Chapter 75
The noise filling the assembly hall shook. This was the decisive weakness that Revenant had wanted and that Antonio and the Marquis had tried to expose in Carl.
“How else could you be so certain Brita’s attack was fake unless you know the black dragon and are working together?”
“Come to think of it… you said you saw Aira Chandler, the black dragon’s master’s records ‘by chance’ while looking for something, but are you certain it was truly a coincidence?”
The Marquis supported Antonio’s opinion.
“There’s a saying that when coincidences repeat, they become inevitable. You asked me if I knew about the black dragon, but perhaps it was Your Grace who came across Aira Chandler’s records while tracking the black dragon?”
Carl clenched his molars. He could clearly feel the atmosphere in the assembly hall being roughly shaken by suspicions without a single piece of solid evidence.
“Otherwise, there’s no way to explain why you knew of Aira Chandler’s records, and why you, master of the silver Idelin who should be leading the charge to eliminate the black dragon more than anyone, are trying to protect it.”
The murmuring reached its peak. Surely not His Grace, the Prince, master of Idelin. The nobles’ whispers, caught up in the Marquis and Antonio’s logic, filled the assembly hall noisily. That’s when—
“…Excuse me.”
Sian, who had been listening from the audience as if she didn’t exist, raised her hand. In the noisy assembly hall, the unfamiliar woman’s voice possessed a strange power that subdued the scattered commotion.
“I know those without names in the noble registry have no right to speak, but would it be alright if I say something?”
Sian was already standing from her seat. Carl, who hadn’t dared to look at her since the appearance of her father, Count Chandler, finally looked at her at this perfect opportunity.
Sian, with platinum blonde hair like Count Chandler’s falling below her shoulders, wore a serene expression. Her face showed no reaction to all the discussions that had shaken the nobles’ section and all the ominous whispers.
Though her expression wasn’t negative—no, rather because of that—Carl severely furrowed his brow with an ominous feeling.
“State your name and status!”
Sian’s intervention was as good as unexpected reinforcements for the Marquis and Antonio.
As the black dragon’s master, she would be a fatal weakness for Carl, master of the silver dragon. Given the hostile atmosphere toward the black dragon filling the noble assembly hall, it was obvious she would try to hide her identity somehow.
“My name is Haley Dude. I am a baroness with a small domain and few retainers, the life-saving benefactor who saved His Grace Prince Carlston Klaus when he was at death’s door from the Dragon Knight’s attack, and—”
“…”
Sian looked at the Marquis, Antonio, Carl, and Hendrick with an utterly calm face, without any hesitation.
“I am Prince Carlston Klaus’s fiancée.”
“My Lady, though you were specially permitted to observe as the fiancée of His Grace, master of Idelin, this is not a place for uninvolved persons to step forward carelessly.”
The Marquis spoke sternly, words he didn’t mean. Sian barely acknowledged his empty words as she not only stood from her seat but slightly lifted her skirts and took determined steps forward.
Her destination was clearly the platform where Count Winston Chandler still remained in the witness position, not having left.
Count Chandler showed no change in expression, as if he had no idea of Sian’s true identity as she approached him.
Far from being saddened that her father didn’t recognize her, Sian twisted her lips in a cold sneer.
If he had enough fatherly love to recognize his daughter instantly across more than a decade, he wouldn’t have so easily thought to kill her.
Now all his statements about the years being hell seemed utterly ridiculous. Especially when other dragon masters who had no connection to the matter—the Crown Prince and Prince—were condemning the punishment of a black dragon that hadn’t even committed any crimes.
He must have wished her dead. Just as Revenant had wished Carl dead when framing him.
Rather, upon hearing news that the black dragon had reappeared and was disturbing the capital’s peace, he had taken this stand out of fear that his crimes would be exposed. When the daughter he had so cruelly tried to kill and bury from existence returned alive, she would bring interest on his crimes as well.
Sian stared at Count Chandler with eyes colder than ever before. Count Chandler, who had initially maintained a blank expression at Sian’s sudden intervention simply not understanding the situation, seemed to read something ominous in Sian’s gradually approaching figure.
With each step that made her wavy platinum blonde hair sway, Count Chandler’s expression wavered as well.
“You are…”
“His Grace Prince Carlston Klaus—master of Idelin, Lord of Ivarid, and my fiancé—has no connection to the black dragon.”
Sian spoke up alongside Count Chandler, ignoring his choked voice. The Marquis inwardly concealed a satisfied smile at Sian’s statement, as if she had stepped into a swamp of her own accord.
“Of course, my Lady, you would want to claim that and believe in His Grace…”
“Furthermore.”
Sian raised her chin proudly, cutting off the Marquis’s words as he tried to create a smokescreen to draw out the desired response.
“The black dragon has never attacked Brita, let alone assassinated or infiltrated the Dragon King’s nest. He didn’t even know the Dragon King’s nest was in the Imperial Palace underground.”
“How would my Lady know that?”
Antonio interrupted at Sian’s direct and resolute words, which seemed as if she were about to reveal herself as the black dragon’s master. Carl suppressed an uneasy premonition between his clenched molars, thinking ‘surely not.’
“Before I reveal how I know this, I would like everyone to look at this.”
As she spoke, Sian produced something. Though she had clearly come up to the platform empty-handed, she somehow revealed a white cloth-wrapped bundle in one hand.
“The dragon masters present would do better to completely sever their empathic connection with their dragons. This is my sincere advice.”
Sian pulled her lips into a sardonic smile and, before finishing her words, unwrapped the white cloth to reveal a box. Carl, who had seen it once before, frowned.
“Brother, be careful.”
Hendrick blinked at Carl’s warning, not knowing what it meant. And in that moment, following Carl and Sian’s warning, he consciously severed his connection with Nathan.
Sian unwrapped the white cloth quickly and without mercy, then opened the box without any warning.
—Screech.
The Marquis and Antonio, who hadn’t anticipated what it might be and were standing blankly, simultaneously drew in sharp breaths at the following sensation of fear and pain.
Even the nobles’ section, which had been enveloped in suffocating silence at Sian’s words, all hardened their expressions like people sensing disaster in the heavy and ominous air.
“What is that?”
By the time the Marquis and Antonio belatedly severed their dragon connections and escaped that terrible sensation, Hendrick was already asking, having sensed something unsettling about the object Sian had produced.
Though he hadn’t felt as intense a shock as the Marquis and Antonio thanks to following Carl’s advice to sever his dragon connection, even Hendrick could clearly feel the unsettling magical power emanating from what Sian held. He, too, frowned sharply, feeling a faint headache.
Sian looked at the stone-faced Hendrick with a neutral expression and opened her mouth.
“It’s a hidden weapon made from a living dragon’s bones.”
The Marquis and Antonio belatedly showed faces caught off guard. It was something they had suspected the Prince might have brought when he returned alive. But they had completely forgotten about it since there had been no mention of it until now.
“A living dragon’s bones?”
