After finishing breakfast with her family, Liliana read the letter Prince Mikael had sent in her study.
[To the dear young lady.
The weather is very nice today as well.
On a day like this, it would be wonderful to enjoy a picnic together with you, but it is unfortunate that we cannot.
When will you open your heart to me?
I am always thinking of you and indulging in such pleasant fantasies.
I eagerly await the day when we will be together, and it fills me with excitement.
How wonderful it would be if you felt the same as I do. Would you not accept my feelings now?
People say that there is no pair that suits each other as well as we do.
After hearing that, I too think the same. You are the happiness of my life and my love.
….]
It was truly a very long letter.
How could someone possibly fill three whole pages with such cringe-inducing lines?
Liliana felt the impulse to open Mikael’s head and see what was inside.
He had even sprayed perfume on the letter, as it carried a fragrance.
It made her think he was truly putting in an extraordinary amount of effort.
Perhaps trying to prove that if one strikes a tree ten times it would eventually fall, Prince Mikael was sending Liliana one letter every day.
Suddenly, she became curious.
After sending letters like this to her, what could he be doing right now?
“Shall I check?”
Holding Prince Mikael’s letter in her hand, Liliana gathered dark mana at her fingertips.
The letter infused with dark mana instantly transformed into the shape of a crow.
“Show it to me through your eyes.”
When Liliana kissed the crow’s beak, the crow’s red eyes flashed as it flew out through the window.
Toward the place where the owner of the letter was.
A moment later, she was able to see what Mikael was doing through the crow’s eyes.
Her own two eyes, connected to the crow, captured his figure directly.
A man with violet hair and a woman with silver hair were embracing each other in the garden.
The violet-haired man was Mikael, the Empire’s Second Prince, and the silver-haired woman was Elisha.
The two gazed at each other with affectionate expressions before soon pressing their lips together.
In the past, she would have been furious watching that scene, but now it wasn’t so.
It was merely laughable.
Elisha was the only daughter of Baron Lindel, a vassal of the Ducal House, and a daughter he had raised with great care.
Because her mother had died of illness when she was young, the Baron had raised Elisha alone.
Later, at her father’s recommendation, Elisha came to serve as Liliana’s companion.
Liliana also had no mother, so she was glad to meet Elisha, who was in the same situation.
And the two grew up comforting each other’s loneliness.
Liliana believed Elisha was the kindest and cutest friend in the world, someone who would stay by her side no matter what happened.
To think that the same girl would join hands with Mikael and drive her into ruin.
She had never imagined that everything had been an act.
Her feelings had been sincere, but it seemed Elisha’s hadn’t been. The sense of betrayal was truly beyond words.
“Shall I play a little prank?”
With a faint smile, Liliana sent a message to the crow, telling it to fly over the two of them.
The crow carried out its task very faithfully.
Because the crow that flew past just above their heads startled Elisha and caused her to fall.
— Ah!
— Elisha, are you alright?
Mikael caught Elisha as she nearly fell in surprise.
Prince Mikael had been startled as well. When the crow suddenly intruded, his pleasant mood vanished and he grew angry.
Liliana watched the scene as if she found it amusing.
“What should I do next?”
In the past, she had crushed the Imperial Family with force, just as they had crushed the Ducal House with force.
But now things were different.
‘Should I take everything from them? Yes, that would be better.’
This life wouldn’t be a revenge of blood, but a revenge to protect.
She would take everything from them.
Liliana wrote a letter to Prince Estevan. It was a simple letter saying she wanted to meet him.
Because the time had come to return an answer to Prince Mikael.
Now that she had confirmed the relationship between the two with her own eyes, there was no longer any reason to delay.
***
The Sapphire Palace, which carried a quiet and tranquil atmosphere, was the Palace of the First Prince, Estevan.
Like its master, the office also gave off a dry and desolate atmosphere.
The owner of the office, the First Prince Estevan, was a very handsome man with blond hair and red eyes.
The legitimate son born between the Emperor and the Empress, the golden hair that Mikael didn’t possess shone like a brilliant sun.
Among the Emperors in the Empire’s history, all possessed golden hair except for the sixteenth Emperor, Dekan, who had seized the throne through a coup.
