The maid’s eyes were bloodshot, and her lips were a mess of torn, scarred skin.

‘Where did things go wrong. What is going to happen to me?’

Where had Sara Johnson gone, and what did those screams mean.

Before the frightening imagination could even take full shape, another layer of fear was painted over it.

Just as the maid was being consumed by terror, a single gentle voice rang out.

“Ribeta, do not handle her so harshly.”

The maid turned her head toward the voice of salvation. Even through vision blurred by tears, the blazing crimson hair was vivid.

“Child, it is all right. I believe your words, so you need not tremble so.”

“Th, thank you. Y, Your Highness the Empress Consort.”

The maid wiped her tears, overcome with emotion.

She could not tell whether these tears were born of fear or relief. But it was clear that this was a single thread of hope.

She unconsciously shuffled forward on her knees, crawling toward the Empress Consort. What stopped her blind, survival-driven advance was a small pouch.

Through the slightly open drawstring, gleaming gold coins shone yellow. They were gold coins she had never seen in her life. Her eyes went wide.

“That is a small token of my sincerity. Please accept it.”

The Empress Consort’s sweet voice settled at her ear.

Before she knew it, greed had pushed aside her fear and swelled within her.

“Th, thank you.”

The maid gathered the pouch with trembling hands and rose to her feet. The Empress Consort smiled benevolently at her as she swayed unsteadily.

“Pay your respects.”

She numbly bent her waist, following the rough pull of the knight gripping her arm.

“I do hope there are no misunderstandings, Mila. I was simply asking out of concern for my son’s health.”

“Y, yes! O, of course!!”

She bowed her head several times before following the knight away.

It was only when she had left the greenhouse and was walking through the vast rear garden that she thought perhaps she was quite lucky after all.

‘Her Highness the Empress Consort truly is a gentle and benevolent person.’

Yet from somewhere deep within, an inexplicable chill kept rising.

The moment the warmth of the greenhouse that had been heating her body went completely cold, Mila realized.

‘Did I ever…… tell her my name?’

The name ‘Mila’ was one only her family used, so how could Her Highness the Empress Consort have known it?

The maid froze in place. The pouch that had felt so heavy and reassuring seemed to drag her down like an anchor.

* * *

The carriage carrying Irena traveled a considerable distance even after passing through the grand gates of Walterburg.

“We have arrived.”

The coachman knocked. Irena straightened the coat draped over her shoulders and stepped out of the carriage.

The building she had been a part of for over ten years, yet could never grow accustomed to, looked down at her coldly.

Before it stood the seasoned butler, who said,

“The Duke is waiting. Please follow me, my lady.”

Irena followed him.

White marble and enormous stone statues, elegant paintings hung throughout. Brilliant flowers bloomed in season and small fountains spouted water.

Not a single thing was without beauty, yet none of it was meant for a bastard child.

“My lord. The young lady has arrived.”

“Come in.”

So this moment has finally come.

Irena pressed the corners of her lips up out of habit and opened the study door.

It was a door that opened and closed without a sound, yet she felt as though she heard a thud behind her back.

Irena barely managed to move her coldly dried tongue.

“My lord.”

The man seated beyond the enormous desk cast his gaze toward her.

Those eyes, cold as a winter sea, held not a trace of warmth.

The duke, whom she had once believed to be a savior and at some point had fantasized was a father, looked at her without expression.

“You are late.”

The blue gaze swept over Irena.

It was neither a warning toward a daughter who had spent the night away, nor a look of concern for a child who had been through something terrible. It was the inspection of a possession that had left his hands and returned.

Irena put strength into her frozen toes and opened her mouth.

“Was this your plan?”

“Plan?”

“Those of imperial blood are administered small doses of poison from childhood to build up a tolerance. His Highness the Crown Prince would have been no exception, yet he succumbed far too easily. As though someone knew it would work.”

“Go on.”

