Chapter 1. Kill the Empress
****
Perso Gertium, the red-haired man, stared at the seat where Anna sat.
“Rotrega said his daughter is fearless, but she’s not without a head. I think she’s smart and a good judge of situations.”
Perso approached the window without saying a word. He looked out the window. He was huge and intimidatingly large and covered half of the window.
Anna, who was sitting here and chatting a while ago, was walking toward the lake hill.
A small woman was walking diligently filled his green eyes.
“Anna used to be the Empress’s closest maid of honor, but now she has no power. Well, of course, I’m sure you know more than I do.”
“Why did she ask to see me?”
A question with a heavy voice echoed through the air.
If the Empress were still alive, he would be able to guess at least a little about her intentions.
But no forces or intentions were being read from Anna now.
“A little bit… However, I heard that Anna’s situation changed badly after the Puglish kicked her out. Since His Majesty doesn’t even want to see the traces of the Empress.”
“….”
The current emperor, Gillotti Tanatos, had become increasingly obsessed with the Empress after her death.
Anna’s situation was not good, because the Emperor wanted to erase every trace of the Empress. He wanted to kill anyone who was related to her.
He even set the Sunset family’s mansion on fire, and dug up the tombs of her predecessors.
Even Perso thought it was an excessive treatment.
After the downfall of the Sunset family, the emperor did not pursue the Sunset family’s crimes as when he was angry before.
The truth was that he just buried the case completely.
And so it should be.
Since Cainely Sunset* was innocent. (*Roselyn’s brother.”
Gertium didn’t know the exact circumstances of how Natasha had framed Cainely Sunset.
However, he could tell that Cain knew it was dangerous and that the safety of the people around him was more at stake than his own safety in following her lead to visit.
Perso planted one of his own subordinates in one of Natasha’s manipulators.
She also needed warriors, so she had no hesitation to make Gertium the imperial dog.
Of course, she wasn’t afraid to kill him, either.
One of her orders was to investigate Anna Puglish.
This meant that one of the cards that Natasha had grabbed and blackmailed Cain was Anna.
Perso looked at the back of the woman as she moved away with an increasingly intense look in his eyes.
“I’m Anna Rotrega. You should know because I’m the daughter of Viscount Rotrega.”
Her brown eyes shone as she said her name so clearly.
It was the first time a woman didn’t look away while facing him.
She didn’t panic, she wasn’t afraid, but she maintained her calm composure.
That was nothing, and the brown eyes he met in that darkness were clearly imprinted.
She was so small and fragile, who came up just about his chest, but the way she looked straight into his eyes was just as piercing as those of knights who had crossed the hardships of life and death many times.
“Oh, maybe…”
Henrik opened his mouth again, as if he had realized something afterwards.
Perso looked at Henrik with eyes that had been following Anna’s back as she disappeared over the hill.
“Let me tell you this…. Could it be …………?”
“You pause again.”
Perso, who hated Henrik for not getting straight to the point, narrowed his eyes and nudged Henrik.
Henrik, who had been rolling his eyeballs this way and that, rubbed his chin and opened his mouth as if he had made up his mind.
“Is Anna going to ask for protection from DuKe Perso?”
Perso’s brow furrowed at the completely unexpected words.
It was a habit that always came out when he was in a panic.
“What do you mean?”
Henrik replied, tapping the table when Perso asked back in a hard voice.
“Actually, now that I think about it, Duke Perso is the only force that can protect Anna from the Empire. Now that Sunset is gone, the two major forces are Gertium and Helio. Among them, Helio is considered to be the enemy of His Majesty as well as the Sunset family, so you never know when something might happen again, right?”
All the nobles, even Anna’s husband, had abandoned her.
In the eyes of the emperor, she was sure to be as good as dead.
She would need a roof over her head to hide her and protect her.
And Henrik had said that Anna might have sought out Perso as that roof. Perso’s gaze followed Anna’s back as she disappeared behind the hill again.
“Well, that’s just my guess.”
Ha, ha, ha.
Henrik chuckled and gulped down the cold tea.
Until that moment, Perso’s gaze hadn’t left the hill where the sun was setting.
***
‘I guess it’s time for another letter from Rosie…………’
Anna thought as she gazed blankly at the icy lake.
Before leaving Noem’s mansion, Anna told Roselyn to send the letter to Count Marktop’s residence, where her father was, within a month.
So that if the letter arrived during her father’s stay, he could send it to her immediately.
Rosie said that she needed Henrik Alpatio.
She also added that she needed a card to shake Perso Gertium.
Of course, there were no details, but that was enough reason for Anna to meet with Henrik and Perso.
And in order to sway them….
‘I can’t end up being mere benefactors. Oh, and if Rosie can give me any hints, I’ll be ready to try to convince or sway them.’
It wasn’t enough to keep this up.
Anna took a deep breath. This was not the time to hurry.
It was a fact that even a walking child knew that Gertium was on the side of the imperial family.
What could be the reason for Rosie to want to convince him who was on the Emperor’s side?
