Hidden Cracks in the Palace
Even Adrian had to admit that using the alias "Rian" was rather uninspired. Yet precisely because it was so blatantly obvious, no one ever dreamed of connecting the rough-and-tumble sellsword to Prince Adrian himself.
Neither the Empress nor Adrian placed an ounce of trust in the Emperor. The Empress's maiden family, the prestigious House of Integria, felt precisely the same way.
For now, the Emperor still walked on eggshells around the great noble houses. After all, he had taken the only daughter of House Integria, one of the empire's oldest and most revered bloodlines, as his Empress and had fathered an heir with her. Even if he stopped short of deposing the Empress or having Adrian murdered outright... what would happen if he openly invested Brian as Crown Prince?
From that very moment, Adrian's fate would be sealed. To clear Brian's path, the Emperor would inevitably eliminate him. And if death was in the cards, Adrian refused to go down without putting up a fight.
That was why Adrian had secretly sought to secure a mercenary company of his own. Yet mercenaries were unruly beasts—wild horses that defied the bridle. Even wealthy noble houses couldn't effortlessly tame them. Once an assignment was fulfilled, they vanished like mist, and being an opportunistic rabble pulled from the gutter, their individual morals were practically nonexistent. There was good reason highborn families poured fortunes into raising disciplined knights and standing soldiers instead.
In the end, Adrian had simply rolled up his sleeves and jumped into the mud himself. Even he acknowledged it was madness: playing the sellsword under the flimsy name of Rian.
Initially, it had merely been a trial run to see if such a scheme was even feasible. But against all odds, the gambit worked, turning him into a surprisingly convincing mercenary. By then, it was far too late to change his moniker.
Still, he harbored no illusions about the danger. Even if he was a disregarded prince tucked away in the Empress's palace, what if his secret leaked? If Imperial Consort Cleo ever caught wind of it, she would gleefully applaud the thorn in her side walking straight into peril and dispatch assassins without a second thought.
Yet by braving those risks and earning his stripes on the capital's rough streets, Adrian had successfully brought two formidable mercenary bands under his thumb. The discreet backing of House Integria had smoothed the path considerably.
Even with the companies consolidated and managed through proxies, he still had to show his face periodically to inspect the ranks. He simply hadn't anticipated that, on a day he finally managed to slip out, an uninvited guest would track him down in such a fashion.
"Of course, our family isn't lacking in personnel," Bibi said. "A manpower shortage along the northern front against the demonic beasts is a chronic ailment, but surely you don't think I'm asking Your Imperial Highness for frontline troops?"
Wait... wasn't her tone around Titania a lot more... adorable? Adrian was struck by a bizarre sense of dissonance as he looked down at the tiny girl speaking with such chilling composure. Paying his bewilderment no heed, Bibi gave a small snort.
"What I want to borrow are people to keep watch on the Bradley earldom. It would be ideal if you could also keep an eye on Imperial Consort Elaine inside the palace... though that's a favor I'll likely need to ask Her Majesty the Empress."
"Wait a second. Aren't you tossing around some dangerously sensitive topics?" Adrian shook his head in disbelief. "Count Bradley's family? The Empress and I keep our heads down and barely dare to breathe in the palace, but... Imperial Consort Elaine is hidden away so deeply that some servants genuinely wonder if she's even alive. And above all, His Majesty the Emperor still keeps an unspoken, obsessive watch over her."
He gave a slow, bitter shake of his head.
The ugly ego of an insecure man...
If Elaine's health was truly so frail, sending her away to a warm estate with a milder climate to recuperate would have been the merciful choice. Instead, the Emperor preferred that she wither and rot within the palace walls. A lofty woman who dared reject him over a dead former lover—if she had to die, the Emperor insisted she die under his roof.
"Besides," Adrian pressed, "this involves Titania, doesn't it?"
The look in Bibi's eyes shifted instantly. Sensed through her tension, the knight guarding her back shot a piercing glare straight at Adrian.
Good grief, even the bodyguards serving the Castreins are monstrous... Despite the intimidating atmosphere, Adrian maintained his composure without missing a beat. No matter how unfavorable his situation, his silver tongue remained his greatest weapon.
"You know Titania and I have formed an alliance, don't you, my lady? Why are you doing this? Could this end up harming her? Not that I think you'd ever intentionally hurt her, but... this is her sorest spot. Her reverse scale. You can't just carelessly meddle with matters concerning her biological mother."
