“Your Highness, are you alright?”

“Your Highness… are you okay?”

Vanessa rose with Garcia and Renee’s support. Fortunately, it seemed her skin wasn’t scraped, but her knees and elbows had hit hard enough that they would bruise.

Biting her lip while enduring the throbbing pain, Vanessa felt embarrassed at showing such an unseemly sight to her subordinates. She sighed deeply and said,

“I’m fine. It will bruise, but it’s nothing serious.”

It was laughably ironic that right after speaking about bringing misfortune, she proved it by falling down.

Vanessa brushed off the dirt from her clothes herself while making self-deprecating remarks. A flustered Renee stopped her and dusted her off instead, then took out a handkerchief from her apron pocket to wipe Vanessa’s hands.

Meanwhile, Garcia was watching Vanessa with a complex expression.

Once Vanessa’s disheveled hair and clothes were somewhat tidied up, Garcia spoke to her in an uncharacteristically apologetic voice.

“Um… Your Highness. I don’t quite understand what happened, but I feel I did something wrong, so I apologize. I didn’t expect Your Highness to misunderstand my words like that.”

“Misunderstand…?”

Vanessa slowly raised her head and looked at Garcia with sapphire eyes that seemed to sparkle like starlight. At that moment, Garcia thought for the first time that her eyes were beautiful.

That is to say, while he had known that Vanessa was an inhumanly beautiful woman from the start and thought she had quite a remarkable face, this was the first time he genuinely thought ‘beautiful’ from his heart.

Feeling somewhat strange, Garcia couldn’t meet Vanessa’s eyes directly. He nodded while cleverly averting his gaze to look at the area around her eyes.

“I don’t know the details either, but His Grace didn’t say those things because he finds you troublesome. It’s just, well, how should I put it… sigh I don’t really understand either, but anyway, it’s a misunderstanding.”

Though he managed to string together unconvincing words, Garcia himself was at a loss for how to explain it.

Is it natural to be bothered when a seemingly intimate man hangs around a woman you’re interested in? But… were she and he really that close? He didn’t think they were that close.

To begin with, Garcia hadn’t fully grasped Jurgen’s true feelings. It made no sense for him to speculate about Jurgen’s feelings to Vanessa, saying things like it might be jealousy.

So he simply followed Jurgen’s order not to get close to Vanessa and relayed the words exactly as he heard them… but he never expected her to take it so negatively.

Only after the situation had developed this way did Garcia truly realize how the ‘misfortune’ Vanessa carried affected her.

He hadn’t known. Probably none of Drake’s retainers had.

The endless misfortune, rumors of bringing calamity, the label of an ill-omened woman. How all of these weighed her down.

As a complete outsider and foreigner, she had never been someone to be understood. That’s why they had only dealt with her superficially, never truly trying to understand her. Garcia realized this fact only now.

“…If you say so, I understand for now. I seem to have become uncharacteristically emotional. My misfortune is a constant thing, so it shouldn’t be anything special anymore…”

“……”

“Sometimes, it seems I have trouble accepting my fate. Today I’m particularly anxious… perhaps that’s why.”

At Vanessa’s words that seemed like muttering to herself, Garcia recalled something and carefully asked.

“Is the reason for your anxiety… because of Arno Terevron and that mage Saskia?”

Vanessa flinched momentarily before nodding somewhat unnaturally. She seemed to be hiding something.

“Well… yes. If those two are really alive, it’s more than a little disturbing.”

Garcia was curious about what she was hiding, but for now, he voiced the question that had come to mind.

“In that alley, the person Arno Terevron encountered was Saskia… that’s what Your Highness suspected, right?”

The previous evening, Jurgen had explained what he saw in the alley to Vanessa and questioned her thoroughly about Arno and Saskia, and Vanessa had revealed everything she knew. She had also added her speculation that Saskia might have been responsible for Arno’s disappearance in the alley.

“Saskia swore submission to the Terevron royal family… It wasn’t just a promise, but a ‘mage’s oath.’ You know what that is too, right?”

