4.

After finishing the call with the Grand Duke, Hansen was waiting outside.

“Are you all right?”

He checked Jaynie’s complexion. When Jaynie was younger, he would always get extremely nervous whenever the Duke summoned him.

“Did the butler contact Father?”

Jaynie knew his father was keeping an eye on him. Through intermediaries, he always kept tabs on Jaynie’s situation. Even if Jaynie were to collapse, his father’s concern wouldn’t be for his health, but for something else entirely.

It would have been stranger to assume his father would leave a young son in the capital without any surveillance.

Hansen was originally the butler of the ducal estate. When Jaynie was sent to the capital, his father assigned a few familiar servants to accompany him. Hansen was placed in charge of overseeing them.

He was a high-ranking servant, capable of direct conversations with his master. Jaynie often wondered just how much of his activities Hansen reported back to his father.

Hansen looked flustered.

“No, young master.”

“You should have,” Jaynie said, brushing past him. Hansen tried to add something, but Jaynie wasn’t listening.

When Jaynie had first arrived in the capital, still just a boy, Hansen had looked after him like a parent. But Hansen could never truly be his parent.

It wasn’t reasonable to expect unwavering loyalty or affection from a servant—or from any outsider, for that matter. No one could offer absolute devotion.

Even Leandro, whom Jaynie had once thought of as the only person who could be truly absolute, had betrayed him.

Jaynie had gained the support of the Cardinal and softened the Duke’s stance toward him. Yet, despite there being no real problems, his chest still ached. Pausing for a moment, he leaned against the wall.

“Young master.”

“Leave me.”

Jaynie waved off the attempt to help him. It really had been a long time since he’d last seen the Duke.

Ever since his self-imposed seclusion, no matter how many times Jaynie had called for him outside his door, the Duke never opened it.

“I’m not sure if Jaynie truly deserves that title.”

When the collateral relatives pressured Jaynie to prove himself as the rightful heir, he had pounded on the Duke’s door until his hands were bruised.

The Duke never answered. Jaynie ultimately won the succession battle, but without Leandro, he wouldn’t have been able to stand on his own feet—it would have been utterly miserable.

The Duke was an excellent ruler and a decent father. He tried to give Jaynie everything he could as an inheritance. Jaynie was well aware that not all parents were like that.

Yet, when Jaynie needed him most, the Duke abandoned him.

“It’s all right, Jaynie. I’m here for you.”

What Jaynie needed then was an embrace.

Leandro was probably doing well. Even without Jaynie, Leandro had no trouble.

Jaynie told himself he was no different. Even without Leandro, he had no problems. He had let Leandro go, and here he was, living perfectly fine, wasn’t he?

Jaynie had gained the Cardinal’s support without Leandro.

…But Jaynie hadn’t seen with his own eyes how Leandro was doing. How could he be certain Leandro was growing into the man he knew—becoming the perfect knight?

Another wave of dizziness struck him, and this time, Jaynie couldn’t shrug off Hansen’s support.

“Don’t make obvious excuses,” Jaynie thought bitterly to himself. He was tired of his own pretense.

“You should lie down and rest for a while, young master. I’ll call a priest,” Hansen suggested.

“Where’s Berner?” Jaynie asked instead.

“Excuse me?”

“I need to see him,” Jaynie said firmly.

Jaynie wanted to convince himself that he was fine without Leandro.

A priest and a mage—he had resolved one of the two pressing issues.

Now, he had to focus on the other.

Berner.

He needed to see that boy.

* * *

Berner was a clever boy. However, being smart and being perceptive were entirely different matters—and Berner was perceptive enough to notice how much the servants in this mansion disliked him.

In truth, even someone oblivious would have been able to tell.

‘Ah.’

Berner had overslept that morning. No servant was waiting for him when he woke. Since something had happened to Jaynie the previous evening, they hadn’t shared dinner, and now Berner had gone three meals without eating.

Thinking he needed to have breakfast, he headed to the servants’ dining hall. Summoning a servant with the bell string wasn’t even a consideration—no one would come anyway.

In the dining hall, a group of servants was chatting noisily over a late meal.

“Did you hear about the page the young master used to favor?”

