“Stop crying. Go get my clothes. I have somewhere to be.”

“Yes…… sniff.”

A short while later, watching Raul’s reddened eyes in the mirror as the boy helped him dress, Andrea understood something.

The reason he had not written a letter of recommendation and sent the boy somewhere else on the day they first met was that he had wanted to go on protecting him.

A boy standing lost and blank in his mother’s bedchamber, blinking those innocent eyes that seemed untouched by the world.

He had felt a strange protective instinct in that moment, one he had never felt before.

That was why he had kept the boy close.

Even if he had also been the one to give him the hardest time.

Watching the boy sniffle on, Andrea thought he ought to find something new to give him, something to redirect his attention.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Andrea stopped by the offices of the Daily Minerve at 1 Rue Saint-Honoré, where its headquarters was located.

He had been occupied with getting to the bottom of the poison affair and had not visited in some time.

“Come in.”

The moment Andrea stepped inside, curious eyes drifted past him to the figure trailing close behind.

“Right, this is a new addition starting today. Name’s Raul. My personal attendant. He’ll also be joining the team to handle illustrations and graphic advertisements for our Minerve.”

“Wow!”

Riley bowed politely, a little flustered. These were all His Highness’s friends, which made them practically distinguished guests.

“Please take care of me. I’m Raul.”

Dressed neatly in palace livery, Riley stood looking around the office with an awkward expression, and Andrea dropped a bombshell.

“He also happens to be the illustrator behind 『A Ballad of Flame and Loss.』 Caught him in the end.”

“What?”

Everyone except Alfonso, who already knew the full story, reacted with shock.

The team had held meeting after meeting over that very matter. Their conclusion had been that the publisher’s main office and that wretched illustrator needed to be tracked down and dealt with. And the culprit was standing right here?

A moment of stunned silence passed, and then the questions started flying, and eventually they had no choice but to accept it.

Good lord…… so that was why the serial had stopped running recently.

They burst out laughing, then swung back to ‘but even so, mocking a member of the royal family like that and no punishment?’ and fell into confused bewilderment.

Edwin, the first to make sense of the situation, muttered as though making sure Andrea could hear.

“So in short, you’ve poached a talent from enemy territory. Or wait, is this not poaching but actually a form of punishment?”

Bernay joined in with a round of applause.

“Unpaid labor as retribution. For someone Your Highness is so fond of, the punishment is remarkably lenient!”

“Well, His Highness has always been softer than he looks.”

Andrea wrinkled his nose at the lot of them, ignored all the stares, and tried to steer Riley toward the sofa.

But Roso was sprawled across it in a state of near-horizontal relaxation, and Andrea immediately regretted bringing Raul here.

‘I can’t have him picking up bad habits from these people. I shouldn’t let him come alone.’

He felt this even more strongly when Roso and Bernay got to their feet and sauntered over to offer Raul a handshake.

Andrea swatted their hands away preemptively, but Roso winked with a playful grin and pushed his luck.

“Oh~ something pretty. Exactly my type.”

A blue vein pulsed briefly at Andrea’s temple.

He reached out without thinking and pulled Raul toward himself. The words came out sharp and automatic.

“Go find your type at a club.”

“Come on. I’m just joking. Not even letting me introduce myself to the new recruit, that’s a bit much. Right, Raul?”

Roso pulled his hand back with a sulky look, and Andrea changed the subject with a sudden announcement.

“Anyway. I’ve finally found a way to get rid of my stepmother.”

The murmuring room fell silent again, and everyone stared.

“What? The queen?”

“You’ve finally found proof of her connection to 〈Clemont〉?”

Every member of the Daily Minerve had gathered for the purpose of standing against the queen and her allies, so this was as good as all of their goals being achieved at once.

They were soon given a full account of the ‘incense burner affair’ by Alfonso.

