Beast of the Frozen Night

Road to the North (1)

The sunset light that streamed through the window colored the desolate parlor with an ominous red.

With every move of his lips, thick cigarette smoke permeated from the middle-aged man with a long pipe in his mouth.
In silence the man put down the pipe and drew a conclusion.

“So, prepare to leave for the North.”

It was the sound of someone handing his daughter to a seventy-year-old perverted man that was old enough to be her grandfather.

She suspected this to some extent from the time she was suddenly called to a family meeting, but they went too far this time.
Anne forgot the etiquette drilled into her as a noble girl and revealed her true feelings.

“Father, I heard that he is over seventy years old.”

“Angroanne, you are being immature.
This is the Grand Duke Cromund with authority comparable to that of the imperial family.
When the old man dies, all the properties of his house will become yours.
You should thank your brother for making you the Grand Duchess.”

A snide voice interrupted without the slightest trace of courtesy.

Robert Libelois, the immature successor of County Libelois.

It was her older brother who was the one responsible for this, and yet he was brazenly showing his face.
If it had been her, she would have immediately been rebuked for intervening in a conversation, but her parents, who were soft to the successor, were silent this time as well.

Anne opened her mouth as she struggled to tamp down the resentment filling her throat.

“Was Brother so mature that he molested someone else’s woman?”

At the same time, Robert, whose eyes usually only came into focus at the sight of beautiful women, molested the Grand Duke’s lover during her visit to the capital and was arrested on the spot by the knights of the Grand Duchy’s family.
It wasn’t the first time he had acted like an animal in heat, but this time he got it wrong.

She was a woman favored by the Grand Duke Cromund who oversaw the North.
He was an immovable figure even to the imperial family.

The only thing that County Libelois could do was lie flat on their stomachs and beg.
They pleaded for mercy, but a threat to detain Robert was the only reply.
After all, it was just yesterday that the Grand Duchy’s family demanded a huge amount of compensation in the name of molesting the Grand Duke’s lover.

Naturally, the Libelois family did not have the ability to cover that amount.
The incompetent Count and thoughtless h