Prologue

Have you ever killed someone?

I hadn’t. I swear to heaven, not even once.

…Then why had I ended up in a situation like this…?

It was a dark night, with only a tiny crescent moon shining faintly over the surroundings.

Dark clouds swallowed the moonlight, and pitch-black darkness settled over everything.

This was deep inside the Imperial Palace,

in an abandoned garden that no one ever visited.

“Haah….”

No one saw me, right…?

I clutched my heart, which was beating like crazy.

Everything had gone terribly wrong.

“First… First, I need to hide them somewhere no one can see… Hic!”

A hiccup suddenly forced its way up my throat.

My head wasn’t working properly, and my fingertips were cold as ice.

Three men were lying collapsed in front of me.

First.

Dai, the fixer from the back alleys who was my master.

He lay there with his eyes half-open, staring blankly into the air.

Blood was gushing from his chest.

I placed my trembling hand against his neck.

There was no pulse.

“…He’s dead.”

The moment I said those words, reality came crashing down on me.

I covered my mouth and stumbled backward.

I desperately wanted to run away like this, but….

‘…Then I’ll die too.’

So I couldn’t just stand there.

Almost mechanically, I dragged the fixer’s body toward the edge of the bushes.

His clothes dragged across the ground and became dirty.

I had washed those clothes so carefully with my hands in the freezing water of midwinter…

But now, that didn’t matter anymore.

I pushed his body deep into the bushes.

The untrimmed grass was more than enough to completely hide his body.

And next—

A fat, middle-aged nobleman.

He was a luxurious-looking man with the plump cheeks that only wealthy people seemed to have.

“Ugh. It’s damp….”

He had also collapsed after being stabbed.

I bit my small lips tightly and dragged his body into the bushes, burying him there.

That took care of the second man.

And finally, the last one.

The man lying on the ground.

Even in the darkness of night, his platinum-colored hair shone faintly. His neat, soft features looked as if they had been carved from stone.

I had only seen him for the first time today, but he was someone I could never forget.

The Third Prince of the Ozvalt Empire, Ozvalt Yulian.

My hands trembled.

I felt like the man could raise his bright yellow eyes at any moment, and I could hardly breathe.

I didn’t want to check….

But I had to.

I took a deep breath and carefully checked for his breathing with my trembling fingertips.

I could feel the faint movement of air.

…He was alive.

“Haa… haa….”

Thud!

All the strength left my body, and I sank to the ground.

It felt as though all the blood had drained from my body.

“Vanillin, you idiot….”

You biiig idiot…!

I covered my cheeks with both trembling hands.

Was it a good thing that the Third Prince was alive?

…Or was it the worst possible thing?

“How did I end up doing this to the Third Prince…?”

I raised my head and looked at the sky.

It was still dark.

As if it were predicting my future.

“How did things end up like this?”

Sniff.

Trembling beside the fallen Third Prince in the middle of the abandoned garden of the Imperial Palace,

I remembered that morning—the morning when everything had started going wrong.