“Is it true that His Highness has changed?”

Eldeo had been all but pushed out of the room, and now he stood outside asking Mollys. To Mollys’s eye, he looked rather dazed.

“Well — yes. Probably. I’m not sure in what direction you mean, exactly. But where did you hear that?”

“Mary said so. I didn’t believe it. But seeing him today — it does seem to be true. Is something seriously wrong with him? When exactly did he start changing?”

Collecting himself, Eldeo turned on Mollys with a grave expression and a rapid string of questions. He hadn’t known Rafez as long as Mollys had, but he had known him long enough that the change gave him pause.

Yes — he couldn’t quite say in what direction, but still.

“It isn’t something that happened long ago. It’s quite recent.”

“I was told clearly that Mary was to come in as a mistress — is that still the case? Because looking at His Highness and Her Highness just now——”

“I was told the same, and preparations were underway accordingly. But given the current situation, I don’t think it would be a simple matter for Miss Mary to take that position.”

The order to install Mary as a mistress had struck Mollys as odd as well.

At the center of Rafez’s recent change was Lacy — and strangely, while Rafez grew ever more hostile toward the Emperor, he seemed to be drawing Lacy closer and closer to his side.

And with the estate currently in the middle of searching for a spy, Mary coming in now would clearly make things difficult for her.

“You see it that way as well. And if a mistress is brought into the Grand Ducal house, the imperial family will be the first to react — this being a marriage the Emperor himself arranged.”

“That it would.”

“……I should be going for today. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“Safe travels, then.”

Mollys made no move to stop Eldeo from leaving. It was only natural that he too needed time to think.

The door swung open.

The moment Eldeo left, the bedroom door opened first. It was Rafez.

“Your Highness.”

“Mollys, bring some tea. Peppermint.”

And then —

A sharp crash.

When Mollys entered at the sound of the cup shattering, the tea had already spilled and was soaking into the carpet, and it was clearly Rafez who had smashed the cup. Something had been wrong with the tea — a fleeting chill passed through him, but the thought of poison hadn’t crossed his mind for even a moment.

“Someone just tried to poison the Grand Duchess.”

Until he heard Rafez say it.

Even as Mollys followed his orders and locked everyone who had touched the tea in a single room, he couldn’t fully believe it. How could Rafez know there was poison in a cup he hadn’t even tasted — and even if there was, how could he be certain it had been meant for Lacy?

The cups were identical, and there had been nothing predetermined about which would be placed in front of whom.

If someone had been targeting Lacy, Rafez could just as easily have drunk it and died.

“Your Highness, all the suspects have been confined to one room.”

Rafez and Lacy had remained in the bedroom since. No one had been permitted inside, and the estate had the feeling of ice on the verge of cracking.

“Are you all right, Your Highness?”

“I’m fine.”

“But how did you know there was poison in the cup? The tea spilled completely — it’s been difficult to find any evidence……”

“Her Highness’s tea was a higher temperature than mine. Mine had cooled, but hers was still steaming.”

At Rafez’s words, not only Mollys but Lacy herself finally understood. She hadn’t known how Rafez had caught it before anyone else — but to have noticed something that precise.

One offhand remark — that the tea was too hot — and he had realized the cups had been switched.

If she had drunk the tea——

“The cups were switched, then. I’m truly relieved you are both unharmed.”

“Is Siz among the suspects?”

“Pardon?”

Lacy looked at Rafez when he suddenly mentioned Siz.

Siz, as a suspect in a poisoning attempt.

“Ah — no. I brought the tea directly from the kitchen myself the moment it was ready, so only those who were in the kitchen have been named as suspects.”

“Is that so? Then what was Siz doing in the meantime?”

“That I’m not certain of.”

“Have her come here at once.”

Lacy’s expression was uneasy. Rafez knew it, and called for Siz regardless. She appeared before them shortly.

“You sent for me, Your Highness.”

Siz was composed.

“Yes. What have you been doing until now?”

