“How can I just stay in my room when Your Highness has been falsely accused of murder? I… know better than anyone how terrible that is.”

The surroundings fell dead silent at those words. Because Melissa’s sincere words were tinged with tears. In the silence, Reizen drew in a wet breath and spoke.

“What if it’s not false?”

Melissa’s eyes slowly widened.

“If it’s not a false accusation, what will you do then? Even if I’m a murderer, will you still worry about me?”

Reizen’s lips twisted. She knew it was words thrown as a test. Everyone here would know that he didn’t kill Count Maidos.

But why was he throwing such obvious things as a test? Was he trying to mock her?

Melissa’s gaze crumpled resentfully.

“That’s impossible.”

“You never know. I might be a scoundrel who kills people.”

“…Your Highness.”

Melissa gripped the newspaper tightly and glared at him with reddened eyes. Seemingly quite pleased with that reaction, Reizen’s eyes curved for the first time in a while.

“I hope you keep believing in me like that, Melissa Grey.”

“The culprit is.”

“At least it’s not me, right? I know that too.”

He raised his eyebrow and shrugged his shoulders. Whilton, who had his eyes closed, timidly asked.

“Um… when can I open my eyes?”

“Until the half-n*ked princess returns to her room.”

“Ah. Okay.”

Whilton nodded as if he understood. While looking at Whilton’s back frozen like a statue, Melissa bit her lip.

“I know you don’t trust my help. But do you really need to… push me away like this?”

“I told you. The princess should just… stay alive. Don’t do anything.”

Who knew that being told to just stay alive could feel so suffocating?

She had lived her life always suppressing her emotions, not expressing her opinions, and living quietly.

The etiquette teacher had drilled into her ears until they were calloused that she should obey her grandfather’s words, and after marriage, respect her husband’s words above all else.

But why, at this age, was she developing an aversion to those words?

Melissa wanted to help him. As soon as she saw the newspaper, her first worry was for Reizen.

It pained her to see him suffering and groaning in agony every night. Every time she watched him having nightmares or staying up at night, Melissa’s heart burned with guilt.

She knew. That she was the only one desperately trying to prove her usefulness when Reizen didn’t need her. But since this was all Melissa could do… she was frustrated and hated herself too.

The strength left her hand gripping the crumpled newspaper.

She had needlessly made everyone uncomfortable. It was all meaningless worry.

“I’ll go now.”

As the deflated Melissa turned to leave, Reizen’s words caught her ankle.

“Still, I think it’s good that he died.”

Melissa clenched her fist in place.

“Don’t worry about anything else. You. Just think about yourself.”

“…”

“Ah, be happy that bastard Maidos is dead, honestly clap and celebrate to your heart’s content.”

How could I possibly do that?

Though rebellious words rose to her throat, she didn’t speak them out loud. For the first time, she ignored his words and walked away.

As she quickly passed through the corridor, anger kept rising inside her.

Though he had joked around earlier, he definitely wasn’t the culprit. Because one photo in the newspaper revealed who the culprit was.

She had discovered a familiar object among the evidence photos from the crime scene. It was the cufflinks that Melissa had personally made and gifted once.

How could she simply clap and be happy seeing that?

Reizen didn’t know her at all. In this world, no one would be happy when someone they like is falsely accused of murder, but this man seemed not to know that.

Just like she liked Mielin Castle, she liked that man too.

He was someone she wanted to stay beside, and she sincerely wished he wouldn’t be hurt.

But she was still annoyed about how he completely ignored such feelings and wouldn’t even let her tell him who the culprit was.

‘Celebrate?’

Did he tell her to clap and be happy because her ex-husband died?

That night, before going to bed, Melissa ordered Laila to bring champagne. Then she decorated the table with a flower vase and fruits for Reizen to drink when he returned from work, and went to sleep.

Late at night, Reizen came in drying his hair after a bath and smiled at the table.

She had left a note for him too. The note was written in neat handwriting as if printed from a press:

[Celebrating the death of my ex-husband. – M.G.]

The man smiled lovingly with curved eyes and poured and drank the champagne. The fresh and sweet grape fragrance tingled as it went down his throat.

This is the first time being teased has felt so delightful.

It was a night when he couldn’t help but smile foolishly even while knowing dark clouds were approaching.

***

Count Kelly was famous as a gambler in the capital.

He was someone who frequented pleasure quarters like his own home and enjoyed betting, and once he even brought his family to the brink of bankruptcy after losing badly in a blackjack card game with a foreign merchant.

Everyone said in unison. That the Kelly family was finished now.

But one day he miraculously returned to the pleasure quarter and started continuing his games as if nothing had happened.

How the count paid off his debts then remains unknown. But people speculated it was probably thanks to the capital accumulated by his family over 6 generations.

After that, Count Kelly also married the famous ‘Melissa Grey.’

For him, alcohol, gambling, and women were daily life.

He had dated seven lovers at once before, and married over twenty times, so marriage was nothing…

Though he split with Melissa Grey after just a week and met another woman, that too was a common occurrence for the man so he had no particular feelings about it.

His goal was simply to live with a beast’s heart, throwing away money placed in his hands at the gaming table, and die as things flowed.

Then one day.

“Blackjack! It’s blackjack!”

It was a particularly good day for gaming.

“Today I’m number one!”

Count Kelly shouted drunkenly with cards in his hand. The red-nosed man staggered as he swept up all the chips on the gaming table at once.

“That’s it!”

The man with slurred speech said proudly as he tried to leave. That’s when a woman who had lost money at the same table walked over seductively and grabbed his shoulder.

“Are you leaving like this? Just one more round. It’s such a shame.”

“You lost some money today, miss? I haven’t seen your face before, well, shall I give you some advice? I know because I’ve been in places like this a lot.”

The count whispered in her ear.

“Run away. Those guys are all pros.”

He could tell just by looking at their eyes.

Count Kelly tried to turn away while laughing loudly. Then the woman grabbed and clung to his arm. She begged for just one chance, just one more chance. If she lost this time too, she had no money left so she would do anything he asked.

“Anything… I ask?”

His nostrils flared as his lecherous gaze swept over her entire body. Since her figure was quite decent, he decided to play just one more round.

But.

He went bankrupt on the spot.

This was impossible.

How?

When he came to his senses, Count Kelly had already sold off his mansion’s documents, his recently married wife, and even his children with his own hands.

Really, how?

He went mad from the inexplicable sudden ruin. He wrote a long suicide note in his mansion detailing this content meticulously, then shot himself in the head.

It was just three days after Count Maidos’s death.

The newspapers prominently featured the successive deaths of nobles. They claimed this must be someone’s plot since famous nobles were dying one after another.

The police bureau obtained the Emperor’s approval to establish a temporary organization to thoroughly investigate the nobles’ deaths. The coroner of the Special Investigation Department, the temporary police organization created this way, submitted a new report.

Count Kelly’s death was not ‘suicide’ but ‘homicide.’

Examination of the count’s corpse revealed the exact same bullet as Count Maidos.

This was hunting rifle ammunition produced in small quantities in the Kingdom of Tavania, and appears to have been made relatively recently.

And in a state where Tavanian merchants had cut off supplies to the empire, there was only one person who had most recently contacted them.

It was Prince Reizen.

All circumstances pointed fingers at Reizen.

It’s you? You’re the culprit.

Prince Reizen’s name was on thousands, tens of thousands of lips. So, did he really kill Melissa’s ex-husbands out of revenge?