Toxic Marriage - Chapter 11.1

Chapter 11.1

After much effort, she was able to calm down her heart and smoothly continue her sick acting.

Freya skipped lunch that day. Her reflection in the mirror looked sickly enough thanks to the powder she applied, but she needed to do it thoroughly. The medicine the maid brought along with her lunch went down the drain of the attached bathroom.

‘Come to think of it, I should have received a letter from the Teacher asking how I was doing.’

A letter asking if she had arrived well and what life was like here. But Freya didn’t receive any letter.

She expected communication with the outside world to be cut off, but this was a little unsettling. She didn’t know whether the letters were being teared up and thrown away, or if someone was impersonating her and replying to them.

Frowning, Freya picked up her cloak to go out.

There was nothing she could do about the letters, so she had to forget about them and start looking into the structure and management system of the castle.

If she said she wanted to go for a walk around the place using the fact that she was depressed as an excuse, Erik, who was like an open book, would pretend to be troubled for a while but eventually allow her.

‘Shall I take a little look around the castle instead of being greedy today?’

As befitting a fortress in a prolonged war, the structure of the castle where Freya resided was extremely complex, and even now, she had no idea where Margrave Fenrir Niflheim’s bedroom was or where the servants of this place were staying.

All she knew was that the room that had been given to Risyr had been used by the knights here in the past and it still smelled like feet. It was clear that the resentful attendant who was like a house fairy had given Risyr the worst room out of many.

For this reason, Freya needed to know the internal structure of the building. She had to know how many rooms there were, and which ones were good so that she could ask for Risyr’s residence to be moved.

Concluding that it would be better to do whatever than to patiently wait for dinner with Fenrir like a chicken waiting for its head to be cut off, Freya grabbed the doorknob.

As she went outside, a dreary corridor greeted her. When she opened the window to check the location of her room, it was in the most remote place in the eastern part of the castle, similar to a tower where criminals were imprisoned.

‘Aren’t the people here the criminals?’

They tricked a woman who didn’t know anything into coming here. Forcibly, too.

Even though Freya was thinking deeply, she had carefully engraved the places she passed in her mind in case she got lost in this wide castle and wasn’t able to return to her room.

As she continued walking, Freya came across the painting of a deer with silver antlers. The painting still boasted of its magnificence.

When she first came here, she saw this painting and comforted herself that it would be okay since animal lovers couldn’t be bad people. Unfortunately, he was a lunatic who chewed on the raw liver of an animal.

At that time, she had the absurd hope of ignoring the unusual atmosphere of the castle.

‘But what is this painting of a deer?’

Even if the place was filled with paintings because they couldn’t hang the portrait of the head of the household who didn’t get old, this was a little unusual.

A painting of a deer in a forest, drawn with a dignified appearance, like a white horse of a solemn knight. What stood out were the silver antlers, so majestic that they did not suit the face of a gentle herbivore.

Could it be a painting by some famous artist? The margrave could never have that kind of sensitivity. Or maybe it was a painting made with special paints. If he was older than her deceased grandfather, he might have been collecting strange things for a long time. He must have had something fun to do if he was locked up in this castle.

‘Hm… But…’

Freya, who was still looking at the painting, slowly reached out her hand.

She felt an unknown impulse as she carefully looked at it, like the mysterious deer was pulling her towards it.

“You can’t touch it!”

Just as Freya’s fingers were about to faintly touch the painting, she heard a voice scolding her from a distance.

When she stopped and turned her head, there was a fierce woman who resembled a house fairy.

Arne.