~Chapter 13~
Huh?
My vision blurred, my body swayed. Strength left my legs, and the world spun around me. Yet still, I couldn’t just sit down.
E… Evelyn? Did he just call me Evelyn?
I was so lost in repeating the words I had just heard that I forgot I was vomiting blood.
In Krelas, I was supposed to be just “Lin.”
When I first went for the interview, I couldn’t think of a proper name, so I just took the last letter of my real name, Evelyn, and called myself Lin.
A commoner with no family name. Lin.
The only person who knew my true identity and real name was Casian, the one who brought me to Krelas.
But this was the Emperor’s palace, the Furious Palace, and the voice was not Casian’s.
No… Could it be? I nervously turned my body to the side.
I saw Mikhail running toward me with a worried expression, holding Joshua, whose eyes were red and teary from crying like a little rabbit.
“Lin! What happened? You said you were fine, you said you were okay!”
His voice was urgent, his gestures frantic. In Mikhail’s eyes, I was fully visible.
Ah… I must look like a zombie that’s been feeding on corpses.
Joshua also burst into tears, reaching his little hands toward me.
“Mama! Are you okay? Mama!”
When Mikhail put Joshua down, the boy grabbed the hem of my skirt and shook me.
Did I just hear that wrong?
I couldn’t take my eyes off his face.
Mikhail… did he just call me that? I wanted to ask, but if I did, it would be admitting that I had been hiding my true identity all this time. I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
“Your Majesty, why did you come out here?”
When I spoke, the blood I had been holding back trickled down my chin.
“I followed you because your expression didn’t look good. I wondered what was going on. But seeing you like this… Lin, what happened? You said you were fine.”
He called me Lin. Did I mishear? How could a single name make my heart drop like this?
Just as I was relieved, another wave of blood surged from within me.
“Ugh… guk.”
Drip, drip, drip.
I quickly bent over to prevent my blood from staining my clothes, but it was too fast for me.
In the end, the front of my dress was soaked.
It was the dress I had planned to wear just once today to leave the palace, then sell for travel money… but the blood…!
I muttered while looking down at the dress, feeling disappointed.
“Ah… my dress…”
My money…
I couldn’t bring myself to say it aloud in front of Mikhail, so I swallowed the words, but they pounded in my chest. Mikhail held me and stroked my head.
“It’s okay. Calm down, Lin.”
But I wasn’t okay.
I pushed Mikhail away and looked at the dress again, when I noticed the blood dripping from my chin onto the necklace around my neck.
“Blood…”
“It’s fine. My clothes don’t mind a little blood.”
No, not your clothes! My jewelry!
Mikhail seemed to understand half of what I was thinking and said with a regretful expression:
“I’ll give you ten, twenty dresses if you want. Don’t hurt yourself.”
“Mama, I’ll give my money too. Don’t cry, Mama.”
Even just hearing his pathetic, heartbreaking voice made me feel sad, but the cry of my money seemed louder in my mind.
Ugh! How do I get blood out of metal and jewelry?
I was flustered and lost in thought when Mikhail shouted:
“Head steward! Palace! Bring the palace physician!”
“I’m fine. Don’t—”
At that moment, another wave surged. Something boiled up inside me again.
I hastily covered my mouth, but it was already too late. Blood gushed out. More than before.
This damn magical reflux… how many times is this happening?
It’s my body trying to survive, but I didn’t want to vomit so much that I couldn’t even talk. My head was already spinning and I was dizzy.
Damn it.
I cursed inwardly and reached for something to hold onto. I staggered, my body tilting, and someone firmly caught me.
I saw the face of the person holding me.
“M-Mikhail?”
Last time I had collapsed in front of Eunsu, and now in front of Mikhail…
I silently scolded myself, thinking, Seriously? Then my consciousness cut off completely.
At the same time, not far from Krelas Imperial Palace, in a nearby forest.
Casian threw the letter he had been holding.
The man who had brought the letter from afar opened his eyes wide at Casian’s careless attitude.
