“You’re more important than me!”
It seemed today was a day for seeing new sides of Rant. The child, who had never asserted himself in his life, cut me off and shouted strongly. This wasn’t the gentle puppy he usually was. He wasn’t likely to listen no matter what. If coaxing didn’t work, taking a firm approach might be the way.
“Not only interrupting the person speaking but raising your voice too—it seems your etiquette training has been lacking.”
“I’m sorry.”
Rant immediately bowed his head and replied. He must have realized his own agitation, for the tips of his ears, visible through his hair, flushed red.
Looking at Rant with his head down stirred a strange feeling in me. Clearly, this Rant now was the gentle puppy I knew. Even if he had been rebelling just moments ago.
I steadied my heart, which threatened to soften at the sight of his dejected form. If I didn’t make this clear now, the chances were high that when something similar happened again, Rant would throw himself into danger once more. It was better to nip that possibility in the bud from the start.
“Do you even realize how dangerous what you did was?”
Rant kept his head lowered, offering no answer. I had no intention of waiting for his response, so I continued right away.
“You’re no longer just on your own anymore. You didn’t just put yourself in danger—you endangered the entire Eliant family, who have staked their future on you. By acting recklessly from a position where you absolutely mustn’t, you’ve even disappointed me, the one who has placed her hopes in you.”
“But!”
Rant lifted his head, his face full of grievance as tears welled up in his eyes. I steadied my weakening resolve once more and pressed him even harder.
“I know you did it to help me. But did that action of yours actually help me?”
Rant shook his head. The teardrop hanging in his dark brown eyes dangled as if it would fall at any moment.
“Your rash actions didn’t just fail to help—they only made things harder for everyone. Isn’t that right?”
“…Yes.”
Rant finally let the teardrop fall. In the end, I couldn’t hold firm and had to let my resolve melt away. I couldn’t just watch my crying puppy—I reached out and gently wiped his eyes.
“I’m not saying don’t help me. If you came to me when I was in danger, I’d be overjoyed.”
Rant tilted his head toward me, rubbing his cheek against my hand.
“But Rant, you’re still too young. You’re at an age where you should be receiving help, not giving it.”
“I want to protect you too, Sister.”
His voice carried a hint of sobs, but Rant articulated his will clearly, word by word.
“I couldn’t just stay still when I heard you’d disappeared.”
Rant took my hand and pulled it to his chest. The sound of his heartbeat transmitted through my palm.
“It hurt so much here that I couldn’t breathe. Unless I saw your safe face, it felt like my heart would burst.”
I pulled Rant, who was crying like a waterfall, into my arms. To him, I was no different from a parent. Just as a chick fresh from its egg imprints on the first thing it sees as its mother, Rant had followed me.
Now I could finally understand the shock Rant must have felt upon hearing I’d vanished. I slowly stroked his back.
“I worry about you too. So don’t do anything dangerous, Rant.”
“…Yes.”
The child, barely managing a reply, burst into a heartbroken wail in my arms. My puppy wasn’t going through some rebellious phase—he was simply terrified. And like that, he cried in my embrace for a good while.
Knock knock.
“Miss, Viscountess Pison has arrived.”
After sending Rant, who had calmed somewhat, back to his room, word came that Anasha had arrived. I instructed the maid to guide her to the reception room in my private quarters.
“It’s been a while, Anasha.”
“Bionne, are you all right?”
“Of course.”
As I answered, I led Anasha to the sofa opposite mine. Even as she sat, she couldn’t stop scrutinizing my complexion.
“I heard you went through something terrible.”
“It was the people around me who suffered more.”
Once the maids had set out the tea and withdrawn, Anasha leaned in close to me.
“Is it really okay to leave things like this?”
“What do you mean?”
Anasha’s eyes darted quickly. I could guess why she hesitated to speak plainly.
Instead of answering, I lifted my teacup and stared into the liquid. The clear tea rippled gently within. I took a sip and let it slide down my throat—warm enough to feel just a touch hot.
A little hot, rather than moderately cooled.
The butler had let it slip that it was the marquis’s—no, Father’s—preference. Even though he knew full well I shared the same taste.
Since that day, nothing had particularly changed in the relationship between Father and me. He was still sparing with his expressions, and I wasn’t the affectionate daughter type either.
But unlike before, our bond was no longer barren. When we crossed paths in the mornings or evenings, we could look at each other with smiles, and even during those silent meals where we once focused solely on eating without a word, we could now exchange a bit of casual conversation—not out of necessity, but just because. Compared to the past, it was a giant leap forward.
Just as I had changed from then, so had Father. Our relationship was slowly evolving like this.
Had I been lost too deep in thought? Anasha spoke up, her face full of impatience.
“The rumors aren’t looking good at all.”
“Are they?”
As I set down my teacup and replied, she finally let out a sigh.
“Sigh, that’s not something to brush off so lightly.”
“Getting worked up won’t change anything.”
