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Chapter – 04
The Person I Truly Need to Get Revenge On.
“It seems someone is inside.”
Josephine stood before the third banquet hall of the Imperial Palace, where the tea party was scheduled.
“The Red Knights are inspecting the banquet hall. While you wait, Her Majesty the Empress, allow me to escort you to a room where you can rest.”
Josephine declined the imperial palace attendant’s offer in her characteristically subdued voice.
“It’s fine. I’ll wait here until it’s over.”
No doubt Henryus, who had been paranoid about assassination attempts since his accession, had mobilized his personal knight order again.
The attendant accepted her words and retreated somewhere.
Only one knight was visible through the slightly ajar door.
Long, shaggy hair like black vines and a towering height. An impeccable physique and skin as pale as his eyes.
He had fierce eyes, too wild for a royal guard, lacking aristocratic refinement, yet there was an innate nobility about him—a disconcerting impression.
“Your Majesty, have you heard the rumors lately about the captain of the Red Knights?”
Harbor, standing beside her, lowered his voice and asked. Josephine quickly stopped him.
“Shh, they are the Emperor’s personal guard who operate in the shadows. Don’t you know their identities are classified as state secrets?”
“The newly appointed one isn’t a secret, Your Majesty. Do you really not know?”
Harbor widened his eyes and whispered.
“You know of the ‘Red-Eyed’ beasts, right? Those savages. The current captain of the Red Knights is the First Prince Siegfried, who came here as a hostage from the Nordan United Kingdom they founded!”
Red-Eyes. As soon as those words ended, Josephine’s eyes met the man’s through the crack in the door.
The man fixed his gaze on Josephine and picked up one of the teacups on the table.
And then, at the shocking scene that unfolded next, Josephine froze on the spot.
Siegfried—he was putting poison in Henryus’s teacup.
For a moment, it felt as if time had stopped.
Unconsciously, Josephine asked in a voice that trembled slightly.
“Who did you say the captain of the Red Knights is?”
“Siegfried. The First Prince of that vile savage nation we often have territorial wars with over the Honghae peninsula, our northern maritime border.”
Harbor answered in a small voice.
Siegfried—a name she had only heard of.
A prince of Nordan who came to the Empire as a hostage over a decade ago, along with an unfair treaty during the previous emperor’s reign.
For some reason, he never appeared at official functions, so Josephine had never had a chance to meet him.
Having only heard palace news through her maids all this time, she hadn’t paid much attention to how he was doing lately either.
“Why would someone like that suddenly become the captain of the Emperor’s personal guard?”
“It’s just a title in name only, of course. The two nations are still at a standoff, and the Nordan United Kingdom hasn’t demanded the hostage’s return in the past ten years, so he ended up suffering this humiliation.”
Josephine found it easy to understand.
Since he was called the First Prince, he was most likely the strongest candidate for the Nordan throne.
The suspicious Henryus would only have one reason to keep such a person by his side.
‘He probably wants to toy with and torment him like a dog. Henryus has an inferiority complex towards all legitimate royalty in the world.’
Unconsciously, Josephine added a remark tinged with a bit of pity.
“How unfortunate. If he’s been a hostage for ten years, he must have suffered all sorts of hardships in the Empire since childhood.”
“That’s the way of hostages. Even now, if the maritime border disputes intensify, Prince Siegfried would probably be the first one hung from the frontlines’ watchtower, right?”
Harbor spoke as if it were a matter of course. Josephine turned to look at him with slight shock.
“You mean they use him as a human shield every time there’s a war with the Nordan Kingdom?”
Harbor nodded with a slightly flustered face.
“That’s the only way to make them back down first, isn’t it? Even a discarded prince is still royalty.”
“Is that Henryus’s doing?”
Josephine asked in a disbelieving whisper. Harbor added in an uneasy voice.
“W-well, probably? It’s common to threaten a hostage’s life when a war turns unfavorable, you know.”
Listening to Harbor, Josephine felt a faint wave of dizziness.