“I heard he was sent to the temple. What did he do?”

“Who knows.”

“Mary said she saw him in the young master’s study, covered in blood.”

“Him? After the young master doted on him so much…”

“Who can understand the whims of the young master?”

They clicked their tongues.

Berner agreed with part of their words.

‘What is the young master thinking?’

In front of Jaynie, Berner called him “Lord Jaynie,” but in his mind, he thought of him as “the young master.”

Leaning against the wall, Berner waited for the dangerous conversation to pass before stepping into the dining hall.

The servants fell silent as soon as they noticed him. The cheerful atmosphere filled with laughter and chatter vanished in an instant. Berner walked past them toward where the leftover food was kept.

He didn’t bother ordering them to prepare a meal. If he did, they would pretend to listen at best.

The servants didn’t consider Berner to be someone who could give them orders.

After all, bastards weren’t nobles. A bastard acknowledged by their parent could become part of the family, but Berner’s case was different. He was the child of a Grand Princess, not the Duke’s bloodline.

The servants served the Duke. To them, Jaynie was the only young master of this house.

Berner placed some dry bread and soup on a tray and left the dining hall. The silence persisted behind him. Only once they were sure Berner had disappeared down the hallway would they feel comfortable talking again. He could bet every sock he owned that the topic of their conversation would be none other than himself.

But it didn’t matter. Not in the slightest.

When Berner first arrived at the Duke’s capital estate, he couldn’t suppress the nervous tremors in his body.

The young master had no reason to like him.

But something felt strange. After the incident with “the young master’s childhood clothes,” the young master summoned a tailor and had several new outfits made for Berner. The soft, well-made garments were the kind he hadn’t worn since he lived with his mother.

“Noble children your age are already being educated. It’s too late for you to learn swordsmanship. Magic might be better. I’ll arrange for a mage to teach you.”

The day after Jaynie said this, the room next to Berner’s was vacated and turned into a study. Shelves were installed on every wall, each filled with various books on magic.

“Berner? My pupil? Or should I call you Lord Berner?”

The mage assigned to teach Berner stumbled over his words as he asked.

Lorant, the mage, had been temporarily expelled from the Magic Tower for misappropriating research funds. Until he repaid what he owed, he was barred from returning.

Even so, the so-called misappropriation had been due to a mere calculation error, hardly a crime. And given how many ways mages could accumulate wealth, it wasn’t a severe punishment.

“Just call me by my name.”

“Then, Lord Berner, shall we explore the mysteries of magic together? It’s incredible—I never thought I’d have a pupil! I thought I’d never experience something like this in my life….”

He beamed with delight.

Berner was puzzled. This mage, unless he was a complete eccentric, seemed like a genuinely good person. But why would the young master assign someone so kind to be his tutor?

Especially when Berner wasn’t a good student. He was a slow learner who couldn’t even grasp the basics of “sensing his own magical energy,” something most managed within a month.

Despite this, Lorant never got angry. Instead, he would ponder alongside Berner.

“Why can’t Lord Berner use magic? You sense my magical energy just fine. You can even detect the spells placed on my magical items. That’s a rare talent. Honestly, you might have extraordinary potential. But it seems like something is blocking one of your circuits….”

Lorant even tried to comfort him enthusiastically.

While there were rumors that mages from the Magic Tower were eccentric, Lorant seemed particularly peculiar. After all, even if the Duke ordered a mage to be strict with their student, it wasn’t as if such commands would hold any sway over those from the Tower. The severity of “strictness” would likely be misunderstood anyway.

Then there was the matter of Jaynie having dinner with him. Berner wasn’t sure what to make of that.

On the first day at the estate, Berner and Jaynie shared a seafood meal.

Berner, starving after the long journey, devoured the food with abandon. When he happened to look up, he noticed Jaynie watching him.

“Do you like seafood?” Jaynie asked.

“I don’t know.”

Berner knew from his time in the Duke’s household that seafood was a luxury in the Empire. The Kallios Mountains divided the eastern and western regions, and importing seafood required the use of magic.

After his mother’s death, Berner had grown accustomed to a life without servants. He had learned to fend for himself, including preparing his own meals.

