"James didn't know."
The Baron shook his head and looked at the fire before him. He had suddenly grown much older:
"Mother never told James that the man she had been engaged to also bore the surname Kaming, so James knew nothing about it. As for Mother... she had probably guessed something before I was born, but because of love, she did not want to accept reality and pretended not to know.
"Mother died young, probably because the future gradually confirmed the suspicions she had refused to face. On top of that, she was never able to contact Father again. In the end, her heart died, consumed by anxiety and longing.
"So, in our family's fifty-year story, among all the participants in this tragicomedy, I am the one who understands everything best."
Shade looked at him curiously:
"But I still don't understand. What does this have to do with you going to 1809 in your youth and stealing your one-year-old wife?"
"Reading Mother's diary and figuring out what happened took the twenty-three-year-old me more than half a year. At the time, I was nearly driven mad. I even wanted to treat that diary and that book as proof that Mother had gone insane. After all, she had indeed been somewhat mentally unstable while she was alive."
He took a deep breath, trying not to become so agitated:
"I read many books and searched through a great deal of information during that time. Then I realized something: many things that had yet to happen in the future had jointly led to the present me being myself. And if certain things in the future did not happen, then I would not exist."
He paused, then asked Shade very seriously:
"Do you understand what I mean?"
Shade nodded lightly:
"I do. Normally, the