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Chapter 17
When Kazar opened the door to the study he used while staying at Edelweiss, he found two boxes and a letter placed on the desk.
They had been sent by Kaylen, the only 5th Circle mage in the empire.
The blue box is the one you ordered. It’s my first time making one, but the performance is pretty decent. After one charge, it can transmit 100 sentences. The charging cost is 100 gold, so it’s easiest to think of it as 1 gold per sentence.
P.S. The invisibility artifact in the gold box is a gift from the Duke of Spes. He said it was repayment for helping the children of his family. Thanks to you, I was able to clear out my old stock. Nobody bought it because it was too expensive.
Kazar opened the gold box from the Duke of Spes first.
Inside was a plain silver ring without any decorations. Since it was an artifact Kaylen had shown him before, Kazar already knew how to use it and what it could do.
He also knew it cost as much as a townhouse in the capital.
‘This is excessive compensation for helping the children of his family.’
Although sending such an expensive gift through Kaylen without even a note was exactly something the Duke of Spes would do.
Kazar put the silver ring on his ring finger and opened the blue box.
Inside was the bracelet-shaped artifact he had ordered two months ago. It was a portable communication version of the magical orb used to communicate with someone far away through images.
“One gold per sentence.”
The price was easy to calculate, but using it would not feel easy at all.
Still, in an emergency, it would be extremely useful.
He had originally planned to register two recipients: Laine and Hawk.
Kazar looked around the study and picked up a single strand of green hair.
When he touched it to one of the two beads attached to the bracelet, it was absorbed as if melting into it, and the bead began glowing with a faint green light.
Kazar placed his finger on the green bead and thought of what he wanted to say.
[Laine, come in.]
With loud footsteps, the door suddenly burst open.
“What the hell? I just heard Your Highness’s voice inside my head.”
Instead of answering, Kazar raised the bracelet.
“Oh, it’s finished? If it had arrived a few days earlier, you wouldn’t have gone through such hell.”
“One gold per sentence.”
At the shocking price, Laine remembered that Kazar had ordered it to work anywhere across the empire and nodded in understanding.
“As expected of Kaylen. I didn’t even know it would be possible when you placed the order. But why did you call me?”
“Testing. But you arrived quickly.”
“I was already on my way here. I think I know who the person trying to buy Your Highness is.”
“Is it the Kingdom of Bellua?”
Laine’s eyes widened.
“How did you know?”
“Because the place I was taken to was Arden. Bellua is just across the river.”
“That’s right. Anyway, I think it’s Princess Mahel.”
“Princess?”
Kazar frowned.
He knew her name since she was the princess of a neighboring kingdom, but—
“I’ve never done anything to deserve being kidnapped.”
Seeing that Kazar genuinely did not know, Laine kindly explained.
“She’s been sending you love letters since last year.”
“She was?”
“She sent one every single day. Without fail. I thought she was checking attendance at an academy.”
“Was that so? I burn things like love letters immediately.”
Laine glared at Kazar as if insulting him with his eyes, then continued explaining.
“Her maid probably wrote them, but it’s true that the princess is completely obsessed with Your Highness. The contents were painfully embarrassing. I almost lost my hands and feet from reading them.”
“You read them?”
“I read every letter that comes to Your Highness. Anyway, it’s obvious Princess Mahel fell for you. But Bellua isn’t in a position to send a marriage proposal to the empire. So they probably resorted to something this extreme.”
“They aren’t in a position to do that, yet they kidnapped me? They’re bold.”
“Do you think Bellua kidnapped you themselves? Her Majesty the Empress probably sweet-talked them into taking you, saying she would wrap everything up nicely and deliver you. You were lucky to escape. Especially in your condition.”
That was probably true.
“I suppose I was lucky.”
Kazar recalled Eluana’s eyes, green like the lush plants of midsummer, and murmured.
“Anyway, I’ll investigate more about Princess Mahel. And this.”
Laine placed a painting on the desk.
Kazar casually unrolled the rolled-up portrait and immediately doubted his eyes.
At first, he thought it was a portrait of Eluana.
But the woman in the painting was not a girl.
It was a woman who looked so much like Eluana that Kazar wondered if this was what Eluana would look like after growing older.
“This is the portrait the Duke of Spes spread throughout the empire fifteen years ago. What do you think? Does she resemble Eluana Vita?”
Laine urged him for an answer, but Kazar could not easily open his mouth.
This was not just resemblance.
“…She’s identical.”
Eluana was fifteen years old.
There was no doubt.
Kazar spoke the conclusion he had reached.
“Eluana Vita might be the Duke of Spes’s biological daughter.”
This information alone belonged in the second section of Laine’s information archive.
A second-grade secret.
Information capable of changing the political situation of the empire.
And then—
“This is insane.”
Kazar muttered quietly.
The fact that the Duke of Spes was Eluana’s father was not the biggest problem.
The real issue was that the woman in the portrait was her mother.
This was first-grade information.
A secret capable of changing the fate of the entire continent.
The Duke of Spes came to the Lavender Room when the lavender fields had fallen into darkness.
“Could you spare some time for me? There is something I need to tell you. I delayed it because I thought I needed to speak with you when you were calm.”
Eluana made room for him to enter and asked:
“Is it about my mother?”
“Yes.”
The Duke of Spes slowly looked around the Lavender Room.
His gaze, filled with regret, touched every corner before returning to Eluana.
