It seemed she had visitors for the first time.

Andrea, for the first time in his life, quieted his footsteps as he approached the door, and found himself peering through the slightly open gap.

Inside were familiar faces, a few of the attendants from Eli Palace, come to visit.

“You’re really all right now, aren’t you?”

“Honestly. Try to be a little more careful. You walked into a hunting ground and got yourself shot. Do you know how frightened we were?”

Riley’s cheerful voice came through as well.

“Oh, it barely grazed me. I’m much better now, hehe. I fainted and made a whole scene out of nothing. Look, I can walk just fine.”

She was demonstrating by pacing back and forth in front of her colleagues, and someone reached over and ruffled her hair with a scolding look.

“Stop startling everyone, you. Remember when you nearly made someone fall off a ladder that time.”

They were bringing up incidents Andrea had never heard of, patting Riley’s hair and pinching her round cheeks with easy familiarity.

A vein was beginning to rise on Andrea’s forehead, and to make things worse, Jayden added more.

“Anyway, you said you’ve been going stir-crazy in the ward all day, so I brought you something.”

“A gift?”

Riley took what was held out to her with wide eyes.

She unwrapped it carefully and let out a small sound of delight.

“Paints?”

“Right, you like sketching and drawing things, don’t you? I was walking past an art supply shop last week and spotted these. Thought you might be bored.”

“Wow, thank you so much!”

Riley’s bright smile, unguarded in its joy, caught the sunlight and sparkled.

The more it did, the more Andrea’s expression darkened behind the door.

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just get better soon and come back to your post. Things have piled up without you, more than you’d think.”

The other attendant, Robert, chimed in from beside Jayden.

“Exactly. And the palace has been too quiet. Who knew we’d miss the sound of you chattering away. More than anything, His Highness has been giving off a strange atmosphere lately and everyone’s been walking on eggshells.”

“What do you mean, a strange atmosphere?”

Riley was curious, since she had noticed something similar herself, and asked.

“Hard to say exactly. He was never much of a talker to begin with, but now he’s even quieter. Always seems lost in thought.”

“Well, things are complicated right now. That would explain it.”

Riley assumed the quiet in the palace lately had to do with the turmoil between the queen, the king, and Lady Talbot.

And it was true that His Highness Andrea’s manner had been…… strange recently.

Beyond what she could attribute to the political struggle with the queen and the unrest within the palace, there seemed to be something more.

The way he would fix her with a still, unreadable gaze she could not begin to interpret. The sudden deep sighs. The way he would rub his forehead once as though something pained him, then leave.

Hmm…… he must be upset.

It was Andrea who had shot her. She assumed he was tormenting himself over it, so Riley had been deliberately trying to look healthy and cheerful.

Either way, hearing that he was quiet and subdued back at the palace made her grateful that he cared so much.

When she had regained consciousness, Riley had been briefly afraid her secret had been discovered, but the bandaging was intact and no one around her had given anything away, so she believed she had safely gotten through it.

Meanwhile, Andrea still stood at the door, and his cool gaze had been resting precisely on Jayden and Robert’s hands as they kept touching Riley’s hair and cheeks, before shifting to the paint set she was now turning over with delight.

The grip of his hand tightened on what he was holding.

He had, in fact, also come bearing a gift for Riley, a set of colored pencils to keep her from being bored.

And now someone had beaten him to it. His mood plummeted in an instant.

Of all things, art supplies were what he had wanted to be the first to give her, as a way of encouraging her talent and her dreams.

On top of that, why were those two being so utterly unguarded around Raul, or rather, Riley.

Of course they were simply acting the way they would with a close colleague, but what if Riley’s identity as a woman were ever revealed?

Something unpleasant stirred and churned in his gut, and his brow furrowed deeply.

Palace discipline has grown far too lax.

The camaraderie among the attendants has gone too far. Order requires that everyone maintain an appropriate distance.

The fine wrapping paper crumpled under the tightening grip of Andrea’s hand.

He turned and went back to Rufus’s office, then asked sharply.

“Why are you already allowing visitors for Riley?”

Rufus caught the faint crease on Andrea’s brow and the edge in his voice, and scratched his temple as he made his excuse.

“Well…… she had rested enough, and she was so terribly bored……”

Andrea exhaled into the air with an expression that made it clear he disagreed entirely, then turned his head and said flatly.

“Forbid it again.”

With that, he turned and walked away, the crumpled gift box still in his hand.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Not long after that, the situation outside moved quickly.

The Blanc Ducal House’s resistance intensified, and the parliamentary faction nobles who supported them began showing signs of consolidating.

Andrea had been waiting for exactly that moment, and he finally laid everything before the king.

Learning the full truth of the Queen Dowager’s suspicious death and the poisoned incense burner that had been placed in his own bedchamber, the king was deeply shaken and soon erupted in fury.

Among the ministers, the consensus was that Queen Fabienne’s execution was unavoidable, but the Blanc Ducal House bribed the chief justice and fought to the bitter end.

Their argument was that pinning all the blame on the queen and the Blanc family based solely on the testimony of a single maid, with no physical evidence, was an act of extreme malice.

They even went so far as to mobilize the private armies of local strongmen across the southern region, raising a rebel force.

Of course, Andrea led the royal knights and the central army personally and suppressed the ragtag force, bringing the situation under control, but by the time it was done, a month had flown by.

The king, who had initially wanted to take a hard line, faltered somewhat in the face of the threat of civil war.

Fabienne’s tearful pleas also weakened his resolve. Her defense centered on three points: that the suspicion of murdering the Queen Dowager was utterly groundless, that being cast out on the basis of a bribed maid’s confession alone was a grave injustice, and that placing Akera’s Claw in the king’s bedchamber incense burner had been aimed only at causing infertility, with absolutely no intent to kill.

The king was a philanderer but not a cold man, and he found it difficult to execute the queen for the sake of the second prince Henry as well.

In the end, he used the excuse that he could not execute the mother of his second son, and had Fabienne confined for life to a villa in a coastal city in the provinces.

The face Fabienne made as she was dragged out of the palace, screaming and thrashing to the last after her deposition, was something to behold.

Delighted that he would never have to call that face his stepmother again, Andrea sent her off with a bright farewell smile as she struggled.

Naturally, the Blanc Ducal House, which had raised a private army, was also shut down shortly after as a rebel faction.

In truth, this was less than half a victory from Andrea’s perspective.

He had not been able to cleanly excise the irritants. Even so, dismantling the Blanc family, the head of a parliamentary faction built over decades, was a decent enough outcome.

He returned to the capital after more than a month away.

He had led the central army and suppressed the rebel force, but ‘suppressed’ was generous. The enemy had scattered on their own before his forces even drew close.

In the end, he left only the troops needed for reconnaissance and returned quickly to the capital with the royal knights.

Even then, Andrea’s feet went straight to Riley’s room.

But……

“Raul? Hmm…… seems to be out somewhere having fun.”

Rufus, buried in his laboratory, said it with the air of someone wondering why he was being asked, then caught Andrea’s expression and quickly corrected himself.

“Fully recovered now, going around here and there. Mostly the garden out front or the rear grounds, so you might find him there.”