Who’s your dad?

Chapter 10 

“Th-there’s been an accident!”

It was a sudden outburst. Before my mind could even catch up, my mouth began to improvise to navigate the crisis. Ah, I don’t know. Let’s just babble and see.

“An accident? What accident are you talking about?”

“Well, um. It was a carriage, a carriage accident. I fell from the carriage…”

“…”

Karl’s eyes narrowed. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was going to see where this was going.

“I hit my head a bit. I’m… I’m having trouble remembering…”

“You lost your memory? Because of hitting your head?”

“Yes, exactly.”

A classic drama plot, an accident and amnesia. I must have reached the limit of my improvisational skills by now.

“So, I lost my previous memories. And I still have lingering effects from the accident, so I came here quietly to recuperate. But suddenly, someone brought a child and claimed it was mine… I didn’t know what was happening, so the best I could do was to call a detective. That’s roughly the situation.”

“Hah. And you expect us to believe that now?”

“Even if you don’t believe it, there’s nothing I can do. Because that’s the truth.”

What if you don’t believe it? If I claim ignorance and can’t even ask a baby, “Am I your mother? Who is your father?” 

I glanced at Hannah beside me. Hannah sent me a look that said, ‘Well done, my lady!’

Karl, still seated, only moved his eyes to look at the child in my arms. Nestled in the warmth of my embrace, it seemed the child was dozing off again, making gentle cooing sounds. It was a typical behavior when feeling sleepy.

Yes, sleep, sleep. Sleeping helps.

I handed Valerie back to Hannah and asked her to put the child back to bed.

As Hannah tried to put the child to sleep by patting her back, Karl spoke up, rising from his seat.

“We need to verify this.”

As Karl stood up, I raised my head and noticed the knights’ eyes fixed on my face.

“What? What is it? Why are you guys staring at ……?”

This time, the knights’ gazes flicked to the potion on the table, then back to my face.

Finally, I understood. Ah, so that’s it. They want to use that potion to directly verify if Valerie is Celeste’s daughter?

“We need to determine if the Viscountess is lying or not.”

I had to watch as the knights swiftly pinned one of the detective’s arms to the table and aimed a knife at him.

What’s going on? Why a detective for testing our blood relations…

Unable to understand their actions, I blinked, then suddenly realized.

Karl clearly suspected something between me and the detective.

The potion test required a blood sample from the test subject. Their current actions were to obtain that blood.

A short groan escaped the detective’s lips as he was held firmly by the knights, unable to move. Red droplets of blood began to form on his hand.

Did they really need to resort to using a knife?

The detective’s previous action of extracting a drop of blood from me with a needle had been rather gentle. Seeing him now, struggling and whimpering with unnecessary wounds, I couldn’t help but think that.

As a crimson drop of liquid fell onto the clear potion, the knights’ eyes moved again. There were three vials of potion on the table. All of them were confiscated from the detective.

Why does that detective carry around multiple vials of potions like that? The more I knew, the stranger he seemed.

“Bring the child here.”

“Oh, no, wait…”

As the man’s command fell with terrifying finality, the knights surrounding us immediately closed in on Hannah. They snatched the child away and forcibly pressed down her arms and shoulders, immobilizing her.

The child was transferred to the arms of the tallest knight, who seemed to be the lieutenant of Karl’s retinue. Unlike the other knights, he wore a red emblem on his chest, presumably indicating he was some sort of deputy commander within the knights’ order.

In any case, the large knight with a sharp, almost chilling gaze skillfully lifted the child into his embrace. It was somewhat unexpected.

“”Abubu.”

Although his face was mostly obscured, the child seemed to take a liking to the emblem on his uniform. She eagerly grabbed at it, making joyful noises and playing with the emblem without pause.

“Anyone is good as long as you give them a …… hug.”

As a strange sense of betrayal began to creep in, I snapped back to attention at the knight’s voice, delivered devoid of any emotion, almost as if reading from a textbook.

“Now, we need to extract a drop of the child’s blood.”

Even adults find it uncomfortable and painful when pricked by a needle, yet they were about to do it to that tiny baby?

Karl nodded in agreement to the knight’s words. It meant he allowed it.

Were all the men here sociopaths? The sight of them approaching the tiny child, ready to extract a drop of blood without even batting an eye, was chilling.

But there was nothing I could do. We were outnumbered, and all of them were knights, with a considerable difference in strength. I had no means to resist such a display of power.

But I couldn’t just stand by.

“Why are you poking a needle into that tiny hand?”

“Yes, please refrain from touching Miss Valerie’s body recklessly!”

I protested, and Hannah joined in, but the knight simply glanced at Hannah before continuing his actions.

I looked at Karl, as if asking him to intervene, but Karl remained impassive. He just stood there, arms crossed, staring down at me in a stoic manner.

Unaware of the impending pain, the child remained cheerful.

One man, who had wiped the needle tip with a handkerchief, took the child’s hand in his grasp. Annoyed by the interruption, the child squirmed and began to whimper.

“Waaah, waaah!”

As the needle grazed the child’s tiny fingertip, followed by tears streaming down her flushed cheeks, her cheerful laughter disappeared in an instant. Tears dripped onto her red face.

Her hand was small, but the drop of blood wasn’t insignificant. When it didn’t seem enough to drop onto the potion, the knight forcefully squeezed her finger to produce more blood.

The cries of pain from the child struck my heart like arrows.

I remembered his face. Let’s see. Glaring at the knight who made Valerie cry, I silently vowed futile vengeance.

“These sociopaths…”

“Here, take her back.”

After finishing their task, the knights returned the child to me. Valerie, still startled by the sharp pain, didn’t calm down easily.

“There, there. Good girl, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

Despite my attempts to comfort her while holding her close, she continued to cry loudly. She, who usually played so happily, was now crying so bitterly. It infuriated me to see her crying like this.

Unable to contain my frustration, I cradled Valerie and tried to soothe her, but she kept crying loudly. How could those people act so indifferent when she was crying so sorrowfully?

With a heavy heart, I held Valerie, comforting her as she wept.

“Is it just a matter of waiting now?”

“Since we’ve added two drops of blood, all you need to do is let the potion swirl well for a few minutes.”

The knight swirled the vial a few times and carefully placed it back on the table.

“If the blood spreads and the potion turns red, it means the two blood samples are unrelated.”

“And if they are related?”

“They’ll be absorbed and the potion will turn transparent.”

“So if it turns red, it’s not blood related. If it turns transparent, it is blood related.”

“That’s right.”

The man took out a pocket watch from his pocket and placed it next to the potion bottle.

Tick. Tock. The sound of the second hand ticking filled the air.

I wasn’t the only one here with a complex mindset. No matter how tangled the original story was, there was no way the rural village detective and Celeste could have had any connection. After all, she was portrayed as a serious-minded aristocrat in the novel.

So the most likely match here is Duke Albrecht. An unnecessarily, overly handsome leading man.

Tick. Tock.

Everyone held their breath, watching the potion for any change. It was so quiet that I briefly forgot about the magical stones I had hidden on the ground floor.

Among the four magical stones hidden, the closest one was… right under the pillar behind where the knights were standing.

Was now the time to use those magical stones to escape, or was it not yet the right moment to gauge? The potion mixed with the blood of the detective and Valery turned red.

“The color of the potion has changed.”

Of course. Of course. How could you ever suspect anything between the detective and Celeste. What was the spell that activated the magic stone, anyway?