SOTBW - 177

The priest carefully felt Luna’s lower abdomen and then tilted his head in confusion. Maurice watched anxiously as the priest continued the examination.

Lucas, whose face had partially healed, had been thoroughly exploring Luna. Though the pain from his shattered cheekbone still lingered, it wasn’t enough to hinder his nightly routine of keeping Luna in his bedroom.

Maurice, while watching the maids clean Lucas’ bed, noticed dried white stains on the sheets. He had even gathered testimonies of hearing Luna’s cries of pain from Lucas’ room. To confirm whether Luna was pregnant, Maurice went as far as asking about her menstrual cycle.

However, since it was difficult to be certain just by observation, he paid to summon a priest. Now that Lucas’ wounds from Maximón had healed well, all that remained was for the priest to confirm Luna’s pregnancy. That would be the final piece of the puzzle.

But then, the priest withdrew his hand with a troubled expression.

“She is not pregnant. I sense no signs of pregnancy at all. If she were carrying a child, I would have detected it with divine power, but there’s nothing…”

Maurice was visibly shaken by the priest’s words.

“W-what if the baby is just starting to settle in her womb?”

“Hmm. In that case, it might not be detectable yet…”

The priest glanced at Luna.

Luna quickly covered her exposed belly with her clothes and lowered her gaze. Her wrists and ankles, swollen and red, were clearly visible due to the short, thin garment that barely covered her vital areas. It was evident just how sadistic her owner’s sexual preferences were.

The priest asked Luna bluntly, seemingly unfazed by her discomfort.

“Did you have intercourse with your owner during your ovulation period?”

Luna flinched at the question. Unsure how to respond to such an invasive question, she looked to Maurice, who glared at her. Luna bit her lip and slowly nodded.

“Did your owner definitely ejaculate inside you?”

As the humiliating questions continued, Luna’s face burned with shame. When she didn’t respond and averted her gaze, Maurice slapped her cheek.

“Answer quickly! This is a very important matter!”

Luna clenched the hem of her short skirt tightly and nodded once. Maurice, thinking he might need to retrain her as a slave, turned back to the priest.

The priest skimmed through the notebook Maurice handed him. It contained detailed records of Luna’s menstrual cycle, ovulation dates, and the number of times she had been with Lucas.

After calculating the dates, the priest shook his head as if there was no hope.

“It’s been quite some time since her last ovulation period. The fact that there’s still no reaction means she hasn’t conceived.”

The priest’s definitive statement darkened Maurice’ expression. Having completed his task, the priest collected his payment and left the mansion.

Luna sat frozen in her chair, unable to move. Maurice, looking utterly despairing, leaned on the table for support before finally lashing out at Luna in frustration.

“You’ve served the young master for so long, yet you couldn’t even conceive a child? What have you been doing all this time? The young master has been so generous to you! He even ordered that you be fed meat at every meal so you wouldn’t go hungry!”

Luna remained stubbornly silent, refusing to speak. It was true that she was served chicken at every meal. But Lucas didn’t just give it to her.

What Maurice didn’t know—or perhaps chose to ignore because Luna was just a slave—was that Luna had to perform certain acts between Lucas’ legs just to eat. Whether Maurice was unaware of Lucas’ perverse behavior or simply turned a blind eye due to Luna’s status as a slave, it didn’t matter.

As Maurice continued to berate her, Luna tuned out his words and stared out the window at the thick blanket of snow.

Winter had arrived. She hadn’t even noticed the change in seasons, shuttling daily between Lucas’ bedroom and the underground dungeon.

Luna blankly stared at the reflection of a prostitute in the window. The nearly naked woman was unmistakably a prostitute.

Her body was covered in marks of abuse, and the area between her legs was so swollen that it ached with every step. She thought about killing herself several times a day. Escaping this mansion was impossible.

She had even given up trying to figure out how she had ended up in this situation. The more she thought about running away, the more her misery multiplied. Luna clung to the last shreds of her self-esteem, but she felt like she wouldn’t survive until spring.

She wanted to find Emaydis, but the repetitive, animalistic life she led made it impossible. Exhausted from Lucas’ torment, Luna blinked slowly and stared at the floor.

Now, she didn’t even want to see her sister. She didn’t want anyone to find out how she had been treated here or the things she had done out of fear of being beaten.

If Emaydis knew, she would cry uncontrollably. She would apologize for not being able to protect Luna and would cry until she collapsed.

Luna, who had been overwhelmed by the thought of her beloved sister, suddenly shuddered. Faintly, she heard the sound of a small bell ringing. As soon as she heard it, goosebumps ran down her dry arms. It was the sound of Lucas searching for her.

Whether Luna heard it or not, Maurice, who had been angry, fell silent and turned to look at the door. A servant entered and delivered a message that the young master was calling for the slave.

Luna’s face twisted in pain. She looked at Maurice as though begging him not to send her there, but it was clear that God had abandoned Luna long ago.

Maurice gestured with his chin for the servant to take Luna away. The servant, forcing Luna, who refused to move, dragged her towards Lucas’ bedroom. Luna entered the room like an animal being led to the slaughterhouse.

When the door slammed shut, Luna squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. A meal had been set on the elliptical table.