“After Her Highness the Grand Duchess left her room, I was tidying it.”

“You’re saying you didn’t go anywhere — that you were in that room the entire time?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

Even under Rafez’s interrogation, Siz answered as though she had prepared for it. That only deepened his suspicion.

The investigation into the spy was still ongoing, but it had already come to light that Siz was a spy from the Marquess Jin household — which meant she was a spy planted by the Duke of Lennon.

That said, he wasn’t fully convinced she was the culprit.

“And how am I supposed to believe that? As you well know, someone just attempted to poison the Grand Duchess.”

But interrogating Siz like this, in front of Lacy, at a moment like this —

“Why would I poison Her Highness the Grand Duchess?”

“You’re far too calm. You don’t seem surprised in the slightest. Why is that?”

“Your Highness, that’s——”

“Let me offer an explanation. It’s because even if you didn’t carry it out yourself, you at least knew it was going to happen. Isn’t that right?”

“That…… what are you saying?”

Only now did Siz appear faintly rattled. Which made it all the stranger.

“Because you’re a spy planted by the ducal house.”

Siz went rigid at Rafez’s words.

And Lacy was no less startled to hear them.

She had sensed that Rafez was looking into things differently than before, that something about the estate had begun moving in a different direction — but still.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Siz spoke with her expression still locked.

“Stop pretending you don’t know. I’ve already looked into it.”

Rafez extended his hand into the air, and Mollys — standing behind Siz, watching the scene unfold with his own barely concealed surprise — quickly passed over a sheaf of documents. He had been told to keep them on his person, but he hadn’t the faintest idea they would be used like this.

Rafez threw the documents straight down in front of Siz. Old papers scattered through the air and fell to the floor. Among those that landed at Lacy’s feet, she could make out the words Marquess Jin household on a single page.

The Marquess Jin household?

Siz didn’t need to pick them up to know what they contained.

“It was you. Wasn’t it.”

“No. It wasn’t me!”

“And how am I supposed to believe that? A spy for the ducal house.”

Rafez was unhurried. Siz had dropped to her knees before him, but he looked as though his mind was already made up.

“If I am a spy for the ducal house, as Your Highness says — why would I try to poison Her Highness the Grand Duchess?”

“Why? Must I explain that to you as well? Stop with the shamelessness.”

Anyone listening would have found Siz’s words reasonable — but Rafez remained unmoved.

Of course he did. He had already driven a blade into his own chest again and again over Lacy’s deaths.

“You intended to kill the Grand Duchess and frame me for it.”

Silence fell at Rafez’s words.

Siz had nothing left to say.

He had known that much too. How——. That had been classified between the imperial family and the ducal house.

She wanted to offer some defense, some explanation — but she could feel that Rafez was already too certain for any of it to matter.

What would happen to her now?

A spy for the ducal house, exposed — it was only natural that she would be tortured and eventually disappear without a trace, buried somewhere no one would find her. But for the entire plan to be uncovered like this——

What would happen to Lacy.

“Go on then — say something. Tell me it wasn’t you. Or are you admitting now that it was?”

Rafez asked Siz with a smile, but the answer came from an entirely different direction.

He turned toward the source of that cool, even voice.

“Lacy.”

“Siz is simply someone who stays by my side. There was no poison, no plot — nothing.”

Rafez hadn’t truly believed Siz was the culprit either. The image of Siz clutching a bleeding Lacy was still vivid in his memory.

His real intention had been to find another spy — and if possible, turn her into a double agent against the ducal house. If he could get a firm hold on her weakness right now——

“……Then who was it that tried to poison you?”

“I don’t know either. The original plan was for me to drink the poison myself.”

Even knowing it already, something dropped heavily inside Rafez at Lacy’s confession.

How could she say so calmly that she had planned to drink poison.

“But that’s no longer possible. The poison I lost — you have it, don’t you?”

Her eyes were bright as she looked at him, as though she had finally found what she had been searching for all along.