Chapter 149
The aide did not reveal all the sordid deeds Smith had committed over the years.
He spoke only about the Emperor’s assassination attempt, in chronological order, with such simplicity and clarity that even a three-year-old could understand.
Smith’s eyes bulged as if they might pop out, but gripped in Einar’s hand, there was nothing he could do.
“That concludes my testimony.”
As the aide closed his mouth, the First Prince stared blankly at Einar with a lost expression, the Fourth Prince anxiously bit his nails amid the flowing tension, and Sierre smiled brightly with an innocent face.
The Emperor’s closest confidants showed reactions not much different from the princes.
“S-so, this means…”
The general glared at Smith with reddened eyes while crumpling the fabricated documents the Third Prince had presented.
To administer poison himself, then frame an innocent person, and then to proclaim himself a champion of justice…
—BANG!
“Such abomination!”
“Next.”
The general rose indignantly, striking the table at the center of the council chamber as if he might break it, but at the Duke Bolshevik’s calm command, he quietly sat back down.
After the aide stepped aside, more than one person entered.
“L-let go of me, ack! Aaaack!”
An imperial knight dragged in Hans, whose body was twice his size.
Perhaps instinctively feeling the pressure of the venue, Hans couldn’t quite shout at full volume. Though he had been subdued by someone half his size—through some unknown method—he was still desperately trying to resist.
But the moment he saw the mechanical device dropped before him, his mind went blank.
“You made this, didn’t you? At the request of a woman named Jane.”
The content delivered in that extremely calm and composed voice rendered Hans incapable of thought.
Not only was everything happening to him too sudden, but…
“If you tell the truth, you might save a life.”
He had blindly convinced himself that the “life” mentioned by this unknown high-ranking person referred to Jane’s.
“I-I’ll tell you everything. Jane just wanted her position…”
Just as his long-winded tale of Jane’s delusions was about to unfold—
“Just confirm whether you made this at that woman’s request, and whether you provided it to the Third Prince. Yes or no.”
The Duke mercilessly cut off his rambling.
“Y-yes. That’s correct.”
Hans instinctively fidgeted with the mechanical device, cleanly dismantling it and reassembling it in an instant, inadvertently adding credibility to his statement.
When Hans’s booming voice abruptly ceased, a silence descended upon the council chamber, so thick it seemed about to shatter.
And Einar broke that silence quite simply.
“That is the full account of what transpired in this incident.”
The man who had nearly been framed for the grave crime of attempting to assassinate the Emperor spoke with an excessively calm voice and even an indifferent attitude.
But no one contradicted his words.
It was all too clear that the documents presented by the Third Prince had been fabricated to implicate the Second Prince.
“Well then.”
Einar swept his gaze across the room, making eye contact with each person present, then declared without a hint of anger or regret, tossing Smith aside like garbage:
“Confine the criminal to the palace. His Imperial Majesty will determine his fate when he wakes. Which will be soon.”
“His Majesty will wake… You! How do you know that?!”
Smith, sprawled on the floor, shouted loudly with bloodshot eyes.
“This isn’t over, it’s not over! I won’t just quietly accept…”
Even as he was unceremoniously dragged away by the same knight who had brought in Hans, he continued to rage.
Of course, no one paid any attention to Smith’s voice as it grew fainter with distance.
After Smith was dragged away, still raging loudly and clinging to his solitary hope until the end—
Einar headed straight for the Bolshevik estate.
Duke Bolshevik had to remain at the palace to handle the aftermath of the Third Prince’s treachery, so he received the Duke’s sharp, icy glare, but as promised, the Emperor shielded him from it.
Rushing like the wind, Einar arrived at the estate where the servants—now accustomed to, if not comfortable with, his comings and goings—greeted him warmly as he asked:
“Where is Riina?”
“The young mistress is in the annex. I will escort you.”
Guided by Sebastian’s always-proper steps, Einar reached a room in the annex—Jane’s former room—and hesitated when he saw the fiery red hair flickering through the wide-open door.
Riina was looking down at Jane with an expressionless face.
And Jane, standing before Riina like a criminal, was nearly driven mad with confusion.
Why? Since when? How?
Why did this happen? Why did it go wrong? Why did it fail?
Clearly, clearly, she had received very good news of success at dawn.
‘Success, we’ve succeeded! It’s over! Everything is over now!’
The Emperor had collapsed, and the Third Prince had identified the Second Prince as the culprit of the assassination attempt, which would implicate the impostor as well.
Naturally, the impostor would have no choice but to await a miserable end.
And if the real one—herself—were to appear and reveal the full story of the mechanical device used in the assassination attempt while disposing of Hans who made it, she could stabilize the shaken Bolshevik.
