Chapter 79
Chapter 79. My Sinner
“Mmm…”
Vinea raised her heavily drooping body. As soon as she rose, Lineue hurriedly approached her side.
“Empress! Are you alright?”
“Where is this…?”
“It’s your bedroom. His Majesty brought you here two hours ago while you were asleep. Are you feeling better?”
Vinea nodded slowly.
As she recalled his incomprehensible words and passionate confession, her mind became confused.
Seeing Vinea sitting dazedly on the bed, Lineue brought her some water and a small pill with a worried expression.
“It’s time for your medicine, so I prepared it. The imperial medical staff kept asking what it was, which was troublesome, but I managed to deflect their questions, so you needn’t worry.”
“…It’s not medicine prepared by the imperial court?”
Lineue nodded with a surprised look.
“No. Before you lost your memory, Empress, you ordered me to give you this medicine twice a day no matter what. You said not to tell His Majesty or the medical staff under any circumstances.”
“The me before I lost my memory?”
She had been taking this medicine without much thought until now. Vinea’s blue eyes looked at the medicine bottle with suspicion.
Somehow, her memories after taking this medicine had always been hazy, but she had thought it was just due to briefly falling asleep from the medicine’s effects.
Was that not the case?
What on earth had happened to her before she lost her memory, for His Majesty and this still-unfamiliar maid to say such things that she couldn’t understand?
After hesitating for a moment, she finally swallowed the medicine. As the bitter taste went down her throat, a sharp headache soon stimulated her temples.
“Ugh…”
“Empress!”
Lineue looked at Vinea with a startled expression as she staggered and steadied herself on the bed.
Vinea raised her hand to stop Lineue.
“…I’m fine. Step back.”
Vinea, who had risen from her seat with difficulty, headed for the mirror.
Red marks were visible here and there outside the lightly worn white dress. On her neck, collarbone, and shoulders.
The encounter and conversation she had shared with him in the glass garden while she had lost her memory naturally came to mind.
Vinea pressed her swollen lower lip hard with her index finger. Unlike her thoughtful eyes, her lips curved into a smile.
“How very thoroughly you’ve engraved it, my sinner.”
Vinea turned around.
“I must have told you to keep the medicine I received from Balak Utar. Do you have it?”
“Yes, Empress. Since you didn’t mention it afterwards, I’ve hidden it in the tea cabinet in the reception room for now.”
“Bring it to me.”
Lineue nodded and left the room. Vinea turned back to look at herself in the mirror.
She traced the most prominent mark on her neck with her hand. It was a persistently engraved mark.
“It would have been nice to hear it directly, but then I couldn’t have beaten you, could I, Tatar?”
Clumsy acting couldn’t have given him the same hell she had experienced. The sight of the other person flying freely after losing their memory, the fear of being thrown alone into despair.
So after much deliberation, she swallowed the medicine. But she left a small hole through Lineue.
She had met Balak Utar four times including this regression, but there was one time in another regression when she had contacted him without seeing his face.
It was to obtain the recipe for the antidote to the Arpanium drug.
Perhaps because she hadn’t met him directly and formed a deep relationship, she couldn’t get the antidote recipe through the Valita Trading Company, but she was able to obtain the neutralizer recipe at a great cost.
She hadn’t known that something she had learned just in case would be so helpful.
The Arpanium neutralizer used Talm and Ulnan, just like the epidemic treatment in Haksya village. With things turning out this way, it really felt like God was playing tricks on them.
Drinking the neutralizer restored her memory completely for about two hours. Although the more it was used, the longer it took for Arpanium to be fully detoxified, she thought it was worth enduring.
She hadn’t expected Balak Utar to bring the complete cure himself.
Just then, Lineue came in with the medicine bottle. The half-remaining blue liquid sloshed inside the crystal bottle.
She had won the bet. So there was no need to continue this act any longer.
Vinea swallowed the medicine without hesitation.
A hot sensation different from the neutralizer flowed down her throat. When the headache that had persisted even after drinking the neutralizer completely subsided, she felt her body become much lighter.
“Where is His Majesty?”
“He returned to the main palace after bringing you to the bedroom. News arrived that evidence had been found that the Emperor Emeritus had tried to poison you, Empress.”
Lineue lowered her voice and continued speaking to Vinea.
