Chapter 244

The MacKinnon family was half in mourning after receiving the Empress’s letter.

If the Empress of Bistor—the greatest empire in the world, the savior of mankind—sent someone a letter, the recipient should have been honored. But reality rarely followed theory. In the real world, people could only mutter, “So that’s how it is.”

The MacKinnons had their own circumstances. Their precious youngest daughter had recently been summoned to enlist. The unit she would be assigned to would end up fighting against her best friend—someone the MacKinnons considered like another daughter. They couldn’t bear the thought, so they’d been piling up flimsy excuses to delay her enlistment.

And with the young ladies of the great noble houses all in trouble now, the MacKinnons happened to have a daughter not much younger than the Crown Prince, along with a massive dowry.

“I’ll dress as a woman and go to the Imperial Palace.”

Marquis MacKinnon, fully aware of all of this, went silent at his son’s words. The Countess beside him took it even further.

“Then how about I pretend to be Diane and go instead?”

Please… The Marquis felt a sour ache in his stomach. The MacKinnon Trading Company had surged to become the dominant giant of the commercial world after the balance of the Empire’s three major trading companies collapsed, and the family gathered in this room was its core.

Normally, they were rational and immaculate. Yet at this crucial moment, they were spewing nonsense.

Of course, he understood why.

It was about Diane—the cutest, kindest, most adorable, prettiest, most lovable girl in the world.

In the end, he offered his own alternative.

“Fine. I’ll dress as a woman, pretend to be Diane, and go to the Imperial Palace.”

“Do you think that makes sense, Father?”

“Don’t say ridiculous things, dear.”

Criticism poured in. The Marquis glared at his wife and son, resentment rising.

“How is that any different from what you said? What sensible idea did either of you offer? The letter says, ‘I am concerned as the parent of all people because you have been postponing your enlistment for a long time due to poor health,’ but isn’t that just a polite way of telling us to hurry up and present her so the Imperial Family can fix the date they’ll use her? This isn’t some contract where you sign and deliver goods later. How thoroughly do you think they’ll check that it’s really our baby?”

He talked without pausing, looking back and forth between them, and the family fell silent.

After a moment, the door to the small tearoom opened.

“Brother, Mom, Dad! You’re having tea without me?”

Clang.

The instant the door opened without a knock, the three of them reached for the cups on the table at the same time, not even checking who had entered. It was a clumsy attempt to cover the Empress’s letter spread out on the table—except all three moved together, and the cups collided, cracking and shattering.

“Oh my! What is this, my lord and lady, young master!”

Betty, who had followed Diane in, gasped and hurried to pull out a handkerchief. Diane clicked her tongue at the three people who only ever turned into fools in front of her. She didn’t need an explanation to guess what was happening.

“I already heard everything. The letter from Her Majesty the Empress. I heard you even gave the Empress’s envoy a place to sleep. If he’s staying in our house, that means I have to go with him, right?”

How did she know? The family—who had kept the envoy’s arrival secret so Diane wouldn’t feel burdened—coughed awkwardly. At the Countess’s subtle stare, silently asking where the leak came from, Betty, wiping tea off the table, answered with an embarrassed face.

“I ran into the envoy himself on the way.”

“Tch.” Joyce muttered under his breath. “I should’ve locked her up…”

Betty pretended not to hear, keeping her flustered expression.

A firm anger settled over Diane’s lovely face.

“So you were having tea without me because you were discussing how to respond to the letter, right? It’s my business, but the three of you were going to handle it without telling me?”

“Kid, that’s—”

“Don’t call me kid!”

Joyce yelped and snapped his mouth shut.

Diane glared fiercely. The Count, Countess, and Joyce all thought even her fierce act looked angelically cute, but they didn’t dare say it in this atmosphere.

“I’m old enough now! I have social standing! I have the judgment to be involved in deciding my future! Don’t treat me like a child!”

Every word was correct. No matter how the Marquis turned it over in his mind, he couldn’t find a proper rebuttal. He mumbled, his heart heavy.

“But my pretty one… if the Imperial Family has started taking notice of you, you’re in danger.”

Everyone knew the MacKinnon family was close to the Grand Duchess of Maindulante. Even if someone didn’t know, by now Nerys and Diane’s classmates would have spread their friendship widely through society.

That made the Empress’s move even more pointed. The MacKinnons had ignored the Crown Prince’s summons with excuse after excuse, so it was only natural the Empress would want to verify the situation. But a handwritten letter—sent to a family close to the North, the very side the Imperial Family had declared war on—asking after the well-being of their young lady?

It was a clear demand to choose a side.

If they didn’t immediately present their daughter, humbled and grateful for the Empress’s concern, they would be seen as taking the side of those vile enemies.

If they hurriedly sent her—perhaps with a matching display of monetary sincerity—they would be seen as taking the Empire’s side.

It was understandable. This was the moment when everyone had to choose plainly. The Tipian Marquesate was being treated as the Grand Duke’s ally whether it wanted to be or not, and wherever the Grand Duke went, his side swelled. Still, the rest of the continent remained the enemy.

And everything the MacKinnons possessed was surrounded by that enemy.

“The Imperial Family will want you, my angel,” the Count said quietly. “As a hostage, and as a candidate for the next Crown Princess. Our family history may be short, but we have something important.”

Money. The MacKinnons understood its value better than anyone—far more practical than shared bloodlines and ancient surnames.

The kind of value that made people who sneered behind your back come up smiling when they needed something.

“There will be young ladies who won’t like that,” the Countess added, indirectly.

Meaning: noble families would move to harm Diane first.

