Chapter 8

“It is truly a contradiction, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“I mean sending a Millium to the most dangerous opponent in order to protect Your Highness.”

“You said the only remaining young, unmarried member of the imperial family is the Duke.”

Rene gave a deep smile to the Crown Prince, who tossed out a light joke even in the heavy atmosphere.

They said divorce was not easy, but in truth, if a member of the imperial family requested it, a divorce could be granted.

That she could not become the first wife was the same as with nobles, but that was the only way Adel could divorce.

Powerful families were bound to change, and it could be seen as a trick by the imperial family to maintain power by contracting new political marriages with influential houses in keeping with the times.

But that did not mean they could take women from every noble house as if seizing them; it was only possible with the consent of the woman and her family.

And any member of the imperial family who gained a Millium would, as a matter of course, dream of usurping the throne.

Indeed, the moment my father became a relative of the imperial house by marriage, he began to expand his influence as if he had grown wings.

As it was something he had prepared for a long time, his plans proceeded smoothly.

The imperial house also kept him in check, but for the sake of Millium’s power and the blessing of the full moon, they had no choice but to endure and tolerate him.

“Do you think that the Duke, even after gaining your sister, would not covet the imperial house?”

“That I cannot know, but… for now, the Duke is the best choice.”

“But is your sister not doing well on the estate?”

She let out a faint, uncharacteristic laugh.

The Crown Prince knew well that when she laughed like this, he would not receive an answer.

“The people my father is contacting are all consumed by greed.”

“And they are old, besides.”

When Rene smiled faintly, the Crown Prince gently covered the back of her hand with his.

“Do not worry too much. House Devryan will not let go of its mistress so easily.”

“My father will use any means. He is the sort to set a trap. So it is not bad to prepare in advance.”

But the Crown Prince did not think his wife was rushing like this for only that reason.

Rene’s sister had sent letters to the imperial palace quite often.

According to the maids, Rene had never once sent her a reply.

But after receiving a letter not long ago, Rene sent her sister a reply for the first time.

“How is your health?”

On the morning of her twenty-fourth birthday, Rene did not wake.

Unlike the records of Millium’s power, which said one dreamed of the Empire’s future for three days to a week, she wandered in dreams for over half a month.

Her dream was that long and wretched, hot enough to burn her whole body, and exactly that cold.

There were times so terrifying that tears would not come, and on some days she wept from being overwhelmed.

All of it was too much for her to bear alone.

“These days I am much more at ease.”

Rene looked at her husband, who always worried about her health.

She had long since realized that there was no love in the warm eyes that looked at her with concern.

As with most political marriages, there was no love exchanged between them.

But he always respected Rene and fulfilled his duty as a husband.

She did not want this man’s hands stained with a traitor’s blood after her death.

And she could not let her sister be swept into the vortex of political strife either.

But the Crown Prince ultimately refused to remarry her sister, and Rene had no choice but to make another choice.

“Your health always comes first.”

“Everyone worries about the future of the Empire on my shoulders, but Your Highness always puts my health first?”

“Just because the myth of the Empire says so, just because you were born to the fate of power, does not mean you do not hurt, does it?”

Rene closed her eyes to swallow the tears that surged up.

* * *

Meanwhile, after finishing his audience with the Crown Prince and Crown Princess, Jacques went to find his younger sibling, who was staying in a remote corner of the imperial palace.

“Why on earth did the Crown Princess give such an order?”

“If I go, it won’t look good.”

“Do you believe that word for word? And why did she keep mentioning the Countess of Devryan?”

“Devryan?”

“Yes. If it is the lord of the Herbron estate, that is the family. Have you heard of them?”

Jacques had of course heard the name many times.

The man who had drawn the hottest attention until he appeared in high society was named Ethan Devryan.

“I have heard of him. But understanding a woman of House Millium is not easy.”

Devain happened to be out in the garden, running and playing with the dog he kept.

It was a shabby castle, enough to make one wonder if such a place existed in the imperial palace, but unlike the heavily decorated, artificial gardens, it seemed warm somehow.

The child, with hair black as night and bright red eyes, looked as if he were a small copy of Jacques.

He looked different even from when Jacques had seen him not long ago.

“Are you not going to approach him?”

“He’s playing so intently over there—what would I go and do?”

