“Speaking of which… Do you perhaps remember the oracle? The oracle given to those who inherit the first blood of Arcadia.”

“Hmm, roughly. But why?”

The founding ancestor received an oracle to purify this land from the demonic realm’s influence and established Arcadia. Oracles were also bestowed upon the descendants who inherited the first blood of Arcadia.

Recalling the setting I had read in the original story, I waited for Dame Gwendolyn’s next words.

“Fundamentally, oracles cannot be carelessly disclosed. Unless one is a sworn blood relative through family or the temple, they cannot be shared. Since the oracle itself is the will of the Sky God, spreading it would go against the equilibrium.”

“…Ah, no wonder.”

Dame Gwendolyn stopped speaking when she noticed the look of realization on my face.

“Cedrion said that it was a secret of Norhart and that he couldn’t tell me about Angie until we were officially engaged. So that was why.”

As I expected. Dame Gwendolyn’s expression brightened, as if a lingering doubt had finally been resolved.

“So, you’re assuming Cedrion also received an oracle as a direct descendant of Norhart, and that the oracle contains something related to Angie?”

“Yes. If that’s the case, then I can understand why he wouldn’t tell me.”

“That makes sense…”

An oracle.

Everything was finally starting to fit together.

I knew from the original setting that oracles existed in this world. After all, Michael had once mentioned his oracle when confessing to Flora, saying something about submitting to his beloved.

Maybe because the mechanics of it were never fully explained, I hadn’t expected it to be connected like this.

‘Wait. Now that I think about it, wasn’t Michael lying about the oracle? Right now, I can’t hear anything about Angie because I’m only an unofficial fiancée. But back then, he hadn’t even been dating Flora, let alone engaged to her.’

Unbelievable. The male lead from the novel I had enjoyed so much was not only monitoring me after I possessed Odelia’s body, but he had also lied during his confession to the heroine.

Ha, really… My dislike for the original male lead kept growing.

I could tolerate him tormenting me if I thought of it as taking on Odelia’s karma. That didn’t mean it felt good, though.

Right now, our relationship was an ill-fated one, and I only regarded him when I was reading the story as a son-in-law because I was ‘Flora’s mom’. But if he had even lied during his confession? This was… unbelievable.

‘Ugh, my heart.’

Calm down, calm down. I barely managed to suppress the slang from my past life that was trying to surface, thanks to the peace of my current life.

“So, you were going to ask Cedrion whether Angie is connected to the oracle?”

“Yes. But if what you say is true, then there’s no need to ask. If Angie is indeed related to the oracle, then His Grace wouldn’t be able to confirm it either. When you say they can’t disclose it, is it some kind of restriction?”

“I’m not sure of the exact details, but I’ve heard that they can’t express anything related to it.”

If Angie was truly linked to the oracle and Cedrion, then my plan to scrutinize him with a hawk’s eye to see if he was trustworthy was meaningless from the start.

An oracle was absolute.

Honestly, the reason I had told Cedrion that I couldn’t trust him easily was my own anxiety.

The information from the original story was useless to me as someone who had possessed Odelia’s body, and I had no memories of Odelia’s past either.

In that situation… I kept wanting to trust him.

More than that, I was unknowingly drawn to him.

But I couldn’t allow myself to admit it.

‘Spending time every day talking to a handsome man and being around him—it’s only natural to feel a flutter, right?’

In the end, I was going to leave in a few months. Cedrion was only treating me well because of Angie, because of his guilt over not preventing Lure’s downfall, or because he had known Odelia in childhood.

There wasn’t a single part of his kindness that was truly meant for me.

Probably…

Not wanting to dwell on it, I deliberately lightened my tone.

“If that’s true, he must have had a hard time. Trying to convince me without being able to explain the truth.”

“Which is why it was natural for you to find His Grace and his aide’s words suspicious.”

“Now, everything that seemed strange finally makes sense.”

“He was acting quite unusual…”

Like how he claimed to be the biological father yet showed no affection for Angie, or how he was confused about Angie’s gender, or how he evaded questions about Angie’s mother.

Dame Gwendolyn and I looked at each other and chuckled softly.

“Then, what exactly is Angie’s true identity? Is her mother really dead? How did that person know about the butterfly-shaped mark on Angie’s back?”

“To uncover those secrets, we might need to know the contents of the oracle.”

“Right. Angie is definitely not an ordinary child…”

I murmured as I brushed back the hair of the baby sleeping soundly in my arms. Her chubby cheeks formed such a perfect curve that they looked irresistibly biteable.

“And… since you mentioned your childhood earlier, something occurred to me.”

“Hm? What is it?”

