Chapter 26

Chapter 26

It was a boy who had burst into the carriage. His hat partially obscured his face. He frantically looked around at the passengers in the carriage.

“Let Ryan go!” he growled. The voice was a familiar one. The unknown assailant then slowly lifted his head. He was the spitting image of Ryan.

I was right. They’re twin brothers. Everything I had predicted was correct.

The vision I had was a memory of Ryan… He had been frolicking around with a girl I assumed was Eliza. At first, I had thought I was seeing two of him because the image was distorted, but after thinking more carefully, I rejected that thought. I’d had a vision of Ryan, his brother, and a young Eliza playing together. It turned out, my vision had not been of two Ryans, but of him and his identical twin.

“Release my daughter,” Kallen demanded, his expression deathly serious. “If you release her this instant, I shall grant you a swift death. One free of torture.”

I felt the twin tense behind me.

“Let Ryan out of here first. If not, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Kallen glared at the young boy. “Scratch my daughter’s cheek? Slit her throat? Or perhaps sever her finger?” He slowly raised his hands. “If you do, do you think I will sit idly by?”

With a startling crash, Ryan’s twin flew out of the carriage, as though struck by an invisible force.

“Liden!” Ryan shouted.

A black, murky blob of mana hovered before me, clearly the afterimage of what had attacked the boy named Liden. It looked identical to the black substance that had bound William, the perpetrator of the red hat murders. It slowly slithered toward Liden, then cracked across his cheek like a whip.

He squealed. As the serpentine mana entwined his body, the boy writhed in the dirt. It was black magic. At that moment, Jade pulled a dagger from his chest pocket and lunged for Ryan’s neck. Ryan reeled back, knocking his head against the wall.

Jade glanced at the duke from the corner of his eye. “I shall kill him immediately, Father,” he promised casually.

“Wait! Please don’t!” I shouted hastily.

Jade and Kallen then turned to face me, their eyes as blank as those of dolls.

“I want to hear what they have to say! Please!” I went on desperately.

“Fine,” Kallen agreed in a low whisper. He flung open the door, sprung from the carriage, and strode toward Liden, who was panting on the ground. He then grasped him by the scruff of his neck. “But not before severing this bastard’s hands for threatening my daughter with a knife.”

A sense of shock tingled through my body. How is that any different from killing him? If you cut off his hands, he’ll simply bleed to death!

“I’m fine! The knife didn’t even touch me, I swear!” I waved my hands frantically, wincing slightly as my injured shoulder throbbed.

Kallen raised an eyebrow. Then, with a snap of his fingers, the black chains of mana lifted from Liden’s body. Meanwhile, Jade dragged Ryan out of the carriage and refused to drop his dagger from the latter’s throat. Only then did I notice Liden’s entire body was soaked, as if he had swum the length of a river. He gave off a damp odor.

“I see now,” Jade mumbled under his breath. “There were two of you. When did you manage to switch places?”

The twins stayed silent.

“And which one of you killed Percy?” Kallen then inquired, but Ryan and Liden simply exchanged blank stares.

“One last question.” The duke turned to stare at me. “How did you know all this, my dear child?”

I swallowed hard. “Th-that’s not what’s important right now. Don’t you want to know the truth about this case?”

“My child has a talent for manipulating me, it appears,” Kallen replied, clicking his tongue. Just the sound of his cold voice made my hair stand on end.

I can’t pretend to be in the dark, especially if my prediction is true.

“I don’t particularly want to hear what these murderers have to say, but if that’s what my daughter wants, I suppose my hands are tied.” Kallen nodded to Jade, who, without releasing his dagger, began to drag Ryan down the alley.

The back alley near the river contained a deserted warehouse. Once we entered, Ryan and Liden were restrained at the center of the warehouse, their bodies bound tightly by the black energy that moved at Kallen’s fingertips.

A snake? For the first time, I looked closely at what I had assumed were black chains. But in reality, it was a black snake.

Did the duke summon it using magic? Kallen grasped Ryan’s chin and looked him directly in the eyes.

“I will allow you to speak, but if you bite your tongue in refusal, I will ensure that your other half dies a slow, torturous death.”

“Father, please remember to cover Leticia’s ears when you say such awful things,” Jade said bluntly, placing his dagger back in his chest pocket.

I bit my lower lip and gripped Jade’s sleeve. He settled his hand on my shoulder in response.

