“Is the fiancé of Lady Blanche finally being revealed here today?”

“But the acting head hasn’t given any indication of that…”

At the words I overheard, I straightened my back and stepped forward, ahead of Sybel.

Now, all eyes were fixed on me.

“That’s right. Sybel is still merely the ‘acting head,’ so he cannot dare to override the will of the Marquis, can he? Everyone remembers the will of the Marquis.”

Sybel had not yet completed the succession ceremony and had not received the king’s decree.

This meant that while he could perform the duties of the head in practice, he was not officially the head of the Blanche family.

“Lady Blanche, so who is the lucky man?”

Ah, finally, this question came out.

They looked around as if suspecting each other.

I was grateful that the Grand Duke was not present and opened my mouth.

“It is the Baluasten family.”

“What!”

“Do you mean the Grand Duke of the North?”

“My goodness.”

The uproar spread rapidly like a falling domino, too fast to stop.

By tomorrow, news of my marriage would have spread throughout the kingdom.

I hid my anxious heart and turned to Sybel as if expecting his reaction.

This time, he couldn’t even hide his expression; his jaw was clenched so tightly it was protruding.

Without taking my eyes off Sybel, I slowly approached the man standing next to him.

“I believe some of you have already seen it. The Grand Duke, who will be my husband, sent a knight from the North as an early gift. So if you intend to step on my shadow…”

The shoes of the man who had stepped on my dress before the dance were shiny and polished.

With a smile that anyone could see was menacing, I slowly stomped on the man’s pristine shoes.

“Remember that there is a beast from the North behind me.”

“Ugh.”

The man in front of me gritted his teeth, enduring the pain, but he couldn’t move away.

And immediately, the people surrounding me retreated to a distance of about 1 meter.

“You all act like scared little mice.”

As I turned to them, smiling as if enjoying myself, the long-awaited system window appeared.

However, I was too distracted to even think about examining the memory fragment.

After giving a light curtsey to the Crown Prince who was watching from the second floor, I walked straight out of the ballroom without looking back.

* * *

At the entrance of the palace where the ball was being held.

The waiting room, where bodyguards without titles and the servants and coachmen of the attending nobles stayed, was filled with cheap tobacco smoke and the smell of alcohol.

The men who had been exchanging trivial or vulgar jokes turned their attention to the commotion coming from outside the door.

“Lady, that area is for gentlemen only!”

The noisy waiting room fell silent in an instant.

Dozens of eyes were fixed on the door, curious to see who the bold visitor was who dared to step into this rough crowd.

A knight who had been leaning silently against the wall like a statue suddenly moved.

He looked like a pet dog recognizing the sound of its master’s footsteps from afar and going to greet them at the door.

And finally, when the waiting room door swung open.

“Sir…!”

“Please leave. The air here is not good.”

Thanks to Cedric’s massive frame completely blocking the door, the men in the waiting room could only hear a high-pitched voice.

Cedric shielded Belinda entirely as he exited the waiting room, not allowing her to be seen until the door was fully closed.

“What is the matter?”

Belinda looked up at Cedric, who had appeared before she even called for him, and spoke with a somewhat calmer expression.

“We must leave immediately. I think Sybel has done something.”

Belinda deliberately said no more, fearing that voicing her suspicions would make her inner anxiety a reality.

She merely urged the coachman to drive at a breakneck speed that could overturn the carriage.

“At the very least, you should have had no weaknesses, Bel.”

Belinda couldn’t understand why Leo came to mind with that one sentence.

On the night of the ball.

Terry was away from the mansion to investigate Sybel’s aide.

Therefore, the only ones currently guarding the Blanche annex were Vivian and Leo.

The fact that she had carelessly overlooked now made her incredibly anxious.

Hoping that this would become something to laugh about later, Belinda opened the door and jumped out before the carriage even stopped.

Cedric caught her multiple times, preventing her from falling, so she barely avoided a rough landing.

But there was no time to feel relieved.

The moment she saw the front door of the annex open, Belinda’s heart sank.

Cedric stopped her as she hurried to go inside.

“I don’t sense any presence inside, but we can’t be sure.”

Belinda followed Cedric, who had drawn his sword, into the mansion.

The inside of the mansion was a complete mess, as if an earthquake had swept through it.

In the middle of the mansion, which looked like it had been deliberately ransacked, Belinda called out a name.

“Ratchet?”

Her voice echoed through the empty hall.

But there was no response.

“Vivian!”

Belinda searched the mansion until her anger subsided. But Cedric was right.

The mansion was empty.

It was then.

<Bel! Bel!>

“Sugar!”

She was so distracted that she had completely forgotten about Sugar.

Sugar circled frantically above Belinda’s head, screaming like a siren.

<Smelly humans came in droves! And they threw things! Sugar saw it all! Then bang! Boom! The little human went whoosh! And then the door, screech!>

After sending some magical energy to Sugar, Belinda grabbed Sugar as if catching a flying insect.

“Calm down and explain properly.”

Belinda listened quietly to Sugar’s explanation.

Finally, after releasing Sugar, Belinda spoke.

“I found out where Vivian is. But the whereabouts of Ratchet are unknown.”

Her expression was cruelly blank, but Cedric noticed that her hands were trembling.

“Contact the rats. Release them all.”

* * *

Vivian’s life had changed 180 degrees since coming to the Blanche mansion.

At the Magic Tower, it was routine to stay up for days and nights, engrossed in researching magical tools, then collapse from exhaustion.

But now, because Belinda restricted her caffeine and stimulant intake, she had inadvertently become a morning person and often dozed off in the late evening hours.

That day too, Vivian was desperately fighting off sleep while working on a magical firearm.

‘If I could just have a single, strong black coffee with a lot of stimulants, I’d have no other wishes…’

While she was yawning and moving her hands, a strange sound caught her attention.

Creak. Thud.

It was the sound of the hinges of the wooden door used by the servants twisting.

Late at night.

The employees would have all returned to the main building by now.

‘Who’s here?’

Normally, Terry would have checked the situation, but tonight she was away from the mansion.

Therefore, Vivian rubbed her heavy eyelids and peeked outside the door.

“……”

“……”

And she faced a stranger walking boldly down the corridor.

Because of the long scar running across his cheek, his appearance looked very menacing.

“Who, who are you?”

“I came from the main building. Is there a servant named Ratchet in this mansion?”

A servant from the main building at this hour?

Moreover, she was sure she had locked the door, so she couldn’t figure out how he got in.

‘Come to think of it, Belinda did say she was going somewhere today.’

Naturally, Vivian assumed Leo had gone with her, so she yawned and answered nonchalantly.

“He went out with Belinda.”

“That can’t be.”

The certainty in the stranger’s muttering woke Vivian’s brain like a stimulant.

‘Why is he so sure?’

In the past, when she was just engrossed in research at the Magic Tower, she would have brushed it off.

But hadn’t she learned something from living with Belinda?

The world wasn’t made up of goodwill alone.