At Lady Camille’s voice, Queen Rhea quickly set aside the shadow on her face and smiled warmly.

“Come in, Blair. The weather was so lovely I called you out here. I hope it suits you.”

“I’m simply grateful for the invitation, Your Highness. I had no idea such a beautiful place existed.”

Blair sat down at the tea table and gave a polite bow.

It was no empty pleasantry. The garden suited Blair’s taste exactly. The water lilies floating on the small pond, the wildflowers blooming among the grasses.

“I’m glad you like it.”

Queen Rhea poured the tea herself and filled Blair’s cup. She always had this quality, Blair thought. The tea she brewed had a clean, unadorned taste.

“I always steep my tea a little lighter.”

A faint smile rested on the queen’s face as she shared the small secret.

“When I’m with someone I enjoy, steeping it lighter means we can sit and drink together for longer.”

It was a slightly whimsical reason, but the queen’s playful smile drew one out of Blair as well.

“You’re quite right, Your Highness. The tea is light enough that I keep wanting more.”

“I learned it from someone else. My first etiquette teacher, and my first love.”

The sudden mention of a first love made Blair’s eyes go wide.

“I had my own burning season. Though my father pushed me into becoming queen of a country where I knew no one.”

A flicker of loneliness passed through her eyes. Seeing it, Blair spoke before she could stop herself.

“Do you regret it.”

She worried immediately that it had been too forward, but fortunately the queen showed no sign of taking offense.

“Regret. I think I did at first. Wondering what might have happened if I had resisted more strategically. Oh, did you know I tried to run away in the night because I didn’t want to come to the Kingdom of Eiron?”

“I’m afraid I did know.”

She could hardly admit she had actively dug into the queen’s past. But the queen’s next words were unexpected.

“Well. With that much interest in the past, it would be stranger not to know.”

“……You knew.”

Blair had always sensed a quiet strength in her, but she had not imagined the queen had been keeping track of her actions.

Blair fidgeted with the handle of her teacup and dipped her head slightly.

“It’s all right. I know you didn’t do it with ill intent.”

“At first it was only curiosity. After meeting Lady Vivian and hearing about her from His Highness.”

Blair spoke honestly to Queen Rhea.

The conflict over dargon and the armistice she had pieced together from history books and records. The death of King Karl. The tangled relationship between Vivian, Rubens, and Rhea that followed. And Duke Brienne, woven through all of it.

Queen Rhea listened quietly until Blair finished, then was silent for a moment before speaking.

“I already knew you were sharp. But to have reasoned it out that far…… you’re cleverer than I thought, Blair.”

The queen smiled and took a sip of her now lukewarm tea.

“You’ve thought it through correctly. I have no doubt that Willer Brienne conspired with my father.”

“Then the dargon trade monopoly was……”

“Payment for what Brienne provided. But even I don’t know exactly what passed between them.”

Queen Rhea continued with a firm expression.

“A marriage alliance with Eiron wasn’t valuable enough to Valia to justify giving away a trade monopoly.”

“It does seem there must have been some additional arrangement between them…… forgive me, Your Highness.”

Blair had muttered it almost to herself, then quickly bowed her head, realizing it might have been rude.

“It’s fine. I severed ties with my father long ago. Whatever the arrangement was, the fact that he sold me off doesn’t change. And he did it knowing full well what kind of man Brienne is.”

The bitterness in her voice was old and deep.

“Brienne went to every length to make me queen. Two ladies of my age died, and two more were driven out. I had to watch it all happen. There was nothing I could do. I was alone, with no one I knew.”

The hands holding the teacup had gone white.

“I could only…… curl up small and wait for the storm of blood to pass.”

“……Your Highness.”

The terrible years flickered quickly through Queen Rhea’s grey-blue eyes.

“Brienne didn’t stop there. He pressured me relentlessly to produce an heir.”

Contempt bled into the queen’s voice.

“That was how Lina came to be. I was overjoyed, but strangely, it made me feel it all the more sharply. How truly cruel what my father had done to me was.”