“So, shall we begin the interrogation as per my daughter’s request?” the duke said impassively. “Why and how did you carry out such an act?”

“I…” Pale-faced, Ryan began to speak cautiously. I had already guessed how he’d pulled off the murder: a simple body-swapping trick. When he’d left to pick the roses, he had already switched places with his older brother. Then, while Liden had chatted with us, Ryan had lain in wait to kill Percy.

“But Percy died without so much as a scream,” I mumbled. “Did you poison him?”

“If I had, it likely would not have escaped your notice. After all, you are a lady of keen intellect. I covered Percy’s mouth with a cloth soaked in sedative to render him temporarily unconscious. Luring him was simple. He always gave Eliza blue presents, so I triggered his emotions by mentioning her keepsakes.”

I remembered Ryan telling us that many of Eliza’s belongings were blue.

Kallen then jerked his chin, encouraging us to continue.

“Then, at the last moment, you swapped places again when you left to send the mirror signal,” I said.

Ryan nodded. “Yes, and that was the final time Liden and I switched places.” I stared at Ryan, waiting for him to explain further.

“I have no regrets. He made a fool of Eliza. He treated her like filth.” Ryan went on, his voice loud and clear. “Our family was poor, so my twin brother was adopted by a relative. But then that family went broke and Liden was forced to live on the streets. I’m surprised to hear you’re from the back alley, my lady, but I assume that’s where you met my brother. We didn’t reunite until we were in our early teens.”

At that moment, I suddenly remembered what Jax had said.

“One day, when we were fifteen, Ryan was suddenly overflowing with cheerfulness, as if he had turned into a completely different person. I remember wondering what had gotten into him. But gradually he became the person he is today.”

Could that mean…?

“Lord Ryan, have you two been living as one person?”

“That’s right. We shared an identity. It was possible because we are identical twins.” Ryan calmly nodded as he spoke. “As you are well aware, private education is extremely expensive. I wanted to return Liden to his aristocratic life.”

“I’m guessing you practiced how to give the appearance of the same person then,” I said.

“No wonder you acted like an entirely different person sometimes,” Jade muttered.

Ryan took a deep breath and resumed his explanation.

“So why did you kill Percy?” Jade asked bluntly.

Ryan audibly ground his teeth together. “Because what he did to Eliza was akin to murder.”

The warehouse fell silent.

“My sister had grown into a remarkable beauty. There were even men in Percy’s family who urged her to break off her engagement and accept their marriage proposals, promising to pay the penalty fee on her behalf. These men all possessed noble titles, wealth, and property. Learning this, Percy—”

“Percy, who had nothing but wealth, responded in a manner that was… ungentlemanly,” Kallen interrupted.

“Precisely, Your Grace.” Ryan nodded, biting down on his lower lip as if to suppress his pain.

“Was that all?” I asked him quietly.

His head jerked up, and he examined my face intently. “You’re quite mysterious, my lady. Almost as if someone else resides inside that small frame…”

My breath hitched. Fortunately, Ryan continued speaking before Kallen and Jade could say anything.

“But you’re correct—that wasn’t the end of it. Percy had assaulted Eliza in his summerhouse. His awful, worthless friends were with him at the time. They had goaded him into laying his hands on her. Percy becomes volatile when he drinks, you see, almost like he’s a different person.”

“Disgusting,” Jade muttered, his face twisting in contempt.

“And as if that wasn’t enough…” Ryan gritted his teeth.

“When Percy passed out drunk, the other bastards in the summerhouse had their way with Eliza. Several of them…”

Revolting brutes… I clenched my fists, appalled by what I was hearing.

“Did Eliza take her own life?” I asked hesitantly.

Ryan looked at me with desolate eyes.

“In noble families, when a young lady is said to have died of pneumonia, it’s usually a euphemism for suicide. Eliza broke down into tears when she told us the truth. Then one day, she slit her wrists.”

“And you wanted Lord Percy to die in the same manner,” I said. This was also something I’d already known. Eliza was a stranger to me, but my heart started to ache all over again.

“So you killed the boy to exact revenge?” Kallen said, then pointed to Liden. “But what about him? I thought he and your sister grew up apart from each other.”

“The three of us once spent a week filled with nothing but joy and laughter at a cottage. It was the only time we shared as siblings, but the memories of that week are what have sustained us this whole time.”

My hands started to shake. He was referring to the memory I had seen in my vision.

But how was I able to see someone else’s memories?