Chapter 32
Despite having the audacity to bargain with royalty, the girl before him didn’t even bat an eye.
To an outsider, it would look as though this heinous behavior was not her first time.
Padrick could only stand there dazed, unable to believe what he had heard with his own ears.
“First, do not harm those around me on the pretext that I rejected Your Highness’s proposal.”
In the meantime, her words continued, shamelessly calm.
“Whomever I choose to marry is strictly a matter of my own free will. Do not attempt to force through power what should be achieved through mutual agreement and respect.”
It was a stubborn refusal.
One condition was already enough to leave him speechless, but she claimed there was still one more left.
The trembling caused by the unfamiliar sensation quickly subsided, and anger rushed in to fill its place.
Padrick let out a cold snort.
“Since you’ve dared to come here to blackmailed me, I assume you’re prepared for the consequences. If I were to cut to the chase and have your tongue ripped out right here, would you still be able to wag that clever mouth of yours?”
“Your Highness cannot do that. If I were to die now, the opportunity to redeem your mistake yourself will vanish forever.”
It wasn’t a guess; it was a conviction. As if to prove she wasn’t bluffing, her voice remained perfectly level.
Her chillingly composed manner of speech reminded him of someone.
It was his mother, who would be waiting for her son deep within the Great Palace at this very moment.
‘Just… what on earth is going on…!’
It was a useless question in the face of what had already transpired.
What mattered was this woman’s hostility, which was all the more bone-chilling for its quietude.
“…….”
To the eyes, she appeared to be nothing more than a fragile flower, but beneath the surface, she was bristling with thorns sharpened God knows when.
A low groan escaped from between Padrick’s teeth.
“……What is the second condition.”
Lottie, who had been speaking without hesitation like a burst dam, faltered slightly for some reason.
Padrick’s brow furrowed as he tried to gauge what loathsome things were about to spill from those lips.
“Correct everything that has been warped because of Your Highness. By your own hand, return everything to where it originally belonged.”
“……!”
“That is my second proposal.”
There was no way he could fail to understand what it meant to “correct everything.”
As the face of the man imprisoned in Roy-John Prison came to mind, Padrick let out a fitful, hollow laugh.
“You said you would turn a blind eye to the truth, yet you mean for me to reveal the whole truth. By my own hand.”
“…….”
“Why? Do you find that man, whose head is about to roll for a crime that doesn’t exist, so unbearably pitiful? What, do you want to be called a great saintess for saving him?”
Lottie remained silent even under the fierce interrogation.
As if looking into herself rather than the opponent before her, she began to sink into deep thought.
Padrick’s question was, in fact, the same one she had been repeating to herself until the moment she arrived here.
Why, of all people, was she trying to use the cards in her hand for that man?
Even without her help, he might have a way to escape this crisis. Above all, the scheme Padrick had orchestrated was excessively crude and full of clumsy holes.
Already, rumors were circulating among some nobles questioning whether the deposed Crown Prince was being pushed too far.
‘Even knowing that, why?’
Was it really, as someone said, because she wanted to be praised as a saintess by him?
No, that’s not it, Charlotte Evanshire.
You saw it clearly with your own eyes.
That man who played the villain, who couldn’t take his eyes off you the whole time he was being dragged away—the man who tried so hard to maintain his icy mask, only to fail in the end.
That foolish man who, even in that moment, was so preoccupied with your safety that he couldn’t even utter a single word in his own defense.
“……Do you remember the first condition I mentioned, Your Highness?”
Lottie’s consciousness rose to the surface once more. Her voice followed, calm and transparent like water drawn from a well.
“I will say it one more time. Do not, for any reason, harm those around me. I believe this is a sufficient answer to Your Highness’s question.”
It didn’t take long for Padrick to understand the meaning behind those words.
“Those around her.” As he thought of Calix Valdea, who had somehow already occupied a place in that category, heat rushed to his face.
Even in your absence, you persist in trying to defeat me.
“Just… why are you doing this to me? Why are you being so cruel…….”
He didn’t expect an answer. But he was curious.
You and I surely met for the first time at that spring day’s royal ball.
Then why do your eyes look as though years have been layered within them?
Why do I see emotions in your eyes that can only be described as remorse when you look at me?
“That is……”
A slow answer drifted out.
For the duration of a single breath, Lottie slowly scanned the room where she sat facing Padrick.
The place that had been used as their bridal suite before Padrick ascended the throne.
Memories of sharing a single blanket, sharing each other’s warmth while dreaming sweet dreams, and waking up to the same sunlight flickered dimly in her mind.
