“What do you mean by that? You think the father of the child is Duke Cassian?”

Duncan shouted as he hurriedly entered the room, turning to Catherine, who was following closely behind.

“Shh! Keep it down!”

Catherine, startled, quickly glanced around the corridor and shut the door behind her.

Her hands trembled slightly as she turned back.

“Wasn’t she supposed to share a room with Jerome that night?”

Duncan nervously loosened his tie and tossed it onto the bed.

The blue fabric didn’t even stay—it slid off and fell to the floor.

Turning around, he pulled a metal pipe from inside his jacket, lit it, and hastily took a puff from the other end.

Soon, dark smoke began to billow from the pipe’s tip.

“I thought so too. Yulia was always with Jerome, taking care of him… I assumed they went into the room together when the effects kicked in…”

“Jerome clearly said he was with Yulia, right? They’re practically inseparable.”

“Surely Jerome wouldn’t lie about it…”

Catherine brought her trembling hand to her mouth and began to bite her long nails, which she had beautifully manicured.

That day, she had interrogated Jerome when he returned from the graduation banquet, eager to know if the event had lived up to its reputation, if he had met many friends, and…

…if he had been with Yulia.

“Was the medicine possibly faulty? What if that shameless guy tricked us? We paid a fortune for it…”

“No, Yulia did experience the symptoms of the medicine. She says she can’t remember anything since drinking.”

Catherine bit her lower lip.

The medicine she had given Yulia was certainly not a hangover cure.

She recalled her conversation with the apothecary from the Cleric Kingdom a few months ago.

***

“What about this medicine?”

“And what exactly is it?”

Catherine had looked at the transparent glass bottle the apothecary offered with a disinterested expression.

“Originally, it’s used discreetly in investigations—to probe hidden intentions or uncover evidence…”

The apothecary grinned as he continued.

“When taken with alcohol, it causes the drinker to become far more intoxicated than usual.”

“So it just accelerates intoxication?”

“If that were all, I wouldn’t bother explaining it like this. It makes the person deeply drunk… and, under the influence of alcohol, makes them honest.”

…So it’s an interrogation drug, then.

Catherine shook the glass bottle up and down.

The clear liquid sloshed inside.

“And in the end… it erases all memory of what happened while intoxicated.”

“All memory…?”

Catherine froze her moving hand.

“Remember that special medicine I prepared for you before? Used together with this… I believe the results would be quite satisfactory.”

The apothecary’s small eyes sparkled with excitement.

Catherine swallowed hard, feeling a wave of unease wash over her.

***

“Haah…”

Yulia’s drunken behavior and Jerome’s affections for her had led Catherine to hope that something would happen at the graduation banquet.

Even if nothing had happened, both of them would end up with no memories, and if Yulia mistook herself for being pregnant due to the effects of the special tonic she had given her…!

Everything would have gone according to Catherine’s design.

‘…The problem is that I was so flustered by Yulia’s response earlier that I couldn’t properly stop her from heading to the Isheide estate.’

Convinced that the baby’s father was Jerome, she had persuaded Yulia to the point of no return, only to find herself in a mess.

And now, suddenly, it was Duke Cassian?

She had no idea where he had come from.

Catherine bit her lips nervously as she spoke.

“Yulia said she’s going to the Isheide estate tomorrow. We need to follow her right away and explain what’s going on to the Duke.”

“Wait a minute. You want me to go see Cassian Isheide?”

“Of course.”

“I can’t do that! No way! Just looking at that young Duke’s face makes me sick.”

Duncan squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head vigorously.

Cassian Isheide was, without a doubt, the one person Duncan most wanted to avoid.

Duncan had built his reputation on manipulating people—guiding conversations in his favor and reaping the benefits.

He had turned his once-average ducal house into the wealthiest in the empire through sheer cunning.

But none of that worked on Cassian.

No matter how warmly Duncan approached him, Cassian responded coldly.

Before Duncan could even state his intentions, Cassian seemed to already know—and dismiss them entirely.

‘I can’t read that man at all…’

Duncan had hoped to get close to the Duke, a classmate of Jerome’s, to establish a connection with the royal family, but he kept running into a thick wall of rejection.

“What are we going to do? Are we really going to let Yulia marry Duke Cassian?”

