VL 07

Chapter 7

The Imperial Consort’s performance was somewhat exaggerated, but precisely because of that, it unexpectedly struck a chord with the crowd.

Well…… of course, there was still a bit of whispering going on.

“Did the Consort………… really love the Third Prince that much?”

“All those rumors about the two of them being on cold terms must have been total nonsense.”

“Seriously. There’s no other way she could cry so heartbreakingly…………”

And the person listening to those remarks with the most stunned look on his face was none other than Carden.

“What on earth is going on here…………”

“Something straight out of a history book…………”

“Then the Consort really isn’t the culprit…………”

The confusion among the murmuring crowd deepened even further.

Naturally, the Empress was not one to let such a golden opportunity slip by.

She immediately rushed to Rowan, affectionately wrapping an arm around her shoulders, and—just as Rowan had done—cried out in vehement appeal to the Emperor.

“Poor Consort! Even after being nearly poisoned to death yourself, all you care about is the Prince. How can your heart be so pure?”

It was a remarkably tender tone for someone who, just a short while ago, had handed Rowan the most lethal poison in the world and told her to end her own life.

Cradled in the Empress’s arms, Mokyeong swallowed a dry laugh inwardly.

‘This woman is no joke either.’

She herself was fairly shameless, but changing faces with that kind of instantaneous fluidity was no easy feat.

Acting as though she genuinely cared for the imperial couple, the Empress dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief and turned to address the Emperor with fiery indignation.

“The Consort is right, Your Majesty! You must thoroughly investigate who dared to attempt the assassination of the Third Prince, whom you hold so dear. This is nothing short of a direct challenge to the imperial lineage!”

The Empress’s mind was racing.

Judging by how things were unfolding, this had to be the Prince’s own self-staged scheme.

‘No wonder his elite guards were far calmer than expected…………’

The clues she had missed in her panic were finally coming into focus.

If this truly was the Prince’s own fabrication, the more the facts were brought to light, the more disadvantageous it would be for the Third Prince.

‘I can’t let this opportunity slip away.’

Thinking cunningly, the Empress pulled the helpful Consort—who had unexpectedly turned a crisis into an opportunity—even closer with feigned affection.

If the Prince had woken up normal, she would have found some way to corner the Consort once again, but this changed the game entirely.

‘She’s smarter than I thought. I can use her a bit more.’

She had thought she tripped and hit her face on the ground, but this incident had turned out to be an even better opportunity for the Empress.

No matter what happened to the Prince from here on out, people wouldn’t immediately suspect the Empress or the Consort the way they used to.

However, Carden—who could easily guess what the Empress was thinking—was hardly going to just sit back and let it happen.

“…………Strange. It was the Consort’s maid who brought in the tea leaves, yet the Consort claims she didn’t prepare the tea herself.”

“Is that so? Well, that is rather odd. Consort, do you remember which maid was serving the tea?”

Unfortunately, she was a maid who didn’t exist in Rowan’s memories.

Within the Prince’s palace, maids were swapped out as frequently as meals, so Rowan hadn’t bothered to memorize every single one of their faces and names.

They were bound to be the Empress’s people, the Prince’s people, or the Emperor’s people anyway.

In this vast palace, she had no allies, no people of her own.

Yet the important thing here wasn’t whose person that maid was.

It was the fact that this cross-examination would allow Mokyeong to get what she ‘truly’ wanted.

That was what mattered most.

“His Highness and Your Majesty’s suspicions are entirely justified. It is only natural that you still suspect me. Therefore, Your Majesty…………”

Heavy tears welled up and spilled from Mokyeong’s eyes once more.

Her reddened eye rims, looking up at the Emperor, were practically desperate.

With a face baked red from crying so much, Mokyeong flattened herself against the floor at the Emperor’s feet and made a swift, impassioned appeal.

“Please confine me to my estate until the culprit is caught!”

The head of the Empress, who had been holding Rowan close, whipped around in surprise.

The heavy footsteps of full-grown men echoed sharply down the long corridor.

Having walked all the way back to his bedchamber without uttering a single word, Carden was followed closely by a swarm of his elite guards.

Click.

The sound of the door closing echoed behind Carden as he came to an abrupt halt.

And at the exact same moment.

“…………Ha.”

A hollow, incredulous laugh broke from Carden’s lips as he swept a hand back across his brow.

“Ha, ha ha………… Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“Y-Your Highness?”

“Pfft—ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Once the laughter broke free, it spilled out in loud, unruly bursts as if detached from his own will.

It was a full-bellied roar of laughter, loud enough to leave his trailing, miserable-looking guards standing there in blank, terrified shock.

Even after the Consort had volunteered for confinement, the imperial palace had been turned completely upside down once more, yet the person who had suffered the greatest blow hadn’t said a single word the entire way back to his quarters. That had only made his guards all the more anxious.

And yet, the moment the door shut, he starts laughing like this…………?

“Your Highness…………”

Could it be that his plan failed so miserably it actually snapped his mind?

Though the question carried a heavy undercurrent of worry, Carden’s laughter showed no signs of stopping.

A restless Taylor hurriedly checked the door latch connecting to the hallway one more time before cautioning him in a low, careful voice.