Enoch studied Jacques’s complexion as he only watched his younger sibling without approaching.

“It has been quite a while since you settled in the capital, so how about bringing your younger sibling to live with you?”

“…Not yet….”

Jacques murmured something so softly that even Enoch, standing right beside him, could not hear.

“Pardon?”

“Look, Enoch. I’ve only just begun to find high society amusing, and if I bring that little one here, wouldn’t it be too much trouble?”

Enoch made a face that said, “As if that were the reason,” and turned his gaze back to Devain.

“Huh? Isn’t that the Empress Dowager?”

“Countess Grace.”

“Pardon?”

“She would prefer to be called that.”

The Empress Dowager was the mother of the current Emperor and the grandmother of Jacques Sonnier.

After Jacques’s father died suddenly, she herself cast aside the position of Empress Dowager that she should naturally have held.

And she took up her already dead and gone father’s name and returned as the head of the countly house.

It was all but unheard of for a woman to sit as head of a house in the Empire, but the countly family had been unable to maintain its line any longer, so with the family’s revival, the title passed to her.

But even though she had refused the position of Empress Dowager, she did not leave the imperial palace and remained.

People who could not know what happened within the palace walls gossiped that the Emperor had stopped his mother from leaving the palace, or that the Empress Dowager had remained of her own will.

But one could not know exactly what happened within the imperial house through conjecture alone.

For the history of the imperial house had always been made of blood and tears, hatred and abyss.

“Are you not going to greet her?”

“It is not yet time.”

“I did not know there was a separate time for a grandson to greet his grandmother.”

Jacques let out a soft laugh, patted Enoch’s shoulder twice as he might his younger sibling, and soon left the place.

* * *

Meanwhile, in her bedchamber after the Crown Prince had left, Rene took out the letter from her sister and read it again.

The first time Rene saw Adelaide was when the child was about four years old.

When Adel’s mother died of illness, her father appeared from somewhere with Adel.

Rene would never forget the day she first saw her.

The child, clutching a tattered rabbit doll with one ear torn off, shone brilliantly even in shabby clothes.

Even at that young age, Rene could tell it was a light radiating from the child.

Of course, Rene, too, had been unable to be kind to Adel because she was burdened with the yoke placed upon her.

But neither had she been cruel to the child.

And yet the child did not seek her out in difficult moments.

Since she did not come, it was time to go to her herself.

After her debutante at sixteen, Adel always sent a letter to the imperial palace once a month, or at the latest once every two months.

It was not that Rene had intended not to reply from the beginning.

That year, Rene’s power manifested without fail, and after that it became harder to write to Adel.

For some time now, the story that appeared without fail in Adel’s letters was about the waterway system on the estate.

Even reading only her letters, Rene could tell how passionate the child was about the work.

So Rene casually conveyed news of Herbron to the Crown Prince.

Naturally, upon hearing the news, he was greatly pleased and soon expressed his intention to bestow a Medal of Merit.

And not long after, a reply to the imperial palace’s letter arrived from the lord of Herbron.

Reading that letter, Rene was dumbfounded.

She was not angry that a mere count running a provincial manor dared to deceive the imperial house.

Annaston Lowell.

The woman, said to have been a maid who had worked for the countly family for a long time, was the general manager of this facility and the first person to conceive of it.

Rene quickly sent people and ordered them to find out what was happening in the lord’s household.

‘The head of Devryan has done something very amusing.’

That he had taken a maid and had a son by her was not exactly something to blame the head of the family for.

Judging by the child’s age, it was clear that the maid Annaston had conceived the child before Adel went to that house.

Only now did she understand the reactions of the current Count and the former Count that she had seen when she visited the Herbron estate years ago.

So even then, Ethan Devryan had already had a woman in his heart.

Of course, she could not reproach the Count for falling in love during those two years before Adel saved Ethan and went to Herbron.

But to steal the merit of the Medal of Merit and try to give noble status to his woman….

Foolish Adelaide Millium would still not try to leave the man she revered like a god.

She thought that now she would have to bring the child back, even by force.

Rene recalled Duke Sonnier’s face from today.

She could not assert from the hazy afterimage alone whether he was the man she had seen in her vision.

But one thing was certain: the man at its center was not Ethan Devryan.