Ch64 - Volume 3 Final

Grand Duchess Alienor’s voice gradually diminished as time passed, as if she were afraid someone might hear her, even though there were only the two of them in the spacious room. Prince Merrick, swept away by her story, grabbed his mother’s skirt and asked ruefully.

“Does that mean he survived?”

“They said there was an unexpected interruption, and he was rescued.”

“… An interruption?”

“Who else in the capital would protect that wicked soul? I heard that he helped him this time as well.”

Prince Merrick bit his lip until it bled and swallowed a groan that was boiling like a beast. An unresolved old grudge fell like a stone and weighed heavily on him. For the first time in his life, Prince Merrick felt a bone-crushing, murderous hatred for a gigantic being he could not even dare to confront because he was always standing in front of him like a mountain.

It was only because of him that he couldn’t do anything about the despicable murderer. In spite of harming the honor of his bloodline and slaughtering his kin, he coddled and protected the enemy, instead of standing by his kin.

He knew he was like a thorn in his side, but this was truly unjust. If Prince Merrick was guilty of anything, it was only that his noble blood had earned him access to the throne. However, the Emperor would never forgive him for that.

“Mother, I cannot stand it.”

Prince Merrick’s face contorted into a ghastly grimace, tears streaming down his face.

“I cannot stand it any longer. I have committed no sin against His Majesty, yet he is too harsh on me. Why must I always be the one to suffer? Why must I be the only one to endure it all? A good woman was murdered and an innocent child died. They were my wife and my child. No one with rights should be subjected to such atrocities. Moreover, I have the blood of House Ardi running through my veins, just like him. It is a noble lineage with the right to succession to the throne directly granted by the Emperor!”

He pulled at the hem of his mother’s skirt, buried his face in it, and began to wail. She was the only one who understood his pain, just as he had nowhere else to direct his resentment and anger.

“A murderer must pay the price! Those who protected him should be guilty of the same crime!!!”

“That is correct. You are not wrong. I believe so, too.”

“I cannot forgive you, Mother. I have tried to hold it in, but I cannot. How am I supposed to release myself of this bitterness and resentment?”

“Let us find a way. If it is what Prince Merrick wants, I will do it. I will do anything for my son.”

Grand Duchess Alienor whispered softly as she hugged her son tightly, for he had finally returned to her arms. Her arms were drenched with her son’s tears as her slender hands stroked her son’s hair.

Prince Merrick wept for a long time afterward. The man who was unable to express anything as he watched the woman he loved slain and his child buried, cried out like an animal and vomited his pain.

***

Grand Duchess Alienor laid down her sleeping son still in her arms and stood up.

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I promise you. I will never let this happen to you ever again. No matter what happens, I will never make you suffer like this again.

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“sQt OgvISSIwvN Qt tSIIrQwV, tJ SIE wJ JwI Qw EaI iIHbJJh YJb EaI EQhI iIQwV.”

Grand Duchess Alienor, afraid that her son, who had been sleeping, would be awakened, gave the servants a firm warning. The servants nodded quickly, realizing that Grand Duchess Alienor’s nerves were particularly sensitive.

She went to the toilette room and took off her wet garment while being served by the maids. Then, after taking a quick bath, she changed into the nightgown that was prepared for her. The maids dried her hair to prevent her from catching a cold, and after much combing and detangling, they left. Grand Duchess Alienor smoothed out the light silk gown that wrapped around her and entered the bedroom.

“Coming now?”

The Grand Duchess was about to climb into bed after a long day and jerked upright at the sound of a voice behind her. An uninvited guest was lurking in an intimate space where no one should be.

Grand Duchess Alienor slowly turned around and looked towards the source of the sound. A woman sitting silently in a long chair placed inside the room got up with a smile and approached her.

“How dare you! Such impertinence. What are you doing here, unannounced?”

Grand Duchess Alienor snapped at the uninvited guest, her cold voice dripping with ice. She didn’t bother to hide the cold, sharply forged contempt she glared at her with.

“Did Your Highness really want me to contact you publicly, lest word get out that you are interacting with a woman of my status?”

The other woman, however, was no pushover either, and she laughed nonchalantly and waved her hand dismissively as if she didn’t care about the Grand Duchess’s feelings.

“Hmph. Who would dare say such nonsense to me? If you have come this far, tell me what you are here for.”

Though they held hands out of necessity, Grand Duchess Alienor hated dealing with her. She was the kind of person Grand Duchess Alienor hated the most, and normally wouldn’t have dared to speak to her.

“You have done something bold.”

One of the most famous courtesans of the capital, she looked at Grand Duchess Alienor with her trademark seductive smile.

“To send out members of the Nightwing without our permission, without consulting us at all… what on earth was that about?”

In contrast to Grand Duchess Alienor’s frozen expression, she continued to smile sweetly. From the beginning, she had a face with smile lines around her eyes as if she was used to smiling all the time, but Grand Princess Alienor was disgusted with her as if she were a snake.

She always had a smile on her face. If one smiles when one is happy, sad, and even angry, that smile is not an expression of emotion, but a mask.

“What is the problem? I simply listened to your request.”

“I cannot catch what Your Highness is saying. Could you please explain in a way that I can understand?”

“Is that not what you had asked first? To create a distraction for the Emperor’s counterintelligence organization, a little something to keep them occupied for a while. If the Emperor’s lover had been brutally murdered in the capital, the incident would have attracted attention quite nicely.”

The woman’s beautiful fine eyebrows were slightly furrowed. She did not believe Grand Duchess Alienor’s excuses at all. As she said, it was true that they asked Grand Duchess Alienor a case that would draw the attention of the Emperor’s counterintelligence organization. Not long ago, they lost a cell they were trying to infiltrate into the empire, and thanks to that, two branch organizations and one infiltration route connecting the capital from the outer harbor were completely destroyed.