“Your Highness, it would be wise to lower your voice. If anyone were to overhear…………”

“So what if they do, Taylor? A man who just came back from the dead is allowed a little chuckle in his own room. Right? Ah-ha-ha-ha!”

Still unable to stop laughing, Carden waved a hand dismissively.

Shaking his head with a wry smile, he walked over to the shelf and pulled out a bottle of whiskey.

Pouring the dark amber liquor into a silver cup, Carden tossed it back in a single swallow before his guards could even stop him.

“Y-Your Highness. The poison is still—”

“A man needs to celebrate coming back from the dead.”

Cutting them off abruptly, Carden poured himself a second glass.

As he closed his eyes, savoring the sensation of the harsh liquor clawing its way down his empty stomach, the events of a short while ago rushed back to him.

When he had just woken from the venom, Carden’s mind hadn’t been fully clear yet.

His body felt as heavy as if it were submerged deep in water, and the surrounding sounds echoed dully as though thick plugs had been shoved into his ears.

However, when he heard the Empress’s voice drifting through that hazy blur of noise, he instinctively squeezed his eyes shut and forced his breathing to a halt.

“Consort, the herbs seem to have burned down completely, so why isn’t the Prince waking up?”

Consort, herbs, Prince…………

That suspicious combination of words slowly dragged his brain awake.

Ah, right.

He had ingested the poison alongside the Consort.

The plan was for Taylor to revive him with the prepared antidote once his own funeral services began.

Even without taking the antidote, the poison would naturally clear from his system after about five days, but he had required a dramatic spectacle.

Thus, just like the legendary First Emperor, when his coffin entered the imperial chapel for final mass, Taylor was supposed to inject the antidote into his bloodline via a needle tip.

The moment a centuries-old legend that no one believed in became reality.

A dead prince returning to life through divine blessing.

Yet from the sounds echoing around him right now, this clearly wasn’t the chapel.

There was no priest chanting a mass, nor the tolling of a bell.

Instead, what reached his ears was the Empress’s voice and the sound of countless people breathing.

‘Was Ellow’s poison too weak…………?’

Had it worn off naturally faster than expected because of that? Or had Taylor advanced the schedule for some reason?

Just as he was forcibly turning his sluggish, poison-fogged brain to figure it out, an unfamiliar voice had cut through the air.

“Your Highness, are you truly not going to wake up? Even when everyone is waiting so desperately for you?”

Unfamiliar.

No, it wasn’t unfamiliar at all.

It was a voice he had undoubtedly heard countless times before, yet it felt subtly different.

What was different about it?

Wait, whose voice was it again…………?

As he was slowly pondering that question, a pair of ice-cold hands cupped his cheeks and the back of his neck.

He barely managed to suppress the urge to flinch like some inexperienced novice just in time.

And the moment he did—

A chilly snowflake pressed softly against his tightly sealed lips.

‘…?’

At first, he didn’t understand what it was.

However, it didn’t take him long to realize that the thing covering his lips was someone else’s mouth.

‘…!’

Startled, his lips parted of their own accord, and a fragrant, sweet sensation pressed past them.

To his utter idiocy, Carden realized a beat too late that it was the tongue of the woman pressing against his mouth.

And at the exact same time, he recognized the identity of this insane woman holding his face and kissing him.

Rowan Oult.

His wife, sent to his side for the sole purpose of killing him.

But the realization came too late, and the invasion had already begun.

Accompanied by a sweetness so excessive it felt as though honey had been smeared across the tip of her tongue, an unidentifiable, warm current rushed deep down his throat.

By the time he thought to stop it, it was already too late.

Even as he tried to fight swallowing it, the energy gliding along the tip of his tongue slipped past his throat and sank deep into his chest.

At that instant, he felt something snap softly within his heavily weighted body.

‘What on earth did she feed me?’

Snapping his eyes wide open, Carden moved to glare down at the wife holding his face, but the lips that had been pressed against his slowly pulled away.

Just as his mouth twitched involuntarily at the sudden, strange emptiness left behind,

The woman’s face—previously blurred by the lingering fog of the venom—gradually came into sharp focus through the widening gap.

A cascade of silver hair falling like a waterfall.

Amidst that hair, heterochromatic irises of mesmerizing green and gold stared straight into his eyes without a single tremor.

For a moment, Carden couldn’t process a single thought.

The Rowan Oult he knew had never looked at anyone with eyes like that.

She was a woman who always avoided his gaze, and if their eyes ever accidentally met, she would bow her head first like a criminal caught in the act.

Yet the woman standing before him now, having opened her eyes to face him—

“You’re finally awake, Your Highness.”

—was looking at him with a bewitching smile he had never seen before.

She had become the ultimate, unpredictable variable that completely shattered his meticulously crafted plan.

Even worse…………….

“………What on earth did you just do to me?”

“Nothing at all.”

“I simply woke our sleeping Prince a little ahead of schedule.”

Rowan knew for a fact that he wasn’t dead.

On top of that, calling it ‘a little ahead of schedule’—

Didn’t that mean she even knew when he was supposed to wake up?

‘How on earth did that woman…?’