Chapter 67
“No. It’s not like you think.”
“Shame. If I could see my brother being cheated on, I think my lifespan might stretch a little longer. Anyway, then what is this all about?”
“Nina’s gone.”
He didn’t say my eldest daughter or the First Princess—just “Nina.”
Ravian raised his eyebrows, feigning indifference.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“…Our eldest daughter.”
A silence followed.
The two brothers stared at each other until Ravian spoke first, letting out a short laugh with mocking words.
“So she really existed?”
Leoparte flinched without realizing it.
His throat burned, and once again his chest grew tight.
He was trying to test his brother, yet instead he felt he himself had been caught off guard.
Even so, the words flowed out as if memorized.
“You probably already know, but she was so sickly that we never presented her at court. But on New Year’s Eve, she suddenly disappeared inside the imperial palace.”
“…”
“It seems someone took her. There was even a note left behind by the kidnapper.”
He regretted burning that note.
While Leoparte was sinking into belated regret, Ravian suddenly asked,
“Where in the palace?”
Once again struck by the question, Leoparte hesitated for a moment, then confessed.
“The First Princess’s palace. She was tired, so we put her to bed early.”
The way he added the explanation sounded like an excuse, but Ravian didn’t seem particularly interested in that.
“What did the kidnapper’s note say?”
“It just taunted us, telling us to look carefully. I have no clue who it could be.”
“No clue? You sure about that? She vanished not just anywhere, but inside her own palace. Shouldn’t you start by grilling the guards and handmaids? Didn’t the image stones show anything?”
Grilling.
That crude word struck Leoparte’s heart especially sharply today.
And he knew exactly why.
Even if the handmaids or guards had colluded in the crime, it was he himself who had created the perfect environment for it to happen.
As if he had secretly hoped someone would just take the child away where he wouldn’t have to see her…
If, as Ravian said, he had at least set up new image stones, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.
“There haven’t been any image stones lately.”
“Why not?”
“…The child noticed them and felt uncomfortable.”
Ravian instantly knew it was a lie.
According to Merci, who had helped smuggle Nina out of the palace, there had been image stones inside the First Princess’s residence.
Unless they had broken for some reason.
“Anyway, we interrogated them, but nothing came out. Besides them, only a handful of people know about this—including the Imperial Guard.”
“So what exactly do you want me to do?”
The former captain of the Imperial Guard spat coldly.
“Something that happened inside the palace—what am I supposed to do about it? I’m a thug, not a detective or policeman. For a brother, that’s a clever trick, but whose idea was this?”
“It’s no one’s idea. It’s the truth.”
“And you expect me to believe that?”
Though his tone was mocking, Ravian was secretly a little surprised.
That Leoparte would actually ask him to investigate Nina’s case—that was unexpected, and a rather curious turn.
If our daughter were kidnapped, I might be the first to beg you for help.
Suddenly, he remembered something Karin had once said.
Back then he’d laughed it off as a joke, but seeing Leoparte like this, it no longer felt like words to be dismissed.
Still, Ravian wasn’t ready to bite at the bait.
They were both testing each other here.
And for Ravian, the real question wasn’t the ransom for Nina.
It was what kind of parents Leoparte and Diana had been to her.
Not the money—the child.
Leoparte, staring a little dazedly at Ravian, suddenly dropped the pipe from his hand.
The dull sound of it hitting the carpet made Ravian’s brow crease.
“Trembling hands?”
“…No.”
Leoparte forced out a reply and bent down to pick up the pipe—only to collapse out of his chair the next instant.
With a crash, the chair clattered away, the sound echoing from a distance.
Leoparte knelt on the floor, clutching his chest, swallowing ragged groans.
Ravian looked down at him with an exasperated expression.
“What is this now? Are you actually sick?”
“…No, it’s not that…”
Since that day, he hadn’t been able to breathe properly.
Even though he had neglected her at his side, even though he had secretly wished she would just disappear—he couldn’t draw a full breath anymore.
No matter who was behind the kidnapping, the only thing he could do now was this:
Beg his younger brother, the head of the continent’s largest gang, to find Nina.
That was why he had spoken.
But now that he had said it, the crushing reality struck him, tightening around his throat.
Dream and reality blurred, and his mind filled with haze.
“Hey, what’s wrong? Should I call someone from the palace?”
Leoparte shook his head violently.
Then, gasping for breath, he whispered between his teeth,
“You… only you.”
“What?”
“The only one I can ask now… is you. The only way to find out what happened to her…”
Another strange silence fell.
Through the rising smoke, Ravian stared at Leoparte, then finally moved closer and spoke.
“These days it’s dismissed as rumor, but once, in our imperial family, there was a trend of culling.”
Culling.
As an imperial heir from birth, Leoparte had of course heard of it.
A history soaked in blood.
A ruling family steeped in blood…
Ravian stopped suddenly, flicking his finger against a glass ornament on the shelf.
They were figurines shaped like little children.
“I wondered what exactly they culled, and I found out—it meant killing off children who were weak or unworthy, then pretending nothing happened.”
Cruel words.
To parents who had just lost their child, could there be anything crueller?
Yet Ravian continued in a calm, almost lazy tone.
“Not that it was unique to the imperial family. Tell me, brother—do you know what color your eldest daughter likes? What food she loves, or what she can’t eat? What clothes she likes best?”
The sound of glass figurines falling from the shelf rang out.
The delicate glass dolls shattered one after another.
“Hm? Easy, right? What’s her favorite animal? Did she like her mother or her father more? How did she get along with her sister?”
Though the questions seemed simple, his manner was that of an interrogation.
Yet Leoparte could not scold his younger brother for his rudeness, nor could he answer.
If it were Estella, he could answer confidently about anything.
But with Nina—he realized he knew nothing. That truth pierced his chest like a shard of glass.
Silence.
Ravian turned from the shelf and looked straight at his brother.
His absinthe-colored eyes glimmered with twisted mockery.
“Seems you don’t know anything.”
“…”
“Then tell me—why should I let myself get dragged into this pathetic farce?”
“That’s not…”
“What did you do to the child? Hm? Was it you, was it your wife—or both of you? What the hell did you do to her?”
Though his face remained cold, Ravian was struggling hard to keep from raising his voice.
They were just test questions, yet his emotions kept boiling up uncontrollably.
