137. A Sick Visit Is Just an Excuse, I Came to Interrogate You
“I greet Your Majesty the Empress.”
After parting ways with Seraphine,
I went straight to the imperial palace and requested an audience.
I worried she might refuse such a sudden request, but the Empress readily granted it.
The maids guided me directly into her private chambers.
Not the audience hall or even a reception room, but straight to her quarters?
I was caught off guard, but the Empress’s condition explained everything—she was so visibly ill that it was hard to imagine her granting formal audiences, let alone moving around.
So that’s why she called me straight here.
I bowed deeply to the Empress lying on her sickbed.
“It has been far too long. I should have visited sooner, but I beg your forgiveness for the delay.”
“Thank you for coming. The necklace you presented was truly beautiful.”
The Empress turned her head toward me with some effort. A faint smile touched her lips.
“It is a humble trinket, hardly worthy of Your Majesty.”
I hadn’t dared come empty-handed and so had brought a mana-stone necklace as tribute.
The Empress accepted it with genuine pleasure.
“So then, what brings you here? Surely you didn’t come only to offer me a necklace.”
“Forgive my boldness, Your Majesty, but I requested this audience because there is something I wish to ask.”
“Your honesty is refreshing. What is it you want to know?”
“Well…”
“Speak freely.”
“I wish to know more about the fire that the Blaine family was involved in years ago.”
At that, the smile that had lingered on the Empress’s lips vanished.
Did I come at it too directly?
I could have warmed the atmosphere with idle chatter, but given her fragile health, I didn’t know how long she could last.
I didn’t have the luxury of wasting time.
“To think such words would come from your lips… surprising indeed.”
The Empress gestured for her maids and attendants to leave.
It had already been more than ten years.
No one in high society ever spoke of it anymore, and I myself would never have known had Seraphine not told me.
“Yes, I suppose since you’ve grown close with Lady Blaine, you might be curious about that old matter.”
“How did you…”
I thought she had withdrawn from central politics and spent her days confined to bed.
And yet, she knew even of my personal connections?
“When I cannot move about myself, that is when the eyes and ears I’ve placed outside prove their worth.”
The Empress smiled softly.
After a pause, she began recounting the old tale.
“That day was a terrible tragedy. It happened at a small orphanage, but it sent shockwaves throughout the entire Empire.”
She spoke of how many were killed or injured, of how the fire spread beyond the orphanage to nearby buildings.
There had even been suspicions of arson, but in the end, the matter was declared an accident of unknown cause.
“Even so, with so many victims, Viscount Blaine could not escape grave responsibility.”
“I heard that among the children caught in the fire was one from a noble family. Who was it?”
“That, I cannot say.”
“Why not?”
“Because to dredge up a grief that has finally sunk beneath the surface would be cruel.”
Her words were gentle, almost motherly, but I could not accept them.
“Is it not because… that child was His Majesty’s illegitimate son?”
“…!”
At my question, the air in the room froze solid.
I suspected that the noble child who had supposedly perished in that fire might have been Cayenne.
He—the one nearly killed at birth by the Empress, who for some reason survived.
The one who later endured human experimentation in the research institute.
There had always been a blank period in his life before that.
Could he have been placed in an orphanage and caught up in that fire?
Told to the world that he had died in the flames, when in truth he had lived…
Perhaps I was grasping at straws, but the timing and circumstances fit too neatly not to question.
“Now I understand why you sought me out.”
For a fleeting moment, a fierce light flashed in the Empress’s eyes, replacing the dull lifelessness there before.
“Had you spoken such words in front of His Majesty or Lady Shiloh, you would not have lived to tell the tale.”
“Your Majesty…”
“Consider this conversation unheard. And for your own sake, never raise the matter again.”
She turned away coldly. At that instant, above her head, a system window appeared.
【SYSTEM: You may now view part of The Empress’s Faded Memories.】
[☞ View Now ☜]
Roselia calmly surveyed her surroundings.
The palace again, huh.
More precisely, the Emperor’s office.
At that moment, the imperial physician knocked on the door and was immediately admitted.
“How is Lady Shiloh?”
“She has regained consciousness, but her fever will not break. Her imprisonment right after childbirth has taken a great toll on her health.”
The Emperor’s expression darkened.
Judging by their words, this memory took place not long after Shiloh gave birth.
“I see. Care for her with the utmost effort, and report immediately if anything changes.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
After dismissing the physician, the Emperor summoned his aide.
“You called, sire?”
“Sir Albert. There is something I must entrust to you alone.”
The Emperor’s voice dropped low.
“Speak, Your Majesty.”
The aide bowed gravely.
“Gather men at once and search for the child’s whereabouts.”
“…What? Your Majesty, what do you mean…?”
Albert looked stricken.
“The child may still be alive. I never saw the body with my own eyes, did I?”
“Forgive me, sire, but the infant had already passed…”
“Silence!”
The Emperor roared like thunder.
“Your Majesty.”
The aide tried desperately to reason with him.
The Empress had produced a paternity test claiming Shiloh’s child was not of the Emperor’s blood.
Furious, the Emperor had thrown Shiloh in prison and ordered the child cast out of the palace.
But soon, suspicions arose about the test. Even the temple admitted, under pressure, that the Empress had forced them to falsify it.
Shocked, the Emperor ordered the child retrieved, but by then only tattered clothes and part of a corpse remained.
There was no way the child could still live—yet the aide bit back those words.
The Emperor’s hand trembled. His eyes were bloodshot, his breathing ragged. He hadn’t slept in days.
He was no longer in his right mind.
“Scour the Empire inside and out. Even if she was ruthless, the Empress wouldn’t let my child simply die. Perhaps she had the child smuggled away, abandoned in the slums, left in a forest or near the border—anything is possible!”
“Your Majesty…”
Clinging to strong drink, he lived on only by nurturing the fragile hope that his child might still be alive.
Without that thought, he would have been consumed by guilt and despair.
“…As you command.”
Albert pitied his liege, ensnared by such false hope.
But instead of shattering him with cruel truth, he accepted the order.
And then, years later—
“W-we found him, Your Majesty!”
“What? Found him?!”
“We have discovered a boy who may be your son!”
“Truly?”
Joy flushed the Emperor’s face.
“Yes. After searching orphanages across the Empire, we found a boy abandoned at just the time the prince disappeared. His appearance also bears a striking resemblance.”
“O-oh…! Bring him here at once!”
“As you command, sire.”
At last, after years of fruitless searching, a miracle—an orphan boy who resembled the lost child.
But hope quickly soured into despair.
“What?! His Majesty is searching for the child?!”
The Empress leapt to her feet at the maid’s report.
“Yes, Your Majesty. The Emperor is currently having every orphanage and foster home in the Empire investigated.”
“….”
Exhaustion shadowed the Empress’s face.
She and the Emperor had been locked in this cold war for years now.
The maid hesitated.
“Shall we leave it to Marquis Balton again?”
“Yes. He began this—let him finish it as well.”
As the Empress dismissed the maid, Roselia’s vision flashed white.
“…My lady? Lady?”
“Yes? What?”
I blinked back to awareness and found myself once more in the Empress’s chambers.
At some point, her maids had gathered around her bed.
“Her Majesty says she is not feeling well. It would be best if you left now.”
The very same maid who had been giving reports in the memory now smiled warmly at me.
