“Blair, you can pretend all you like, but you want the princess consort position too, don’t you?”

Selina’s taunting voice followed her from behind.

Blair gave no reply to Selina, who was waving and calling out something about working together, and walked quickly back to her room. She dropped onto the bed with a long exhale. Her dark reddish, curling hair fanned out across the white sheets.

“Haah…… this is a disaster.”

Want it? Not even close. It’s the opposite, actually. What am I even doing here, going through this wretched frons business.

Blair had absolutely no intention of becoming princess consort. And she had even less intention of riding the frons’s prestige to the top of the marriage market.

There was only one thing she wanted. The western annex of the royal palace — the place commonly known as the Withered Garden.

The Withered Garden.

It was another name for the western annex, far removed from the heart of the palace, and it was the place where frons who had not been chosen as princess consort could remain.

Most frons who were not selected simply left the palace and returned to their family homes. They became the center of that season’s social scene, admired by young noble ladies and courted by a flood of suitors, eventually finding a good match and marrying.

But occasionally, a frons chose to stay rather than leave — either because her feelings for the prince lingered, or because she couldn’t bring herself to let go of royal influence.

These women were permitted to remain in the western annex in place of leaving, spending the rest of their days there. If the chosen princess consort failed to produce an heir, one of them might be taken as a secondary consort, or even elevated to the position of princess consort or queen.

For that reason, those residing in the western annex were not permitted to marry.

At first glance it appeared to be a gesture of respect for the frons’s wishes, but in truth it was nothing more than the royal family keeping them available for their own convenience.

At least, that was how Blair saw it.

In practice, there had been a few cases in the past where frons chose to remain in the western annex, and most of them did not end well. In the prime of their youth, they grew weary of waiting with no end in sight, their unrequited feelings withering and drying up until they fell ill.

That was precisely why the western annex had come to be called the Withered Garden.

But the western annex was exactly where Blair wanted to go.

It was a refuge from parents who treated marriage like a business transaction, a place where she would never have to marry at all.

Withered Garden or not, for me it’s the best option there is.

Six months ago, her parents had lobbied relentlessly and managed to get her selected as a frons, pushing her through the palace gates.

Even if you don’t become princess consort, just being selected as a frons means you can make connections with at least a marquis’s family. Blair.

That obsession with climbing the social ladder.

Their greed had cost another person’s child her life, and their own child as well — and still her parents hadn’t come to their senses. She could never understand them.

So the moment she arrived at the palace, Blair had spent every effort quietly scheming to slip away. In the process, she had learned of the western annex, and from that day on it became her one and only goal.

Being appraised like goods put up for sale, then married off to some man she felt nothing for — spending her life in the palace writing whatever she pleased seemed far happier by comparison.

To make that happen, she absolutely could not be chosen as princess consort.

Fortunately, there had been a very strong candidate among the frons, so it hadn’t been difficult. Until yesterday, at least.

Anais Brienne, poisoned. What on earth happened?

House Brienne was the most powerful family in the kingdom. Generation after generation, they had held key positions and accumulated wealth and influence — a family that, in short, had the royal house in the palm of its hand.

When the daughter of such a family entered the palace as a frons, the outcome had been as good as decided.

And yet she had been poisoned inside the palace. The day before the princess consort selection, no less. There was clearly some scheme at work, something tied to the struggle for power.

As Selina had suggested, had Olivia’s side made a move to seize the position of princess consort?

“Haah…… I don’t know either.”

Blair muttered, exhaling a long breath from the weight pressing on her chest. It was truly terrible, what had happened to Anais, but what worried her most was that the princess consort selection would now have to begin again.

Should I just not leave this room and keep out of sight entirely?

Blair began to coldly sort through the situation. Until now, she had managed to stay out of the spotlight without any particular effort.

Anais Brienne’s presence had been so overwhelming that, as Selina had put it, the other frons were essentially decorative.

But with Anais gone, the remaining frons would inevitably start to stand out.

Olivia Lorentz is probably the most likely candidate now. The only thing that put her behind Anais was the weight of their respective families.

Though that gap in family standing had been considerable.

Either way, her own family was nothing like Anais’s or Olivia’s in terms of influence.

Selina had a disagreeable personality, but her family was a count’s house with gold mines. Tilda was indecisive and naive, but her father had a firm grip on maritime trade.

By comparison, Blair’s family was a viscount’s house with a decent amount of money and nothing more. Enough to push her into the palace, perhaps, but family prestige wasn’t the kind of thing money could buy.

Then again, that’s exactly why they pushed so hard to tie us to a family with a higher title. My sister, and me.

Blair let out a cold, humorless laugh.

After spending some time comparing herself to the other frons, she eventually shook her head. No matter how she looked at it, there was nothing about her that the royal family would single out over the others.

She just had to do what she had been doing for the past six months — nothing, and draw no one’s attention.

With that thought, the knot of anxiety in her chest loosened a little. And almost immediately, her eyelids grew heavy.

I pushed myself too hard yesterday…… If it hadn’t been for that strange man, I wouldn’t have been out so late.

Blair thought back to the man she had run into outside the palace walls.

I mean, even if he wasn’t the guard captain, surely anyone who spotted something suspicious near the royal palace ought to pay attention to it.

‘Ridiculous, honestly. One more warning and he probably would have dragged me down to the dungeon.’

It was infuriating even now. And what had he been doing wandering around there himself?

But who was he, really? His voice felt oddly familiar somehow.

Blair tried to place the owner of that familiar voice, but the wave of sleep crashing over her was too much to fight, and she drifted off.

❀❀❀

The fallout from Anais’s poisoning was immense.

The Duke of Brienne, beside himself with rage that his daughter had been poisoned inside the palace, tore through every corner of it in a frenzy.

Thanks to that, even though Blair had shut herself in her room for days, no one came looking for her.

She spent those days in a rare stretch of leisure, writing to her heart’s content. The palace was stifling, but at least she could write freely here.

Her mother had always insisted that writing was a useless pursuit that would do nothing to help her find a good match, so Blair had grown up hiding whenever she wrote.

And when she got caught, everything would be torn to pieces.

She used to sit there crying, clutching the shreds of paper too small to piece back together, and Allen would always be there to comfort her.

Smiling that bright, sunlit smile, fitting the scraps back together one by one with small, careful hands.

The old memory surfaced without warning. Blair rubbed the sting from the tip of her nose and smiled faintly, bittersweet.

Missing that face more than usual today, she set down her pen, opened the drawer, and drew out a small jewelry box tucked deep in the back. She lifted the lid with care.

The calm on Blair’s face vanished in an instant.

“Wh-what?! Where did it go?”

Her green eyes filled with panic as she stared at the empty box.

The brooch Allen had given her — the one she had always kept so carefully — was gone. She turned the box upside down and shook out the drawer, but the brooch was nowhere to be found.

Eyes darting, she thought for a long moment before letting out a small groan.