Chapter 87
Chapter 87. Found It
Rain fell steadily on the gray mansion of the Grand Duke Aktavil’s family in the Veshnu Empire.
Many had gathered to mourn the death of the Grand Duke’s only heir. Among them were those who had become the new masters of the imperial palace: Empress Felga and her son, Crown Prince Vante.
Felga placed a white chrysanthemum on the white coffin with a slight bow before turning away first.
Vante followed, placing a white chrysanthemum on the coffin to mourn his cousin’s death.
He turned to face his uncle, Gartan. Cold blue eyes met the Grand Duke’s.
“…Did you really have to do that?”
A low voice, tinged with anger and self-reproach, was directed at Gartan. Black eyes devoid of regret looked at his nephew, now fully grown.
“Can you walk leaning on a broken cane? You must throw it away and stand alone.”
“He was your only son, Uncle.”
“A child who would have further solidified your position due to his disability.”
A son who would never be able to use one leg for the rest of his life. When he was healthy, he had been a good tool, qualified to become Crown Prince in Vante’s stead, but that value had disappeared forever.
It was clear that the existence of a son who lived each day drunk and embracing women, bearing an irreversible disability, would hinder his intended plans. It would only serve to make Vante’s position as Crown Prince, and his father’s throne, more secure.
So he killed him. Though his insides burned and anger and sadness welled up, power held more value to him than his child.
The foolish Emperor Emeritus Maxiul had failed to kill Vinea even with such precious manpower, and Vante was alive and well before his eyes.
All plans had gone awry.
Where did it all begin? It seemed that something had started to twist since Vinea left the Veshnu Empire for marriage, but he couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause. He could only guess that the marriage, carried out as if she were being sold off, had changed something in that child.
One way or another, there was only one choice left in the end. To kill his brother and Vante, and all those who might threaten his position. At least as long as he lived, imperial power had to be his alone.
“—Vante.”
Felga interrupted the conversation between the two. Her indifferent gaze fell on Gartan.
“Your grief must be great. Your only son ending up like this… I dare not fathom your feelings.”
Felga lowered her gaze ceremoniously. Gartan didn’t think she was genuinely saddened either. His snake-like cunning gaze swept over Vante and Felga standing before him.
“They say the position makes the person. You’ve changed a lot. So much so that I can barely remember when you were in this Grand Duke’s residence.”
“When the position changes, those surrounding us change as well. It’s a position where a knife might come from those who were always by our side at any time, isn’t it? One must change. If one doesn’t want to be foolishly caught off guard.”
The sharp exchange was buried under the sound of falling rain.
Felga nodded slightly and turned away. Vante also turned his back on Gartan, following his mother Felga.
Though he felt a murderous gaze as if it could tear a person apart from behind, the two didn’t look back and boarded the carriage.
Thud, the carriage door closed. They hoped the dark emotions would be washed away by the sound of rain hitting the window, but it wasn’t as easy as that.
Vante deliberately buried the memories of time spent with his arrogant and foolish cousin.
Felga exhaled a tired sigh and spoke to Vante.
“Now your uncle must have fully realized. That we know he’s plotting treason.”
Vante nodded with a hardened face.
He still couldn’t forget. The look in his uncle’s eyes when he greeted the returning delegation from Tessibania.
A gaze mixed with murderous intent and a sense of defeat, as if seeing someone he wished wasn’t alive. The smile he painted like an actor beneath that coldly frozen gaze.
After the delegation returned to Veshnu, he was plagued by threats from assassins every day.
It was obvious who had sent them. He could no longer deny or ignore what had happened in Tessibania.
That the uncle he had so trusted and followed was desperately trying to kill him.
Vante closed his eyes tightly and opened them again. The blue eyes that reappeared no longer held any of their former naivety.
Felga swallowed her bitterness as she watched her son finally becoming a person truly befitting a Crown Prince.
“This mother doesn’t regret shooting the arrow at Nexior’s leg. Rather than regretting after losing you and your father, I would have pulled the bowstring even if I had to choose a hundred times.”
“I feel the same, Mother. If we fall, Uncle’s blade will be aimed at Sister next. We must prevent that at all costs. Hasn’t Sister already sacrificed so much because of the war?”
“Yes. Just by fully maintaining the power we hold now, we’ll be protecting Vinea. We must stop your uncle no matter what happens.”
