Chapter 4: The Emperor and the New Weapon
“PRINCESS Ileze wants to visit me to apologize for the incident with the Gardener Cats?” I furrowed my brow at the letter Lucian brought me.
A week had passed since Silverio tried to kill me. I’d spent that time dealing with the creeping anxiety that came with everything I learned, but to the rest of the world, I was still living my normal life.
The mysteries of reincarnation, collapse of the ego, black magic…
I was curious about all of these things, but couldn’t find anyone who would be a reliable source of information. Silverio had remained inside of King Glenreed ever since, and even if we were able to speak again, I highly doubted he would provide me with anything of value.
All I could do for the time being was fulfill my role as the figurehead queen.
My ego had yet to collapse, but I had no idea what the future would hold. That was why I left the matter of becoming the official queen up in the air for now.
“I wonder if Her Highness is plotting something again…” I muttered.
Frankly, this whole affair was an annoyance, but rejecting her offer to apologize would only make things worse. With a sigh, I began to pen a response to Princess Ileze.
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PRINCESS Ileze arrived at my villa on the appointed date. She said she’d come to apologize, but she did a poor job of hiding the contempt for me in her eyes.
I kept my guard up, even more certain now that she was plotting something. As I conversed with her over tea…
“Huh…?”
Prickle!
Something rippled through my body for the briefest instant. I accidentally brought my cup down hard against the table. As I struggled to keep a straight face in the midst of such a sensation, I heard an even louder thud.
“Princess Ileze…?!”
Princess Ileze had collapsed onto the table across from me. Her long hair fanned out over the top of it, soaking up the spilled tea. I called out to her, but she was unresponsive.
Poison.
The dreadful word flashed in my mind. I looked around to take in the situation, trying not to lose my composure.
Princess Ileze wasn’t the only one in trouble.
The two maids waiting behind her had collapsed to the ground as well.
Help came and tended to the women, but they didn’t respond. They had pulses and were breathing, at least, but none of the three showed any signs of rousing.
We called a doctor next, contacted Princess Ileze’s Wolfvartian residence…and in the flurry of activity, before long, evening had come without any change in the situation.
Princess Ileze had come to my villa in a party of four. Three of them had collapsed, excluding one of her maids. This completely unexpected outcome was making my head hurt.
“It really looks like I poisoned them…” I groaned.
I wasn’t the culprit, of course, but it was a terrible set of circumstances.
Everyone knew Princess Ileze and I were at odds over the incident in the Gardener Cats’ field. To an outsider, it would look like I poisoned her in an act of revenge.
“And what was that strange sensation right before she collapsed…?”
Did it have something to do with her losing consciousness?
Still puzzled, I began to search for a method of proving my innocence.
✦ ✦ ✦
MY question would be answered the next day. It was delivered by King Glenreed himself.
“Princess Ileze was cursed?” I repeated.
“That’s right. I’m certain of it. I smelled it when I went and visited her.”
A curse.
It was something I didn’t even know existed until one week ago. Now it was already rearing its ugly head in my life.
I returned my focus to King Glenreed and looked at him carefully. “You’re absolutely certain you smelled a curse on her?”
“Yes. …Part of it was the same scent that you have. How could I ever mistake it?”
It seemed a bit hard for him to say, but King Glenreed was resolute.
Some part of my soul carried the lingering scent from a curse, though I didn’t know where it had come from. As dreadful as it was to think about, it proved useful in this instance.
“Do you believe you can identify the culprit?” I asked. “Anyone with the scent of a curse on their soul would be suspicious.”
I didn’t want to think that anyone in this country was practicing black magic. But optimism wasn’t going to help me now that I’d been dragged into this.
“I can’t find anyone in the castle with that scent right now,” he said. “I went through the room where Princess Ileze was staying too, but there was nothing helpful there.”
“Not even poison, or something like it?”
“Unfortunately not. All I found were her personal items, dresses, accessories, some sweets, and a jar of honey Fillia must have given her. I had the sweets and honey tested for poison to be safe, but they were completely normal, as they looked and tasted.”
“I see…”
There was no evidence and no leads on a culprit. I didn’t know how curses worked in the first place, so there was little I could do about that, but it was irritating to know that we were so powerless.
I thought of Silverio, who probably knew more about curses, but I dismissed the idea of calling on him. His attitude when I previously met him made me think he wasn’t eager to help me. Not to mention, I was scared of the likely outcome that he’d take over King Glenreed’s body again.
“Silverio is still slumbering inside me. I asked him about curses, but he appears to be ignoring me. I’m sure he knows things, he just refuses to help.” The king had a sour look on his face.
It sounded like Silverio wasn’t someone we could rely on after all.
“Could we ask for Lord Featherio’s help?” I asked.
“Probably not. He might know something about curses, but the Heaven-Wing clan doesn’t interfere with the government. They only observe the royal family, nobles, and the overall political state of affairs until they determine it’s time to play the Wing Chord. Their role is to neither antagonize nor to back any party. Maybe they can eat food at your villa without issue, but they won’t give you outright support. I doubt they can.”
“You’re right…”
Unfortunately, it seemed we couldn’t go to Lord Featherio for help either. He already saved me from death once, so it was logical that he might not be able to interfere any further than that.
We knew a curse was involved in this incident. But still, we were at a dead end.
All I could do was watch King Glenreed leave as he returned to his work.