Growing Suspicions
Ariel had laid out every possible move she could think of, determined to complete all preparations before Yulken’s return tomorrow. She had asked Elfelt to leave her alone because she wanted some time to think by herself, and now she sat alone in her office. When a knock sounded at the door, she didn’t even bother asking who it was and simply told them to enter. Shuri slipped inside cautiously.
“Looks like you came back empty-handed.”
“Yes… I’m sorry, my lady.”
Seeing Shuri enter with her shoulders slumped, Ariel had already expected the outcome, yet the disappointment still lingered. She had hoped to interrogate the assassin they had picked up that day and somehow extract information, but things hadn’t gone as planned. Still, she hadn’t truly believed it would be that easy, so she wasn’t overly bothered.
Well, those cunning bastards wouldn’t have left any traces behind anyway.
Whether the assassins were direct subordinates sent by the mastermind or merely mercenaries hired with money, either way they would have erased any clues that could expose their employer. Ariel hadn’t placed high expectations on the task when she asked Shuri to handle it separately, so she comforted the girl with gentle words and beckoned her closer.
“Silentium.”
She cast the spell to prevent any sound from leaking out, then spoke in a low, subdued voice as she asked the question she had been waiting to pose.
“What about the other matter I mentioned?”
On the very day she returned to the castle, Ariel had given Shuri one additional secret request: to investigate the recent movements of several vassals she had taken note of during the incident. Of course, the task was too much for Shuri alone, so Ariel had assigned extra personnel to assist her.
Some might assume that since she had not yet ascended to the position of family head, Ariel lacked subordinates she could command like her own limbs. But that was a misconception. Excluding Shuri, there were exactly four individuals who lived and died solely by her orders—her personal retainers. They were the exclusive guards who had protected her since childhood.
In the beginning, when she was still young and knew nothing, they had served purely as bodyguards. But as she grew older and began to desire subordinates she could wield like extensions of herself, their role had gradually shifted. This was the first time she had used them in earnest, yet fortunately they were performing their duties flawlessly.
“First, Lord Dulius showed no signs of suspicious activity. All the people he met were within the castle, and he hasn’t left the grounds at all these past few days.”
“I see.”
Ariel nodded as if she had expected as much; she had never harbored any real doubts about Dulius. He was the type of man who, to put it kindly, was not worldly, and to put it less kindly, showed little interest in others. The character assessment her father had once given her described him as “an upright warrior.” If he had no interest in a man named Edgar, he was hardly the sort to scheme against him out of hostility. Ariel had suspected as much.
Once her master seemed satisfied, Shuri immediately moved on to the next target. This time it was Gale.
“On the other hand… Lord Gale’s movements are rather strange.”
“Strange how?”
Had they caught some unsettling sign? Ariel narrowed her eyes and pressed for details.
“He left for his family estate the very day after you returned, my lady. Our tracking confirmed that his carriage stopped in Delion.”
“Delion…”
Delion was a city located on the border between the Northern and Central regions. It was a place one could not reach through dimensional stones, so travel was possible only by carriage—and the distance was considerable.
“Where is Lord Gale’s family estate?”
“It’s in a place called Fortuna.”
“Hmm. Then it’s not entirely inaccurate to say he went home.”
Delion and Fortuna were quite close to each other. It was entirely plausible that he had simply stopped the carriage for a short rest on the way. Of course, the fact that he had left the very day after the incident, almost as if trying to erase his tracks, could certainly raise suspicion. But Ariel’s perspective was slightly different.
“It’s not impossible, but I think we can remove Lord Gale from the list of suspects.”
“Pardon? But…”
Ariel fully understood the concern in Shuri’s voice. That was why she decided to add a bit of explanation to ease the girl’s confusion.
“Think about it the other way around. Who knows about this incident right now?”
“Well… you, young master, and me… right? Of course, including the one who plotted it.”
When Shuri tilted her head and murmured, Ariel snapped her fingers.
“Exactly. But if the tail hasn’t even been exposed yet, why would they suddenly try to hide? Unless the other party is a fool, they would know that concealing themselves in this situation would only draw more suspicion.”
“Ah…!”
“If we assume they’re guilty, the behavior might seem plausible. But if we assume they’re innocent, it becomes plausible for the opposite reason. Simply because ‘they didn’t know.’ That alone is enough.”
In other words, an innocent person would have no hesitation in taking actions that could otherwise look suspicious. Shuri finally seemed to understand; she nodded vigorously, now able to accept her master’s reasoning.
“Besides, if I were the culprit, I wouldn’t choose to leave the castle while the assassin I sent is still alive and well.”