Sitting across from each other with an ivory table between them, Eluana prepared herself.
She had already realized that there had been complicated circumstances between the Duke of Spes and her mother.
The Lavender Room had been maintained so that its owner could return and use it at any time.
It was not simply cleaned.
Every year, the clothes in the dressing room were completely replaced so they would not become outdated.
Dozens of dresses that had never been worn were discarded every year while waiting for a mother who never returned.
For fifteen years.
“I’m ready to listen.”
Even though she said she was ready, her heart pounded.
Because she had a feeling that whatever she heard would not be something she could simply answer with, “Ah, so that’s what happened.”
“How much do you know about the imperial family?”
He said he would talk about her mother, yet suddenly asked about the imperial family.
Although confused, Eluana answered without hesitation.
“The current 27th Emperor rules the empire. I met the First Prince, and he was trash. The Second Prince died mysteriously as a child. The Third Prince is studying abroad. I’m a little worried whether the Fourth Prince returned safely to the imperial palace. I heard the Fifth Prince is around Rui’s age. Oh, and there is one princess.”
After answering, Eluana found it strange.
‘Why do I know so much?’
She had never studied it separately.
All she had done was read picture books at home and listen to Ron Vita occasionally talk about imperial history and society.
“What you know is correct.”
The Duke of Spes looked at Eluana with concern.
The easiest path available to him now was independence from the empire.
A war might break out, but it would likely only be symbolic.
The current imperial family did not have the strength to fight the Spes family.
But that was not what Stella, who had died, wanted.
If she had desired that path, she would not have left.
Then what path would Eluana—his child—want?
From this point onward, the Duke of Spes would tell her about Stella’s past and her children’s future.
If Eluana chose, he was prepared to walk even the most difficult road with her.
The Duke of Spes slowly opened his mouth.
“Within the empire, there exists another imperial family besides the Fortuna Imperial Family.”
“The Cantio Imperial Family? Aren’t they the direct descendants of the first emperor? I thought they all disappeared when the Fortuna Imperial Family began.”
“Only those descendants of Cantio who pass the trial shall have the right to become emperor.”
Under the dragon’s declaration, imperial succession was decided through a competition among royal family members who passed the trial held in the Dragon Hall.
The problem appeared about three hundred years later.
People who fulfilled the condition of being “descendants of Cantio” appeared in several different families.
One of them was the Grand Duke of Fortuna, born from an imperial princess.
The Grand Duke of Fortuna secretly entered the Dragon Hall, passed the dragon’s trial, started a rebellion, and declared himself emperor.
During that process, it was said that everyone bearing the Cantio name or carrying Cantio blood was executed.
The three-hundred-year reign of the Cantio Imperial Family ended, and the Fortuna Imperial Family began.
“Publicly, that is what was announced. But the Fortuna Imperial Family, which seized the throne through rebellion, failed to eliminate all of Cantio. On the day they assassinated the emperor and committed treason, heavy rain fell and all the rivers overflowed. The legend that natural disasters occur whenever someone carrying the Cantio name dies an unnatural death was true. Even the Fortuna Imperial Family must have predicted that much. The problem was that from that day onward, for twelve days, not only the three blessings but also the artifacts left behind by the dragon stopped functioning.”
Eluana already knew about that incident.
The capital without the dragon’s blessings and artifact powers had supposedly fallen into complete chaos.
The empire’s entrance gates and teleport gates, the protective magic around the imperial palace, the capital’s water and sewage systems, and even the magical streetlights all stopped working.
For twelve days, the capital lost light, water, and safety.
“After the rebellion, only a young princess survived. She was originally supposed to be executed, but the new emperor who had committed treason became uneasy. He did not know the conditions required for the dragon’s blessing to continue. There was a possibility that executing the princess would completely remove the dragon’s blessing. So instead, he gave the young princess the Fortuna surname and imprisoned her inside the imperial palace until she turned eighteen.”
“Why eighteen?”
“You have heard about imperial succession.”
“I heard that princes and princesses take the dragon’s trial when they turn eighteen. If they pass, a mark appears somewhere on their body the next morning. Candidates with the marks compete, and the next emperor is decided that way. Ah… you prevented her from taking the dragon’s trial.”
A strange expression crossed the Duke of Spes’s face.
Eluana knew far more details than he expected.
He hid his surprise and continued.
“Afterward, children carrying Cantio blood were also accepted as members of the royal family and given the Fortuna surname. They were given Cantio as a middle name to distinguish them, then imprisoned inside the imperial palace. This continued for seven hundred years.”
Eluana felt something was wrong.
‘They kept giving birth to children who would be imprisoned until they turned eighteen? For seven hundred years?’
A terrible thought suddenly rose in her mind.
‘No. Don’t jump to conclusions.’
She desperately pushed away the possibility.
“Was there never a Cantio who decided not to have children?”
“It would have been difficult to resist the pressure of the imperial family.”
Meaning they had been forced to continue this system to preserve the dragon’s blessing that supported the empire.
Imprisoned for eighteen years.
Giving birth to a child who would also be imprisoned.
Spending another eighteen years without that child.
“It’s horrible and cruel.”
Seeing Eluana’s distorted expression, the Duke of Spes felt his heart burn.
Because what he was about to tell her was just as horrible and cruel as she had said.
“…Stella’s real name was Stella Cantio Fortuna.”
