Chapter 12 Part 3
“I didn’t expect those words to come out of your mouth.”
She tucked her windblown hair behind her ear and looked toward the capital. Her green eyes seemed to be looking somewhere far away.
“You break into every place you want, don’t you?”
“I run away before I get caught, so it’s fine. But if you get caught, Angelica, it’ll be troublesome, won’t it? There’s also your dignity as a duchess to think about.”
“And the dignity of the master of the Mage Tower is fine?”
“My dignity has never stood upright even once, so it’s fine!”
At his shameless reply, Angelica burst into laughter. She thought it would have been nice if she, too, could answer like that.
Seeing Angelica laugh like that made Emilio worried. It was different from before. Even if he no longer felt the same way, he could tell. They were friends, after all.
“Did something happen to you? Angelica, we’re friends. My mouth may be loose, but when it comes to matters about you, that’s an exception. Tell me. Is Theo breaking your heart?”
But Angelica realized that Emilio’s eyes, as he spoke the word “friend,” no longer held the same pain as before. His heart had changed too. She was surprised, but it did not hurt as much as it had with Rahil.
After all, his feelings had always had a will-o’-the-wisp quality to them, so she had expected they might suddenly change like this.
“That’s what I want to ask you. You look like you’re troubled too! Tell me. Who caught your eye? Who is making your heart flutter?”
“What?”
For a moment, Emilio looked flustered, and his face flushed red. Laughter shimmered in Angelica’s eyes. In the past, when he had confessed to her, Angelica had told him that his feelings would eventually change, and that when they did, she would gladly give him dating advice.
“You can tell me! Emilio, you’re not the kind of person who can hide anything!”
Emilio, who had been growing redder and redder in embarrassment, slipped on the roof and almost rolled off. If Angelica had not quickly caught him, he might really have fallen.
Even if that had happened, he would have used magic to avoid the fall, but Emilio grumbled as he found his footing again.
“What am I hiding?”
“Hehe, I have my ways of knowing everything. Who is it? Which family’s young lady is she from? Is she someone with a fiancé, by any chance?”
If Emilio had fallen for someone, he was the kind of person who would not hide it and would go around talking about it. So the fact that he could not answer meant that, if he said it out loud, the woman would be put in a difficult position.
“A fiancé? What are you talking about? There’s no….”
Angelica did not miss the bitter look that passed across Emilio’s face. A mere fiancé would not be enough to make him look like that.
Then was it because the woman already had someone she loved?
‘That can’t be it either. Even though Emilio knew I liked Theo, he didn’t fall into despair.’
Then….
A frightening feeling swept through her. Most of her friends had loved the same woman, and perhaps Rahil and Emilio also had similar taste when it came to women.
“Is it Anais, by any chance?”
Before she could even think about the disrespect of speaking the empress’s name aloud, the words had already slipped out. Emilio turned pale at her question.
“Wh-what are you talking about!”
Angelica stared at Emilio in shock as his face turned bluish pale, then flushed red again. She had wanted to become close enough to the empress someday to call her by name. Not to commit this kind of disrespect by saying her name in such a way.
Emilio looked at Angelica in confusion, then shook his head.
“No! It’s not like that, so don’t think about it! You misunderstood!”
Seeing Emilio grab her arm and shout, Angelica swallowed her breath. This was a place meant for knight apprentices, but it was an abandoned building, so no one would notice even if they made a commotion.
That was why Angelica had also been secretly coming here.
“What are you going to do?”
It was a sincere question. It came from her concern for Emilio. At those words, Emilio looked confused.
“What do you mean, what am I going to do? Anais already has a husband, and I… I just felt that way, that’s all. I can hide it, so somehow it’ll work out.”
As Angelica watched Emilio blushing and making excuses, a thought flowed into her mind. It was a thought completely unlike her.
‘The empress does not love Rahil.’
Rahil had come to love her, but the empress had only shown him a cold expression. Angelica thought that, just as she herself once had, Anais would never recognize the jewel that was Rahil until the very end.
Because she already had him in her hand. No fool paid attention to something they already possessed. Besides, the wound Rahil had given her had been far too fatal. A proud woman like her would never forgive Rahil.
“Why… did that happen? Did you become close to the empress?”
“That’s not it! Anais feels uncomfortable around me! It’s….”
Emilio, who had been in confusion, finally decided to be honest and tell her the truth.
Both he and she were nobles of the pro-emperor faction, but Angelica’s position was different from the people on Rahil’s side. She would keep the secret. That was why he could tell her what magic the dragon had cast at the very end.
Angelica was shocked to hear that Anais was Radiel’s reincarnation, and that Emilio was the reincarnation of the man Radiel had loved.
‘The dragon tried to kidnap the empress?’
Rahil had even hunted the dragon to protect Anais. Just hearing about the dragon’s corpse in the main palace made her heart pound.
The one who had actually killed the dragon was Rodrigo, but in Angelica’s mind, it felt as if Rahil had killed the dragon for Anais.
‘Why am I like this? I was always someone who wanted to protect, not someone who wanted to be protected.’
“Then that dragon… thought the empress would choose you if you seduced her?”
She swallowed the words, “instead of Rahil.”
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