Luna watched Lucas, who was sitting on a chair and idly playing with the whip used for training horses. His face, already wrinkled and deformed due to the scars from various surgeries to align his bones, looked even more grotesque.

Luna hesitated and took a few steps forward, desperately trying to avoid Lucas’ gaze. Lucas, standing up from the window, cracked the whip on the floor, making Luna flinch.

“Where have you been? I told you to be in your place during meal time.”

Lucas lifted Luna’s chin with the handle of the whip. Luna, afraid of the punishment, smiled brightly and spoke in a sweet, apologetic voice.

“The butler called me for a moment. He had something to check with me.”

“Maurice? Why would he want you?”

“He… He probably wanted to check for any STDs. Since the young master is so fond of me…”

“Ah.”

Lucas nodded, as if he understood that could be the case.

“Maurice is a very loyal person. If only there was someone like that around me, an old man like him.”

Turning his back, Lucas sat on the sofa. Luna, fearful of the whip, quickly ran to him and knelt in front of him. She looked up at him with a submissive face, like a trained dog, and her chest exposed beneath her stretched-out neck.

Luna’s clothes were so loose and thin that they barely served any purpose. Lucas, seeming pleased with her body, stared at her before pressing the whip’s tip painfully against her chest.

“It’s time for dinner, Luna. Do you remember how you’re supposed to behave at meal times?”

At his words, Luna shuddered, then hastily removed her clothes. Naked, she rubbed her head against Lucas’ legs like a dog. With no hesitation in her actions, Lucas smiled in satisfaction and loosened his belt.

Luna stopped thinking about anything else. In front of Lucas, she was no longer a person—she was just a prostitute, no, even less than that, a four-legged beast used to satisfy his lust.

Later, Maurice, who had been eavesdropping outside the bedroom, quietly walked away.

The news that Luna was not pregnant was deeply disappointing. Maurice had considered bringing in a slave who had been pregnant before, but Lucas only wanted Luna. If he suggested another slave now, it would only bring trouble.

Returning to his room, Maurice took off his magnifying glasses with a complicated expression. Piles of letters demanding payment for debts were scattered across his desk.

Lucas was not interested in such things. He believed it was beneath his noble status to handle money matters.

Since Edwin had severed Lucas’ financial ties, Maurice had been selling decorations and slaves within the mansion to raise money. Though the slaves Lucas had gathered were all beautiful, fetching high prices, it still wasn’t enough to cover his extravagant expenses.

Maurice, with a troubled expression, was going through receipts when he noticed a thick stack of papers placed in the middle of the desk. These papers were not his. When Maurice had called for a priest to confirm Luna’s pregnancy, such papers had not been there.

With a confused expression, Maurice flipped through the papers and froze as he saw the detailed contents written inside. They described in detail the atrocities Lucas had committed.

Not only were there moral and religious issues, but the things written were also serious violations of royal law. Maurice’s face darkened as he read.

Someone had deliberately gone after Lucas. From incidents at the Noctis Fortress to events in Elgort Territory, everything was meticulously documented. It seemed like someone had gone out of their way to ruin Lucas.

Maurice, trembling, turned the pages until he could no longer bear to read. The person who would do such a thing was none other than Maximón. That greedy adopted son, who had been planning to devour the Elgort family, had even prepared something like this to bring Lucas down.

Maurice, gripping his thinning hair as if he were about to rip it out, looked utterly confused, unsure of how to handle this dilemma.

The papers contained details about Lucas. It was recorded that, while Lucas was traveling down to Noctis Fortress, he pretended to have food poisoning and then raped a female priest who came to treat him. The church had kept a record of the priest, who was believed to have been assaulted by someone else at the time, and had even secured testimony.

Maurice read that sentence over and over again. Lucas had once almost been excommunicated from the Elgort Diocese for being drunk and spitting on the crucifix and urinating on it. Thanks to Edwin personally pleading with the pope, Lucas had avoided excommunication, but if the fact that he had raped the female priest were to become public, the consequences were inevitable.

Being excommunicated from the Church meant being expelled from the entire kingdom of Bastronia. The moment that happened, Lucas would be treated like a ghost. He would never be able to inherit the title of Marquis, would lose his status, and would be forced to live his life as a vagrant.

Maurice’s hand, clutching the stack of papers, trembled uncontrollably. He could not allow the young master, whom he had served his whole life, to end up in such a fate.

Lucas was the only son of Edwin. Only Lucas could become the Marquis of Elgort.

Having served the Elgort family for generations, Maurice felt a deep sense of duty to rescue Lucas from this crisis at any cost. Ensuring Lucas could safely inherit the title of Marquis was the very reason for Maurice’s existence.

He pulled himself together and read through all of the crimes Lucas had committed as listed on the paper. The fact that these documents had been sent here instead of to the Church or the royal family meant that Maximón had some ulterior motive.

As Maurice read through the threatening words, he paused on the last page. At the very end of the paper, written in elegant handwriting, was a surprising sentence.

“If you do not want Lucas Elgort to fall into trouble, bring a female slave named Luna to the Pofenti General Store in the village of Ferencia Inn, located north of the Noctis Fortress, by midnight in three days.”