For some reason, Dame Gwendolyn hesitated to continue. She, who always spoke in a clear and confident tone, fidgeted with her fingers for a moment before speaking.

“I can’t help but think that what happened in your childhood might be related to your illness.”

“My illness?”

“You’ve been unwell for quite some time.”

I had suspected as much. Dame Gwendolyn had always sounded oddly serious whenever she referenced my medical history during checkups.

“Your condition has been worsening steadily over the past ten years, but recently, it has deteriorated rapidly.”

“Ten years…”

“I first started treating you ten years ago, but I was told you had already been ill before then.”

Cedrion had said that he had known Odelia when she was eight years old—fourteen years ago—so the timeline roughly matched.

“And since your illness is an extremely rare disease that has never been reported in academia, I asked the Marquis about the circumstances surrounding its initial onset…”

A hint of unease flickered across Dame Gwendolyn’s serious expression.

“The Marquis did not answer anything.”

“Father… kept silent about it. And if this is the truth that Cedrion wishes to reveal to me…”

No one spoke the next words aloud.

At that moment, something I had not yet mentioned to Dame Gwendolyn suddenly came to mind.

After that incident in my childhood, Michael had placed a barrier around the Blue Roof Manor, and until recently, he had been using that barrier to keep me under surveillance.

Which meant…

***

After leaving the Grand Duchess’s chambers, Dame Gwendolyn did not return to her room immediately. She leaned against the window in the hallway, gazing down at the inner courtyard of the Grand Duke’s castle.

“So the royal family was involved in Lady Odelia’s illness…”

The cause of the disease she had been puzzling over for nearly ten years turned out to be far grander than she had expected.

Odelia believed that she had accepted Dame Gwendolyn as her personal physician because of the shockingly high salary offer, but the truth was entirely different.

“There’s no one else with enough guts to take on the daughter of a traitor as their exclusive patient. And no one else sharp-eyed enough to properly assess her condition.”

And more than anything, if not for her, Odelia would not have even a few months left to live.

Dame Gwendolyn had volunteered to be Odelia’s personal physician purely for the sake of ensuring her a peaceful remaining life.

And while she was at it, she had hoped to uncover the cause of this bizarre illness that had never been recorded in any medical journal.

“Marquis, I have something to discuss regarding the Lady’s health.”

Dame Gwendolyn had first become the visiting physician for the Marquisate of Lure when Odelia was twelve. She had taken the position knowing only that the beloved daughter of Lure was frail.

“Has the Lady… ever been attacked with magic?”

“……”

“I examined her because the treatment was proving ineffective, and I found that there was a severe imbalance of magical energy near her heart. It seems that she was originally born with immense magical power, but for some reason, she is gradually losing it… Something like this wouldn’t be possible unless she had been exposed to a significant magical force.”

“Dame Gwendolyn.”

“Yes, my lord?”

“…I hired you because you are discreet. I trust you will remember that.”

Thinking back on it now, the expression on the Marquis of Lure’s face back then had looked strangely fearful.

The Marquis of Lure was a man who adored his daughter. His love for his wife, who had died in childbirth, was also well known. Since Odelia had inherited her mother’s violet eyes and the same stubborn glint within them, it was only natural that he would dote on her.

Yet despite all that, he had silently stood by while his daughter suffered from an ominous illness.

For a noble house of such standing, it was strange how desperately he had tried to push his daughter into the position of crown princess. And when that failed, he had even conspired in a rebellion.

“He must have made some sort of deal with the royal family. And the rebellion… was likely the result of that deal falling through. The Grand Duke must have known the truth behind it all, which is why he submitted that petition.”

At the end of Dame Gwendolyn’s gaze was a flowerbed beneath the fountain, an oddly out-of-place feature among the neatly designed garden.

It had been transplanted from its original spot when Odelia had started tending to her little vegetable patch.

‘Ruining the historic scenery of the inner courtyard just for a contract fiancée, huh.’

There was something both unfamiliar and oddly familiar about the way the Grand Duke of Norhart doted on Odelia.

The unfamiliar part was how it contrasted with the image of him that was widely known—a meticulous, workaholic man who left no room for personal indulgence.

The familiar part was based on her own experience of observing countless forms of love as she moved between noble households.

From what Dame Gwendolyn could tell, those feelings had only developed recently.

If the Grand Duke of Norhart had harbored such emotions back when Odelia reigned as the most beautiful woman in Arcadia, then the moment he so much as cast a longing glance her way, society would have erupted with rumors.

And considering how overly attentive he was to Odelia now, it seemed unlikely that he had ever tried to suppress his emotions in the past.

“The way he treats Mathias so coldly, though… Honestly, men.”