Reunion (2)
‘Arrogant bastard.’
Helena was smiling, but it was not a smile.
Inside, she kept imagining pouring the scalding tea over the head of the man seated across from her and slapping his cheek.
‘A mere human butcher who doesn’t know his place dares to insult me?’
Marquis Redcliffe was indeed busy cleaning up the mess after Helena had been fingered as the mastermind behind the attempt to poison the Empress. On top of that, he was deeply disappointed that the second prince had failed to outshine the third prince at the Founding Festival.
Ian had struck precisely at her most painful spots.
“That is entirely possible.”
On the other hand, Ian was not the sort to react directly to an insult. He offered Helena, who was openly ignoring him, a faint smile.
“It seems I worried over nothing, forgetting my own station.”
He took a calm sip of tea and answered in a voice laced with amusement.
“His Lordship the Marquis would never make such an important decision without consulting Her Highness the Second Consort. I assumed, perhaps mistakenly, that Your Highness knew nothing of the matter.”
Ian knew all too well how Marquis Redcliffe treated the daughter who had failed to become Empress.
‘Puffed up with pride just because Father granted him a viscount title.’
Helena ground her teeth.
Ian wore an expression of gentle sympathy, as though he knew perfectly well she was lying to preserve her pride.
“Oh my.”
Helena swallowed her rising fury and kept her smile in place.
“It seems I nearly caused the viscount to misunderstand.”
There was nothing she could do. Viscount Miller knew her personal weaknesses, and he understood better than anyone that she could not speak ill of him to Marquis Redcliffe.
‘Fox-like bastard.’
She felt blood rush to her face, turning it scarlet, but it didn’t matter. Imperial women wore thick makeup precisely to hide their ever-changing expressions.
“Still, I thank you for your concern.”
“Not at all.”
Ian quietly set down his empty teacup.
“The investigation and preparations for the subjugation zone assigned to His Highness have already been completed. No dangerous monsters will appear, so you may rest easy.”
He narrowed his eyes into crescent moons.
“I cannot speak for the zones assigned to the other princes, however.”
Helena’s rigid face softened slightly.
“…That is a relief.”
“As you know, I tend to handle my duties thoroughly.”
The man’s pettiness.
Helena watched with displeasure as Ian rose from his seat. It lasted only a fleeting instant.
“The subjugation battle draws near.”
Ian offered the Second Consort a courteous bow.
“Next time I will come with His Highness Lloyd. Until then, Your Highness the Second Consort.”
Bang.
‘Why?’
The moment I returned to the prince’s palace I fled straight to my room. I collapsed against the door and slid to the floor.
‘Why…?’
Countless questions swirled through my mind at once.
I had assumed he was alive, but I never imagined I would run into him without any warning.
‘Why is Ian in the imperial palace?’
Those enigmatic ash-gray eyes and dark gray-gold hair. The faintly irritable brows, the sharply elegant eyes, the handsome nose, and the lips that curved smoothly into dimples whenever he smiled.
Ian looked exactly as I remembered him.
“Yeah, I’m fine!”
Emilia had answered brightly when Ian asked if she was all right. Then she grabbed my frozen hand and tugged.
“Rachel, let’s go quickly! Ria doesn’t want to keep big brother waiting!”
In that instant, a strange light flickered in Ian’s eyes.
“Excuse me, but are you perhaps Her Highness Princess Emilia?”
“Huh? Mister, do you know Ria?”
“Of course I do. How could anyone not know the Empire’s one and only princess?”
Ian smiled what passed for a friendly smile and bowed.
“Please forgive my rudeness. I am Ian Miller…”
The moment he looked the princess in the eye and reached for her small head, I snatched Emilia and pulled her into my arms.
“Don’t touch her!”
At my sharp cry, Ian stared at me in bewilderment. It must have been humiliating to be treated like a pervert by a woman he had never met.
“…I apologize.”
I forced the words out and stood.
“Her Highness dislikes being touched by strangers.”
It was a blatant lie. Emilia, who would normally have shouted that it wasn’t true, seemed to sense something was wrong. The princess simply sucked on her finger and watched me quietly. In her blue eyes—so like Edwin’s—worry and unease flickered.
“Ah, I see.”
Ian nodded as though he accepted my excuse.
