Chapter 4.2
Even as he looed at the person sitting before him, her appearance so authentic, hearing that single line made the Marquis certain.
This person was Rozalia’s new toy, someone of such little value, who could be broken on the spot by his hand and whom Rozalia wouldn’t bat an eye.
If the Imperial Princess had truly meant to deceive him, she would never have placed someone with this terrible of a performance in front of him. Other people might be fooled easily enough, but not him.
If it had been the real Rozalia, she would have laughed instead of giving a long, polite reply to his first greeting.
And above all, she would never have been wearing the ring so openly for him to see.
He watched the ring from the corner of his eye, pretending not to notice the glances that kept darting in his direction. It was an object that could not be concealed, even by an illusion spell. Once he had identified it, the low hum of magic coming from it was clear.
‘She wasn’t even properly told my name.’
A secret that every member of the imperial household knew, the secret of the Iberos family.
The Iberos bloodline could sense and manipulate mana, the kind of ability that had nearly vanished from the continent.
They couldn’t perform the grand feats of the sorcerers from the history books, but they could analyze the mana circuit of any magic artifact, interfere with it, and read and direct the flow of ambient mana in the natural world.
It was this ability that had given the Iberos house a power matching the imperial household. And because they used this unique ability exclusively in service of the empire, they received the imperial family’s firm protection rather than its suspicion.
Among all of them, Lucerian Iberos had been born with the strongest ability of any generation. He had been called a monster since birth, his power was in a different category from anyone else in the family. Beyond simply reading mana, he wielded magic freely, like the legends of old.
Using only that level of illusion magic to fool him was a plan too flimsy even to find funny.
‘Shall I see what face is under there?’
So the Princess had finally, for once, given an actual response to his proposal, only to catch him off guard in a different way entirely. The crude trick she’d used, which was going to be discovered instantly, spoke plainly enough: she had resented being made to meet him, and she intended to mock him with it.
The poor creature in front of him had no idea, but the Marquis already knew that even if he exposed this person’s identity on the spot and held her to account, Rozalia wouldn’t bother to protect her.
“This is interesting.”
“…..?”
“I was wondering why you were so rigid. Don’t tell me the great Rozalia is actually nervous, just because it’s been so long since we last met?”
He should have been annoyed at the trick someone had tried to play on him, and yet, strangely, what he felt wasn’t displeasure but something closer to bafflement, followed by curiosity.
‘It’s true that my days have been nothing but dull lately.’
It was a thoroughly impulsive act, the bored Marquis reaching out to touch the face wearing the illusion. Not something he would ever have done to the real Rozalia.
The image of a gift wrapped up and placed in front of him had come to him for no good reason.
A face hidden beneath an illusion, beautiful, and meaningless, concealing someone inside whose identity he didn’t know.
The impulse and curiosity that wasn’t like him might have been nothing more than a whim born from unrelenting tedium. And so the Marquis chose to play along in Rozalia’s game rather than put a stop to her childish trick.
Soft skin met his fingertips. The trembling breath, tight with nerves, was perfectly clear at this distance. Beneath the thick perfume, a quiet, sweet scent hid, modest and unassuming, and the Marquis smiled to himself.
‘A woman, for one.’
The first of the ‘gift’s’ true things he’d found.
He had spoken Rozalia’s name while he stroked whatever real face lay inside, touching the unknown gift that had dropped in front of him.
The faint expectation and odd pleasure that not even the long, draining correction his teachers had attempted since childhood had ever produced, it tingled all the way to his fingertips.
He was perhaps the most beautiful face in the world, yet he was drawn to exactly the opposite. Things that crumbled, were discarded, fell apart and became worthless.
Especially watching something perfectly arranged and put-together come apart before his eyes, that gave him a small release from the suffocation that clamped his limbs day and night.
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