The letter started formally and gradually shifted into a more familiar tone. He seemed to have gotten so worked up that he slipped back into his old way of speaking.

『……If there’s anything I can do to help, just say the word. Respectfully yours, to the esteemed Blair, Your Highness the Princess Consort, from Ned.』

The closing was impeccably formal again. It was a thoroughly disorganized letter with no regard for proper etiquette, but the faint smile that came to Blair’s lips was the first of the day.

Even if the letter said nothing of substance, knowing there was a friend who would offer his support without hesitation lifted her spirits, which had been at rock bottom, just a little.

Another knock came at the door. This time it was Tilda.

“Are you feeling a little better today?”

“Oh, I just received a letter from a friend I haven’t heard from in a while.”

Blair folded Ned’s letter back up and said it with a slightly awkward smile.

“My, do you have another friend besides us?”

At the familiar bright voice, Blair looked up in surprise at the person following Tilda in.

“Selina……?”

“I showed up without any warning, just like that.”

Tilda shook her head as if there was no helping it.

“The capital is in an uproar and you expect me to just sit still somewhere?”

“Selina. You didn’t come all this way just to say that, did you?”

Tilda asked with a straight face at Selina’s rather breezy manner. But Selina didn’t bat an eye.

“Goodness, how intimidating. Spending so much time in the royal palace must have changed you, Tilda.”

She teased that the Tilda Royce who used to sit in a corner eating apple galettes had gone somewhere, and Tilda’s face went red with offense.

“So what really brings you here, Selina? At a time like this?”

Blair gestured for Lucia to bring some tea, then asked.

“You must be in a position where you should be distancing yourself from me.”

The logic of high society was both delicate and simple.

Once someone became the subject of scandal, it affected not only that person but the reputations of those associated with them. The more sensational and damaging the content, the worse the effect, and being a princess consort was no exception.

“You’re telling me. People have been such a nuisance. Even people I’ve never met in my life were coming up to me asking about Anais and the contract marriage.”

Selina shook her head with an exhausted look.

“I was so worn out by all of it that I came here to escape. There’s simply no one I can have a proper conversation with, honestly.”

She glanced sideways as she said it. It was a habit of Selina’s that came out whenever she felt embarrassed or flustered.

“You’re not going to ask me what actually happened? About the contract marriage.”

“Well. It’s not particularly important to me. I only believe what I see with my own eyes.”

Selina shrugged and continued.

“I don’t know whether your beginning was a contract or something else, but your feelings for each other have always been genuine, haven’t they?”

“How do you…… know that?”

“Good heavens. You looked at each other that way every single time, and you’re asking me how I know?”

Blair wanted to ask what way that was, but she had a feeling the answer would be embarrassing, so she held her tongue.

“Anyway, thank you, Selina.”

Blair said it with her second smile of the day.

Tired or not, Selina had come to offer comfort. Knowing that she had made that choice, she who valued her social reputation so highly, gave Blair something to hold onto.

“No, I told you, I only came here to get away from annoying people.”

“Selina. Why can’t you just say it honestly? You’re strangely timid in the oddest places.”

Tilda scolded Selina for insisting to the very end, and got her revenge from earlier.

When Lucia brought the tea at last, Selina filled them in on the current state of high society.

According to her, factions aligned with Duke Brienne were actively spreading malicious rumors about Kalintz, Blair, and Vivian. Some were apparently even embellishing things that had never happened at all, spinning them out like fiction.

“At first there were people who didn’t believe it, but…… with Lady Vivian’s s*icide attempt, the accusation that she poisoned Anais has come to be accepted as fact.”

The assumption was that Vivian had made that choice because she couldn’t bear the guilt. And so the contract marriage story, despite having no evidence, was being taken as truth as well.

The narrative being constructed was that Kalintz had used his mother to poison Anais Brienne because he didn’t want to share power with the influential noble families, and that he had entered a contract with Blair, from the most obscure of families, precisely for that reason.