The man, wrapped head to toe in black cloth, was Torio, one of the direct knights of the Emperor, a member of the Seika Knights who only acted under the Emperor’s command.
This mission, too, had brought him to the heart of a foreign country, Krelas, under the Emperor’s secret order.
“Did you sneak across the border just to deliver this?”
It was the first time Torio had seen someone call a letter directly from the Emperor “this trash.”
Even more surprising, the superior of this man was bowing deeply in front of him.
“I had no other way but to deliver it quickly,” the superior said, using extreme honorifics.
Torio scanned the man in front of him. Who is this person?
Casian clicked his tongue at the two men who had delivered the letter.
“Well done. You say you’re the Emperor’s direct knights, yet your attire is like this? Are you advertising that you’re suspicious?”
Torio, like his superior, was dressed completely in black from head to toe.
Black might stand out during the day, but at night it was perfect.
The superior could have argued, but instead bowed again.
“I was thoughtless. I apologize.”
The superior was the vice captain of the Seika Knights, trusted by the Emperor. Usually, he wouldn’t bow like this.
But now he bowed like he had no neck at all. Who was this person in front of him?
“Enough. Don’t come to me for something like this again. Don’t you see how important this moment is for me?”
Casian’s annoyance made the superior’s eyes widen.
“Important… moment? I heard you’ve been keeping an eye on Vivace recently. Are you planning to make it part of the Empire’s territory?”
Casian waved his hand impatiently.
“What would I do with such a tiny patch of land? You think that’s what I’m after? Stop talking nonsense and get lost. You’re annoying.”
Casian spun around, cold words dripping.
“Wait a minute!”
Casian turned back with a vexed look.
“Why, again?”
“Are you not going to reply? If I return like this, I could be suspected of failing to deliver the letter properly.”
The vice captain’s desperate request was met with Casian reaching his hand out.
“Give it back.”
The vice captain quickly picked up the letter from the ground and offered it to Casian with both hands.
Casian held it with both hands, looked at it for a moment, then crumpled it into a ball with a crunch. Twisting it again, another crunch.
In just two moves, the letter was a perfect sphere.
“Done. Since it’s crumpled with magic, the Emperor will recognize it. Now go.”
Before the vice captain could reply, Casian vanished into thin air.
Torio, who had been silently watching, grabbed his superior’s cloak and asked:
“Who the hell is that crazy guy? How dare he crumple the Emperor’s letter?”
The vice captain quickly collected the crumpled letter, then whispered into Torio’s ear.
Torio’s eyes widened in astonishment.
“Whaaat?”
Casian laughed, recalling the contents of the letter.
“Hmph!”
Return? When I told them to leave before…
He still couldn’t forget the day he had been driven out of his country.
The day he was suddenly gagged by knights in the middle of the night and carried somewhere.
At first, he thought he was being kidnapped. He felt doomed. But no one entered the carriage he was put in.
Days passed in thirst and hunger, and when he finally opened his eyes, he thought he had arrived in heaven.
But it wasn’t heaven—it was a temple. A temple in a foreign country, far from his homeland.
Later, he learned it was a temple in the small country of Vivace, but at the time, he didn’t know.
When he woke, a priest handed him a letter from his father explaining the situation:
“The current state of the Empire is unstable. You must recognize that your presence is disturbing your older brother’s position. Since you are kind, I assume you wouldn’t want to ruin your brother’s perfect future. Considering your feelings in advance, I am sending you to a safe place. If you behave well there, I will send someone to bring you back.
—Father”
‘Considering my feelings in advance?’
What nonsense. The truth was, they simply wanted me out of the way so I wouldn’t interfere with my brother.
I had worried something like this might happen, but I reassured myself it would be fine because they were my biological parents and brother.
I thought if I stayed quiet and invisible, they would eventually notice me, and they would never abandon me.
But when I came to my senses, I had already been abandoned.
Eleven years old. Knowing all I could, yet too young to live alone.
The bodyguard who promised to protect me until death, the steward who promised not to serve anyone else—none of them were there. Casian was entirely alone.