No matter how composed she pretended to be now, Adrian clearly remembered the days when Titania had desperately scrambled for even a sliver of her mother's affection. Though she seemed completely different these days...
Even now, she never brings up her birth mother.
She acted as though she had severed all lingering attachments, behaving as if a mother had never existed in her life at all. Yet paradoxically, that stoic indifference proved it was an untouchable scar. Burdened by lingering guilt over having neglected Titania in the past, neither Adrian nor the Empress could bring themselves to poke at that wound. Bibi, who could hardly be ignorant of that fact, saw her expression darken.
"...We've confirmed contact between Imperial Consort Cleo and Imperial Consort Elaine," Bibi said, her tone heavy with gloom. "And though I couldn't bring myself to tell Sister Titania, I looked into Lady Elaine's family and the circumstances surrounding her entry into the imperial palace. ...There are too many strange discrepancies."
"Strange discrepancies? Like what?"
Adrian had been quite young when Titania was born, so the finer details eluded his memory. All he remembered was an astonishingly beautiful, unbearably sorrowful woman appearing at his father's side, and his own mother looking at him with deep-seated sorrow, sighing again and again.
"The Bradley earldom is... essentially the Emperor's hunting dog," Bibi explained. "They handled all manner of dirty work, yet their status remained unusually low. The iron mine granted to them as compensation after Consort Elaine entered the palace was so unprofitable it was practically abandoned. Above all, Sister Titania was virtually betrothed to the Castrein Duchy from the womb. Even if Consort Elaine washed her hands of Sister Titania, the Bradley family should have jumped at the chance to intervene and claim their stake as her maternal kin..."
"Couldn't Consort Cleo have blocked them?"
"Even with her interference, would they surrender such a golden opportunity so easily? The chance to act as maternal relatives to an imperial princess—and the future Duchess of Castrein? No matter how doted upon Consort Cleo might be, the Emperor would never appreciate his own direct hounds cowering beneath a concubine's skirts."
That wasn't all. Bibi seethed inwardly as another discovery she hadn't dared disclose to Adrian echoed in her mind.
'Among the provisions entering the Lycoris Palace, there is no poison.'
No poison?
Then was Princess Titania's claim—that Imperial Consort Elaine was slowly poisoning herself in seclusion—a lie?
No. Bibi believed Titania with all her heart. Titania genuinely believed that Elaine had sequestered herself and was deliberately ingesting poison...
Yet a dreadful premonition clung to her thoughts. In her previous life before the regression, countless people had succumbed to an unidentified wasting disease, beginning with Consort Elaine. Lasper of the Castrein Duchy had been among them.
What if...
What if, by some terrible chance...
"...What if Her Highness has other motives entirely?"
What if Imperial Consort Elaine had played some part in that mysterious illness? What if there existed a truth Titania was completely blind to?
Bibi prayed with every fiber of her being that it wasn't true. And even if it was, she wanted it resolved and buried before Titania ever caught wind of it.
"What if we've been utterly mistaken, and Consort Elaine has secretly allied herself with a completely different faction?"
Adrian's face hardened.
"That's pure speculation," he replied, his voice firm and decisive. "Imperial Consort Elaine possesses zero actual authority, and there is nothing within her power to accomplish. Even if she had schemes, she would have insisted on raising Titania with her own hands from infancy. Granted, that would have drawn Consort Cleo's vicious scrutiny... but braving assassination attempts to protect her own daughter would have been far simpler than orchestrating conspiracies from total isolation."
"......"
"You care for Titania so deeply that your imagination is running wild. Why don't you take a breath?" Adrian said. "Besides, based on what you've just said, I don't see why you need to borrow my men. When it comes to tailing someone or gathering intelligence, Castrein surely has—"
"We cannot dig into the Bradley family," Bibi cut in. "...Because it would bring harm to Sister Titania."
Ah. Only then did Adrian grasp her dilemma.
There was an infamous rumor that Titania was not the Emperor's child, but rather conceived between Elaine and her lover before she was dragged into the imperial harem.
Though decades had muted the whispers, if word got out that House Castrein was snooping into the Bradley earldom—and by extension, the sordid origins of Titania's birth—it would ignite an uncontrollable disaster for everyone involved.
"Even so, meddling from my end is poking a hornet's nest," Adrian mused. "Still... if it's true that Imperial Consort Cleo has been in contact with Consort Elaine..."
His green eyes darkened with calculating resolve.
"There might be an angle to exploit after all. The hounds Consort Cleo keeps on her leash are notoriously low-grade."