But the Count had different thoughts. His smile widened, and he glanced at the Duke, who had the same goosebumps as Julian all over his body. The Duke's expression was tense and his hand instinctively hovered near his side as if ready to intervene.
Vanessa and Olivia, who were less sensitive to subtle shifts in mana, could not feel the full change in the atmosphere. But they too knew that something big was being prepared. The tension in the air was palpable even to them.
**
Unlike the Count, the Countess despised Kraven and the Astran Duchy with a burning intensity that she made no effort to hide, at least not in the privacy of her own thoughts.
Honestly, who would not feel the same after learning that the man entrusted with her daughter's future would treat her as though she were nothing more than an insect? And as if that were not frustratingly enough, the same psychotic man was rumored to harbor an unnatural, twisted lust for his own mother and sister.
