The king sent his knights to search for Princess Beronis.
The first place they dispatched men to was Sarg’s home. The man, who had become little more than a wreck, lived—absurdly enough—near Hyderlin’s grave, right next to the abandoned chapel.
Captain of the Royal Guard Skalts Petaora and his adjutant, who had searched the nearby orphanage until late into the night, only came to see the king when morning arrived.
“That Sarg Gloriosa is living with a woman?”
Skalts, reporting the search results to the king on behalf of the knights, nodded at the king’s question.
Chesa scratched his forehead. Jet-black, tightly curled hair like crow’s wing feathers hung over his brow.
“I swear, I don’t know how long that man intends to keep surprising me. It was shocking enough that he became that pathetic wreck from drinking, but now he’s womanizing too… I’m curious what he’ll do next.”
Chesa, who had been sitting on the edge of the bed, glanced back. Margarite was covered from head to toe with the blanket, not a single strand of hair visible.
The queen, tormented by the king all night, had fallen asleep as if unconscious and had not woken even by morning. The king didn’t want to leave the queen’s side. Because of this, the current Captain of the Royal Guard Skalts had been assigned the uncomfortable duty of entering the king and queen’s bedroom to make his report.
Skalts tried to avert his attention from the red scratch marks left on the king’s face and neck.
Chesa looked at the blanket-covered queen and said:
“Tell me more about Sarg’s wife.”
“Yes. The woman’s name is Hys Gloriosa. They haven’t held a ceremony yet, so she’s not officially a ‘Gloriosa.'”
Chesa chuckled. To give the Gloriosa name to a woman of unknown origin—Duke Gloriosa would clutch the back of his neck if he knew. But that wasn’t the only amusing thing.
“Her name is Hys—isn’t that Hyderlin’s pet name?”
“It’s not just the name that’s similar. Remarkably, she has the same appearance as the count—enough that you’d believe it if someone said Count Biche had come back to life. Except for the black hair, she’s completely identical.”
Of course, the personality was different too. Skalts recalled the woman’s appearance anew. Unlike Hyderlin, who had been arrogant beyond measure, that woman had been completely cowed. She was pitifully thin as a twig.
Chesa clicked his tongue.
“So obsessed with my older sister that he found himself a substitute that looks like her shell? More disgusting than I imagined.”
Skalts inwardly agreed with the king’s words.
“And there was an infant between the two of them.”
“A baby?”
The sleeping Margarite shifted.
Anyone else would have let it pass without much thought. But Chesa was different. He was… excessively cautious. It could be called an animal instinct cultivated from living in the royal palace for so long.
Chesa kept his gaze on Margarite as he requested additional explanation from Skalts.
“Describe the baby. How many months old would you say?”
“My apologies. I know nothing about infant development, so it’s difficult to explain. They said the name was Mack.”
“Mack…”
That was Margarite’s pet name.
“Then how big was the baby?”
Skalts searched his memory and assumed the posture of holding a child in his arms. Then he roughly indicated the baby’s size. Chesa, who was quite interested in child-rearing, stroked his chin.
“Ah… I’m not certain, but roughly three or four months old, perhaps. Similar in age to our Princess Beronis, then.”
The blanket rustled again. This was the moment when Chesa’s cautiousness showed its worth. The shrewd king smiled faintly.
“Then there must have been a relationship between Gloriosa and that woman from at least a year ago. There would be a midwife who delivered the child three or four months ago. Sir, investigate this.”
Chesa gently placed his hand on the blanket and added:
“Don’t be disappointed even if you don’t obtain meaningful investigation results. The absence of results is also a result in its own way.”
“Understood.”
Skalts understood Chesa’s words. And he cursed his own foolishness.
Chesa was talking about the possibility that Sarg and the woman had lied about ‘Princess Beronis’ being their baby. He hadn’t blamed Skalts directly, but that indirect rebuke made Skalts all the more ashamed.
“You may go now.”
Even until Skalts withdrew, Chesa only looked at Margarite.
When he heard the sound of the door closing, Chesa gently pulled down the blanket. The ends of disheveled hair were revealed, then a round back of the head, then a white, thin neck, then shoulders marked with bruises.
Margarite was sleeping with her face buried in the pillow. But in Chesa’s opinion, Margarite was not asleep. She was pretending to sleep.
“Margarite. Did you hear?”
Chesa flopped down on the bed. He gently caressed the bruise on Margarite’s shoulder.
“Your old friend has a daughter.”
Margarite did not answer. But Chesa smiled gently and said:
“Actually, the place Duke Gloriosa lives now isn’t really a good environment to raise a baby, you know. It would be fortunate if she doesn’t catch some disease.”
“……”
“So I was thinking, why don’t we bring her to the palace and make her Beronis’s playmate? They’re the same age and have similar birthdays, after all.”
“……”
“Then that child would grow up eating good food and receiving a good education. As a friend of the next king. As Gloriosa’s daughter.”