“I know,” Diane said, smiling with calm confidence. “We all knew this day would come—when we heard about the great noble families collapsing in the Imperial Palace, and when His Highness the Crown Prince declared war.”

The many pieces of information Nerys had given them last year—as if preparing the MacKinnons to grow rapidly—had already made them suspect something like this might happen.

And—

“We also know what to do. It’s already been discussed with Riz’s family. So why are you having tea without me and talking about it again when all we have to do is follow through?”

The Count, Countess, and Joyce fell silent.

Their pretty, cute, kind, adorable, lovable angel was right.

They simply didn’t have the courage—at least not once—to throw their beloved youngest daughter into danger.

After Betty finished wiping the tea from the table, Diane sat down across from her and clenched her fist.

“Don’t worry. Nothing will happen. I’m more worried about you, Brother.”

“Who are you worried about, you little kid?”

“I’m not a little kid!”

Joyce laughed at Diane’s bright eyes. The Count and Countess smiled too, tears shining.

A few days later, the MacKinnon Countess departed for the Imperial Palace to answer the Crown Prince’s summons.

And she vanished on a mountain road not far from the Imperial Palace.

❖ ❖ ❖

“Joyce MacKinnon is coming up to investigate because Diane MacKinnon has disappeared?”

Marquis Lykeandros scoffed as he read the report.

“Let him investigate. See if he finds anything.”

His tone was confident, yet a flicker of guilt crossed his face. He didn’t regret ordering his men to attack Diane MacKinnon’s carriage on the way to the Imperial Palace… but he wasn’t completely without sympathy, either.

As a father with a daughter around the same age.

Still, he’d decided to remove that innocent young lady because he was a father.

His precious Megara had pleaded with him, insisting that Diane hated her and that if Diane became Crown Princess, she would never get along with her.

‘How did things come to this?’

Even now, the Marquis felt sorry for Megara. He was bitter at how little he could do for her. Her publicly revealed birth could not be changed.

So he had no choice but to do even what he disliked, if it meant his daughter would be less pitiful.

Even if that meant killing an innocent girl Megara’s age—and putting a puppet in the Crown Princess’s seat instead.

‘It must have been handled cleanly.’

Only one of the men he’d sent had survived, and even that barely. Shortly after the attack, a small landslide near the site had swallowed the bodies, sparing the Marquis the trouble of destroying evidence himself. And the surviving man had testified that he’d seen Diane die.

If Joyce MacKinnon came to search for his beloved sister, that was fine, too. It would mean another child from a prominent house could end up as a hostage of the Imperial Family.

The Marquis crumpled the report and burned it.

Knock, knock.

A servant tapped at the door of the small room where the Marquis sat.

“Is it time?” the Marquis asked.

The servant bowed as if apologizing.

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“I see. I’ll go.”

He had been handling personal matters during the break, but the Marquis was not at his own mansion. These days, he stayed in the Imperial Palace almost constantly.

First, Abelus relied on him more and more. Among the great nobles, he was the only one who had provided large numbers of troops, and he was the father of Megara, Abelus’s favored woman. Second, the Marquis had concerns beyond the tasks Abelus assigned him.

Normally, anyone who was not imperial blood or an official employee of the palace could not stay within the Imperial Palace at will. Yet the Marquis had been given a small bedroom as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Except for occasional visits home, he worked and lived inside the palace.

Even now, a state affairs meeting awaited him.

He followed the servant to the Imperial Palace’s large conference room.

“Marquis, Your Excellency.”

“You’ve arrived.”

They were faces he always saw.

As he exchanged light greetings, the Marquis paused. There was someone he hadn’t seen in a long time.

Marquis Kendall—who had rarely left his mansion since his daughter Aidalia’s death—spoke first, his face hollow as a ghost.

“Duke.”

“Marquis Kendall. How have you been?”

“How can a father who has lost his child be well? Still, I thought I ought to show my face at court from time to time, to fulfill my duties as a nobleman. So I came out for a while.”

Of all days… Marquis Lykeandros clicked his tongue inwardly, irritated that Kendall had attended today’s meeting. Worse, the man Kendall had been speaking to until just now was Duke Grunehals, who also hadn’t been showing his face at court much these days.

Once the nobles took their seats, Marquis Odroy—chairing today’s meeting—opened proceedings. He addressed the front in the war with the Grand Duke to the extent it wouldn’t expose military secrets, then moved on to other state affairs. Marquis Lykeandros naturally became the center of the discussion, offering his opinions.

When the meeting had progressed far enough, he finally introduced the topic he’d prepared.

“Since His Highness the Crown Prince does not yet have a Crown Princess, there has been confusion in various matters. Of course, the Imperial Family will make the final choice—but shouldn’t the Council of Nobles also be able to recommend qualified candidates?”

In principle, it was a reasonable argument. In practice, it was not something the father of the Crown Prince’s mistress should be saying.

Nobles who didn’t know the details widened their eyes. Nobles who had been bought by the Marquis nodded as if it were only right. The Marquis smiled and continued.

“I understand my position is shameful. That is precisely why I wanted to speak more actively. Some say they cannot speak freely about serving Her Highness the Crown Princess because they are watching me—but why don’t we at least gather our opinions lightly today?”

The nobles exchanged glances and began listing mediocre names. A baron’s daughter. A viscount’s daughter. After a while, the names of counts’ daughters began to emerge.

Marquis Lykeandros listened to the sluggish conversation, then selected a single name.

“I have often heard that Lady Alecto Isalani is intelligent. What do you think, Count Isalani?”