Chapter 121
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“Even though there are parts I can guess, I want to confirm them.”
“Really?”
Amid the frustration, Blake delivered good news, and Angelina’s expression brightened.
“Yes. That’s why I came to meet the Marquis today to confirm it. I came urgently without notice, but it seems I missed him.”
“Why do you need my brother to break the seal?”
“Seeing that the Kadenhart family has Artoas, the knight’s sword, I thought the Marquis’s family might have the priest’s heart. So I wanted to ask the Marquis how he manages the family heirloom.”
“Ah.”
Angelina nodded lightly.
“You could have asked me about that instead of specifically my brother…”
“Asking Miss Flaubert directly would be like looking at the answer key. I wanted to do some homework before meeting you. I failed completely, though.”
“My brother hasn’t been home much lately. And even if you met him, you wouldn’t hear much about Zeplictus.”
After all, she had already asked Ante and confirmed that Zeplictus wasn’t in its place.
“So the name is Zeplictus…”
Blake muttered quietly, hearing the name of the heirloom for the first time.
Angelina nodded lightly and pushed Artoas toward him.
“Anyway, if you have some idea, take this. You’ll need the item to experiment with anything, right?”
She was trying to pass it on quickly while she had the chance.
“But this is—”
“If you start saying you need to prove yourself or find a proper way, I’ll really get angry this time.”
Blake tried to say something, but Angelina cut him off from the start.
She made it clear she wouldn’t accept any objection from him.
“Solving the case is more important right now. We need to break the seal quickly to solve the secret of the rose… Wait a moment.”
Angelina, while speaking, belatedly realized something and opened her eyes wide.
“H-how did you know? About the priest’s heart and the knight’s sword…! That Artoas and Zeplictus are the things mentioned in that song?”
She showed an uncharacteristically flustered appearance, even stumbling over her words.
How did the Duke figure out what she only knew from seeing the memories?
Does the Duke’s family have some special ancient text?
‘Could it be that His Grace can also see something? But His Grace has never touched a sacred object?’
Is this another male protagonist buff? If so, isn’t that too unfair? This damn world setting, don’t discriminate against even the villain’s sister…! It’s heartbreaking!
Amid various speculations, Blake let out a hollow laugh.
“I wasn’t expecting praise for figuring it out well… but did you think I wouldn’t be able to figure it out? Or were you planning to keep it a secret from me until the end?”
He seemed upset.
So Angelina waved her hands.
“No, that’s not it. I was wondering if the method you used to figure it out could be shared.”
It was something she herself had only discovered a few days ago.
With so many incidents happening at once, there was no time to share it with him.
“I still haven’t solved all the questions myself…”
She wondered if he might have more hints about the rose.
Now that they had reached a dead end with Artoas’s seal and Zeplictus’s whereabouts, the rose seemed to be the only breakthrough.
“I didn’t use any special method. I just kept thinking, and the connections naturally became apparent.”
“I see…”
Could this be the male protagonist’s intelligence…
Angelina felt a sense of self-deprecation since she only figured it out after seeing the memories, while he claimed to have done it through thought alone.
But knowing that feeling inferior to the male protagonist was the most useless thing, she quickly dismissed it.
“Then take this.”
It seemed that breaking the seal was the male protagonist’s role after all.
“Anyway…”
The words “Next year I won’t be able to return it to you” rose to her throat, but Angelina managed to swallow them before they came out.
Her guard seemed to have weakened after being caught by her brother, almost blurting everything out.
“Here.”
Angelina vaguely changed the subject and wrapped the sword back in its cloth.
After carefully tying it with string, she handed it to Blake.
This time Blake didn’t refuse.
“Anyway?”
Instead, he seemed curious about what she had been about to say.
“I was going to say that anyway, we need to rescue the village chief to find the answer.”
Angelina made up this excuse as a good pretext had just occurred to her.
Fortunately, Blake nodded in agreement.
“Speaking of that.”
He added, as if she had brought up a good point.
“I think I’ve found a way.”
“Really?”
“It’s a bit dangerous… but I think it’s worth trying if we’re together. Would you like to hear it?”
A smile appeared on Angelina’s lips.
“Yes.”
18. Just When I Thought I Was About to Reach It
Blake’s plan was simple.
To take advantage of the fact that Crown Prince Aiden would be attending the theater night.
With the Emperor away on a foreign tour and not in the Imperial Palace, if Crown Prince Aiden went out, the palace guards would naturally be deployed outward.
The plan was to exploit that gap and infiltrate with his forces.
“You said it was dangerous, but I see you intend to take all the risk yourself, Your Grace.”
Moreover, Blake was planning to deploy people from the Duke’s family for the infiltration team in case of emergency.
“This isn’t a ‘plan.’ You’re doing everything yourself, Your Grace.”
Angelina objected as it had become something that didn’t even need to include her.
“Miss Flaubert, you’ve already shouldered a lot. I think it’s right that I handle this much.”
At his words implying she should just know about it, Angelina shook her head.
“Shouldered what…”
She still couldn’t understand why he was grateful to her.
“Anyway, thank you for your consideration. But no.”
However, now was not the time to worry about such trivial matters.
“It’s true that the security will be dispersed following His Highness the Crown Prince. But it was the Empress who took the village chief. And we need to consider the Empress separately from the Imperial Palace.”
What she wants and what the Imperial Palace pursues are different.
Having read the original work, she could be certain of that much.
She would have hidden forces, and those who were officially the Empress’s knights would likely be moving differently from the palace’s protocol for her personal gain.
“The Imperial Palace and the Empress separately…”
Blake, rolling her words in his mouth, asked.
“Is that because of the relationship between the Empress and the Marquis?”
A question asking if it was for Ante’s safety.
“No.”
But Angelina shook her head.
“It’s true that I’m always worried about my brother. But that and this are separate issues.”
It was an answer clearly stating that the Empress was their enemy, regardless of the ‘close’ relationship the two maintained.
After pondering her words for a moment, Blake asked again with an expression of incomprehension.
“But isn’t our enemy the ‘rose’? Since the rose refers to the Imperial family, wouldn’t it be correct to think that the Empress is rather uninvolved?”
If the Imperial family was the rose, it made more sense to suspect the Emperor and Crown Prince, and to consider the Empress, who was connected by marriage, as a victim.
“Of course, the assumption that she is innocent breaks down since the Empress took the village chief.”
It seemed very strange to consider the Crown Prince separately in this situation, unless she was an accomplice.
No matter how negative his feelings toward the Empress and Crown Prince were, he couldn’t let emotions cloud his judgment of the situation.
“…What?”
Meanwhile, hearing this, Angelina opened her eyes wide as if shocked.
“Is there… something else I don’t know?”
At her reaction, Blake let out a troubled sigh.
He had thought he had figured out a lot, but apparently not.
Angelina, who seemed shocked, suddenly stood up from her seat.
“The Imperial family…!”
“…?”
She exclaimed as if she had realized something significant, then suddenly ran to the desk. She grabbed a large book placed on it and returned to the table.
“Is this… ‘History of the Imperial Family’?”
“I received it as a gift.”
It was a book she had received from Aiden.
She had put it aside on a corner of the desk without even looking at it after receiving it, but just now, thanks to Blake, hadn’t she obtained the last hint about the ‘rose’?
She opened the thick cover.
A phrase written before the main text caught her eye.
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