Rumors, by their nature, only veer further off course the more you try to correct them. Perhaps my response was too nonchalant, for Anasha looked at me with a face full of frustration.
“So you’re not even going to make an effort to change them?”
My reputation was in such dire straits that it had Anasha this anxious.
The rumors about me had never been favorable to begin with. Whispers that I wasn’t Father’s true daughter had followed me since childhood, and when I dismissed the nursemaid, tales from the servants she took with her added that I had a vile temper.
The rumors, which had quieted somewhat after my debutante ball, resurfaced on people’s lips once more when Sys carried me on his back through the middle of the street.
Thanks to the efforts of Sys, Anasha, and the guild members, we’d barely managed to suppress the talk about me, but starting with the hunting tournament, it began to spread even wider. The issue was that night I’d spent alone with Sys.
It had been an accident, plain and simple, but to those who spread rumors for the thrill, the circumstances before and after didn’t matter. Their sole interest was the fact that an unmarried woman had spent the night with a man.
The empire’s laws were not lenient toward the promiscuity of an unmarried virgin. With the laws unyielding, people’s perceptions were equally strict when it came to the conduct of unmarried women.
For a woman, having it known that she’d shared a night with a man before marriage was a fatal scandal.
“Do you know what people are saying about you?”
“A whore who seduces this man and that, a disgrace to the nobility. Oh, and there’s talk of me being the witch who devoured the crown prince.”
As rumors go, they reached my ears without me even seeking them out. I hadn’t left the mansion since that day, but from the maids’ whispers, I could tell exactly how the talk about me was circulating.
“You know these absurd rumors are flying around, so why aren’t you doing anything about it!”
Anasha cried out, her face a picture of incredulity.
“The imperial family is staying silent too, so this time, we can’t lift a finger on our side either.”
There was one reason the imperial family maintained silence. Because Crown Prince Sys still hadn’t risen from his sickbed. With Sys—the very center of the incident—still unconscious and lying there, the imperial family couldn’t utter a word.
The rumor of the ‘witch who devoured the crown prince’ probably stemmed from Sys, who hadn’t yet recovered.
As the party involved, I too was holed up in the mansion under Father’s protection, so the rumors swelled with people’s imaginations, growing larger by the day.
“What exactly happened that day?”
“I had an accident, and because of it, His Highness the Crown Prince was injured.”
“I know that much, Bionne.”
A wry laugh escaped me at the resentment in Anasha’s eyes. To hide my smile, I lifted the teacup again and took a sip. By now, the tea had cooled to just the right drinking temperature.
“His Highness the Crown Prince intends to use this incident to shake the First Prince’s faction.”
“What? But His Highness is…”
Currently, Sys was publicly known to be hovering between life and death, barely conscious. A few nobles who had seen him lose consciousness from high fever during transport had exaggerated his condition even further.
It wasn’t entirely false. When the knights first found him, Sys had indeed been unconscious and in critical condition. But contrary to our fears, his fever broke the next day, and he regained his senses right away. Aside from fractured ribs limiting his movement, there was nothing seriously wrong with his health. It was truly a relief.
Sys had tried to get up immediately to announce that he was fine. If not for the rumors that had already begun circulating among the people.
The rumors had started among commoners—more precisely, the servants working in nobles’ households. It was said that I had secretly lured the crown prince and seduced him into danger. Backing this was the old rumor about Evan and me. With Evan away for so long, I’d supposedly grown desperate and seduced the crown prince—an utterly ridiculous tale, but as details piled on and mentions of witnesses emerged, it gained a veneer of credibility.
The rumor, pieced together like a well-crafted play with a plausible before and after, quickly spread even among the nobility. As if someone were deliberately fanning the flames.
“His Highness the Crown Prince is perfectly fine.”
At my words, Anasha clamped her mouth shut and swiftly scanned the surroundings of the reception room. Quick as she was, she grasped the implication immediately.
“I’ve cleared everyone from the area, so you can speak freely, Anasha.”
“Is the culprit behind the rumors the First Imperial Consort after all?”
Anasha was sharp in business matters. She couldn’t possibly be unaware that the rumors about me were fabricated. Merchants were sensitive to gossip by nature.
“Who knows. She’s not entirely uninvolved, but I doubt she’s the mastermind.”
“Then who?”
“If my guess is right, it’s probably the First Prince’s new consort.”
“The First Prince’s new consort…”
Anasha trailed off slowly, as if dredging up a memory, then clapped her hands and continued.
“The woman who bought up a huge quantity of Luishara dresses this time.”
A faint crease formed between Anasha’s brows. She soon spoke with a note of regret.
“She was such a good customer, too.”
To Anasha, a good customer was one who spent lavishly on Luishara’s goods. She loved money, as a merchant should, and she had an exceptional talent for stoking the vanity of noblewomen to coax more spending from them. Even the First Prince’s consort had fallen for her sales tactics, it seemed.