Though it had taken a very different path from what she had planned her entire life, the day had finally arrived when she would drive out the impostor and reclaim her rightful place.
No, this is even better. If I had followed the original plan, it would have taken longer.
After spending several sleepless nights in this blissful thought loop, imagining a rosy future at the end of those nights, she had finally managed to sleep for a few hours before waking up, only to find…
“Do you have anything to say?”
At Riina’s razor-sharp final judgment, Jane jerked her head up.
Her cloudy, murky blue eyes still gleamed with confusion and bewilderment.
But unable to bear that piercing blue gaze looking down at her, she shouted:
“I! I am the real one! You, an impostor! How dare you! Today is the last day you’ll occupy my place and act so smug! You should know your crime of attempting to assassinate His Imperial Majesty—”
“Pour it.”
—Splash.
Before Jane’s ranting could finish, Riina gave the order, and Becky immediately doused Jane with a bucket of strongly scented liquid.
“Ugh, cough, cough.”
From the sudden drenching, the hair dye that had colored Jane’s hair ran down her face in uneven streaks.
A few seconds later, when she managed to open her eyes, Jane was startled to see the dye staining her skirt and frantically tried to rub it away with her hands.
But what was already soiled could not be restored.
“So it was originally that murky, lackluster carrot… color.”
At someone’s candid remark, Jane clutched her hair and opened her mouth but couldn’t utter a word.
Because deep down, she too had known.
Until she entered the Bolshevik estate, she had sincerely believed she was the real Bolshevik, but after entering the ducal mansion she had so desperately yearned for—
The moment she first faced Riina.
Seeing that maddeningly red hair and vivid blue eyes, so clearly different from her own, Jane had needed to deceive herself to keep her lifelong goal from crumbling.
That she was still the real one.
She had to be the real one.
Regardless of hair color, eye color, or anything else, she had to be the real one!
As if seeing through her thoughts, Riina looked down at Jane with indifferent eyes and spoke:
“What is the symbol of Bolshevik?”
No one answered, but everyone gathered there looked at Riina.
Hair red enough to hurt the eyes and eyes blue beyond compare.
Jane, who had instinctively stared at Riina, hastily lowered her head and clenched her fists until her palms bled.
But no matter how much she insisted and forced herself to believe the lie as truth, a lie could never become truth.
Nevertheless, Jane, gritting her teeth, could not accept this and lunged to achieve what she wanted in the most primal way.
“If only you weren’t here!”
Uttering a line worthy of a third-rate novel, she rushed toward Riina with a ghostly appearance.
Before Einar could intervene, Riina’s shadow stirred, and Jane fell face-first before Riina, unable even to gasp.
Collapsing to her knees, Jane firmly gripped her hair with both hands, tightly closing her eyes and shaking her jaw as if utterly refusing to accept reality.
Over her head fell a voice more cold and calm than any other:
“I am Bolshevik.”
That single statement became a dagger, piercing the back of Jane’s neck, now a mess of hair dye.
“You are not.”
The next statement became a sharp comb, tearing Jane’s heart to pieces.
“You poisoned me. With something that drives one slowly mad. A poison passed down in Bolshevik, they say.”
Jane’s cherished poison had been sent for analysis to poison experts, but even the continent’s renowned specialists had only scratched their heads.
After consulting several of them, a poison expert fascinated by Bolshevik offered the most plausible opinion:
‘It’s a poison recorded in Bolshevik historical texts. Not a great secret, but it fell out of use when the necessary ingredients became extremely difficult to obtain after that era. Its effect is…’
“A poison that slowly drives a person mad.”
Jane’s shoulders heaved greatly, but Riina looked down at her with emotionless eyes.
Riina instinctively realized that while the main reason for her own descent into madness and self-destruction before the regression had been herself, Jane’s poison had likely played a significant role.
Although the poison had no effect on her now, the mere fact that a shadow had dared to poison the Bolshevik heir was enough to pronounce the final judgment.
“I banish you from Bolshevik forever. You will serve your sentence in an underground prison where you can indulge in your beloved delusions to your heart’s content.”
Riina had nothing more to say or do, so she turned away from her, only to meet Einar’s eyes directly.
She gladly took his outstretched hand and signaled to Becky with her eyes. Becky, not hiding her rising smirk, bowed her head.
“Is your side finished as well?”
“Yes. Everything has been cleared away.”
As Riina and Einar chatted quietly, the door slowly closed behind them.
Left alone in the room, Jane remained frozen in place like a dried-up, hollow old tree.
The impostor who had believed herself real and had tried to eliminate the real one to become real.
But since an impostor could never become real, the impostor who had been filled with delusions and greed was now left completely empty inside.