Blair found herself thinking of her sister.

Her sister, who had been pushed into a marriage she never wanted because of her parents’ greed, and who had suffered until she turned away from the world entirely.

Blair had read her sister’s final letter more times than she could count. She knew it with absolute certainty. What had driven her sister to death was not her husband’s cruelty. It was the wound left by her parents.

“Blair. Unlike my father, I would do anything to protect my child. I’ve already done one mad thing.”

One mad thing. Blair’s face showed the question before she could voice it, and the queen added,

“You know I can no longer have children?”

“Oh…… I heard you were in a serious carriage accident. That you suffered a severe injury to your abdomen……”

“It wasn’t an accident.”

“!”

Blair nearly cried out in shock. She barely managed to cover her mouth, and Queen Rhea let out a small laugh and continued.

“I could no longer let myself be used by Duke Brienne. I knew exactly what he intended by pressuring me to bear another child, and I could not do it.”

“You arranged the accident deliberately?”

Queen Rhea nodded in silence.

“It is enough that I alone am used by him. I cannot hand my children over to that man.”

There was a hardness in her voice that could not easily be broken.

“Blair. Do you understand why I’m telling you all this?”

Blair held the queen’s gaze steadily. Her eyes were unwavering, looking straight through her.

“Brienne’s movements are not ordinary. Nobles who never paid Lina any mind have been hovering around her lately. That will be his doing.”

Duke Brienne seemed to have begun laying the groundwork in earnest to put Lina on the throne.

“And seeing that Duke Brienne is also going to my father’s birthday banquet, I’m certain he has something in mind.”

“You’re asking me to find out what it is?”

“I know it’s not an easy thing to ask. And you have no obligation to do it.”

Queen Rhea’s expression softened considerably.

“But if you have the means…… please help me.”

The love of a mother for her child came through in her voice, impossible to hide. It was a parent’s love for a child, something Blair had never once felt directed at herself.

“I know Kalintz is also fighting hard to drive out Brienne. So if not for me, then for the prince.”

Blair turned the queen’s words over in her mind for a moment, then slowly opened her mouth.

“Forgive my boldness, Your Highness.”

Blair met Queen Rhea’s eyes directly as she spoke.

“I am not someone who risks her life for others.”

A shadow of disappointment crossed the queen’s face. She tried to conceal it and said,

“……I see. Brienne is a dangerous enemy to make. I understand, Blair.”

The queen continued with a slightly awkward expression.

“Forget what I just said—”

“If I stand against Duke Brienne, it will be by my own will. No one else’s.”

Queen Rhea’s eyes widened slightly in surprise.

“I am not capable enough, nor righteous enough, to dare help someone.”

Blair spoke her honest truth.

She had gone so far as to enter a contract marriage just to live freely on her own terms. Helping others, with that kind of clumsy, grand sense of justice, did not suit her.

“But I know clearly what I want.”

What she wanted to do. What she was capable of. What she ought to do. Blair had always tried to keep herself grounded in those things.

Because that was what she had learned from Allen and her sister.

“Duke Brienne must answer for what he has done. I don’t want to watch anyone else get hurt because of him.”

If not for that man’s greed, Kalintz would never have had to endure any of it.

He would not have had to endure his mother’s *buse and mistake it for love. He would never have needed to abandon his identity and fake his own death just to escape.

“So there is no need to ask me, Your Highness. I intend to do my best, by my own will.”

❀❀❀

“Did you have a good talk with Her Highness the Queen?”

Back in her room, Blair was met with Tilda’s curious eyes.

“Oh…… yes. She told me quite a lot of things. About the atmosphere and culture in Valia, things like that.”

It was not entirely untrue.

When Blair had said she would do her best to drive out Duke Brienne, Queen Rhea had been silent for a moment, visibly surprised. But then she had let out a light, unguarded laugh and said simply,

‘Then I will do my best from where I stand.‘

After that, she had shared various things about the Valia Duchy and Grand Duke Clovitz.

It let Blair end the conversation with her without any lingering heaviness.