Bang—!
King Arjen slammed the desk with a white-knuckled fist.
He had never felt a betrayal quite so acutely.
He had quietly arranged to make the body disappear as Duke Foss had asked—but the single condition the duke had set during their secret negotiations was this:
Do not bring spies into the palace.
Do not plant spies to watch anyone residing within the palace walls. And especially—do not have anyone followed, even if they leave the palace.
And yet.
“How could you do this, Duke Foss? You’ve already broken the one condition I set!”
Bang—!
He struck the desk again, his face flushing scarlet with fury.
The truth was that he desperately needed to build ties with the King of the Kingdom of Doctia—relations between Frozen and Doctia had grown dangerously strained, and reconciliation was overdue.
And yet for all of that, the reason he had reached out to Duke Foss first was far simpler:
Jealousy.
To bring down Duke Calypse Krost’s standing. To fill that vacancy himself.
That was all.
“Please, Your Majesty—allow me to speak. This… this was something I did not anticipate either.”
Duke Foss, standing across the room, pressed his fingers to his temple and let out a strained sound.
“What? You didn’t anticipate it? You didn’t anticipate your spy being discovered?”
“No. Your Majesty, I did not place any spy within the palace. I abided by your condition.”
“Then why was the body identified as a spy of House Foss?!”
“That is precisely why I find it so baffling.”
“……?”
“Your Majesty.”
A silence fell between them.
Duke Foss fixed his pale grey eyes on King Arjen.
Those eyes held no fear—only a dense and genuine bewilderment.
“If I had truly planted a spy—would I have been the one to tell Your Majesty that the body was my spy?”
“……?”
At those words, King Arjen—who had been breathing in sharp, ragged surges—steadied himself and fell into a quiet contemplation.
No. He wouldn’t have.
A spy from House Foss would never carry anything on their person that would identify them as such. Wasn’t it a well-known principle among intelligence circles that a spy’s final mission was to disappear without a trace?
There was no evidence. He could have lied with perfect ease.
But he hadn’t.
And if Duke Foss had intended to plant a spy—
A dead spy would never have been caught by the palace knights. These people are nothing if not meticulous.
Only then did King Arjen slowly lower himself onto the sofa.
“Very well… let’s talk. Sit down.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
Duke Foss bowed and carefully took his seat.
He had been on edge to begin with, and not only because of the present matter. The incident in the North still weighed heavily on him.
He had expected House Krost to take at least several days to suppress the Creature rampage—but the Krost household had crushed it in a single day.
That alone had made Duke Foss begin to doubt the efficacy of the berserk potion he had supplied, and it had forced King Arjen to seethe in silence as Calypse’s face appeared on the front page under the headline: HERO.
I was already treading carefully around Arjen over that affair—and now this wretched spy business on top of everything.
Duke Foss’s eyes narrowed.
The body he had seen in the mortuary was a man who had been operating in the North. Narrow eyes, the kind that always looked slightly closed—that had been his defining feature.
He had never given the man a proper name, so the memory was hazy, but he had once ordered him to run a front operation out of a disguised shop called Perkus Bookshop, quietly moving illegal potions under the cover of ordinary trade.
If he had stayed at Perkus Bookshop, the man would have lived. So why had he left the safety of his base and come all the way to the palace?
Duke Foss’s mind moved quickly.
As the head of a spy operation, he had weathered countless incidents, large and small.
And—
…Aisha.
One of his most prized agents, as of late.
The clever girl who had somehow managed to secure the position of direct heir within House Krost.
She came to the palace, didn’t she.
That seemed the likeliest explanation.
The dead spy had followed Aisha to the palace. And Aisha herself had—
Left without even obtaining an audience with the king.
Officially, there had been some sort of incident and she had been evacuated by portal—but this was the royal palace. What kind of incident could occur here, unless spy had been set against spy?
Is something wrong with Aisha?
“I sincerely apologize to Your Majesty for the trouble this incident has caused.”
“…Ahem!”
Duke Foss had bowed so deeply his crown was visible—but King Arjen only produced an uncomfortable cough.
Just as I expected. So the duke raised his head and offered the most carefully constructed smile he could manage.
“The least I can do for Your Majesty is to uncover why our operative ended up inside the palace and what led to his death. However—”
“……”
“I suspect that alone will not be sufficient. So I would also like to share a piece of classified intelligence from House Foss. I believe it will be of considerable interest to Your Majesty.”
At that, even King Arjen—who had been making a show of not listening—perked up visibly.
How simple he is.
But simple was good.
King Arjen was, strictly speaking, not an ally—he was a tool to be squeezed of use and discarded once his value ran dry.
Duke Foss held his contempt behind a smooth expression and continued.
“There was quite a stir recently when House Krost adopted an orphan girl as their direct heir.”
King Arjen replied with a sharp, tetchy air.
“Yes. What of it?”
“An orphan becoming a direct heir… doesn’t it sound like something out of a fairy tale?”
“What exactly are you trying to say?”
“……”
Duke Foss smiled and let the silence stretch deliberately.
Arjen’s head began to turn toward him—slowly at first, then with a restless, barely concealed hunger, until at last he propped his elbow on the table with the poorly disguised eagerness of a man dying to know.
There you go. And I’m about to tell you something worth knowing.
Satisfied at last, Duke Foss let his voice drop into a measured, deliberate cadence.
“That fairy tale was, in fact, something we orchestrated from beginning to end. The girl who went from orphan to direct heir—the child called ‘Aisha’—is our operative.”
“…What?”
Arjen’s mouth fell open slowly.
He passed a hand over his lips as though he couldn’t believe what he’d heard—but the shock on his face was impossible to erase.
“Is that true? From what I’ve heard, Duke Calypse is said to be extraordinarily attached to the girl.”
“That is the caliber of House Foss’s operatives.”
“…Good God.”
King Arjen rose to his feet, so stunned he began pacing in a circle.
“His direct heir is a spy… and Calypse doesn’t even know it.”
“Correct. As I intend to see Duke Calypse destroyed, Aisha—wearing the title of direct heir—is my trump card.”
“Your trump card…?”
“Your Majesty. If a father discovered that the child he loved with his whole heart belonged to a house that might as well be his mortal enemy—how thoroughly, do you think, would it break him?”
“!”
Arjen’s eyes went wide.
The berserk potion scheme failed—but still…
Duke Foss, as always.
He had long been laying preparations from multiple angles to bring House Krost to ruin.
“Brilliant, as ever! A masterful plan!”
“You are too kind.”
Basking in King Arjen’s praise, Duke Foss let a quiet smile rest on his face.
I’ve soothed that fool of a king for now—so my next course of action is clear.
He would need to insert a new operative.
To find out what was happening inside House Krost.
And to find out what Aisha—who had been sending her reports with increasingly irregular frequency—was actually up to these days.
________________________________________
A few days later.
The cat woke to find itself inside a familiar set of iron bars, and blinked in confusion.
Am I back at Ahili Circus?
He braced with a flutter of worry—wondering if the circus workers had done something to Aisha—but then—
Sniff. Sniff.
He breathed in the scent of the blanket piled like a soft bed beneath him.
Food. Snow. And someone’s hands.
All sorts of smells mingled together—but among them, faint and unmistakable, was Aisha’s scent.
________________________________________
