TLFR 07

Chapter 7

The green eyes that had been perusing the documents slid down to the back of the maid prostrated at his feet.

“Disappeared? That woman?”

To him, it was a story utterly lacking in reality.

Rayeon briefly fumbled through several possibilities in his mind, then indifferently turned his gaze back to the documents.

“Search thoroughly. Check whether she hasn’t lost her way somewhere in the annex.”

Ines had nowhere to go. The annex of the imperial palace was filled with Eleanor’s people—those watching her under Rayeon’s orders. Not just the maids, but the stationed knights as well were all Eleanor’s private soldiers.

There was no way a small, powerless woman like Ines could evade all those countless eyes.

Rayeon began reading the documents again. It was the budget matter for the Grand Duke’s residence that he had not been able to review for quite some time.

“We searched… we searched everywhere, Your Highness. Not just the annex, but even the rear garden of the main palace…”

The budget allocated to the residence this year was 70,000 gold. Of that, one-third went to charitable projects for the duchy’s people.

“We confirmed she went out to stroll in the rear garden, and we waited for her to return, but the sun set and she did not come back…”

One-third went to charitable projects…

“We sent a search request to the imperial palace knights as well, but even after searching for hours, she could not be found anywhere…”

Charitable projects…

Only after reading the same line three times did Rayeon slowly set the documents down on the table. The green eyes that turned back to the maid were coldly sunken.

“So. You could not find her?”

The maid, Berry, sensed the murderous aura violently emanating from her master and pressed her forehead flat against the floor. Rayeon stared at the trembling maid’s back, then rose from his seat.

His head still insisted this could not be. To her, Lezan was a complete foreign land.

Even if she had succeeded in leaving the annex, it was impossible to get past the main gate of the imperial palace.

<Why are you so good to me?>

That voice that had asked so innocently echoed in his ears.

<Letting me stay in a good place, dressing me in good clothes, giving me precious gifts… treating me… kindly.>

She had looked at him with those eyes, asked him with such blind innocence—and then ran away?

Nonsense.

Rayeon thought so, and yet he passed the maid and left the office.

However, when he arrived at the annex of the imperial palace, what awaited him was a room cold without a trace of warmth.

The silver dress Ines had worn yesterday was neatly folded on the table. So was the necklace he had personally placed around her neck a few days ago.

Just yesterday, the color he had been satisfied with lay discarded without care.

Yes. Discarded.

That was not all of Ines’s traces. The yellow dress she had supposedly worn out this morning and the silver hair ornament were also laid neatly on the bed.

Instead, the shabby white dress that had been thrown in a corner of the wardrobe was gone. That thin scrap of cloth she had been wearing the day she came to Lezan.

The maid reported, trembling.

“She definitely went out carrying nothing in her hands… I do not know how she took that dress with her…”

Everything except what she had worn when she came here had been left behind. The meaning of that fact was clear. She had not been kidnapped somewhere—she had run away. On her own two feet.

“…How amusing.”

Contrary to the words he muttered after a long while, not a single expression had risen to Rayeon’s face.

He looked down at the emerald necklace radiating a brilliant luster.

I let her out just briefly to feel how cold and desolate it is outside Eleanor’s fence, and…

She had the audacity to run away.

Rayeon Eleanor was a man who had never once failed to grasp what he wanted.

He weighed the value of something, calculated the effort required accordingly, and achieved it. It was the same on the battlefield and in politics.

And yet a woman worth less than a commoner had slipped from his grasp.

A bastard had run away. Again.

That fact summoned memories from ten years ago.

The day his uncle—who had been as kind to him as his own parents—betrayed him, the previous Grand Duke and Duchess, and Eleanor.

A hollow smile spread across his lips.

“…I thought wrong. Truly.”

Without even going through complicated procedures, it would have been excessive kindness to drag her down to the basement and threaten her. The bastard sort truly could not be trusted. What had he been so certain of, with that feverish heat that had lingered on his lips for so long?

The emerald necklace was crumpled wretchedly in his large grip.

Before long, an order fell.

“…She cannot have fled far yet. Deploy the knights.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Rayeon felt the cold touch of the necklace wrapped between his fingers, then slowly called the knight back.

“…No.”

When the knight turned back in bewilderment, he saw an emotion clearly risen in his lord’s eyes for the first time in a long while. It was the eye of one who had recognized prey before beginning a hunt.

His lips, which had always maintained composure, twisted.

“I will go myself.”