“I heard that there was a time when the Emperor Emeritus left the separate palace empty, and the woman who recently occupied the separate palace gave crucial testimony. Contrary to the Emperor Emeritus’s words, she said she wasn’t with him during that time.”
Vinea’s eyes took on a strange light.
She had been a bit worried because the limited time when her mind returned after drinking the neutralizer wasn’t enough to fully interfere with Agasha’s actions, but it seemed she wasn’t a completely useless person.
“The investigation into the late Empress, it wasn’t traced, was it?”
“No. When I visited the head chef to investigate the desserts the late Empress used to enjoy, I did encounter Sir Deron, but I didn’t mention anything related.”
“Just in case, for the time being, only take on tasks assisting me and don’t leave the Empress’s Palace. We mustn’t give any unnecessary excuses.”
“Understood.”
Vinea turned and left the bedroom. There was no anxiety in her steps as she headed for the main palace.
Now that she had confirmed his feelings and finally broken that proudly raised head, the infinite time was no longer frightening.
She was sorry to him, but she truly wasn’t afraid of regression only after winning the bet. Because an intense hope with the certainty of not losing will illuminate us even in any darkness.
“What about the woman’s safety?”
“She’s currently being held in the underground prison. There’s still some suspicion about her, you see.”
“Have someone bring her to the Empress’s Palace. Say that two knights will be assigned to watch her.”
“But His Majesty is treating this incident very seriously. Will it be possible?”
“Yes. It’ll be fine.”
Since the culprit of this poisoning incident was the same as the victim, who would they punish? Tatar would know that too.
She had just thrown the Emperor Emeritus as good bait to him who needed someone to vent his anger on. He had just played along while knowing.
She sent Arpanium tea leaves to the separate palace where the Emperor Emeritus was, in the name of a noble supporting him. And the day before she visited the separate palace, she sent an additional same gift.
However, she wrapped one of them in an expensive-looking silk cloth that anyone would recognize as valuable, and even tied it with a gold thread.
Ordinary nobles would set aside the most precious-looking gift they received and often bring it out when an important guest came. It was the same this time.
The sharp-witted woman had replaced all the tea leaves in the separate palace with ordinary Arpanium. Then, when a person of high status like the Empress suddenly visited the separate palace, from the servants’ perspective, they had no choice but to bring out the one that looked the most precious.
And those tea leaves were the ‘special’ Arpanium tea leaves received from Balak.
Everything went according to plan. The Empress who lost her memory, the Emperor Emeritus driven into a corner.
After going through a time of hardship, she confirmed that she had won the bet with him in the glass garden.
If there was one thing that bothered her, it would be the plan Balak had made with Eurene.
‘The information Uncle found out is bothering me…’
The information he had passed on before returning to the Veshnu Empire. That Eurene Castallo had spent a night with a high-class courtesan that only nobles sought out.
As soon as she got that information, she had someone follow her, but there was no more news coming in except that she had left the capital as if being chased and headed for a villa.
‘How nice it would be if she just stayed put there.’
But Balak’s answer, which had finally chosen silence, substituted for the answer that Eurene might be in this capital, or even inside the palace right now.
‘She’s a person with tremendous persistence. There’s no way she’ll give up on him like this.’
A woman abandoned by her family and with nowhere to rely on might do anything in her obsession with greed. The past regressions were proving that.
Remembering how she had made bolder and more dangerous choices to bring her down the more she was pushed, there was no doubt that she would cause quite a troublesome incident in this regression as well.
Upon arriving at the main palace, Vinea immediately headed to Tatar’s office. His condition when she had encountered him in the glass garden hadn’t looked too good, so he might still be suffering from hallucinations even now.
Beyond the long windows to the right, the sky where night had settled after the sunset came into view.
The moon wasn’t visible, perhaps due to the thick clouds. It seemed it would be a very dark night.
The one who greeted Vinea when she arrived in front of the Emperor’s office was not Tatar, but his aide Deron.
Through Deron’s shoulder, the empty office was visible. Just as Vinea’s brow furrowed slightly, Deron spoke to her with a hardened face.
“Empress, His Majesty is currently with Lady Eurene Castallo.”
“…How is His Majesty’s condition?”
“Not good. He didn’t recognize me, and Lady Eurene Castallo…”
Deron continued with a dark expression.
“It seemed he was mistaking her for you, Empress.”