Catherine shouted sharply.

“Let her marry him! Eventually, Yulia’s pregnancy will be revealed as a lie, and after that, whether she gets cast out or remains married, that’s her fate.”

Duncan continued to puff out smoke from his pipe.

“That’s not the issue right now! What about Jerome? What about him? You were the one who wanted to keep Yulia close by using the medicine because you knew Jerome liked her!”

“Ugh… really! If that’s the case, you should have just convinced Yulia to marry Jerome!”

“What woman in the world would marry a man who stut—”

“What?”

Duncan glared sharply at Catherine, who was shouting.

“Ah—no, I mean… Yulia isn’t the kind of girl who’d listen to that! She’s already focused on work, not marriage. If we didn’t do something like this, how else were we supposed to keep her? Ugh, this is so frustrating!”

Duncan raised his hands to cover his ears against her loud voice.

Back when he had jumped around excitedly, saying he had a good idea, now he was being yelled at for not handling something so simple.

The chronic avoidant Duncan stood up from his chair.

He crossed the wide room and exited into the hallway, slamming the door behind him.

Catherine, left alone in the room, stared at the closed door, fuming.

“What about our Jerome…?”

He was a perfect son, possessing looks, family background, education, and personality, but there was one thing he couldn’t change: an incurable illness that held him back.

Young Jerome had always been shy and withdrawn, unable to speak to anyone, much less Yulia, the only person he could open up to.

Catherine wanted to gift Yulia to her beloved Jerome.

By any means necessary…

Catherine turned and walked to the window, where the full moon shone brightly.

She grasped the window frame, bowing her head under the moonlight pouring in.

“…I have to convince Duncan to go to the Isheide estate tomorrow, no matter what.”

She could already picture Jerome’s face—hurt by the sudden turn of events.

She couldn’t just sit back and let Yulia marry Cassian.

Clenching her fists, Catherine thought of Yulia’s bright, innocent face.

***

The next day, Yulia arrived at the Isheide estate.

‘No matter what… he has a right to know.’

Yulia gazed up at the grand mansion.

It was the first time she would see him since the graduation banquet.

The equal status of being academy students had vanished; now Cassian was a member of the royal family and a duke, while Yulia was merely an academy graduate.

“…Should I use formal speech?”

Yulia pondered this trivial concern as she quietly followed the butler guiding her to the reception room.

Knock, knock.

“Your Grace, Miss Yulia Haybel has arrived.”

Hearing her name from Abil’s lips sent a wave of anxiety through her.

What would Cassian say? Would he immediately tell her to leave? Would he be incredulous about her showing up after saying they should forget that night?

…What would he say if he found out she was pregnant?

Yulia bit her dry lips, anxiously awaiting his response.

Perhaps due to the tension and anxiety of the past few days, her lips were pale and chapped.

After a long silence, a low voice came from the other side of the door.

“Let her in.”

When Abil opened the door, Yulia saw Cassian sitting on a sofa, his long legs crossed.

He lifted his head from the documents he had been studying, meeting Yulia’s gaze.

For a moment, Cassian silently stared at Yulia before rising from the sofa and walking towards the table near the door of the reception room.

“Abil, prepare some warm tea.”

“Yes, of course.”

Cassian spoke coldly.

He didn’t even glance at Yulia, who had entered awkwardly, as he pulled out a chair opposite the table and sat down.

“Sit.”

Yulia, who had been standing nervously, moved uncomfortably and carefully lowered herself onto the long chair across from him.

The velvet chair was very plush.

“Um…”

Now facing Cassian, words failed her.

“Well… so…”

“Where did all that boldness from last time go?”

Cassian’s low voice cut through the silence.

He was referring to the day they had spent the night together, and she had brazenly fled.

His unfriendly demeanor made it even harder for Yulia to speak.

She opened her mouth, then closed it again, repeating the cycle until Abil returned to the reception room with two small teacups filled with tea and left.

“Hello, Your Grace. The reason I came to see you is… well…”

As Yulia finally found her voice, the words she had been contemplating in her heart came out in formal speech.

Knowing that what she had to say wouldn’t be well received by Cassian, she decided to at least maintain a polite demeanor.

“Make yourself comfortable.”

Cassian’s interruption made Yulia tighten her grip on her hands resting on her lap.