“You are the only one who knows that I can neutralize that poison. So the fact that I happened to be present before His Highness as he lay dying from poisoning…… can that truly be a coincidence?”

“……”

The duke did not answer and looked at Irena with an empty gaze.

The seven great noble houses that upheld the empire. The man who made those proud nobles willingly bow their heads and prostrate themselves at his feet. That was this man, Yulik Walterburg.

His power came from the tip of a pen, and Irena never forgot whose blood that black ink had been collected from.

“It could hardly be a coincidence.”

His flat tone sounded bored.

“Irena, there is no such thing as coincidence. Entrusting oneself to coincidence is the worn and tattered excuse of primitive folk.”

His indifferent voice drove itself into Irena’s ears.

Perhaps it was not her ears but her heart. With every beat of the heart pierced by the duke’s words, it felt as though dark blood welled up and surged.

“That red beast will meet a useful death at the necessary moment. This simply was not that time.”

It felt as though she could not breathe. Like facing the hot breath of a sleeping giant, the back of Irena’s neck stiffened.

So this is how it was. So simply and easily, someone’s life had been bent and broken and trampled over.

How many times had it happened. How much pain had there been.

Irena curled her hands into fists. She had gripped them so tightly that the protruding knuckles had gone white.

‘Mother too……’

A supposition she had not wanted to think about surfaced without warning. Irena bit down on her back teeth.

‘Did you kill my mother too?’

Her mother had left her suddenly.

The bright and spirited smile had begun to die and wither away until, at some point, she had breathed her last.

How much pain she had been in, why she had been in pain, there was nothing young Irena could have known.

To her, her mother’s death was violence wielded without reason, and a despair that fell without end.

In the house perched on a cliff that few people visited, her mother’s body had been left untended for three days.

On the fourth day, the duke came.

‘……’

Stepping past the door that opened easily without a lock, he surveyed the room with mineral-cold eyes.

Then he stared fixedly at her mother lying on the bed.

‘……’

He did not ask. He seemed to have no curiosity about what had happened, or how much time had passed.

He lifted Irena, who had no more tears left to cry, and that was all.

[I miss my mother.]

Irena hid her fragile hope and asked. What had become of her mother. Whether she might actually still be alive.

“……”

When his cold eyes looked down at her, Irena understood. Her mother had left her forever.

Within those icy blue eyes, unripe emotions that a child could not name were tangled together.

Resentment, anger, longing, betrayal.

And elation.

Those raw emotions were the last she ever saw in the duke from that day forward.

It was only after some time had passed that Irena began to wonder.

How had he known about the house on the cliff that no one ever visited? And as though he had been waiting for her mother to die, no less.

The direction all these questions pointed was one.

That the Duke of Walterburg had something to do with her mother’s death.

It was for that single purpose alone that Irena had spent ten years crouching and enduring.

‘Not yet, not yet……’

Irena clasped her two hands together as they began to tremble.

“He had been on the battlefield until recently, so he would have had no opportunity to ingest the Haibick that has been in circulation of late.”

The cold voice pulled Irena back from where she had been wandering in the past.

“……”

“It is fortunate that you were able to resolve it. The Empress Consort’s plan has been foiled, and the Crown Prince has a debt marked against your name, so the yield was greater than anticipated.”

Irena, having swum back up from her memories, shook her waterlogged head. The image of her mother’s final moments and the image of the Crown Prince kept overlapping in her mind.

She struggled to strip away the fear that was trying to settle on her face as she spoke.

“His Highness the Crown Prince truly nearly died. If I had not been there at that moment, he really would have……”

“My dear.”

The duke cut off Irena’s words in a firm tone.

During the brief silence that followed, he turned his head back to his documents. To him, this conversation was worth less than a single sheet of paper.

Only after finishing his signature at the bottom of the document did the duke look back at Irena with a dry gaze.

The moment she met those icy blue eyes, Irena pressed her weight into her heels.

“Put away your misplaced sympathy. The Crown Prince is nothing more than a beast you must tame.”