No matter what, hanging a living person from a watchtower to stop a war…
Setting aside the sentiments between the two nations, this was reason enough for Siegfried to hold a grudge against Henryus.
“Then Siegfried must have no choice but to hate Henryus intensely.”
Josephine added a meaningful remark.
“There were rumors they used to be close friends, the Emperor and him, but it doesn’t seem that way now.”
Harbor shrugged his shoulders. Then he looked at Josephine, who had been pressed against the narrow door crack since earlier, with a puzzled expression.
“But, Your Majesty, why are you asking about Siegfried all of a sudden? Is the person inside the banquet hall right now perhaps Siegfried?”
“No.”
Unconsciously, Josephine stopped Harbor in an urgent voice.
“No. It probably isn’t him.”
Harbor looked suspiciously at the confident Josephine and asked again.
“It’s not? Has Your Majesty met Siegfried before?”
“…….”
Impossible. She had never met him before in her life.
Yet, for some reason, she had a strong premonition that he was Siegfried.
His vivid blood-red eyes were openly provoking her.
I’m going to kill your husband now. Try and stop me if you can.
_’Why is all this happening now?’*
But something still felt off.
The welcome tea party had only happened once, in her previous life.
Thinking back, Henryus had never had his life threatened at that tea party.
That’s when it happened.
Siegfried’s pale lips silently moved for the first time.
‘Elisabeth.’
Right after reading that name, the blood flowing through her veins froze completely.
‘Right. It was Elisabeth.’
Just as Siegfried had said.
The one who drank the tea and collapsed at that party wasn’t Henryus.
The very next day after the tea party, it was Elisabeth who suddenly complained of abdominal pain and collapsed.
Naturally, Henryus had ordered a thorough investigation.
The investigation lasted a month, but the exact cause of the abdominal pain couldn’t be determined.
However, in the process, an unexpected fact came to light.
‘A very faint reaction for poison was detected in the teacup His Majesty the Emperor used on the day of the tea party.’
However, it was concluded that this was due to improper inspection and storage of the teacup at the time, so the matter was eventually brushed aside.
‘But that happened in my past life. It’s an event that hasn’t occurred yet, so how does he know about it?’
Just as she was harboring this doubt, Siegfried suddenly put down the teacup.
“Wait a moment!”
Josephine hurriedly opened the door and went inside.
But the man had vanished somewhere in the blink of an eye.
“Your Majesty! What’s wrong?”
Harbor asked, following her in. The banquet hall was empty.
Josephine stood there dejectedly for a while.
She felt resentful that the man had disappeared so quickly before she could even ask anything.
‘Wait, it was Elisabeth?’
It was then that Josephine felt a strange sense of déjà vu for the first time.
Although Josephine had done all the preparations, the host of this tea party had been Elisabeth from the start.
It was, after all, a tea party held at Henryus’s request to console Elisabeth.
‘She’s the Empress’s longtime friend. You can handle that much without difficulty, right?’
At the time, Josephine did her best to satisfy them both.
They need me.
That alone was enough to make Josephine happy.
That is, until the day Elisabeth whined that she wanted to try the teacup Henryus used and demanded to swap cups.
‘Aah! My, my stomach hurts so much! Henryus! Henry!’
Elisabeth, who had collapsed complaining of stomach pain that day, suddenly received a diagnosis of early pregnancy a month later.
From that point on, everything changed.
First, suspicion crept into Henryus’s eyes as he looked at her.
And half a year later, Elisabeth, cradling her swollen belly, became Henryus’s officially recognized mistress.
Another half year later, Josephine stood on the scaffold, falsely accused of trying to kill the imperial heir in Elisabeth’s womb.
The inexplicable abdominal pain Elisabeth suffered, which coincided perfectly with the timing of the tea party.
The fact that Josephine was well aware Henryus and Elisabeth often swapped each other’s belongings.
On top of that, the incident where Elisabeth almost miscarried—finally caused Henryus’s suspicions to explode.
So he tried to get rid of her as soon as possible, even by pinning a crime she didn’t commit on her.