There were times when she used to hold her breath and watch her sleeping husband’s face, her heart so full that just touching him felt like too much.
She had loved him like that. So intensely and achingly that it felt like the very reason she was born was to give herself to him.
“…….”
Until she spent double the amount of time she had known him, the memories of this place would continue to prick her like tender flesh and cause pain.
Frequently, from time to time, and then eventually, only once in a while.
But what could she do? Though it ended in a wretched conclusion, she could not deny the fact that she had been happy at times while loving him.
So she would simply have to accept it.
She would treat it as the price for choosing that man, and diligently wash away the remnants whenever they came to mind.
By doing so, wouldn’t she eventually see it? A foundation upon which she could start anew, without scars or pain.
“I cannot take up any more of Your Highness’s time since you have places to be, so I will act as if I did not hear that question.”
Having finished all her business, Lottie withdrew with a polite bow and hurried steps.
Left alone, Padrick could not move, even though he knew he had somewhere to go.
“Ha.”
What remained after the woman vanished was, in the end, that laughing bastard.
A bizarre wall that he could never overcome, no matter how hard he struggled.
—Correct everything that has been warped because of Your Highness. By your own hand, return everything to where it originally belonged.
You should have made the promise correctly, Charlotte Evanshire.
“The place where that bastard originally belonged was at his father’s side.”
The day for Calix Valdea’s transfer to Walterstone Prison was only one day away.
Walterstone Prison was a facility that gathered sex offenders, prisoners serving life sentences, and others who required permanent isolation from society.
The intention behind transferring a prisoner held in Roy-John to such a place was obvious to anyone.
“A transfer without even a trial! Even the witch trials of old weren’t this senseless!”
“As long as the royal family holds both executive and judicial power, couldn’t any citizen of Matila end up in the same position?”
As if conscious of the grumbling from members of the Cream Party, it was decided that the prisoner’s transfer would be conducted in private.
Now, from the moment the prisoner arrived at the cold stone building of Walterstone in the suburbs, he would never be able to leave. Unless a miracle occurred.
Calix Valdea, who did not believe in miracles, remained more composed than ever even after being sentenced to his fate.
When the time came, a meal was brought to his solitary cell.
Calix brought it to the table and slowly tore into it. The sight of him eating with bound hands looked remarkably solemn.
A moment later, he spat out what he was chewing without a single change in expression.
“…….”
Calix stared down at a note rolled up to the size of a pinky joint, then slowly unfurled it.
The writing, written in code, was as rugged as the personality of the note’s owner.
<Tracking Tom Philson’s movement route. Presumed to be heading toward Dempis.>
While he was grateful for the members of the Cream Party who were incensed on his behalf, what he couldn’t understand was why they firmly believed he had entered the capital all alone.
From the authorities’ handling of the situation—locking him in Roy-John without any proper interrogation—Calix sensed he had fallen into a nasty trap.
Imprisoned in a solitary cell, he immediately requested an interview.
A lawyer, who had surely come at someone’s behest, sat across from him with a look of extreme annoyance.
He kept a close eye on the pens the lawyer had spread out on the table.
While the lawyer leaned down under the table for a moment, one of them vanished without a trace.
Using the pen snatched from the lawyer, Calix wrote a note. Since there wasn’t a single scrap of paper, he used the packaging that came with his meal instead.
The packaging containing his instructions was collected by the prison guard along with other trash.
His capable subordinate succeeded in snatching the packaging just before it was incinerated. This was the result.
<While White Bear handles securing Tom Philson, the Silver Fox will carry out the operation to extract the Golden Lion.>
Tomorrow, while being transported to Walterstone Prison, Calix Valdea would disappear after being attacked by unidentified assailants.
The panicked authorities would scramble to find the missing prisoner but fail.
Afterward, as it was revealed that the unidentified attack was the work of the Rose Party radicals, a body appearing to be that of the deposed Crown Prince would be discovered in the northwestern border region.
The case would be hushed up like that, and as the royal family faced a hectic autumn with the hosting of the World’s Fair, they would reunite with an unexpected person.
The identity of the man who returned leading numerous merchant ships was…….
<P.S. Adding that the person who met with Tom Philson previously and engaged in a certain transaction is Charlotte Evanshire.>
His steady gaze came to a dead stop at a certain point.
For a moment, he forgot how to think, and even how to breathe.
He was a man who had coldly sought his own way to survive even while being framed as a traitor. Even to him, that name seemed like an eternally unsolvable riddle.
And so, he could only murmur blankly.
‘You… how?’