The Duke’s servants had driven away those who served in the annex where Berner lived, but they hadn’t stopped him from accessing the storeroom for supplies.

Even so, Berner knew better than to touch the rare ingredients. Those were reserved for the Duke and Jaynie—seafood, exotic items, spices, and sweets.

Having lived alone for so long, Berner had forgotten their taste. His “I don’t know” wasn’t meant as defiance; he genuinely couldn’t remember if he liked seafood.

But after the long journey, Berner had been hungry that day. Since no one gave him disapproving looks, he ate to his heart’s content. From then on, seafood dishes often appeared at dinners with Jaynie.

For some reason, Jaynie seemed to want Berner to succeed in magic. He would ask about his progress whenever he remembered. Yet, even when Berner shook his head and said, “Not yet,” Jaynie didn’t scold him. Neither did Lorant.

Compared to life at the ducal estate, the capital mansion was overwhelmingly affluent and peaceful.

Berner found himself wanting to believe that Jaynie genuinely cared for him.

But whenever Berner called for the servants, they pretended not to hear. Laundry he set out returned untouched. Meals like breakfast or lunch were rarely prepared on time. He would overhear gossip about himself in the hallways. The servant assigned to his room clearly didn’t want to serve him.

Servants were meant to be the hands and feet of their master. Berner remembered how his mother had treated her servants—they would read her wishes without her even speaking.

Berner knew this neglect couldn’t be anything other than Jaynie’s will. He was smart and perceptive enough to figure that out.

But he had been alone for far too long.

‘That’s why.’

It only took a few simple gestures—asking about his homework, sharing a meal, or inquiring about his daily life—for Berner to think favorably of someone.

Berner was so lonely that even this level of attention made the servants’ rejection feel insignificant. He understood his own state with cold clarity.

The heart should belong to oneself, but it rarely listens to its owner.

Berner decided to frame it this way:

‘He just doesn’t know how to make people suffer.’

Or maybe the opposite—maybe he knows too well.

After all, he made it impossible for Berner to resent the people who hated him.

The neglect didn’t particularly bother him. He was used to it. It wasn’t as if the servants openly insulted him in front of his face. They merely treated him like a ghost.

Though the servants refused to enter his room to clean, the space he had been given was warm, and the bedding was soft.

There was someone who greeted him when he spoke and shared meals with him.

This was not the empty annex where Berner had once lived. In the annex, he had been a literal ghost—unseen, nonexistent.

A lot had changed around him.

And yet, in truth, there wasn’t much difference between the annex at the ducal estate and the mansion in the capital. Berner was always ready to leave. He had packed his belongings meticulously on the way to the capital, only to have them confiscated. Now, all he had to do was walk out the door.

Just as he had lived in the annex, holding his breath and waiting for the Duke to drive him out, Berner was prepared for the day Jaynie would order him to leave.

‘But this is harder.’

Standing in front of the study room, Berner sighed.

A private tutor was a high-ranking servant. Educated and of a higher status than the other servants, but still a subordinate to the nobility.

Servants worked hard to stay in their master’s good graces. They paid close attention to what actions pleased or displeased their lord.

The tutor assigned to teach Berner quickly realized his pupil’s situation on the very first day of lessons. Servants wouldn’t openly harass someone they considered a “young master.” Berner wasn’t harassed because he was ignored—he was hated by the owner of the house.

The tutor understood his role swiftly.

And he had the authority to discipline his student as needed.

“This is basic arithmetic even a ten-year-old knows. You can’t possibly not understand it, Lord Berner. Are you ignoring me?”

“A student should show proper respect to their teacher. Lord Berner, it seems you need discipline. Roll up your pants and show me your calves.”

The tutor was adept at corporal punishment, striking Berner’s calves hard enough to bruise without drawing blood.

Whenever Berner shared dinner with Jaynie, he wondered.

Could Jaynie really be unaware of what the tutor was doing to him?

But Jaynie never asked why Berner’s steps were awkward on the way back to his room. Instead, he simply said he could replace Lorant with another mage if needed.

It seemed that Jaynie wanted to keep Berner close and enjoy watching him struggle.