“I shouldn’t have let him go somehow… but my sister and Ferdinand were already stabbed…”

“Young Lady, calm down. How can it be the Young Lady’s fault that they were caught?”

“I’m so sorry to be the only one left…”

Arjan covered her face. Her face had been paler than anyone else, which revealed the horrors that had happened in the lounge.

“What about Ferdinand? My sister, my sister—she’s so frail that she cannot last long in such a harsh place…”

“Calm down, Young Lady. You’re already out of breath. Please breathe slowly.”

Arjan began to breathe out slowly according to that person’s words. Every time she blew out a light breath with her trembling lips, her complexion was regained little by little.

But all of those actions hadn’t been caught by Raven’s eyes.

“Young Lady Clemence.”

Even Arjan’s pitiful appearance was disagreeable to him. He had to find his wife quickly, but he was so frustrated by her dawdling answer.

“Don’t make me ask me twice—Molitia, where did my wife go?”

“Uh, you’re…”

Unlike others, Arjan bit her tongue slightly when he was still holding up a cold attitude.

“Young Lady Clemence, I want you to tell me right away—without dragging those feet of yours.”

Sympathy wasn’t working for the Duke. Therefore, it was rather necessary to give away the information that she needed to hand over. Arjan then pointed her finger outward, albeit a little wobbly.

“…she was taken over there.”

“She was dragged away?”

“The unidentified man who knocked her out had thrown me off before dragging her away.”

Raven proceeded to run again following Arjan’s fingertips. As he arrived at the garden without losing a breath, he quickly took a look around.

The white-covered garden appeared similar everywhere. The snow-covered world had obscured even the way out.

His eyes were fixated at one place as he turned his head and searched around. He made a quick pause in his steps before heading to the place that was under a wall in the garden.

“It’s…”

His eyes began scowling as he lifted the shawl with his gaze still fixed on it. It was a familiar shawl—an item that he wouldn’t have not recognized in the first place.

This shawl was a gift from Raven to Molitia, herself.

“…Molitia.”

Raven’s face was crushed terribly right into the shawl. He finally began to realize that Molitia had already disappeared.

“…where did she go?”

He couldn’t just believe what Arjan was saying. She was one of the family members who had always tormented his wife, adding more to his distrust.

“At this time of winter—you’d get cold easily.”

He could never believe it without seeing it with his own pair of eyes. He never imagined that she, who had always been by his side, would disappear in such a vain way like this.

He just couldn’t. Ever since the moment she appeared by his side, he thought that she would always be there next to him.

But that belief was utterly broken for the first time. Due to one’s negligence. All because of a moment’s wrong choice.

“Molitia.”

He just couldn’t hide his weeping heart. For the first time ever, he realized what it was that had made him cry.

Even when his mother had passed away in vain, he was stained with guilt and regret, which he had been unable to retain since he couldn’t cry properly due to his burning hostility towards his own father.

What did the Marquis call it before? She was more important. She was the most precious thing in the whole wide world.

“Please…”

It would’ve been nice if she were to return and whisper his name softly in his ear. Even if the tip of his nose had turned red due to the cold, he thought that he still could have managed these unstable feelings of his, albeit barely, if she appeared by his side and held his hand.

But she hadn’t returned at all. She didn’t hold his hand nor did she call out his name affectionately.

‘She said that she had been dragged away.’

He breathed in her faint scent before lifting his head from the shawl. His face, which had crumbled disastrously, was looking much more brutal than ever.

I will slaughter those hands of the man who took off her shawl.

I will crush the neck of that person who had knocked her out.

I will torture the man who dragged her off to the point of not dying just yet.

And I will absolutely get my wife back. Raven then bit down his lips tightly.

In his eyes, there was no longer a trace of the former Raven.

“What the hell is this list?”

The voice of the aging Marquis rumbled like a thunderbolt.

“Huh? But this is the list which was obtained from my master, but…”

“My official seal is not stamped here!”

The list that had been in the hands of the angry Marquis was eventually thrown towards the servant. Along with the fluttering paper, the servant’s face had shown to be lost in thought.

“And who the hell are these people? I never invited anyone like this!”

“Well, that can’t be…”

The servant, who had already turned blue, quickly knelt down. The final cry of desperation from the person who realized that everything had gone wrong as he intuitively fell onto the floor.