The next morning, a petition written by Marquis Weden arrived at the Imperial Palace. Stripping away the flamboyant rhetoric and the emotionally charged phrases, the gist was simple:
[Bella Apends is undoubtedly my daughter, Cornelia Weden. Please provide assistance so that I may take her back.]
“And if that’s not possible, it also requests that she be taken away from the heinous Duke Inverness and protected.”
A tall man finished speaking with a slight bow. Second Prince, Shateian, who had been sitting on a chair as if deep in thought, raised his gaze to look out the window.
The midday sun was blazing, as if to pierce his eyes. Shateian narrowed his red eyes and chuckled. The rumor was spreading less than an hour after the petition arrived.
“So, His Majesty has no intention of getting involved directly.”
“It’s understandable. They say he bled a whole bucket this morning alone.”
“Oh dear, is he really running out of time? He’s getting more dramatic by the day.”
Shateian shrugged. The tall man, Ludmil, swallowed a small sigh.
“So, what shall we do?”
“Hmm.”
Shateian rested his chin on his hand and lowered his eyes. Red pupils slowly blinked amidst the lustrous, pearl-like platinum blonde hair.
“Well, I’m not so free as to meddle in other people’s family affairs. Besides, there must be someone more eager to get involved than I am when it comes to Marquis Weden, right? Like my brother, for example.”
The corners of his shapely lips curled up slightly. Ludmil shook his head at the spiteful smile.
“If Prince Dillian intervenes, the woman named Cornelia will immediately return to Marquis Weden. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing…”
Just then, the door burst open without warning, and a man with dark ultramarine hair stormed in.
“Shateian!”
At the familiar call, Ludmil raised his eyebrows, and Shateian smiled brightly.
“Who do we have here? Isn’t it my dear friend Balac, who abandoned me in the capital? Let’s see, it’s been almost a month. Hmm… you realized my worth after a month. Not bad.”
“I’ll indulge your whining later, just listen to me first.”
The man called Balac seemed quite anxious. At Shateian’s gesture, Ludmil offered him a chair. Balac sat down, clasped his hands together, took a deep breath, and blurted out:
“You’ve heard the story about Marquis Weden having a lost daughter, haven’t you?”
“Are you trying to present a stale rumor like a freshly caught fish after all that preamble?”
Shateian interrupted, his face losing its color.
“I was just talking about that. Marquis Weden submitted a petition. The daughter’s name is… what was it again?”
“Cornelia, Your Highness.”
“Terrible naming sense. It’s no different from the first daughter’s name. Anyway, he wrote a petition asking me to send that lady back, saying that Duke Inverness is forcibly holding her. My brother will probably handle it.”
At that moment, the ultramarine-haired man growled in his throat. Shateian stared at him in surprise. The man’s green eyes were shining dangerously.
“By ‘brother,’ do you mean First Prince Dillian, who is engaged to the eldest daughter of the Weden family?”
“Yes.”
“No. You mustn’t leave it to him. You have to take on this matter, Shateian.”
“Hmm?”
“You haven’t forgotten our promise, have you? You swore that in exchange for my help in getting you on the throne, you would find and protect my cousin no matter what.”
Balac stared at Shateian with deep eyes.
“What is this… Ha!”
Shateian, who had been staring at Balac with wide eyes, burst into hollow laughter as a thought flashed through his mind.
Balac Ashrent, a member of the Ashrent family, one of the great houses that ruled Lockwood, had come to Belkram a long time ago with his confidant to find his lost relative and had become friends with him.
[Instead of searching so recklessly, why don’t you find that father first?]
What was Balac’s reaction back then? Ah, right. He seemed to smile bitterly. And then he said this:
[If I could, I would have done so already. Unfortunately, my aunt never told us about the child’s father. If I had known she would lose consciousness like that, I would have forced myself to ask… I was foolish. Now, all I can do is not lose hope.]
Back then, Balac was not the head’s younger brother but the head’s second son. It was just a month ago that his brother, Rossel, seized the position of head. Immediately, Balac came to Belkram, and…….
“So that’s why. I couldn’t figure out why you left as soon as you arrived in the capital.”
“…Because I didn’t have the luxury of explaining how it felt to hear the news of my cousin’s death, whom I had been searching for my whole life, as soon as I arrived.”
Balac said in a dry voice. Shateian let out a long breath as if he was dumbfounded when his guess turned out to be correct. Hearing that, he couldn’t even scold him for not telling him sooner.
