Just as he had anticipated, the nobles began to move in a flurry. The entire capital stirred with the movements of nobles navigating their various agendas and interests.

‘He’s not just strong in battle. He’s sharp, too……’

Lost in thought, Alicia pressed her lips together. Using Grand Duke Evander required caution in many respects.

Then,

“I have one question I’d like to ask.”

After the ball ended and they moved to a reception room, Grand Duke Evander fixed his gaze on Alicia.

“What is your real purpose? Your true reason for accepting my proposal.”

“Isn’t it a little late to be asking that now?”

“Better to confirm it now than later.”

A sharp, calculating gaze. A clumsy excuse would only backfire. In moments like this, the best approach was to offer half the truth.

“It’s simple. The path you wish to walk and the path I wish to take are similar.”

“What do you mean?”

“You intend to strike the Empire, do you not?”

A chill flickered in Grand Duke Evander’s eyes in an instant. He drew the sword at his hip and leveled it at her throat.

“Do you understand what those words mean?”

Cold steel touched the back of her neck.

It was a moment of crisis where he looked ready to cut her down on the spot. But Alicia’s expression was bold.

“Of course. But there is nothing to worry about. I am looking in the same direction as you. My target is Helena.”

An unexpected name. Grand Duke Evander’s eyes narrowed.

“Why?”

“Because she tried to kill me.”

“Is that all?”

“Do you need another reason?”

Grand Duke Evander studied her in silence, then slowly shook his head.

“No, that’s enough. But you should be careful. The moment this reaches the other side, not just you but the entire Windmore family will disappear.”

She knew it was no empty threat.

“I didn’t come this far without being prepared for that. More to the point, please put that away. If I end up with a mark on my neck, rumors will start.”

Alicia pushed the sword aside with a composed expression.

Grand Duke Evander let out a short laugh at the audacious response.

“Either you have no fear, or……”

But in that moment,

Grand Duke Evander’s expression twisted abruptly.

“Ngh.”

He pressed one temple hard and clenched his teeth. Veins rose on his forehead, and his strong eyes screwed shut with pain.

“Are you all right?”

“……Don’t concern yourself.”

Despite his words, his expression did not ease for some time. A severe migraine, and the whites of his eyes were shot through with red.

A migraine that came without warning. The pain, like a blade stabbing through his brain thousands of times, was nearly unbearable even for someone with Grand Duke Evander’s formidable endurance.

Crack.

His clenched fist trembled for a long moment. When the headache finally eased, he slowly let out a long breath.

The cold sweat that had soaked his forehead and entire body in that brief time told plainly how terrible the pain had been.

“Phew.”

But his cold gaze returned, as though nothing had happened. He endured it through sheer force of will.

“You should rest.”

“I’m fine. This much is……”

“No. You need to rest.”

Alicia wiped the cold sweat from Grand Duke Evander’s face with her sleeve. She looked over his pallid complexion and slowly opened her mouth.

“You need to stay alive until the very end. Until I have achieved everything I want.”

Those words sounded strangely familiar.

“……”

Grand Duke Evander’s eyes narrowed.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Late at night.

Back in his study, Grand Duke Evander sank into deep thought.

‘You need to stay alive until the very end. Until I have achieved everything I want.’

Her words, whose meaning he could not fully grasp, unsettled a mind that had been filled with nothing but thoughts of revenge.

It was not only her words that stayed with him.

The dance he had shared with Alicia.

A hand that held warmth had touched his own, a hand that had gripped nothing but cold steel his entire life.

And then,

perhaps because of that warmth that had lingered,

the hand that had released hers felt colder and more hollow than before.

What was that feeling……?

It was something he had never felt before.

In a life where he had never once hesitated, that was the first time he had faltered over anything.

“Hmm.”

His thoughts grew tangled as Alicia’s behavior continued to nag at him.

Then,

Knock. Knock. Knock.

A knock broke through his thoughts.

“Come in.”