Felga pulled out a rolled parchment from an inside pocket of her cloak. It was something Vinea, her daughter, had sent along when she sent Vante back to Veshnu.
“Though she’s my daughter, I truly can’t help but admire her. How on earth did she obtain such information while in Tessibania… Read it.”
Vante unrolled the parchment. Written on it were the locations of territories where his uncle’s private soldiers might be hiding, a list of Veshnu nobles likely to be cooperating with him, and a rough inventory of imperial assets he had diverted while in the imperial palace under the pretext of assisting the new emperor.
“Is this… something Sister could investigate on her own?”
“Didn’t she notice the danger from your uncle before anyone else? I’m disappointed she didn’t tell us before the marriage, but it seems she had a plan.”
At the end of the parchment, it was written in neat handwriting that there was a possibility the recorded information might not be accurate, so people should definitely be sent to verify it. Yet it was so detailed that it seemed as if she had directly observed and experienced the opponent’s forces.
Vante raised his head, inwardly marveling at his sister’s abilities.
“Mother, may I ask how you plan to tell Father? Surely it will be a great shock to him.”
“We can’t keep him in the dark forever, so your father should know what he needs to know. Though he’s full of affection, he’s not a foolish person. When he left the imperial palace and inherited the Grand Duke’s estate, there were quite a few people who coveted the assets that returned to your father’s name, but he sorted it all out on his own.”
“Father did…?”
“Yes. He said he thought it needed to be sorted out as he was about to marry me. Haha, you should have seen how fierce he looked then.”
“I can’t imagine it.”
That was understandable because compared to his sharp-witted mother and sister, his father had a somewhat doting side. Perhaps because it was a love marriage, he often showed an especially devoted attitude towards the family.
Moreover, since becoming Emperor, he often entrusted important matters to his uncle, so Vante found it hard to imagine the resolute side of his father that his mother spoke of.
“It might be odd to praise him now, but your father is inevitably your uncle’s brother.”
Even just looking at her son Vante, wasn’t he extremely interested in his sister? Her husband Orban also had a strong desire to protect what he considered his own.
It meant that while family might be his most important value, he wasn’t the type to willingly hand over the throne he already considered his to his brother.
“—Oh my, it seems he heard us talking about him. To contact us like this.”
Felga pulled out a small pendant from her bosom. Vinea’s message had arrived through the artifact she had sent via Vante.
Vante looked at the pendant emitting sparkling light with a brightened face.
“Is it a message from Sister?”
“Yes. Not one has been easy every time she contacts us, so I wonder what it could be this time…”
As she lifted the pendant, neat handwriting like that on the parchment floated in the air. Felga’s expression hardened as she read the short message.
“Oh my…”
The lines drawn in white light wavered.
[I’m pregnant. I need evidence that Uncle and Emperor Emeritus Maxiul have joined hands.]
Felga let out a deep sigh as she looked at Vante’s shocked face. She leaned back deeply against the backrest of the carriage rushing towards the imperial palace and closed her eyes.
“It seems we need to deal with Uncle as soon as possible.”
* * *
I hope the message arrived safely.
Vinea put the gold oval pendant, identical to the one her mother had, back into the drawer.
Knock knock, with the sound of knocking on the door, Lineue entered the office.
“I’ve prepared as you said, but I wonder if there might be an issue with fairness?”
“I only set a deadline, I didn’t say not to come before then, so it doesn’t matter. They must have come like this because they’re confident.”
There was a dressmaker who had brought a completed dress despite the agreed-upon month not having passed yet.
Though not a fashion-sensitive dressmaker, it was one that had long been loved by noble ladies for generations, reviving classical forms without making them look outdated.
As she opened the reception room door and entered, an intricately completed dress was placed on one side.
Vinea slowly walked towards the completed dress and raised her hand to touch the lace decorating the collar.
The velvet cloth embracing the chest, the corset emphasizing the slender waist, and the voluminous petticoat. The pleated black silk covering it all. Towards the end, the layered decorative fabric could look tacky, but the white lace revealed in between struck an appropriate balance.
White pearls were embedded here and there to prevent the fabric from spreading too much, and their sparkling appearance under bright light was quite pleasing to the eye.
It seemed as if a black-haired woman might open the temple doors at any moment, blinking her gloomy silver eyes while wearing this dress.
Vinea slowly closed her eyes and opened them again. A cold elation flashed across her blue eyes.
Found it.
