Chapter 20
She hesitated, but only for a moment.
He still didn’t know her true identity yet.
…As long as he didn’t discover that she was Orbanon’s illegitimate child, it would be fine.
“Won’t you answer me?”
Declin’s voice was relaxed and leisurely.
“Or should I call you Lenia Felt instead?”
“…That’s right. My name is Prina Crowell.”
As though pleased by her answer, a faint smile passed over Declin’s lips.
“Why did you lie?”
Was he seriously asking because he didn’t know?
He had killed someone right in front of her and openly acted suspiciously….
‘Of course I’d want to hide things.’
It wasn’t a grand name, but neither was it a worthless one she wanted to reveal carelessly.
Declin surely understood that much too.
“…I’m sorry. I didn’t think we were fated to meet again.”
He was probably just leaning back in his chair, enjoying her reactions.
“I said we should meet again. Why would you think that? That hurts my feelings.”
“…Most encounters never cross paths again.”
It was a perfectly ordinary answer.
Even if a mere commoner had deceived a grand duke, someone like Declin wouldn’t be deeply moved by it.
At least, she hoped so.
“Then perhaps ours isn’t an ordinary connection after all. How many times have we met already?”
Declin’s eyes curved into crescents.
“Maybe it’s fate.”
Yet his voice, speaking those words, sank coldly.
‘As if someone like you believes in fate.’
Under the desk, Prina’s clasped hands trembled. His tone was gentle, but the meaning beneath it was unmistakable.
Their repeated encounters were highly suspicious. Especially what had happened at the banquet hall.
“Compared to the fake name Lenia Felt, this suits you much better.”
“…Yes.”
“Prina. In the ancient language, it means flower.”
“…It’s a common name.”
Declin looked at her for a moment, then laughed softly.
“Flowers are all common by nature. Yet they’re still beautiful, aren’t they?”
Prina thought about that briefly.
Flowers at least shared the trait of being beautiful. She wasn’t sure people could say the same.
“It suits you well.”
Hardly.
Prina was far removed from anything that could be called beautiful.
“Didn’t I say next time we should meet normally? Seeing you like this is nice.”
This… was a normal meeting?
If it got any more normal, someone would end up dead.
“I heard Your Grace summoned me. Did I… do something wrong?”
Gathering her courage, Prina asked.
‘Stay calm.’
If anything, she had prevented a poisoning. She hadn’t attempted an assassination.
Thinking about it rationally, she shouldn’t be in trouble.
“A wrongdoing, hm. Yes, Miss Prina, there is something I wish to ask you.”
If it were Declin, he would never ask how she dealt with the poison.
Instead, he would probably pin some other suspicion on her—
“Were you the one who stole the poisoned wine?”
He neatly sidestepped all her expectations.
‘He’s asking that so directly…?’
Declin looked completely unconcerned about hiding his own staged scheme.
His attitude made it seem like there was nothing to fear while they were alone together.
Five seconds of panic at the unexpected question.
“Yes, that’s right. I took it.”
Prina answered his honest question honestly.
Declin’s smile deepened, though his eyes did not smile at all.
“Why?”
It was a light question.
But if she answered incorrectly, several charges would probably be added to her name and she’d never leave the underground prison again.
“C-Count Seiton was really trying to assassinate Your Grace, wasn’t he?”
Prina decided to feign ignorance.
His gaze fixed on her face as though trying to determine whether her words were truth or clumsy lies.
Declin flicked the quill in his fingers, spinning it elegantly.
“How did you know the wine was poisoned in the first place?”
Because I read the original novel….
She definitely couldn’t say that.
“At first, I didn’t know. But after bumping into the servant carrying the ceremonial wine, I started to think something was strange.”
“Strange how?”
“That servant came out of the servants’ corridor.”
Declin’s expression didn’t change. As if asking, so what?
“The ceremonial wine for the banquet enters through the corridor by the main entrance. Even the servants’ routes are predetermined for victory celebrations. But that servant… came from a place where people wouldn’t notice him.”
After being assigned to the imperial kitchen, Prina herself had been informed about the routes.
“You noticed just from that?”
“…No. There was one more thing. The servant carrying the wine… was gripping the neck of the bottle.”
“…And what’s wrong with that?”
A trace of disbelief colored Declin’s voice.
“That’s not how servants carry it. Ceremonial wine served to distinguished guests is laid sideways on a tray with the label facing upward, then supported with both hands. That’s proper etiquette.”
“……”
“But there’s no way a servant presenting ceremonial wine to Your Grace would be unfamiliar with protocol, right?”
Of course, the assassin Declin had brought in had learned etiquette fairly well. However, that etiquette had been subtly different.
There was no need to mention that part.
“So you figured it out from there?”
“I thought something felt off, and afterward I got anxious, so I secretly tested it with a silver spoon.”
Declin seemed lost in thought.
Prina watched the quill rolling slowly through his fingers.
“So, to summarize your claim: a perfectly ordinary maid noticed something strange in that brief moment and risked her life to save me.”
Hearing it summarized like that, it did sound incredibly suspicious.
‘But it’s true!’
She had been trying to save Hugo, not Declin. Things only spiraled out of control after she learned an insane truth.
“Yes. I thought… someone was trying to assassinate Your Grace.”
“I see.”
Prina looked at Declin. His suspicious gaze didn’t seem likely to disappear anytime soon.
“There’s actually one more reason I acted so recklessly.”
“What is it?”
Prina met his dry gaze.
“I wanted to impress Your Grace.”
Pause.
The quill spinning between his fingers stopped.
“…I-I’ve admired Your Grace for a long time. So… actually, the reason I went near the banquet hall was because I hoped I might see your face at least once….”
“……”
Prina deliberately stammered. Pretending to be shy, pretending to be too embarrassed to know what to do.
At this point, Declin’s reputation as a war hero returned to the empire was at its peak.
“There are lots of girls like me. I mean people who admire Your Grace… ah.”
“……”
“I-I don’t even know what I’m saying… I’m sorry, Your Grace.”
Prina rambled on, claiming that the reason she had repeatedly encountered him near the banquet hall was because of her admiration for him.
Just as she said, there were many people who admired Declin, and he had likely experienced this countless times before.
So to the man before her, it was probably an excuse both tediously familiar and entirely unremarkable.
“…That’s enough. You may leave now, Miss Prina.”
Prina let out a breath and glanced sideways at Declin’s strong hand gripping the quill.
Why wasn’t he wearing the heirloom ring of House Kaiser—the ring he never once removed in the original novel?
Not during their last meeting, nor the one before that.
Ever since they met at Layton Bridge, he had continuously gone without the ring.
The unsettling suspicion that had lightly brushed past her thoughts suddenly swelled like a snowball, becoming a terror too immense to ignore as it engulfed her whole body.
No way… could it really be…?
