Chapter 68
“As you might know, Sister, the Anais family is loyal to the Empress. Even when Her Majesty was the Crown Princess, my aunt served her faithfully. My father also supports the Empress as the rightful consort.”
Leslie suddenly brought up his own family background.
“Sister Didi, you haven’t had the chance to meet His Highness the Crown Prince yet, right? Ha… Where should I even start? When you look at that total disaster of a human being, you can only think that God has abandoned the House of Rose.”
His expression, tone, and gaze clearly conveyed how much he despised the Crown Prince.
“He’s impatient by nature. He has a violent streak. Normally, that should have been corrected from childhood, but the Empress, drunk on the joy of bearing the heir, coddled her only son. As for His Majesty, the Emperor…”
Leslie paused briefly, choosing his words carefully.
“This might sound odd, but he didn’t want his heir to be too outstanding. So he overlooked the Empress’s indulgence. The imperial consorts, secretly pleased, went along with it.”
“I think I roughly understand why you called him a total disaster.”
This wasn’t just an ordinary child. Each person ruined the heir for their own reasons. The current Crown Prince was the product of foolish imperial figures acting together.
‘The more you know them, the worse they seem.’
Marien’s expression darkened.
‘If the empire falls into the hands of a foolish tyrant, they wouldn’t care about the suffering of ordinary people at all.’
Marien realized anew why Odette had to ascend to the throne. She didn’t want to admit it, but Leslie was right: the House of Rose was beyond saving.
“Even if you took the Crown Prince’s position right now, Sister, you’d do better than him. And as for his taste… it’s abysmal…”
Leslie’s expression was one of pure loathing, more than Marien had ever seen. His thin, red lips trembled.
Marien imagined the situation of Leslie, who loved to adorn himself from head to toe, facing the vile nature of the Crown Prince.
Even though it wasn’t in the original story, she could picture it clearly. These two were natural enemies.
“My words went off track. Anyway, twenty-three years ago, I first encountered Eve at the Opera House.”
Savril had been dressed plainly. His voice was so faint that Leslie had to come close to understand him properly.
Leslie, a trained spy, didn’t realize that everything was intentional on Savril’s part—but he soon believed everything she said.
“It wasn’t that I was naive; Eve’s skill was simply that impressive.”
And the highly skilled spy Savril had approached the Crown Prince back then using Leslie as a stepping stone.
Marien couldn’t help but intervene here. The answer to this question seemed like it could only come from Leslie.
“This is a personal curiosity. I’ll ask just one thing.”
“Yes, what is it?”
“What was the Crown Prince’s charm twenty-three years ago?”
Marien was serious.
“An ace spy like Harun would need to find someone attractive enough to betray their country, logically speaking.”
“If you say His Majesty’s charm was lacking even slightly, he’d be furious.”
“Of course.”
From all the information Marien had gathered, the current Emperor was a man driven by lust for power and distrust of humans. Nothing more, nothing less. A man she could only imagine begging and groveling before Odette in the future.
Yet Savril chose to remain by the Emperor’s side, despite holding top-secret intelligence and being just a step away from receiving a reward from her homeland.
Some readers criticized her taste in men. Even if they said it out of pity, Marien didn’t blame Savril.
‘A misjudgment? That can happen. No one’s perfect. But at the very least, that Emperor had to be as handsome as a combination of Baileon, Cain, and Leslie!’
Only then could her frustration and exasperation be soothed, even slightly.
“Even now…”
Leslie chuckled as he continued.
“His Majesty was remarkable in his prime. During the New Year’s event, people came from far-off foreign lands just to catch a glimpse of the Crown Prince. And until she discovered Eve’s identity, he was genuinely sincere. Does that provide some consolation?”
Marien nodded delicately. Then she returned to the moment when Leslie and Savril parted.
“You don’t know what Harun originally wanted to say, besides that he had poor judgment, do you?”
“Is that a behind-the-scenes story?”
“He hoped to find his second love in a woman less dangerous than me.”
According to Odette, Savril had said that to her young daughter and smiled slightly afterward.
He was still a child, but astonishingly handsome. From the first meeting, it was clear that the heir of the Anais family wasn’t an ordinary person.
“And yet he got his hands bloody trying to save a condemned man without trembling. So even with the boy’s help, I reproached him for poor judgment. At least nothing like my case should happen twice. Because, Odette, if I say what I originally wanted, the man will undoubtedly follow his mother. How could I let Eve leave just after saying that? That’s not a man.”
Marien faithfully conveyed what Odette had told her. It would have been ideal to memorize it in one go, but she wasn’t a genius like Odette.