The door opened and Lieutenant Derick stepped inside.

“I’ve come to report.”

“Right. What’s the reaction been?”

He sank into his chair with a deep sigh.

“For now, there has been no particular response from Helena’s side. The Holy Order has shown no signs of opposition either.”

“That’s to be expected. It was announced all at once in front of every meritorious subject of the principality. There’s no taking it back.”

That was also why he had chosen to make the announcement on the occasion of the memorial.

“For the time being, things appear to be proceeding smoothly. However……”

Derick opened his mouth carefully.

“Can you trust Miss Alicia? Standing against Helena will not be easy.”

Evander let out a short laugh.

“Trust? In a world where even vows made before the gods are broken, hardly.”

“Then……”

Evander’s eyes went cold.

“I simply take what I need. When she is no longer useful, I discard her.”

His cold black eyes burned with nothing but revenge.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Late at night.

Alicia could not sleep.

It was because of the symptoms she had witnessed in Grand Duke Evander firsthand.

His expression, twisted in agony from the terrible headache.

The sight of him struggling against pain too great to bear would not leave her mind. The reason was,

‘Those are the exact same symptoms I experienced.’

They matched perfectly with the symptoms of the poison Helena had fed her.

And the intervals between the attacks are getting shorter.

That meant the poison had taken a deeper hold.

In other words, Helena had already been at work for a long time.

‘She didn’t only use poison on me. Right, if that’s how you want to play it, then I can pursue my revenge all the more freely……’

Death was the only thing that followed in Helena’s footsteps. In the end, to take revenge and to protect the family, she had to stop her.

Fortunately, there is enough time to develop a cure.

Back when she was Seraphiel, she had already been poisoned and had to develop the antidote with a mind that was no longer whole.

Her memory had been failing by the day, and the rushed experiments had ended in failure. But this time was different.

There are clues about the poison.

It was thanks to the conversation she had shared with Helena before her execution.

‘So I thought you were tough. Surviving a full year after ingesting a poison taken from the Forest of Monsters.’

The unexplored region of the northern lands where monsters appeared.

A clue that the poison had been found in the Forest of Monsters, deep within that territory.

There might be an antidote among the other organisms discovered there.

A slender hope, but the most promising line of research available to her right now.

“Rina, where is the library here?”

For the first time in a long while, a light began to shine in Alicia’s eyes.

It was the look of certainty that only someone with a natural gift for handling medicines could possess.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

In a comital territory located roughly a day’s journey southeast of the capital Centor.

Until just a few months ago this land had belonged to the Shteng family, but it had recently changed hands.

“Never gets old.”

Count Jeffrey Wagner held a wine glass and looked around the interior with a satisfied smile.

The interior of the magnificently built castle.

The delicate decorations installed throughout and the high ceilings were testament to the history and glory of an old family.

“It took so much effort to get my hands on this place.”

From a poor merchant’s son to the rank of count. The road he had walked had been nothing short of grueling. At times he had staked his entire fortune, and at times even his life.

At the end of that desperate struggle, he had met Helena and came this far.

‘But I am still hungry.’

It was not for the sake of a single comital territory on the outskirts of the capital that he had paid such enormous costs and risked his life.

Then, at that moment,

“Father!!!”

A sharp voice shattered the quiet peace.

Pushing past the maids as she ran in was Jeffrey Wagner’s only daughter, Mariella.

“What is it?”

Her eyes were swollen from crying.

She threw her arms around her father’s waist the moment she arrived and burst into sobs again.

“You heard, didn’t you, Father? What that Alicia did to me.”

Count Jeffrey’s clothes were soaked with tears in an instant. She cried out in a voice thick with weeping.

“Father, please…… take revenge on Alicia. Please make her pay for the humiliation she put me through!”

Mariella’s voice trembled with rage and frustration.

But Count Jeffrey looked at his daughter and let out a sigh.

“Mariella, what you need to do right now is not take revenge. It is to apologize.”