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Chapter: 10
“Kyaaaah! Your Highness!”
“Quick, fetch the physician!”
Amid the chaos, the screams of people who didn’t know what to do caught her eyes.
In the middle of all the screaming and commotion…
Sieta, exceptionally,
faced Rosiate not with her usual smiling expression, but with a cold, emotionless face.
‘Why do you have that expression?’
She mouthed the words,
whispering them as she pleased.
Rosiate, reading Sieta’s lips with uncanny accuracy, remained expressionless.
Without averting his gaze from Sieta, Rosiate continued to speak with that same blank expression.
Sieta’s consciousness gradually drifted further away.
The last thing she heard was the muffled screams of the servants and maidens.
Her consciousness completely faded.
The Shikan Empire was thrown into upheaval by the sudden, massive incident.
Even royal-related issues normally caused a stir, but this was different.
News arrived of an assassination attempt on the one and only heir, the long-awaited Princess Sieta von Ariace.
“Today’s newspaper!”
Women hurriedly handed over a coin and grabbed the newspaper, beginning to read it intently.
[Princess Sieta has been unconscious for three days now.
The Romancia Kingdom continues to deny responsibility.
They even go so far as to claim, absurdly, that it is a scheme fabricated by Emperor Rosiate of the Shikan Empire, denying that they provoked the Empire at its borders.
They ignore the fact that the poison used does not exist in Shikan Empire and is officially unavailable, and instead insist on their own narrative.]
“Aiyo…”
A collective sigh escaped from those reading the paper.
“Our poor princess, what has happened…”
On the streets, there was a wave of sympathy for Sieta, who had swallowed the poison without even having celebrated her sixth birthday.
Of course, sympathy alone wasn’t the only reaction.
“Those despicable Romancia fiends.”
“Acting so arrogant just because their leaves are slightly special, huh?”
The citizens of the Shikan Empire increasingly harbored hostility toward the Romancia Kingdom, which had attempted to poison the daughter of their benevolent emperor, Rosiate.
Everything…
was going exactly as Sieta had intended.
Emperor Rosiate von Ariace of the Shikan Empire declared war on the Romancia Kingdom.
The Empire’s sole heir, Sieta, a mere six years old…
had drunk the tea cunningly laced with poison, which the Romancia Kingdom had sent as a gift.
She remained unconscious.
Complicating matters, Sieta was famously the “miracle child” who had subdued the legendary Blue Tiger without a scratch.
The attempted assassination of such a clever princess—said to be chosen by the gods—by Romancia was an enormous scandal.
The tea she loved, flavored with peaches, had been delivered by Romancia.
The intent of Romancia to kill Princess Sieta became painfully clear.
Unbeknownst to Sieta, at the same time, Romancia was actively researching the “Blue Nightmares.”
Meaning…
Romancia contained a great many Blue Nightmares.
It was incredibly fortunate for Sieta.
Thanks to the numerous “Blue Nightmares” owned by Romancia’s royal palace,
their denials sounded nothing but brazen nonsense.
Voices of outrage against the Romancia Kingdom, which had attempted to openly poison a child princess, grew louder.
Crossing the Empire’s borders to provoke Shikan, Romancia had ultimately harmed the Empire’s only heir.
Emperor Rosiate of Shikan expressed his grief with tears.
The poison, impossible to produce in Shikan and found only in Romancia,
had been cleverly hidden in tea leaves, evading even the inspectors,
and his only daughter had fallen victim to it—filling him with sorrow and rage.
The shocking news caused even Romancia’s previous allies to turn away in shock.
Romancia tried to claim innocence, blaming the incident on a fabricated scheme by Shikan, but it no longer held any weight.
Instead, Romancia’s insistence on denying responsibility, after attempting to assassinate the Empire’s heir, only drew the continent’s ire.
Of course, Romancia’s complaint wasn’t entirely unfounded.
Some even suggested that cold-blooded Rosiate might have intentionally endangered Sieta, his only heir, but that was a minority opinion.
No sane emperor would risk the life of his sole heir just to fabricate a reason to wage war on a small kingdom.
They could be criticized for attacking a small kingdom without justification, but no one could challenge him if he crushed them.
Yet, the highly rational Rosiate would risk his daughter’s life?
Preposterous.
Still, voices doubting Rosiate persisted, pointing out the strained relationship between the emperor and the collapsed princess.
But no one imagined that six-year-old Sieta herself had orchestrated and executed the plan.
By consuming the poison and falling into a near-death state, Sieta provided Rosiate with undeniable justification:
“My only heir nearly poisoned!”
As all the justifications naturally fell into place, Rosiate gazed at his peacefully sleeping daughter’s small face and quietly muttered, expressionless:
“Was it really necessary to go this far?”
He could have wiped out the small kingdom without concern.
He judged that clever Sieta surely knew this.
Brushing the soft cheek of his still-sleeping daughter, he continued, calmly:
“Or… could there be some other scheme at work?”
He pushed Romancia diplomatically,
and while attending to his daughter meticulously, even amid whispers of suspicion,
Sieta, who had lost consciousness, finally opened her eyes.
For a long time, she shook her unfocused gaze around,
waiting for her vision to clear.
Finally, her blurry vision sharpened, revealing:
“Gasp!”
“You’re awake, my daughter.”
Rosiate von Ariace, personally replacing her damp cloth, looked at her.
Sieta was startled by his snake-like eyes, observing her without emotion,
but she forced herself to remain calm, curling the corners of her mouth upward.
‘Wow, he’s really something.’
Surely, Rosiate’s personal care was motivated by political calculation.
With her vision still blurry and her voice hoarse, she muttered:
“Newspaper…”
Barely managing, she said,
“Um? Could you… hand me the newspaper?”
She located the paper. Rosiate, unsurprised by her request, handed it over.
Sieta quickly scanned only the relevant sections:
[Some rumors circulated.
Should the Romancia Kingdom fall, the one to benefit most…
would be none other than Emperor Rosiate himself.
Insulting the grieving emperor, who secluded himself after his child collapsed, has its limits.]
‘Roughly…’
She roughly understood the situation.
Perhaps due to karma accumulated over time, a few people suspected that it wasn’t Rosiate’s scheme.
But even those few could not imagine that all of this was the independent action of a mere six-year-old, Sieta.
After confirming the reactions, Sieta silently exhaled in relief, glancing at Rosiate.
Seeing her careful observation, Rosiate smiled slightly:
“Our daughter has certainly made quite a stir.”
He seemed to realize that it had all been Sieta’s doing.
