“What? You’re saying this is a real person?”

The king’s reaction was exactly what Andrea had anticipated.

Rather than the fact that indecent pamphlets were being distributed through the capital, his focus had locked entirely onto whether this woman was a real person.

Hiding his smile, Andrea told him in a suitably grave tone.

“Yes. The woman in the drawing is Lady Talbot, who made her debutante debut just recently. She looks exactly like that.”

In that instant, a spark of vigorous curiosity lit up in the king’s eyes.

“Hmm…… quite beautiful. She reminds me of Fabienne in her youth.”

Andrea concealed a sneer and replied.

“Seeing her in person would make any comparison fall short, but that is beside the point. In any case, her likeness was used without her knowledge in this sort of low-grade material, and she would be deeply mortified to find out. The city’s public order department will handle it before it comes to that.”

Stepping out of the king’s chamber a short while later, Andrea let a satisfied smile spread across his face.

He had accomplished two things that morning.

Both were foundations of the plan to bring Queen Fabienne down completely.

The first was successfully stoking the interest of the king, with his well-known weakness for women. The second was extracting a confession from the culprit in the poisoned incense burner case, now held in the dungeon.

The woman named Dalsy had, four years ago, taken employment at the Queen Dowager’s estate on Fabienne’s orders, gained access to her bedchamber, and ensured she inhaled the vapors of Akera’s Claw every day.

As a result, Queen Dowager Marietta had suffered constant headaches, wasted away, and died.

It was murder.

After lying low for several years, the maid had re-entered the palace through Fabienne’s arrangement and begun using the same method on the king. She had been caught midway, unexpectedly, by Andrea.

The culprit was Queen Fabienne.

Turning over how to bring the queen, now a rat in a trap, to the most devastating possible end, Andrea had decided to give the king a new woman.

That woman was Lady Talbot.

A few days earlier, Rufus had passed along a new piece of information.

‘Akera’s Claw takes roughly two years to cause death, but when a man inhales it for more than a week, the situation becomes rather different.’

‘What happens?’

‘It causes severe and permanent damage to reproductive function.’

‘What? He loses function? That can’t happen.’

Seeing Andrea’s grave expression, Rufus quickly clarified.

‘Oh, he’ll still be capable of the act itself, but he’ll become infertile.’

Andrea stood there frowning at Rufus’s explanation, then answered with flat indifference.

‘Well. That works out fine for me. The last thing I need is more half-siblings.’

If anything, for a king with such a notorious appetite for women, it might even be a blessing.

Women would no longer torment the king with hollow dreams of their sons stealing the crown prince’s position, the way Fabienne had.

Either way, the counterattack had begun.

Andrea was smiling to himself and strolling through the colonnade, enjoying the view of the inner courtyard, when Queen Fabienne appeared at the far end of the corridor with her ladies-in-waiting.

She was a woman who radiated the full bloom of mature beauty, but the moment she saw Andrea, a strange unease crossed her face.

One of her maids, and one who had played a central role in the Queen Dowager’s murder at that, had vanished without warning. She would have been unsettled.

Not knowing the woman had already been recaptured and thrown in the dungeon, Fabienne was no doubt throwing everything she had into finding and silencing her first.

Even so, she put on a composed smile and greeted Andrea first.

“My, if it isn’t my eldest stepson. Coming back from paying your respects to His Majesty, I take it.”

He met her probing gaze with an unhurried smile and replied.

“Yes. His Majesty is fortunately recovering his strength. All thanks to Your Highness the Queen’s constant concern for his health.”

Andrea smiled inwardly as he watched Queen Fabienne go rigid.

She had murdered his mother, and every instinct told him to cut this snake down where she stood, but he had to hold on until the decisive moment.

Fabienne recovered quickly from the jab and curved her red lips upward.

“I heard from His Majesty that our dear eldest has been providing him with rare medicinal ingredients. It seems they are working beautifully. I understand he may be well enough to return to state affairs very soon.”

She appeared to be referring to the antidote Rufus had prepared, and Andrea answered with smooth ease.

“Yes, well. I managed to procure something quite rare, and he seems to have gotten back on his feet rather quickly, fortunately. If you would like, I could arrange the same for you, Your Highness? And perhaps share some with Henry as well.”

The mention of Henry seemed to land as a threat, and Queen Fabienne’s voice came out sharp.

“That will not be necessary. Why bring up Henry all of a sudden, coming from his elder brother?”

The skin beneath Fabienne’s eye twitched as their nerves pulled taut against each other, and the corner of Andrea’s mouth curved further.

Thinking what a loathsome woman she was, he pressed on with more mockery.

“By the way, Your Highness, seeing you in this bright sunlight, it seems a few lines have appeared around your eyes. You ought to take better care of yourself. You were once named the heroine of the May Festival, after all. Time is truly unsparing.”

Andrea held her glare without flinching and smiled pleasantly.

“Then again, mature elegance has its own appeal. Though as you know, that is not quite Father’s taste.”

Fabienne finally snapped.

“And the crown prince himself had his most private secrets leaked to the entire world due to his own scandalous conduct! A fine disgrace to the Aurelion royal name, I must say.”

Andrea looked down at the trembling queen with lazy amusement and laughed.

“I am actually in the process of tracking down that publisher’s headquarters. Once I find whoever is behind it, I intend to leave nothing but dust.”

The low voice that slipped through his teeth was so quietly menacing that Queen Fabienne took a step back.

From a distance, the two of them standing in the sunlit colonnade, smiling and conversing, looked every bit like an affectionate mother and son. But the ladies-in-waiting standing nearby had gone pale to a one.

A moment later, Andrea withdrew his offensive first, as unhurried as ever.

“Then I must be going. I’m quite busy, Mother.”

Queen Fabienne watched the broad back of the departing Andrea with a burning stare.

‘Insolent——!’

Even with the full might of her family, the Blanc Ducal House, thrown against him, she had failed to weaken that arrogant young man.

On the contrary, he was building his own power base at an alarming rate, and the anxiety was growing.

‘He’s far more cunning than his mother was. At this rate, will it become permanently impossible for Henry to take the crown prince’s position?’

Biting her lip against the creeping dread, the queen spun on her heel and disappeared.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Walking along the garden path through the flower beds, Andrea snapped off a large lisianthus bud without thinking.

It had reminded him, for just a moment, of Raul’s wide eyes.

Embarrassed by his own action, he scrambled to justify it to himself.

The boy liked flowers, the way girls do. He’d give it as a token of appreciation.

Having already broken the stem, he snapped off a few more and gathered them loosely in his hand, then set off walking again.

The ‘appreciation’ in question was for drawing Lady Talbot’s n*de portrait with such convincing realism.

Of course, the pamphlet had never actually been printed or distributed. It had been slipped into the documents solely for the king’s eyes.

He knew his father well.

The king’s taste, born of a lifelong weakness for women, had never changed.

Young women who combined innocence with provocative sensuality.

Now that his health was returning, the king would likely be looking for a new companion.

He had already seemed restless, unable to escape Queen Fabienne’s watchful surveillance.

His considerable resentment toward the Blanc Ducal House’s interference in state affairs would only add to that.

“Then allow this son to take care of it.”

Andrea murmured with a quiet smile, almost humming.

He had saved his father from a slow death by poisoned incense, and now he was personally arranging a replacement for a wife the man had grown tired of. Truly a devoted son.

One might ask whether Lady Talbot was being made into a sacrifice in all of this, but as far as Andrea could tell, not at all.

Lady Talbot was cut from the same cloth as his father.