Was it so that the Emperor couldn’t use Gertium?
‘………… But this guess is not enough, so hasty judgment may interfere with Rosie.’
Anna tried to resign herself to the fact that she was in a hurry.
She took another deep breath and looked out at the lake.
There was a cold breeze blowing that chilled her nose, but it felt cooler than ever.
It was perfect for emptying her head.
Crunch.
Anna turned around, startled by the sudden sound of a presence.
A huge shadow was approaching, and Anna took a step back without realizing it.
‘’You’re the knight.”
It was the very knight that had guided her to Henrik.
His red hair looked even redder when viewed under the sunset sky.
The man was standing three or four paces away from Anna.
“Is the knight out for a walk?”
“No, it was almost sundown and I saw that you were going far away, so I followed you.”
“What?”
“I saw you went up a while ago, but you didn’t come down………..”
“Oh.”
‘He saw me go this way.’
It sounded like he was worried about Anna because she didn’t come back when the sun was setting.
He was more caring than she thought.
Anna stared at him with a look of surprise.
In her large eyes, she could see the blunt man.
The man’s eyes, which had looked black, now looked quite green.
After standing facing each other for a while, the man narrowed his forehead and said.
“…I see you have a habit of staring at people.”
Anna lowered her gaze quickly, startled.
It was a habit that Cain and Rosie had pointed out to her several times.
She had a habit of staring when she was nervous, and she had been warned many times that strangers might feel uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry if I offended you. I have a bit of an observational habit…….”
Anna’s cheeks turned red with embarrassment. The man just stood there, not even saying it was okay.
When she thought she should leave, the man opened his mouth.
“Would you mind telling me what you observed about me?”
“…… Yes?”
Anna asked back, but the man did not repeat the question.
Anna looked at him again, wondering what to say.
He stared at her as if waiting for a response.
“Your eyes…”
“My eyes?”
“……………..I found your eyes to be more beautiful than I thought.”
“…”
“Green eyes under the red hair are very beautiful.”
Anna let out an awkward smile.
She couldn’t believe she said ‘beautiful’ to a blunt knight.
It was a strange thought.
“But saying it’s beautiful would be rude to the knight, wouldn’t it?”
Anna couldn’t hide her awkwardness and walked past him with her head down.
Perso watched her as she walked past, and when Anna had completely disappeared, he raised his hand and touched his eyes.
There was a sweet scent that he smelled for the first time when she had passed.
****
“Whoa!”
After running for a while, Tamon stopped as he looked up at the sky where the sun was about to set.
He had been running from this morning until now, except when he had to eat.
He was fine, but it wasn’t an easy schedule for Asha, whose body was revived on the way to death and who had barely recovered her strength.
They had to find a place to sleep before nightfall. There were no villages or houses around here, so they had to find a suitable place to sleep nearby.
It was still twilight, so it would be completely dark in another thirty to forty minutes.
Even Roselyn, who was exhausted from the sudden forced march as expected, rejected his suggestion.
“Do we have to camp out?”
“Hmm, perhaps we can find some kind of abandoned hunting shack in the neighborhood, but in the meantime, there is a river, so let’s move over there.”
Tamon led her skillfully.
In truth, Roselyn had never slept or camped out in the wild before.
Born into high nobility, she was the Crown Princess and Empress, but there was no way she would ever experience that.
If she had traveled anywhere, it would have been in a huge carriage where she could sleep in.
That said, she didn’t want to come across as lacking or weak here.
This whole itinerary was for her.
And she didn’t want to complain too openly about it.
“It’s so beautiful here. The riverside is close by.”
Tamon found a sunny spot among the overgrown trees where the sand was dry.
He quickly gathered the branches and made a fire.
In the meantime, all Roselyn tied up the horses and watered them. When Roselyn saw how well he had laid out the sleeping bag, she said with no small amount of admiration.
“You’re good.”
“In war, it’s not always possible to build barracks.”
He made a wide sleeping area.
“This is my place. You can sleep by the fire. By the way, there are a lot of snakes in this area, so be careful not to stay too far away from me.”
He grabbed his spot to sleep calmly then mentioned the snakes.
Roselyn, who had gently placed her bottoms on a fairly comfortable position, gave him a sideways glare as if to say, “Don’t lie to me.” However, Tamon smiled and shrugged, saying it wasn’t a joke.
After roughly unpacking and relieved her hunger, her body began to stiffen from riding all day.
Contrary to the idea of wanting to wash up by the river, Roselyn’s body was lying down on a fluffy sleeping bag.
“Hisssss…..”
A long, grimy, vine snake.
She had seen it once before in a greenhouse sometime ago, but she just backed away from it.
She had never seen many creatures before.
Even as she was drifting off to sleep, Roselyn couldn’t help but secretly stuck close to Tamon’s warmth.
Tamon, who had been looking up at the sky, glanced over at Roselyn, who was closer to him than before and smiled in satisfaction.
“Cute.”
He whispered words she couldn’t hear.