“Is that truly why you touched him?”

“The way you ask questions is quite jarring. Are you interrogating me now?”

“This is not an interrogation, but rather a persuasion. This is no small matter, Grand Duchess. Do you think I do not know your true intentions? I have been telling you. We need Count d’Estuaire for our plans.”

“How dare you mention that name before me!”

The woman spoke softly, as if to comfort her, but to no avail. The mere mention of his name greatly offended Grand Duchess Alienor, and she roared with rage.

“Is Your Highness going to let a small grudge get in the way of things? If you really want revenge, do it after the big business is over. Do you not know that you need him for your son to become the Emperor? No one in the history of the empire has ascended to the throne by rebellion alone. At the very least, the Prince-Electors’ must vote, and a coronation ceremony must be held for it to be legitimate, but even if you use the rights entrusted to you, who will stop Duke Benoist from voting against you?”

However, unlike the emotionally charged Grand Duchess, the woman’s response was cold.

It was a concept that had fallen into disrepute now that the imperial House Ardi’s dominance was so entrenched, but as the supreme lords of the empire, the Prince-Electors had the inherent right to elect an Emperor. Only the Prince-Electors who were eligible for the Grand Feaute had such a right, and currently, the only families able to legitimately exercise this right were House Benoist of the South, and House Fernand, who had been delegated the right by House Léardynis of the North. For this reason, Rodom’s spy organization, The Nightwing, approached Count d’Estuaire and crafted a clever scheme to help him qualify for the Grand Feaute.

“And so I endure without a murmur, seeing those who drove my father to his death brazenly raise their heads once more and walk the capital without shame, all because of your pleas, and you ask me to bear more than this?”

“Since you cannot touch Count d’Estuaire, you messed with Baron Amieux, no?”

“And what is so wrong about that? Could it be that he also has the right to vote in the Prince-Electors’ Council?”

Grand Duchess Alienor sneered sarcastically, furious at the woman’s questioning demeanor. The woman looked at her wistfully and answered quietly.

“Instead of the right to vote in the Prince-Electors’ Council, he has the position of the Custodian of the Imperial Scepter.”

Grand Duchess Alienor kept her mouth shut at her remark, which caught her off guard.

“Why would you attack Baron Amieux of all people? … Why did someone as smart as you make such a mistake? It would have been a different matter had you done it in the past, but it would be foolish to touch him now. He was made the rightful Custodian of the Imperial Scepter by the Emperor, and that makes him quite useful. If you think you can get rid of him, then you are extremely wrong.”

Grand Duchess Alienor bit her lip, unable to say anything as she hadn’t thought of that. The woman shook her head gloomily, pointing out Grand Duchess Alienor’s mistake in a composed voice.

“Even if the rebellion succeeds, the next thing is the problem. Do you want to brand our precious Prince Merrick a usurper? Baron Bouilhet would rather burn himself than cross the imperial hall and hand the scepter to a rebel. The only person whom we can speak to is Baron Amieux, and without him, Prince Merrick will have to take the coronation into his own hands. Even so, legitimacy is at risk, and you do not even consider the minimum safety measures, so I do not know whether Your Highness was brave or reckless.”

She knew very well why the Grand Duchess had done such a thing. Grand Duchess Alienor had a deep resentment against House d’Estuaire. She had reluctantly agreed to the Nightwings’ plan to place her son on the throne, but even then, she had turned cold and refused to speak of Count d’Estuaire at all.

Though she may have closed her eyes for the cause, her resentment remained resolute. She was furious that her enemies’ family had been granted dukedom again by no one else’s hand but her own, and it was easy to imagine how the actions of Baron Amieux, who was rumored to be aiding them, must have irked her.

Given his ex-wife’s affairs in the spotlight and Prince Merrick’s behavior, she must have been desperate to get even with him, and if she could win back her son’s trust in the process, all the better.

It had been nearly three years since she had seen this short-tempered Grand Duchess up close. Due to the nature of her work, she was extremely adept at reading people, and Grand Duchess Alienor was surprisingly easy to understand.

She was ambitious and daring enough to kill even the woman who conceived a child of her lineage if necessary, but at the same time, she was too arrogant and narrow-minded. She was tenacious enough to not give up on her ambition to raise her son to the throne for decades, but she was not meticulous enough to hide her intentions.

“Your Highness, The Grand Duchess .”

The woman took a deep breath and opened her mouth to speak, looking straight at the Grand Duchess, whose eyes were wide open in humiliation.

“Your Highness is not the only one whose fate is tied to the completion of this plan. We, here in Rodom, mobilized all the resources we had available for Your Highness. Please do not create problems with rash judgment. If you continue to disrupt things in this manner, there is no way for us to help you.”

To the outside world, she was only a courtesan by day, but in reality, she was the head of Rodom’s foreign spy organization, The Nightwing, and was also the vassal of Queen Gwyneth.

Grand Duchess Alienor, knowing that there was no way to reverse the tipping of the pendulum without her and Rodom’s help, trembled with shame, struggling to endure the humiliation.

“I shall keep that in mind, Madame Schuabel.”

Grand Duchess Alienor gritted her teeth in response to her words. The way she took her words seemed more like a warning that she would tolerate her advice for now, but would surely pay her back in the future.

Grand Duchess Alienor’s eyes narrowed as if to say, “The day will surely come when you will regret this insolent behavior you have shown me today”. Madame Schuabel smiled boldly and shook her head, as if unperturbed by the Grand Duchess’s demeanor.

“I am honored that you have understood.”

The Eighth Fleur. Madame Schuabel, who was so beautiful even by her nickname, answered and smiled as brightly as if she were a blooming flower.

<To be continued in Volume 4>