The maid named Marianne, recently apprehended, had confessed under t*rture that both what she had done to the Queen Dowager four years ago and what she had been planning to do to the king this time had been carried out on the orders of Queen Fabienne’s faction.

The remarkable contribution made by Raul’s drawings came up naturally in the middle of the explanation, and with Andrea’s brief remark that ‘for that reason, I’ve decided to put the past offense behind us,’ the team finally understood the full picture.

Throughout the telling, Andrea watched Raul standing stiffly at the side, not knowing where to put himself, and smiled.

Those cheeks flushed with pride at becoming a member of a secret newspaper were rather endearing.

In truth, Raul had been deeply subdued lately, shaken by the revelation that the Queen Dowager had been slowly poisoned to death, and that he himself had failed to notice.

When even deliberate teasing drew no reaction, Andrea had grown a little concerned.

He had thought that meeting people outside the palace and doing some drawing might lift the boy’s spirits, and that was why he had brought him along.

Feeling Andrea’s warm gaze, Riley turned and their eyes met, and she gave a small, shy smile.

That smile, after so long, was so bright and guileless that Andrea went blank for a moment.

Something near his heart lurched again.

Still feeling that uncomfortable flutter, he looked away, schooled his expression, and spoke.

“Anyway, he’ll be joining us from time to time in the work of cornering the queen. Look after him.”

Nina, who had been listening quietly, spoke up.

“Our Minerve doesn’t have a serial fiction section, so there isn’t really a place for illustrations……”

Andrea had clearly been waiting for exactly that, and his mouth curved with unhurried satisfaction.

“Then it’s time we restructured our layout the same way they do. Add a serial fiction section, add editorial cartoons. What do you think about running a story with the second prince as the protagonist, paired with illustrations by this one here? You’ve all seen what he can do.”

Andrea jabbed a thumb at himself as he said it, and Riley went rigid, while the rest of the room let out helpless laughs.

Apparently the n*de illustration affair had left quite a mark.

Bernay looked at the flustered Raul and asked with an air of concern.

“Aren’t you dragging an innocent person into this?”

The enemies were already desperately trying to locate the Daily Minerve’s headquarters, which was what prompted the question.

But Andrea draped an arm over Raul’s shoulder and answered with breezy indifference.

“Innocent? Knowing what this one drew, you can still say that?”

He rested his chin on top of Raul’s head, pinning the boy in place, and reminded them all, and the room erupted in laughter again.

The culprit was supposedly right here, and yet the attendant’s guileless expression and neat posture kept making them forget that shocking fact.

“……”

Riley’s face went red, thinking she had been teased quite enough.

And at the moment…… with His Highness’s arm draped over her shoulder, she was practically tucked against his side.

She could feel his warmth and the faint trace of his cologne through the rise and fall of his chest as he laughed.

‘What is this, why am I suddenly so aware of him?’

Flustered, Riley quietly stepped away from Andrea, and Nina was the first to extend a hand with a warm smile.

“I’m Nina, correspondent and editorial writer for the Minerve. Pleased to meet you, Raul.”

Riley collected herself and shook hands.

Roso grumbled.

“What’s this? He wouldn’t even let me shake hands.”

Bernay scolded Roso.

“Because your intentions were obvious.”

“Wow, what do you take me for? I have standards too!”

Roso went on muttering something about preferring muscular carpenters and well-built cavalry officers, and having no particular interest in the delicate pretty-boy type, and jeers broke out from all directions.

“Easy, easy. Show a little restraint in front of the innocent new recruit, would you? Can’t you see his face is about to burst from all the red?”

The atmosphere was nothing like what Riley had imagined a newspaper office would feel like, and her head was spinning a little in the middle of all the chaos.

She was supposed to work with these people going forward?

But chaotic as it was, sitting there listening to the team’s nonsense, she noticed the gloom that had been weighing on her lately lifting, bit by bit.

In the middle of it all, Andrea leaned down and murmured low into Raul’s ear.