Chapter 2. Living in My Country

The bastard of Genear had disappeared.

No matter how much Lezan and Eleanor concealed the fact and secretly pursued her, what was bound to leak leaked.

No one could guess how she had broken through the imperial palace’s strict security. The bastard had vanished without a trace, as if she had never existed there in the first place.

But everyone expected that the woman would be caught and brought back within two days at the shortest, five days at the longest.

Where would a young woman barely grown, in a hostile country with no connections, have to run?

Common sense said so, but…

Ines was not caught even after three whole months had passed.

The knights who had been guarding the imperial palace entrance at the time of the woman’s disappearance were all dragged away and reprimanded, and wanted posters for her were put up throughout Lezan, including the capital.

Every force that could be mobilized searched all of Lezan for three months. Eleanor was the same.

But she was nowhere. At this point, it was reasonable to conclude she had left Lezan’s borders entirely.

The external situation surrounding Lezan and Eleanor reversed in an instant. Genear’s backlash was a natural result.

“At first, you said a month at the longest, did you not? What happened? Over three months have passed already.”

“We will definitely, definitely find her…”

“How many more times must I hear the word ‘definitely’? At this point, I have no choice but to doubt reasonably.”

“Doubt what?”

“Whether Lady Ines’s disappearance was truly her own will. Perhaps Lezan intends to indirectly refuse Genear’s goodwill.”

Genear’s envoy arrogantly raised his head.

However, Genear’s side was not entirely comfortable either. Within the arrogant message sent by Genear’s emperor, a hint of unease had sprouted.

Ines. The child born to Genear’s second princess and a wandering sorcerer was a host of misfortune born carrying a very ancient darkness passed down in Genear.

The plan to plant it in Lezan had gone awry.

What if it were to return to Genear?

They had trampled it so it could not dare bare its claws, but what if it returned bearing a grudge belatedly? That could not be allowed.

Genear’s envoy put force into his voice and warned the ruler of Lezan.

“Even if a bastard, she is still Genear’s imperial blood. Find her unconditionally. If she is dead, then at least her corpse. Separately from that, Lezan and Eleanor must find a way to placate the wrath of His Majesty the Emperor of Genear.”

“Genear has nothing to fear. Emperor of Lezan.”

It was blatant intimidation.

A single wretched bastard had thrown a spark of war onto the continent.

The situation in which her existence—which no one had acknowledged—held the continent’s hegemonies in suspense was truly a comedy.

In the end, Lezan had to make a decision. The one who took strong measures was the Crown Prince.

“I will go to Genear, Your Majesty. I must settle the situation. No matter that Eleanor exists, Lezan cannot digest any more war.”

“You mean to go to a hostile country on your own feet, Edgar? Words say envoy, but you will be no different from a hostage.”

“To conclude the new treaty anyway, someone had to go to Genear. Even for them, if the Crown Prince comes as the head of the delegation, they will not be able to intimidate so recklessly as they do now.”

Edgar’s expression was consistently calm. Unlikely as it was, he looked as though he had anticipated things would turn out this way.

“The method is… yes. Now there is no other way.”

The emperor let out a frustrated breath.

“If only we could find that imperial blood, everything would be solved. Where on earth did she evaporate to… Even turning all of Eleanor upside down, she is not there.”

The pursuit had begun the very night Ines disappeared. It was a fact that had spread secretly that the Grand Duke himself, who had been in charge of handling the bastard, had stepped forward.

Already three months, without even returning to the duchy.

The obsessive aspect of the Grand Duke of Eleanor was something one would expect to see on a battlefield.

If anyone once defied him and dared to rebel, he pursued and trampled them until their roots were pulled out. He was a man with a twisted madness inherent beneath an indifferent and solid mask.

Moreover, this matter involved a bastard as the subject of pursuit. This strange chase bore a resemblance to ten years ago, when he personally suppressed the rebellion that had occurred in the duchy.

The bastard of Eleanor who had slaughtered the previous Grand Duke and Duchess had fled for over a year. But in the end, that one met the same fate as those others—caught by the nephew who had tenaciously pursued him and left sprawled dead.

Rayeon, then and now, had never lost his reason or been swept up in flames of emotion. He was a person who grew colder and more senseless the more he felt a sense of crisis.

But such people were all the more frightening. Because one could not tell at all what they were thinking inside.

In that state, the emperor could not even dare to reprimand the Grand Duke or order him to return Gelnova.

“…That bastard will not meet a good end either.”