Across from the high tower in the flower garden where Milin resided, the main building of Honglian Palace—the Duchess’s Main Hall where she lived—had its regularly scheduled magical lamps extinguished as well.
The entire palace had fallen into slumber.
But in those corridors, which should have been silent under the moonlight and labyrinthine in their tranquility, there was a solitary figure making her way through.
The sound of her military boots landing on the marble tiles was even and rhythmic, a testament to her familiarity with the place.
Vera stopped in front of a room with the door half-ajar.
She gazed at the sliver of light still leaking from the door’s edge, frowned, and pushed the door open to enter.
“Why are you still up so late?”
It was a study.
Behind a mountain of paperwork, a noblewoman with red hair was bent over the desk, reviewing one document after another.
The gentle glow of the lamp illuminated the faint furrow between her brows and the focused amber of her eyes.
Hearing Vera’s voice, she finally set down her pen and looked up at her.
“After all, the ‘Crown Festival’ and that child’s birthday are both coming up. There are always more things to arrange than usual at times like this.”
Meliya Klauschel, one of the four great nobles of the Yilansiya Kingdom and the Northern Duchess, gave her close friend a gentle smile.
The clear fatigue on her face made Vera sigh softly.
“Nonsense. When is there ever a time during the year when you’re not like this?”
Vera stepped closer to the desk and picked up one of the documents Meliya had finished reviewing.
It was a budget list for the “Crown Festival” banquet—the northern festival celebrating the autumn harvest.
She put the list down and randomly picked up several more documents scattered nearby:
“‘Decorations Catalogue,’ ‘Banquet Guest List,’ ‘Banquet Menu’… Do you really need to handle these little things yourself? You could have just delegated all this to someone else.”
“That won’t do. Although in previous years we always held that child’s birthday celebration together with the Crown Festival, this year is her sixteenth birthday—her coming of age. As her mother, how could I not personally see to every detail?”
“That’s putting the cart before the horse. When you collapse from overwork, who’s going to help you clean up the mess?”
“My health is excellent. I work out every day, you know. Hey~”
Vera felt she was already being as blunt as possible, but the woman before her was neither annoyed nor angry.
Instead, she patted her slender arm and struck a muscle-flexing pose.
The ridiculous gesture, so at odds with her age and status, made it hard for Vera to keep scolding her, and in the end, she could only flop down on the nearby sofa and sigh again.
“At your age, how are you still acting like a young girl?”
“What’s wrong with that? Staying young at heart keeps you from getting old too quickly. Or do you want people to see you as some stern old lady at our age?”
“Ha, except for that guy, you’re the hardest person for me to deal with. No wonder you two ended up together…”
Conversations like this had happened more times than they could count over the past decade.
But no matter how many times it repeated, the frozen furrow on Vera’s brow would gradually melt as the two teased each other.
Yet this time, the muttered complaint that slipped out of her as she relaxed seemed to instantly dim Meliya’s cheerful expression.
“…I wasn’t trying to bring him up on purpose. But there is something about him that I have to tell you.”
Seeing her friend’s sudden desolation, Vera realized she hadn’t come to Meliya simply for idle chatter as usual, but rather to bring her a truth—a truth that neither of them had ever wanted to believe.
She took from her military uniform pocket a letter bearing Sephy’s Magical Seal and placed it before Meliya.
“This is a Letter of Introduction from Sephy,” Vera’s voice, which only ever held a hint of warmth when speaking to Meliya, turned cold as she continued, as if breathing out ice: “She introduced someone to the duchy—a girl. Her name is… ‘Lian.'”
Meliya’s fingers paused as she touched the letter stamped with the unique Magical Seal of the Sage. “…Lian, introduced by Sephy?”
She moved the letter into the lamplight, its shadow spilling across her eyes and shrouding the thoughts within.
“An old acquaintance…”
“That girl is about the same age as Milin.”
Vera succinctly described the minor conflict that had occurred in the garden that afternoon, including that punch where ice and fire clashed, and the girl’s attitude—utterly unafraid, even strangely familiar and brazen when facing her.
“But what really convinced me was—”
Vera pressed her lips into a thin line, barely able to suppress the anger burning in her eyes.
“She looks a lot like Lian… doesn’t she?”
“You’ve seen her?”
Vera was a bit surprised.
She knew what ‘Lian’ meant in Meliya’s mouth—that was her affectionate name for that man.
And now, a girl bearing his face but not her daughter, appearing before her under that very name…
“The shamelessness of those two is beyond my imagination…!”
“Lian…”
Vera’s silver teeth were nearly grinding to dust, while Meliya only repeated the girl’s name softly, her fingertips and gaze gliding together over Sephy’s lazy handwriting on the letter.
“The day I went to the farm to look for Milin, I saw the child together with her.” Meliya’s voice carried a dazed air, as if drifting in a memory.
“Since she ran off the moment she saw me, I didn’t have a chance to look at her properly. Seems I didn’t see wrong after all.”
“I’m going to see Sephy tomorrow. I have to get to the bottom of this—what is her purpose in bringing this girl to your manor!”
As Vera slammed her hand down on the desk, the air in the study grew several degrees colder.
The magical lamps, reacting to her leaking magic power from rage, shifted to a chilly hue.
“Lian En Klauscher. If anyone in the world is a bigger bastard, I don’t know them. You always say he must have had some hidden reason, must have been forced into it… But what kind of hidden reason or compulsion would make him abandon you and your child for sixteen years? Now I finally get it. That girl must be the illegitimate child he left with another woman! For that bastard to send her here now, he must have his eyes on everything you’ve worked so hard for all these years—”
“Vera.” Meliya’s voice cut off Vera’s angry tirade.
She stood up and slowly walked to the tall floor-to-ceiling window, gazing out over the magnificent palace—rivaling the royal capital itself.
Beyond Honglian Palace, a vast city had risen, something the woman who had once been a mere village girl could never have dreamed of.
She was, without doubt, the mistress of it all.
But to her, all of this existed as it did because that man had been willing, on that day, to become her sword and fight for her.
“You know he would never betray me. Back then, I was nothing more than a village girl. How could I compare to you, the Pontiff, or that Fairy Princess? If it was power or status he wanted, he could have had it all. Why pick me? Why wait until the day after our wedding to betray me, if that was his intent?”
“Maybe the logic didn’t make sense back then… But now, with that girl appearing before you, you still choose to believe him?”
Vera had always known how deeply this woman could love.
But she had never imagined that, even with damning evidence laid before her, Meliya would still choose to deceive herself.
“And even if it’s exactly as you said, what could we possibly do to the child who came seeking shelter? Lock her in the dungeon out of spite? Hunt down Sephy and curse her out?”
“…Then what do you suggest?”
Vera fell silent for a moment.
She had, in truth, considered all those things just now.
If it had been her adventuring days with the Brave’s Party, she would have acted on them without a second thought.
“Let the girl stay in the manor for now. I’ll find time to meet her. If we want to learn the truth of what happened back then and find out where he is now, our best lead is her. I think that’s also one of the reasons Sephy sent her to us.”
“Very well. The sins of that girl’s parents shouldn’t be taken out on her, after all. Do as you wish—she’s come to your house, not mine. But there’s one thing I will do no matter what—”
As Meliya gently folded the letter and put it away in the desk drawer, Vera spoke each word with grave clarity:
“If he’s dead, that’s one thing. But if that man is still alive… even if you stand in front of him, I’ll cut him down all the same.”