“OH my, if it isn’t Queen Laetitia? What brings you here all of a sudden?” Lady Fillia greeted me with her usual charming smile.
Against the colorful flowers of the southern villa, she looked like a young girl who’d been completely sheltered from the impurities of the world.
“Lady Fillia, you gave Princess Ileze poison, didn’t you?”
There was no need to press her subtly for clues anymore, so I got right to the point. Normally, I would have started with small talk so as not to harm her mentally, but a surface-level conversation wasn’t going to do anything for us now.
“Poison…? How unsettling. What are you talking about?” she asked, feigning innocence.
“I’m saying this villa was the source of the poison Princess Ileze received,” I stated.
“Poison? The only thing I make here is honey.”
“And that honey was the poison.”
The wind shook the many varieties of flowers behind her. Flute Bees were able to harvest nectar exclusively from one kind of flower. I remembered how Lady Fillia was growing rhododendrons in her garden before Princess Ileze’s collapse. As beautiful of an addition as they made to the garden, rhododendrons were similar to lily-of-the-valley in a very specific way—their poisonous nature.
“A person could fall into a coma if they consume too much honey made from rhododendron nectar alone,” I said.
I’d completely forgotten about rhododendrons’ toxic effects.
It was all thanks to Berry’s claws. Seeing them reminded me of how the Gardener Cats in the second field had coated their claws with a poison that induced slumber.
Gardener Cats knew all there was to know about plants, so I went to them and asked about poisonous vegetation. That was how I learned rhododendrons were poisonous in this world as well. I confirmed with others that it wasn’t common knowledge in this world—that the Gardener Cats were part of a very small group that utilized its poisonous nature.
Lady Fillia’s honey was made with rhododendron nectar alone. Even though the poison was very weak, that made it possible to take a bite or two without noticing it tasted any different than normal honey.
“This isn’t just about Princess Ileze’s slumber,” I continued. “Thinking back, she was here when we first met at your villa, and then there was the incident with the Gardener Cats while I was here visiting. Her Highness was able to cause that disturbance because you informed her that I was away from the Gardener Cats at that exact time. Am I mistaken?”
The princess and her servants wouldn’t have been able to start an incident at the Gardener Cats’ second field while I was around. Lady Fillia had to have leaked the date and time of my guaranteed absence for her plan to work.
“I’m sure Princess Ileze saw you as a convenient pawn to supply her with information and materials…but it was actually the opposite. You were the one manipulating Princess Ileze, weren’t you?”
Lady Fillia was never working with Princess Ileze at all. Her partner was, in fact, Emperor Ishnad. She lured in Princess Ileze by pretending to help her, then sent her to my villa on the day the curse was planned to take effect. It was all to frame me for poisoning Her Highness. That way, Lady Fillia could remove me from consideration and become the next queen with Emperor Ishnad’s support.
“Why did you take it this far, Lady Fillia? Conspiring with Emperor Ishnad could lead to your total ruin if you made even the slightest mistake. You could never know for sure that he wouldn’t just abandon you at some point either.”
There were many safer methods of obtaining power in this country if that was what she was after. Yet she chose to take the most perilous path, and I could only think of one reason why that would be.
“Why were you so desperate to become the next queen?”
“…Because I wanted to see him again.” Lady Fillia smiled sweetly, like a lovestruck little girl. “King Glenreed acted like he didn’t remember me when we were reunited at the castle. But I didn’t think he could have possibly forgotten me. I searched everywhere out of desperation, trying to come up with how the king I met all those years ago could be someone else. …And then I found it. Queen Laetitia, do you know the truth behind the royal family’s ancestral reversion?”
“…The person you met when you were a child was actually Silverio, wasn’t it?”
It seemed Lady Fillia had stumbled across the royal family’s secret. Lady Fillia came from a dukedom with a very long history. Perhaps it made sense that, tucked away somewhere in her family’s library, she found records detailing ancestral reversion.
The person who conversed with the young Lady Fillia was actually Silverio controlling King Glenreed’s body.
King Glenreed was a sickly child. He said that, while spending so much time in bed, there were periods of his life he didn’t remember well. It was possible those were other instances of Silverio taking over his body without his knowledge.
“I know that King Silverio, the man I met, rarely ever shows himself through King Glenreed. But I thought I might get to see him again one day if I spent the rest of my life by his side as the queen.”
Something so simple drove you to go to these lengths? It wasn’t something I could easily say to her out loud.
Lady Fillia had put in so much effort all these years. Not only did she manage to track down the secret of ancestral reversion, but she was wise enough to master the perfect smile and conduct for a young lady—all in an effort to be selected as the next queen.
Even now, she was readily confessing to her misdeeds because she knew she could feign innocence when she really needed to.
At a lower dose, the honey Lady Fillia gave Princess Ileze could have been used as a medicine to combat insomnia. Perhaps Princess Ileze wasn’t sleeping well as she adjusted to life in this new country, so she merely gave the rhododendron honey as a friendly gesture to help her sleep. It was an excuse Lady Fillia could rely on to get out of trouble, as there was no proof linking her to the incident with the Gardener Cats either.
She was brilliant if she truly planned that far ahead all along. She would certainly be a dependable person to have as an ally. I couldn’t forgive her for involving the Gardener Cats and framing me for a crime, but right now, I needed every means at my disposal to put up a fight against Emperor Ishnad.
“What do you say we strike a deal, Lady Fillia?”
In order to take the first step toward my exoneration, it was time to enter negotiations with Lady Fillia.