Swan Grave - Chapter 26

It was a rude way for a maid to speak to her master. Yet, even though she had said something worth rebuking, Rothbart didn’t seem displeased by Anna’s impertinent retort. He only gave a leisurely smile.

Unlike Rothbart, who quickly returned to the neat image of a gentleman, it took Anna some time to regain her original appearance. Leaning against a tree, Rothbart watched as Anna put on her clothes and continued speaking.

“Are you worried about reputation? No one will know you behave so lewdly. Besides, if you are going to return to your original world, reputation in this one does not matter, does it?”

“People have boundaries.”

Anna’s face twisted in disgust. She had never thought of herself as particularly strict about moral standards. If she had been that fussy from the start, she wouldn’t have accepted Rothbart’s proposal.

But Rothbart’s moral standards were utterly despicable. If she continued to follow his lead, she too would eventually be tainted and corrupted by the debauchery and obscenity of this place. That was what Anna feared.

Once her defenses crumbled, her thoughts spilled out. Not realizing that she had grown agitated, Anna, unlike the obedient self she had shown until now, expressed her thoughts directly while watching Rothbart’s reaction.

“Once you cross that boundary, it’s over. Standards that have been stretched never shrink back, and a line once crossed cannot be undone. Even if the environment changes, it’s the same. I don’t want that.”

She knew better than anyone that what she did in this world couldn’t be brushed aside as mere play. Even if Rothbart mocked her as old-fashioned, Anna steeled herself that she wouldn’t be shaken.

“I really like that.”

But instead, Rothbart wore a pleased smile. Then he suddenly brought up a proposal he had almost forgotten.

“Have you ever thought positively about Svanhild’s words?”

“Pardon?”

“Seems you dislike becoming my mistress. Then how about becoming my wife?”

Anna couldn’t understand why the conversation had suddenly taken this turn. Could it be that she had shown some sign of wanting something? But she wanted nothing…

Perhaps he was mocking her for cheekily talking back to him. Anna quickly shook her head in denial.

“There’s no difference between being a mistress or a wife.”

“Because you’ll leave anyway?”

Rothbart chuckled. What he found so amusing, she couldn’t know. Maybe her desperate efforts to return to her original world seemed laughable to him, but to Anna, it was a matter of life and death.

He narrowed his eyes with an amused look and asked, “Why are you so intent on returning to your original world? Is there someone waiting for you there?”

His cold eyes looked down at her with arms crossed, as if probing for something.

“Hmm? Someone you love, perhaps…”

Anna didn’t feel it was worth answering his question and continued dressing. Once she had finished putting on her clothes and tried to stand, she stumbled. Her knees stung, scraped by the ground. Now that she thought of it, her palms hurt as well.

Suddenly, a shadow fell over her head. Rothbart, who had approached without her noticing, was holding out his hand.

There was no reason not to take it. She knew well that clinging to such useless pride would only make things harder for her. Leaning her weight into her hand, Anna grasped Rothbart’s aged, tree-like hand and stood up.

He didn’t budge in the least. Instead, he slipped his hand under her arm and forced her to her feet. Unable to steady herself, Anna collapsed against his chest. Horrified at the thought he might mistake it for her clinging to him on purpose, she hastily pushed at his chest.

“To be honest, I admit what I do to you is humiliating. But you endure that humiliation just to return to your original world. I’m simply curious about the reason, that’s why I ask.”

Rothbart, unbothered, brushed aside the tangled hair sticking to Anna’s cheek. His touch was tender. As if he were doing it to his wife…

“I loved my wife dearly and treated her well… But in the end, she abandoned me and left.”

“…If you behaved toward your wife the way you do to me, it wouldn’t be strange that she left.”

She shouldn’t have answered back, but Anna reflexively retorted. She grew furious at the thought that he might have been tormenting her all this time just to test how long she would endure. At Anna’s courageous defiance, Rothbart’s mouth curved into a wide grin.

“Do you think I would have treated her this way?”

His sneering tone was enough to make Anna see her position clearly.

Well. He had said she was a substitute for his wife, not that he would treat her like his wife. Who was she, that he would torment her? If she was being punished, perhaps she was even bearing the sins of the Marchioness in her stead…

Anna felt a chill run through her chest, followed by goosebumps. As if she had harbored some sort of expectation… Even though she was only a replacement.

All of this was Rothbart’s fault. He reigned like the cruelest tyrant imaginable, yet behaved in a way that made it feel as though all his exceptions were for her alone. It was hard to ignore the feeling of being made special.

Perhaps even Rose, the governess, had felt the same superiority. Like a creature given its first name by a supreme being, having its very existence redefined. The sense of fulfillment that only livestock raised in comfort could know.

If even she, who came from another world, could feel that way, then it was suddenly understandable that Rose would desperately torment her in order to maintain her place as Rothbart’s “exception.”

“I treated her more preciously than anything in the world. I listened to her every word and tried to give her everything she desired. But none of it mattered. What mattered to her was the one she had left behind in her original world… Are you the same, hmm?”

Yet even the supreme Marquess Rothbart Lohengrin was still a slave shackled to the wife who had left him eleven years ago. He kept chewing over her memory, over and over again. As if he had been preserved in that time. Perhaps when the Marchioness departed this world, she had taken a fragment of Rothbart’s soul along with her.

“Or is it… that even if you had sex and bore children, you could never grow attached to someone from this world? Do you find it physically repulsive? Tell me honestly.”

The question was not only illogical but steeped in desperation. It seemed he had turned it over in his mind countless times, trying to understand why his wife had left.

The sight of him, so unlike his usual self who always stayed composed, watching her fluster from a distance, left Anna speechless. He seemed unfamiliar. And the fact that she found herself pitying him also unsettled her.

He didn’t press her for an answer, as if it was never a question that required one.

“Well… it doesn’t matter either way. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t change that she betrayed me.”

Having concluded on his own, his red eyes gleamed with anticipation like wild roses blooming in the thicket. Though Anna stood right before him, it was as if he didn’t see her.

Hugging Anna and resting his chin on her crown, he whispered, dreaming of the absent Marchiones, “So when she returns, I will take my revenge.”

His humming voice was sweet as a demon’s snare.

“I will return to her the betrayal and helplessness I felt.”

There was nothing Anna could say to Rothbart, who had resolved on vengeance. Her words would not reach him anyway. All Anna could do was stand quietly, feeling left out between the Marchioness and Rothbart, and accept the warmth of his embrace.