Even Dekan, who had usurped the throne through rebellion, had a complex about golden hair and wanted his own son to have golden hair.
So during his reign he chose Empresses and Consorts from families with bloodlines of golden hair, and he was able to have the son with the golden hair he had so greatly desired.
To that extent, golden hair and red eyes were extremely important symbols in the Imperial Family of the Empire.
Receiving the unexpected letter, Estevan’s eyes flashed with interest.
“She wants to meet me?”
The content of the letter was simple.
It only said that she wanted to meet alone in a quiet place.
“What is her intention?”
Holding Liliana Dayan’s letter in his hand, he tapped the desk with his index finger.
Liliana Dayan was the only daughter of House Dayan, the heroine who was receiving Mikael’s fervent courtship.
He was certain that, as the rumors said, she would become engaged to Mikael.
And yet she had asked him for a meeting.
“Should I accept it, or not?”
Estevan looked at his aide Leon, who was sitting leisurely on the sofa drinking tea.
“What do you think, Leon?”
“Well. Would you not find out if you met her?”
“So you are saying I should meet her.”
“Who knows, she might even confess to you, Your Highness.”
“Nonsense.”
After placing Liliana’s letter into a drawer, Estevan changed the subject.
“What about the matter I told you to look into?”
“Black Cat?”
“Yes.”
“There has been no result at all.”
“You mean there is no way to meet them?”
“Yes. They are people who hide themselves very deeply, so it is extremely difficult for me to find them.”
“Hmm…”
He had thought that if he joined hands with Black Cat, he could obtain information about the Empire, but finding them wasn’t as easy as he expected.
“For now, continue looking into it.”
“Yes, understood.”
Black Cat was an organization Estevan needed. If he could use them, it would greatly help in obtaining the information he required.
***
Liliana received the reply she had been waiting for from Estevan.
The reply contained a place and a time.
“Townhouse No. 11, Street J District…”
Estevan had replied that they should meet three days later at noon at Townhouse No. 11 in J District.
Since Liliana had asked to meet in a quiet place, it seemed he had searched for a suitable location.
“Since we are meeting anyway, I should prepare a gift.”
A gift that Prince Estevan would surely like.
Liliana took out the pendant of Paris, the Black Market Master, and infused it with mana. Then Paris’s face appeared in the air.
[Did you call for me, Master?]
Winking as he greeted her, he looked exactly like a mischievous prankster.
“You seem to be in a good mood.”
[Of course. It is our first contact, Master, so I am very excited. Did you know? You are exactly the kind of master I always hoped for.]
“I am the kind of master you hoped for?”
[Yes. I always dreamed of it. I cannot tell you how much I hoped my master would not be some big, rough brute.]
Liliana spoke teasingly.
“You are a womanizer, aren’t you? Your lines smell a little suspicious.”
[What are you saying? A womanizer? That is a statement that would bring down heavenly punishment. I have only you, Master. Hehe.]
Liliana already knew Paris’s personality from before, so she didn’t feel particularly uncomfortable.
On the surface he looked lighthearted, but that was only on the outside. When it came to work, he was the kind of person who seemed to have dozens of snakes coiled inside him.
In other words, if one were misled by a single word from Paris, they would suffer greatly.
“The reason I called you is because there is something I want you to find.”
[Just say the word. I will find anything for you, Master.]
“I heard that the sky-blue diamond necklace that the deposed Empress Anais treasured before she died ended up in the black market. Find it for me. The sooner the better.”
Liliana had known about the existence of the deposed Empress Anais’s necklace since the past.
When she was eighteen, she once saw a noblewoman wearing the deposed Empress’s necklace at a tea party.
That lady had boasted that her husband had won it at an auction and given it to her as a gift.
Although it might feel unpleasant because it belonged to a deposed Empress, when one saw it in person it was an extremely beautiful and radiant gem, too precious to leave hidden away.
The tea party Liliana attended had been in summer, so there was a high chance it was circulating in the black market around now.
[Leave it to me! Even if I have to search every corner of the black market, I will find it.]
“Then I will leave it to you.”
[Yes, Master!]
Hearing Paris’s spirited reply, Liliana ended the communication.
