The Saintess's Return and a Secret Date
The reaction was far more intense than when I first learned that I had a half-sister and that she was the Saintess.
‘They’re not deciding sibling hierarchy by height, right?’
If height determined who was the older sister, I would have been the third in our household.
‘Anika is growing so fast she might make me the fourth soon.’
Instead of the shrinking Ivetta, who looked like a startled rabbit, I faced Beth.
“Since Ivetta was born first, she’s the older sister.”
Ivetta’s birthday was in summer and Beth’s was in autumn. The difference was only a few months, but Ivetta was still the older one.
Beth looked genuinely aggrieved.
“We’re basically the same age anyway, so I’m not calling her ‘sister’!”
She warned Ivetta with the threatening tone of a rebellious teenager.
It was an unacceptable challenge to the authority of the eldest child in the family, but Ivetta simply nodded without protest.
“Alright.”
“Hey, why are you speaking so formally to me?”
Beth asked, leaning in aggressively.
“Uh, um?”
“You said we have to act close, remember?”
I had indeed said that. That we needed to look like affectionate sisters who didn’t want to be separated after finally reuniting.
‘Beth’s version of “acting close” is a little rough, though.’
“Just talk normally. By the way, if you’re the Saintess, can you use healing magic?”
“It’s a bit different from healing magic…”
Before I knew it, Ivetta had been completely swept up in Beth’s pace.
‘Looks like they’ll get along just fine.’
I quietly slipped out of the drawing room to give the sisters some private time together.
I had plenty of work to do myself.
The very next morning, the temple made a grand announcement of the Saintess’s return.
It was a deliberate move to pressure the Emperor, who had taken Ivetta away.
Even ordinary imperial citizens who possessed only faint divine power—not enough to become priests—claimed to have witnessed Ivetta’s awakening in their dreams. The rumor spread at an unprecedented speed.
The entire empire was thrown into a frenzy over the appearance of a Saintess for the first time in hundreds of years.
Exactly as the temple had intended.
For now, only the fact of the Saintess’s awakening had been revealed, but if the Emperor continued to refuse to hand Ivetta over, it was obvious what the temple would announce next.
‘They’ll probably spread rumors that the Emperor kidnapped and is tormenting Ivetta to monopolize Minos’s blessing.’
Even though it was actually the temple that had abused her.
We had made our own preparations, but I was still angry.
‘Lord Minos. No matter how happy you were about Ivetta’s awakening, did you really have to make such a spectacle of it?’
I found myself resenting the god Minos. At this rate, I was the one who was going to become a heretic.
But I didn’t have time to dwell on my resentment toward Minos for long.
“I thought we’d have at least a day or two,” I muttered.
“Same here.”
“We’ll just have to move faster.”
The temple had moved much quicker than we anticipated.
As we reviewed the news of the Saintess’s awakening printed in every major daily newspaper, we cursed the temple for only ever being this diligent when it came to causing trouble and doubled down on our work.
The Blue Hawk practically halted all other operations and devoted itself entirely to collecting and organizing evidence of the temple’s corruption.
The more cards we had against the enemy, the better.
In the meantime, before the temple could announce that the Saintess had been taken to the imperial palace, the Emperor made the first move and revealed that she was staying in the detached palace as an honored guest.
Of course, he also released the confessions from the priests who had drunk Azela’s special truth serum, detailing the circumstances of Ivetta’s abuse.
In every major city across the empire, magical recording devices played the priests’ confessions on endless repeat.
The Emperor carefully steered public opinion so that the priests’ crimes remained the main focus, while also revealing the stories of Ivetta and Beth one after another.
‘Beth, who grew up abused in a noble family that had been wiped out and was rescued by the Emperor. And Ivetta, who was abandoned at the temple as a child and likewise grew up suffering abuse.’
When the emotional seasoning was added—that the two had recognized each other as family at first sight and quickly become deeply attached sisters—sympathy for the Saintess skyrocketed.
‘Everyone knows the destroyed noble house referred to only by initials is the Robertus family, but other, more sensational issues buried that fact.’