“An oath that a mage stakes their life on… one that can only be broken by death.”

“Right. Having made such an oath, Saskia can’t escape. As long as even one member of the Terevron royal family lives… she’ll try to find and protect them, even at the cost of her life.”

“Yes, but the strange thing is…”

“That the emotions left behind by Arno in that alley were joy, fear, and betrayal. …According to what Jurgen saw with Vüs’s power.”

Saskia, bound by oath, couldn’t possibly harm Arno, the last of the Terevron royalty. So why did Arno feel fear and betrayal…?

“…There’s a possibility that the other person with Arno in that alley wasn’t Saskia. It seems strange no matter how you think about it that Arno would feel fear and betrayal upon seeing Saskia.”

“Hmm… that’s certainly…”

At that moment, a certain hypothesis flashed through Garcia’s mind. However, hesitant to voice it, Garcia paused before carefully presenting his theory.

“Perhaps… is there a possibility that Leroy Terevron is alive?”

“…What?”

Vanessa’s expression gradually turned hostile as she asked, unable to believe what she’d heard. As if just considering such a possibility filled her with extreme anger.

Garcia took a surrender pose and explained.

“What I mean is… couldn’t the real Leroy Terevron have escaped after changing his face? Though the possibility might be slim… if he’s alive, Saskia wouldn’t need to be loyal to Arno Terevron. Even among royalty, Leroy’s orders would take priority.”

“…That’s not possible. On the day Terevron fell… it was definitely Leroy who came to find me in the underground prison.”

As Vanessa’s complexion darkened rapidly, Garcia felt extremely embarrassed, thinking he had done something unnecessary. He awkwardly smiled and quickly tried to change the subject.

“Haha, of course, right? I was just being needlessly worried… Anyway! Regarding Arno Terevron and Saskia, our knights will be tracking them, so you don’t need to worry too much. We’re not just good at fighting, you know. Many of our members have learned all sorts of investigative techniques. We’re an even more impressive knight order than we appear, hahaha.”

“……”

Vanessa stared at Garcia blankly before letting out a small laugh. It seemed she immediately understood why Garcia was acting so uncharacteristically frivolous.

In a lighter tone, Vanessa spoke.

“And Leroy… I think I killed him. Though Jurgen was the one who beheaded him.”

“…Pardon? Is that true?”

A surprised Garcia asked blankly, and Renee, who had been silently listening until then, opened her eyes wide.

However, Vanessa had no intention of discussing that matter further, so she simply smiled and walked past them.

This time, Garcia didn’t press the issue either. He just glanced at her with a somewhat surprised expression while watching her mood.

‘Well… I did think she wasn’t just some refined princess.’

Maybe that’s why he’s not uncomfortable with her. Usually, he couldn’t stand nobles.

Garcia followed Vanessa with a grin and disciplined steps. While thinking that although he never expected to feel this way, he could definitely serve this princess as his superior.

✦ ✦ ✦

The uninvited guest arrived at the mansion around three o’clock that afternoon.

Vanessa, who had been spending a boring time in her room, hurried to the lobby upon hearing news of a visitor looking for her.

What she encountered upon arrival was Jurgen and Duke Evanwood facing each other in an ominous atmosphere.

Vanessa hesitated for a moment, but being so happy to meet someone from her homeland after so long, she rushed to Duke Evanwood’s side.

“Duke Evanwood!”

Duke Evanwood opened his eyes wide as if he’d seen a ghost, then immediately showed an expression of such joy that he seemed about to burst into tears.

“This can’t be, Princess Vanessa, you’re really alive!”

“Yes… I survived thanks to Duke Drake’s mercy.”

As she said this, she glanced at Jurgen’s face, which had hardened like stone.

When their eyes suddenly met, he glared at Vanessa so frighteningly that it sent chills down her spine. As if he had already seen through how Duke Evanwood had come to this mansion, and what Vanessa was plotting.