And that once he took the throne, he would exclude the noble houses and monopolize power.

“With things the way they are, the calls for His Highness’s abdication are growing louder.”

Selina said that even some of the moderate nobles had shifted toward supporting abdication.

“Public sentiment seems to be no different.”

Blair said it, thinking back over what Ned had written in his letter.

“Duke Brienne has woven it all together with truly breathtaking skill.”

Tilda murmured with a deep sigh. A brief silence settled over the heavy atmosphere.

“Come to think of it, I don’t see Lady Miller. She hasn’t gone on holiday at a time like this, has she.”

Selina glanced around the parlor as she asked. It was probably her way of trying to change the subject.

“Ah, well……”

But Tilda’s face grew even darker.

“Lady Miller went home.”

“Home? Where’s that?”

“……Valia.”

“What?”

Selina looked baffled and asked if she had really gone on holiday.

Holiday.

Blair’s gaze drifted to the small red ruby hairpin on the desk.

A keepsake. That was what Duke Brienne had called it, but somehow Blair couldn’t bring herself to believe it.

Perhaps it was because of the single purple flower she had left behind. It didn’t feel like Lady Miller would have been caught so easily.

“Yes. I hope it was a holiday.”

Looking at Selina, whose expression had grown even more bewildered, Blair took a sip of the bitterly steeped tea.

❀❀❀

“Someone deliberately erased the trail?”

After Selina left, Blair was listening to Ernst’s report alongside Kalintz and asked back in surprise.

“Yes. It’s certain that Marie’s younger brother came to the capital and bought a new identity. But the strange thing is, the trace of it has vanished completely.”

Marie’s younger brother, Amon, had entered the capital four months ago. Ernst had found it by learning Amon’s name, description, and age from people who had known Marie, then cross-referencing them one by one against the capital’s entry records.

“From the day he entered the capital until now, there is no trace of any activity connected to Amon. But he hasn’t left the capital either. Which means he bought a new identity.”

“You said you were tracking that transaction.”

“That’s right. A boy that age buying a new identity isn’t common, so I thought we’d find it quickly, but……”

Ernst continued with a troubled expression.

“There’s no record to be found anywhere. It’s as though someone deliberately concealed it.”

Every trail they followed had a hole neatly punched through it.

“It seems unlikely that a fourteen-year-old boy did this on his own.”

“That’s exactly what I mean, Your Highness. This is not the work of a child.”

Ernst agreed with a baffled look.

“You’re saying someone is helping him?”

“That would be the reasonable conclusion.”

“But who on earth……”

There was no way to guess who the helper was or why they were helping.

“I don’t know who it is, but one thing is clear: it’s not someone on Willer Brienne’s side.”

Kalintz folded his arms and said it quietly.

“Keep investigating. Whatever the reason he came back to the capital under a hidden identity, there has to be a purpose behind it.”

❀❀❀

The next morning, a visitor arrived at Blair’s room early.

“Lady Camille.”

It was someone she had expected to see before long.

“I greet Your Highness.”

Lady Camille, Queen Rhea’s lady-in-waiting, bowed with her usual impeccable courtesy. It was the same composed manner Blair had always known, but she found herself swallowing involuntarily.

“Her Majesty the Queen wishes to see you.”

The unavoidable moment had finally come.

A direct approach is the only answer with Her Majesty.

That had been Blair’s response to Kalintz’s question two days ago.

Simply denying the contract marriage rumor outright was a tactic that might work on the straightforward King Rubens.

But Queen Rhea was sharp and thought deeply, and Lady Camille beside her was a lady-in-waiting with decades of experience.

She would have already found out that Duke Brienne had heard about the contract marriage from Lady Miller. And she clearly had some inkling that Lady Miller’s failure to return from Valia was not without reason.

There’s no need to say everything. Just tell as much of the truth as I can say.