Few imperial citizens still believed the temple was innocent, but the reason they had remained quiet until now was that there had been no clear spark to ignite their anger.
‘And this incident is more than enough to become the fuse for that fury.’
It concerned a Saintess who had appeared after hundreds of years—one who was clearly overflowing with Minos’s divine favor.
Public sentiment boiled across the entire empire.
“Those damn priests… how could they do that to our Saintess…?”
“I knew the temple was rotten, but this is just too much!”
“Hey, did you see yesterday’s paper? The Saintess had a younger sister she didn’t even know existed… The two of them are so touching that the maids say they secretly cry every day just watching them…”
“I saw it. My in-law’s nephew’s aunt works as a servant in the palace, and she says the Saintess’s younger sister is one of the Emperor’s close aides. After learning about her older sister’s story, she begged the Emperor to protect her, which is why the Saintess is staying in the detached palace.”
Exactly the direction the Emperor had guided them toward.
But the temple wasn’t sitting idle either.
The priests of Peram Temple immediately claimed that the individuals in question had been demoted twenty years ago for committing crimes within the temple, and that their offenses were personal deviations—the temple itself had known nothing.
The High Priest, like a lizard cutting off its own tail, announced their excommunication at the same time.
He then personally appeared in the public square to offer prayers of repentance.
He even pushed forward the few genuinely clean and upright priests within the temple to try to restore its tarnished image.
After all, if a child who could never do nine things right suddenly does one thing well, they get praised for it.
The imperial citizens, who had never held high expectations for the temple, saw their anger cool slightly at this level of damage control.
‘They’ve been doing bad things for years, so it’s not easy to shake them.’
True to his undefeated knight reputation, the Emperor began to slowly withdraw once public opinion started to subside.
‘He had already achieved what he wanted, so there was no need to push too hard.’
The materials on the temple’s corruption that the Blue Hawk had been preparing were carefully stored away in a safe, to be used another day.
At last, the string of all-night work sessions had come to an end.
It was our first date in a long time.
We coordinated our time off and decided to visit a lake near the capital.
It was the same place we had tried to go once before, only for Everett to get too busy and the plan to fall through.
“Ed.”
The moment I spotted Everett, I ran toward him.
I had built up so much speed that I nearly couldn’t stop in time, but Everett caught me at just the right moment.
“You need to be careful, Lina.”
Everett steadied me as I teetered off balance.
“It’s been so long.”
I smiled and hugged him, hoping to avoid a scolding.
Everett froze like a marble statue for a few seconds before carefully wrapping his arms around me in return.
‘Huh? Wait?’
My plan to fluster Everett, who was unusually weak to physical affection, had completely backfired.
I was the one who ended up flustered.
Still holding me in his arms, Everett looked into my eyes and whispered.
“I missed you.”
His cheeks were faintly flushed, as if embarrassed by his own cheesy words, but he didn’t look away.
I was the one who averted my gaze first.
My fingertips tingled.
And it was suddenly way too hot.
I carefully slipped out of his embrace.
“I missed you too, Ed.”
That didn’t mean I disliked this more assertive version of Everett, so I made sure to express that clearly.
I cleared my throat awkwardly and changed the subject.
“By the way, I’ve been calling you ‘Ed’ this whole time.”
Thanks to all the hard training, the nickname “Ed” had become completely natural in a short time.
Everett called me “Lina” too, but that was my actual nickname.
‘What should I call him?’
Since Everett didn’t really have any obvious pet names, I found myself a little stumped.
“You can keep calling me Ed.”
“Really?”
It was definitely better than the pudding, jelly, or other food-related nicknames I had been considering.
‘And it has some memories attached to it.’
“Alright then, Ed.”
I held out my hand to him like a haughty noble young lady.
“I like it too, Lina.”
Everett gently lifted my hand and kissed the back of it.
‘He could have kissed somewhere else.’
I hid my mischievous thoughts behind a bright smile.
If I had known that this was right next to Emerald Lake—the hottest dating spot in the capital these days—and that Lucy, who was also on a long-awaited date with her lover, was standing right behind me watching the entire scene with her hand clamped over her mouth in shock, I would never have done it.