The more Chesa spoke, the more Margarite trembled. Like an aspen tree, faintly. But Margarite did not open her eyes. She kept them stubbornly shut.
At this passive resistance, Chesa chuckled.
“Your birthday banquet is coming up soon. Sir Sarg hasn’t shown up in several years, but… I’d like him to come this year. I should urge him to come by all means.”
“……”
“I’m delighted at the thought of seeing your knight.”
Chesa smiled faintly and lightly kissed Margarite’s ear. Then he sprang up from the bed. He ambled over to the desk and began contemplating the bait to lure the Knight of Radiance to the birthday banquet.
Having quickly finished his planning, Chesa began to write the letter himself.
In recent years, he had delegated the writing of invitations to Sarg. This year was the same. The invitation to Margarite’s birthday banquet had already arrived at Sarg’s door. The handwritten letter he was writing now was an unofficial invitation.
Your friend,
Chesa Bisretio San Lotsa
Having finished the letter, Chesa dropped wax on the invitation with a satisfied expression and sealed it. The seal he used for personal matters was stamped. As he waited for the wax to harden, Chesa was seized by one question.
That woman.
Sarg had been educated as a noble and rarely showed changes in expression, so it would have been difficult to detect lies. But what kind of person was that woman to fool Skalts and even win his sympathy?
Is she an actress or something?
Chesa put his interlocked hands behind his neck and looked up at the ceiling. And he began to speculate about the identity of the woman who bore part of his dead sister’s name.
The next morning, when Sarg opened the door and came out, he was startled. Hyderlin was squatting in front of it.
“What? When did you arrive?”
Hyderlin whirled around to look at Sarg.
“I never left.”
She had been sitting there all night without sleeping a wink. Even lying in bed, sleep wouldn’t come, so getting an inn would just be wasting money.
Sarg raised his neat eyebrows.
“You were here all night?”
“Yeah. Don’t you feel anything?”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel.”
“Like a guilty conscience.”
“Me? Why?”
“You drove a poor woman with nowhere to go out into the cold.”
Sarg snorted.
“As if I’d let you sleep in my house when I know what you might try to pull.”
Somehow the words stung, and Hyderlin raised her eyebrows.
“Hey! I’ll admit you’re handsome. But I don’t like men with beards.”
“That’s not something a woman who was making advances on a bearded man should say.”
“I was planning to shave off your beard clean if you came on to me.”
Sarg sighed. Even though she had retorted to every single thing, he seemed tired of this meaningless, wasteful conversation.
“You’re in the way. Move.”
Hyderlin obediently stepped aside. Sarg went down the stairs with the baby in his arms. He was dressed to go out.
Hyderlin followed leisurely behind him. Sarg glanced back at her but didn’t tell her to get lost. Hyderlin decided to take that as permission.
The place he arrived at was the abandoned chapel.
Picking up the broom placed at the entrance, he spotted the coffin in the center of the abandoned chapel. He approached the coffin with somewhat hurried steps.
It was Hyderlin’s old coffin.
Sarg urgently examined the inside of the coffin, which was full of dirt and dead insects. He muttered in a bewildered voice:
“Why is the coffin outside?”
Hyderlin said indifferently:
“Hey, this is Count Biche’s coffin.”
“I know that. Where are the remains?”
Those remains are standing right here. She said abruptly:
“Come to think of it, I didn’t talk about ‘revenge.’ I said that after this is over, I’d help you take revenge on Count Biche.”
“Did you take her remains?”
At Sarg’s question, Hyderlin calmly affirmed.
“Yes.”
“Where are they?”
“That’s the most important and interesting part of our deal.”
Hyderlin snapped her fingers with a cheerful click.
“If you succeed in killing the king, I’ll return the remains. When you see them, you’ll know what ‘how to take revenge on that woman’ means.”
“……”
“Of course, I can’t tell you what it is right now. I need a card up my sleeve too. I guarantee you’ll like it quite a bit.”
Sarg turned his head and looked at Hyderlin with irritation.
“You’re not very perceptive.”
“This is the first time in my life I’ve heard that.”
“I have no intention of taking revenge on Hyderlin.”
“Hey.”
“Just give back the remains.”
There was an unfathomable anger submerged in that voice. One could see it seething beneath the flawlessly finished surface. Sarg reached out his hand toward her.
Hyderlin instinctively thought he was going to grab her by the collar. She roughly swatted his hand away and snapped:
“Kill the king first. Then I’ll wrap them up nicely and give them back.”
“No matter what happens, I will end his life. That’s my revenge.”
For a moment, the emotion he revealed resembled a blade. A silver-white edge sharpened on a whetstone. It was a trace of the man she had once known well.
“Just give back the remains.”
Hyderlin shrugged her shoulders. As always, she mixed truth and lies.
“Sorry, but they’re with the queen now.”
“……”
“You understand what I mean when I say I can only return them if you kill the king, right?”
“…Yes.”
No sooner had those words ended than the man who resembled a blade disappeared. Only a man plastered with fatigue remained.