“I have been rude. Ah, I was late in introducing myself. I am Ian Miller…”
“I was the one who was rude. It would be troublesome if Her Highness’s schedule is delayed, so we will take our leave first.”
Without meeting his eyes once, I turned and left. The moment we reached the knights’ order, I grabbed Edwin and ran all the way back to the prince’s palace.
“Rachel, what’s wrong?”
“Nanny, what happened?”
After practically dumping the prince and princess on Catherine and returning to my room, my head was still spinning and something kept rising in my throat.
‘Are you okay?’
Ian’s voice asking that question kept echoing in my ears. It was no different from the cold tone that had once ordered, “Stab her in the back. Burn her until not even ashes remain.” Only the words had changed.
“……”
I slowly lowered the hands covering my face. Seeing them tremble faintly somehow calmed me instead.
‘To think I would lose my composure like this after resolving to take revenge.’
The moment I saw Ian, memories of betrayal and death had crashed over me like a wave, and I had acted recklessly.
‘Maintaining composure is the foundation of everything. All those years in the organization, wasted.’
In the end, I had never wanted to confirm in such a way that even I was merely a weak human easily swept away by emotion.
‘Pull yourself together, Kayla Angel.’
This was no time to be dazed. I clenched both fists tightly and thought furiously.
‘The fact that Ian is inside the imperial palace means he has close ties to someone within it.’
Miller, not Angel. I had clearly heard him introduce himself as “Ian Miller.”
‘So the name I saw at the Empress’s palace was his after all.’
A noble surname. Had he bought it with money? Or received it as payment for something?
‘Either way, it’s clear he has no intention of remaining in the organization.’
The assassin guild Angel’s Breath that we had belonged to was said to have been destroyed. Yet the members who followed Ian still seemed to obey him and carry out assassination contracts.
‘Well, if it’s Ian, he would never do something as inefficient as wiping out every single member even if he dismantled the organization.’
If he had a goal, he would achieve it by any means. To do so, he would use everything available to him. Those two principles were practically Ian’s creed.
‘Then the rumor that Angel’s Breath was destroyed—was it deliberately spread by Ian?’
At the moment, that seemed the most likely possibility. I drew my knees up and hugged them.
‘Ian has no reason to mobilize the members to kill Edwin.’
An assassin only moved to kill when a contract had been accepted.
‘So he really is working for the Second Consort.’
It couldn’t be the Emperor. I immediately discarded the dizzying thought. No matter how I considered it, the Emperor was not the type to trust an assassin enough to grant him a title.
‘The Empress also didn’t seem to view Edwin too negatively.’
She had sent him hunting clothes as a gift during the hunting competition, and during the poisoning incident she had trusted both Edwin and me without prejudice.
‘Still, the inner hearts of those in power are impossible to know.’
In any case, the Empress was also a woman striving to place her own son on the throne. She might inwardly consider Edwin an irritating obstacle.
‘Even so, the person more likely than the Empress is still…’
I recalled Second Consort Helena. Those venomously glittering red eyes lingered in my mind.
‘But why would the Second Consort keep Ian close?’
In the past, Helena had commissioned an assassination through the organization. And the one who had accepted and carried it out was none other than Ian.
‘Normally she should be trying to kill him or send him far away. There’s no reason to keep him at her side…’
There was. There was a reason Helena had no choice but to keep Ian close.
I let out a small laugh at the thought that had just crossed my mind.
“Haha, as expected from the former vice-leader of the continent’s greatest assassin guild.”
A person who holds another’s secret can never be the weak party.
“He’s bold, too. To think of blackmailing a consort from a marquis family in return.”
Yet the fact that she had commissioned a murder was not such a great secret within the imperial family.
‘If that fact were ever to become a problem…’
It would be if she had killed someone who must never be killed—someone whose death would be unforgivable for a marquis’s daughter or a second consort. That was the only case.
‘For example, if she had killed one of the Emperor’s own blood.’
In that case, Ian’s blackmail would have worked perfectly on the Second Consort.
‘What Second Consort Helena ordered was the death of the First Consort.’
But there was one thing she had not known.
The existence of the Emperor’s child that the First Consort had been carrying at the time.
“……Really.”
I recalled Ian’s neat appearance from moments ago and let out a dry laugh.
“You really were one hell of a son of a bitch, Ian Angel.”