Right now they had to remain hidden, yet they needed to understand the situation inside the castle better than anyone else after the incident. By this point, whether through their own subordinates or hired help, they would have realized that the assassination had failed due to the lack of contact. The question was why Ariel was keeping silent about the matter. If there were people she suspected, they had no way of knowing who those people were. So they would be hiding within the castle, sniffing around desperately for any additional information.
That was why Ariel had also removed Gale from the list of suspects. She wasn’t as certain as she was with Dulius, but her instincts told her it was the right call.
The last name remaining on the investigation list was—
“Lord Vincent.”
“Yes.”
Vincent Rolan. Among the three people on the list, he was the one Ariel had encountered the least. He always wore a benevolent smile and gave off the impression of a kindly old man, which made it all the more difficult to discern his true nature. She had been so uninterested in him that she had never even asked Yulken for a character assessment.
“There are no particularly suspicious points regarding Lord Vincent either.”
“Really? Just to be sure, tell me everything.”
“Yes. For the first two days after your return, he remained inside the castle the entire time. The next day he went hunting with Lord Lux, and yesterday he went out briefly because he had someone to meet outside.”
“……”
It was an utterly ordinary routine. Ariel wondered if she had chosen the wrong person to suspect and decided to double-check just in case.
“Do we have any information on the person he met while he was out?”
“Ah, it was apparently his own child.”
It seemed they had even confirmed the face. In that case, the information was as solid as it could get. Yet Ariel kept frowning, unable to shake off a persistent sense of unease. She couldn’t quite put it into words, but it felt as though she had forgotten something important. Sometimes the heart reacted before the head, and this was one of those moments. Her mind kept telling her there was nothing to suspect, yet something inside her chest kept prickling at her and refused to let go.
What is it?
It would have been easy to dismiss it as a mere feeling, but Ariel kept digging, desperately trying to dredge up the forgotten memory from the depths of her mind.
Vincent. What memories could she possibly have of an old man she had barely spoken to? One month, six months, one year. As she slowly rewound the timeline of her memories, her eyes suddenly flew wide open. It might have been nothing more than a passing conversation, but in the current situation, one small fragment of memory that could prove crucial had finally surfaced.
It had been roughly two years ago. Around the time when Ariel had mended her awkward relationship with her father and the two of them had begun growing closer. As usual, she had been talking with Yulken and was just leaving the room when she suddenly ran into Vincent.
“It’s wonderful to see that you and His Grace have grown so close lately, my lady.”
Since it was news that brought her the greatest joy, Ariel had smiled and responded warmly even though the person speaking was not particularly close to her.
“I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am. By the way, Vincent, are you close with your children?”
“Unfortunately, I spent so many years on the battlefield that I fear we’ve grown rather distant.”
“That’s a shame.”
At the time, Ariel had truly meant it. So when Vincent later asked her a half-joking, half-serious question, she had given him sincere advice.
“If you could tell this old man what helped you and His Grace grow closer, I would be most grateful to learn from it.”
“Hmm… but your children must already be adults, right?”
“Hehe, even so, I have one late-born daughter. She is much younger than you, my lady.”
At the unexpected news, Ariel’s eyes had sparkled. She had launched into a long speech about how the reason parents and children failed to grow close was simply that they never created opportunities to talk, and she had shared her own experience.
“In that case, why don’t you take her hunting or fishing together? It would be a good way to strengthen the bond between father and daughter.”
Ariel had casually suggested that he go hunting with a girl even younger than herself. That was because she believed it was an excellent pastime; after all, it was what had brought her closer to her own father.
“Fishing? That’s an idea I never considered. Unfortunately, hunting would be difficult for me.”
“Why not hunting?”
“It’s embarrassing to admit for someone who once rolled around on the battlefield, but hunting turns my stomach. I simply can’t bring myself to do it.”
Yes. He had definitely said that.
“So you’ve never been hunting even once?”
“Correct. There were occasional invitations to join hunting parties, but I had no choice but to decline them all.”
He had never gone even once. The moment that memory resurfaced, Ariel’s lips curved into a deep arc.
“…Shuri, you didn’t track Vincent after he went hunting, did you?”
“No. Since he had a companion with him, it didn’t seem suspicious, so the person in charge didn’t record any further details.”
Shuri nodded as she flipped through the papers in her hand. Ariel’s smile grew even deeper—and far more savage.
“Tell the four of them to focus their investigation on Vincent. And on Lux as well.”
“Lord Lux too, my lady?”
“Yes.”
Why had they gone hunting together? No—the real reason was probably not hunting at all, but something else that required them to build a closer relationship. It was still difficult to call this conclusive evidence, but as the pieces of the puzzle slowly began to fit together, Ariel did not tremble with a sense of betrayal. Instead, she shivered with delight.
A weak stomach, was it?
If her prediction turned out to be correct, she found herself wanting to test just how far that weak stomach of his could endure.