So she carefully wrote it down in her notebook and memorized it diligently. When she spoke in front of Leslie, Savril’s calm tone was faithfully reproduced. Marien praised herself for a job well done.
“Haman’s intelligence agency lost an extraordinary talent, didn’t they?”
Leslie’s first reaction. Even when killing the sentries at the spire, he hadn’t shown much fear. Hearing about the first love story, he still remained composed.
Internally, he might have been anything, but at least to Marien, he seemed calm.
“An amazing Eve. Even after parting from me, she evaded the imperial pursuit for years. With her skills, she could have escaped to a third country…”
“At that time, Her Highness the Fourth Princess asked too. She asked if her mother lived in imperial territory just to exact revenge.”
Leslie laughed. It was a very ‘Fourth Princess’ question, he said, asking if a seven-year-old child understood revenge enough to share her mother’s intent.
“So what did Eve answer?”
“She said her revenge was already over the moment Odette was safely born. In front of her precious daughter, any animosity toward the imperial family felt meaningless.”
Savril Harun’s skill remained impressive. She was confident in evading enemies. So she wanted her daughter and herself to live as well as possible in the empire’s beautiful fields.
Savril, a spy who risked her life for the Crown Prince of an enemy nation, loved her daughter with the same wholehearted devotion.
“The Fourth Princess must have blamed herself, quietly.”
Leslie said in a low voice. It was true. Even if Savril spoke from pure love, Odette believed her fragile body limited her mother’s freedom.
Feelings hidden from the other party. Understandable, yet regrettable. Marien’s mouth tasted bitter.
Suddenly, Leslie changed the topic, asking if Marien found Baileon uncomfortable as a partner.
He had pretended to pity Baileon earlier, prying into their relationship, and now this.
“What good is a pure body? Sir Beers has already visited your heart once. Right? The ten or so years before meeting you, and all the memories the minister built with His Highness, they wouldn’t be easy to disregard.”
Was he dragging in his own past failed love just to meddle with someone currently happy? Marien frowned.
“Even the smallest things must still bear the shadow of past love.”
“I didn’t want to hear that from someone who ruined their first love and became a priest.”
Marien stood up. She realized she’d been kneeling on the cushion the whole time. She regretted not standing earlier.
“I’ve conveyed everything I needed to. I’ll be going now.”
If Cain pushed his will and angered people, Leslie was the type to cunningly exploit any gaps in their hearts.
Speaking too long with such a person only unsettles the listener. It was best to leave promptly.
“May God’s blessing always be with you, Sister.”
Marien didn’t respond, simply exiting the confessional.
Even long after the visitor left, Leslie remained, lost in thought.
A story heard after twenty-three years.
“To tell her daughter, ‘That’s not a man…’”
His lips twitched as if in a spasm. He couldn’t stop laughing at the thought. Leslie looked at the empty spot where the visitor had gone.
“If he’d hesitated even for a moment, he would have become not a man.”
Savril’s daughter increasingly resembled her mother.
Her rose-colored eyes were the House of Rose’s, but her talent and speech were unmistakably inherited from Savril.
To dress a cute subordinate like her own mother and send her to Leslie—where did such ideas come from? Did her late mother appear in a dream to guide her?
On the surface, she was still someone trusted by the Second Prince.
“Interesting…”
And Marien Didi, obediently sent by Odette, had come unarmed, seemingly believing her sole purpose was to ‘deliver a message.’
She likely never imagined any persuasion. Hence, she hadn’t smiled once in the confessional. Recalling the tactless Marien who frowned and left, Leslie’s laughter broke out again.
◇ ◆ ◇
“You’ve returned alive.”
Odette spoke as Marien entered the Fourth Princess’s reception room. Marien froze.
“Did you send me to a place where I could have died?”
“The person you met one-on-one was Priest Anais. Isn’t that natural?”
Odette countered, implying Marien was strange. Didn’t she enter the temple fluttering in without any resolve? How did it feel to live without a sense of danger?
‘She’s subtly putting me in my place again.’
Except for the time being chased by a half-naked Cain Blackwood, all life-threatening experiences came through Odette.
Who cares if Cain ruled as the black reaper on the battlefield? What did it matter that Leslie had, since childhood, easily bypassed guards?
“I’m most afraid of Your Highness.”
“That’s a strange thing to say. If you were really afraid of me, you wouldn’t talk so freely in front of me, like Didi does.”
“…Anyway, I returned alive. I’ll report.”
Marien took out a small notebook from her pocket.