“Okay. I understand that far. But you didn’t even know that your cousin was a twin?”
“She’s not a twin, Shateian.”
Balac smiled coldly and asserted.
“My father always said that my aunt was punished for giving birth to a ‘half-blooded girl’.”
Lockwood was a very closed-off country. How much more so the seven great houses that ruled them? The former head, Balac’s father, did not tolerate a child with Belkram blood and ordered his confidant to take her and cut off her breath.
But strangling a newborn baby was like abandoning one’s humanity. It was such a terrible thing that even the most loyal person would hesitate for a moment.
“I knew that he couldn’t bring himself to kill her and abandoned her. But I couldn’t figure out when or where he abandoned her. He vaguely implied that he had entrusted her to her relative, but that was it.”
Balac, grinding his teeth, smiled fiercely. Even now, if he closed his eyes, he felt like he would see his aunt’s gaunt face, stroking her swollen belly and smiling as she asked him to take care of the soon-to-be-born sibling.
“Well, that was until my father was killed by my brother.”
Shateian, who had inadvertently heard about the internal affairs of Ashrent, sighed deeply.
“Right, now that I think about it, your family has produced powerful illusionists for generations.”
Even Ludmil, the confidant Balac had brought, and Balac himself were illusionists, so there was no point in explaining.
“Now the pieces are falling into place.”
Shateian burst into a hollow laugh. Balac, who had rushed back to the capital after hearing the news about Marquis Weden’s lost daughter. And his family’s hereditary abilities and his statement that his cousin was definitely not a twin.
It meant only one thing.
“Severia Inverness was never dead from the beginning.”
What a remarkable woman. To fake her death and try to deceive the entire empire. A strange light flashed in Shateian’s red eyes.
* * *
Apart from submitting a petition to the Imperial Palace, Silas began a kind of smear campaign. The goal was to recapture Severia, and the accompanying effect was to discredit Duke Inverness and drag the family name through the mud.
‘If the old men of Inverness hear that the Duke is doing nonsense in the capital, they won’t stand still.’
Silas hoped that the Inverness family’s council of elders would step in and take Dehart away. It was a tactic typical of him, who was reluctant to come forward.
Thus, Silas instructed the following story to be spread in places with high traffic:
‘Duke Inverness has taken a woman who looks exactly like his dead wife and is holding her captive.’
‘They say that woman is the lost daughter that Marquis Weden was looking for.’
He vaguely hoped that he could once again manipulate people to achieve what he wanted. The problem was that he had chosen the wrong opponent.
Dehart Inverness was a man who had already admitted that he was crazy. To him, scandals were just annoying flies. Besides…….
“In this respect, I strongly feel that I am his daughter.”
It was Severia who deliberately instructed Dehart to raid the Weden mansion in a flamboyant manner, knowing that these kinds of rumors would circulate.
She was sitting at an outdoor cafe in the square, staring at Nelia, who was looking at her from afar with disbelief.
“I’ve never seen that expression before.”
Nelia, who had been ordered by Silas to subtly spread rumors about Severia and Dehart, was utterly shocked to see Severia looking not only fine but healthy. Severia smiled as she bit her lip, trembled, and quickly turned away.
‘I’m glad I put a surveillance illusion on Nelia.’
She had left the mansion early this morning and headed to the square after hearing Nelia talking to the servants.
Severia chuckled and asked Dehart, who was sitting next to her, in a low voice.
“How is it?”
“Everyone’s eyes are bloodshot as if they’re about to pop out looking at you.”
“You mean you, not me.”
The afternoon sun gently fell on the back of her hand. White clouds were drifting leisurely in the clear sky, and small laughter floated above the surrounding tables.
There, Severia showed the world that she was not being held captive by Dehart and that she was voluntarily staying by his side. She did her best to establish the image of ‘Bella Apends,’ not Cornelia Weden, even mustering the courage to smile when she felt meaningful glances reaching her.
Sometimes, the other person would be horrified and turn away, which surprised her a little. Of course, Severia never knew that the reason for this was Dehart, who was glaring at the other person as if he would kill them.
Her actions soon caused a very promising reaction.
[To Miss Bella Apends.]
The invitation with its ornate gold leaf clearly revealed the sender’s identity. Moreover, Dehart said with a sullen expression as he looked at the envelope with small jewels embedded in it, as if begging her to be intimidated.
“It’s an invitation to an art exhibition hosted by the Imperial Family.”
The First Empress, seeing Marquis Weden’s sluggishness, had finally begun to move directly.