Julia instructed her maid to request an audience with Princess Carolina. The maid soon returned, saying she couldn’t request the audience due to Carolina’s absence.

“Not sleeping, but absent? At this hour of the morning? Tell me the truth.”

“According to rumors spreading in the palace, she went out with Prince Patrick of Tane last night and hasn’t returned.”

“Hah. Am I supposed to believe that?”

Carolina had been her cradle friend. From girlhood until now, Carolina had consistently disliked men.

At balls, she never left the wall, earning the nickname “The Empire’s Black Curtain.” She was especially averse to physical contact with men.

‘And she stayed out overnight?’

Surely Prince Patrick, with his dazzling looks and flirtatious smile, must have seduced her.

‘But how?’

“Why is the Tane royal family so filthy?”

Julia had her maid call for a commercial carriage. She went out to the Notos Palace garden. Biting her thumbnail, she stared intently at the statue of Minerva.

Julia, her eyes narrowed in thought, suddenly flashed her onyx-black eyes.

‘I will drag them to ruin, even if it costs me my life.’

After returning to the Leak mansion in the carriage called by the Notos Palace maid, Julia climbed the central staircase, looking for her maid Mina. She intended to give her a thorough scolding.

“My lady, Mina hasn’t returned since entering the palace with you yesterday.”

“What? Ah!”

‘That wretched…’

She recalled Sir Eden’s words.

Last night, I found you collapsed in front of the palace and laid you in your empty bedroom.

Julia finally realized. No matter how drunk she might have been, she wouldn’t have lost consciousness to that degree. Surely the two sisters had conspired to give her the sleeping powder meant for the Empress.

“Call for Sir Henry.”

Julia immediately instructed Henry, the Leak mansion’s knight, to go to the Empress’s palace and either bring back the maid Lena or find out her whereabouts.

Julia called the maids one by one, finding fault and venting her anger. In the midst of this, she received news that Parse, the Duke of Tane’s parliament, had come to visit.

“The Duke of Parse from Tane is visiting?”

Duke Parse was Julia’s uncle, married to the Duke of Leak’s younger sister.

The Parse Duchy included the border city adjacent to Karsik in northern Tane, encompassing the Luken region, with the Parse mansion in the capital. She had stayed at the Parse mansion during her studies at the Tane Academy.

Julia instructed her maid to bring a tea set. Using greetings as an excuse, she went to the Duke’s office.

“Julia greets Your Grace. I hope you have been well.”

Duke Parse received Julia’s greeting halfheartedly. He seemed anxious.

“I shall serve you tea, Your Grace.”

“No, that’s fine. We’ll have tea another time. I have urgent matters to discuss with your father.”

“Julia, leave us.”

“Yes, Your Grace. Please have a comfortable conversation, then.”

Julia gracefully lifted her dress hem, bowed, and backed out of the office.

Julia sent the maid holding the tea set to the tea room and went to the Duke’s bedroom herself.

After lighting the lamp, she pushed aside the ornamental cabinet in the bedroom and entered. It was the Duke of Leak’s secret passage.

As a child, Julia had once witnessed the Duke walk behind a bookcase and push it closed the moment she entered his office.

She knew from books that castles and noble mansions had secret passages.

In her curious girlhood, overcoming fear, she had once entered the passage with a lamp. Entering through the office, Julia had covered her mouth in surprise.

The passage walls were filled with iron shelves in the form of bookcases, each shelf packed with countless gold bars stacked like books.

Julia had subtly asked her mother if she knew about the passage’s existence.

“Mother, I heard that most castles and mansions have walls modified for secret vaults. Do we have one?”

“Of course we do. But Julia, if you need money, just ask. The Duke’s secret passage is filled with venomous snakes, so you’ll be bitten if you enter carelessly.”

Julia wasn’t the type to be intimidated by such threatening statements.

Afterwards, she habitually entered the passage behind the Duke’s office bookcase, not because she needed money, but to take one or two gold bars at a time.

One day, she sensed movement not far from where she stood in the passage. Boldly, she extinguished her lamp and moved towards the sound.

A woman in disheveled undergarments, holding a lamp in one hand and a bundle of clothes in the other, emerged, feeling her way along the wall.

She fixed the lamp to the wall and hurriedly changed clothes. To overcome her fear, she cursed the Duchess in a sharp voice.

After changing, she took the lamp and vanished into the darkness as if being sucked in.

“Whew.”

The damp passage floor was wet from water seeping in from somewhere. She placed her hand on the wall of the narrow, dark place, like an animal’s intestines, as she took steps.

At a fork, she illuminated both passages. Despite having come many times, she was always confused.

On the floor of the passage she entered on the right, an elaborate lace gown had fallen. That meant this path led outside the mansion. She backtracked and entered the other passage.

The ladies who had fled due to the Duchess’s sudden visit had hastily changed into the dresses they brought, throwing their gowns on the floor as they escaped.

There was a clear reason for the Duchess of Leak’s surprise visits to the Duke’s bedroom.

“Your Grace, enjoy yourself. But absolutely do not produce an heir.”

The Duchess didn’t stop there. She would inevitably track down the women who spent the night with the Duke and make them take contraceptive pills. Julia watched and learned right by her mother’s side. And she practiced what she learned.

She walked the dark path towards the office. Julia gritted her teeth, thinking of Harchen.

Yes, Harchen, right now you may be enthralled by the woman before you. But how long will that last? No matter how noble you pretend to be, you’re still a man, you’ll tire of her soon.

Julia had prepared for contingencies. Through Carolina, she had diverted supplement pills made by the imperial physician. Through Mina, she had ordered contraceptive pills of the same shape and weight from Old Chen in Oro Alley.

She had Lena pass them on, inducing the Tane princess to take the contraceptive pills. She needed to prevent pregnancy urgently. After that, she planned to seize any opportunity, by any means necessary.

Yes, I’m the one who will bear the Emperor’s child. Only me, Princess Patricia.

Julia overheard an unexpected and powerful secret behind the Duke of Leak’s office bookcase.

Hehehe. … Elimination, assassination.

“So that’s an option too.”

Julia felt fear and simultaneously, immense exhilaration.

Patrick observed his surroundings while riding in the carriage provided by Arteum. Amidst the generally curious gazes, two, no, three shadowy gazes were identified.

Patrick brushed back Carolina’s black hair that had fallen onto her shoulder and gently pulled her round shoulder. Then he lightly kissed the top of her black head.

“Your Highness, suddenly.”

Carolina looked up at him, her cheeks flushing shyly.

“Your reaction… I like it.”

Patrick drew the curtains as soon as he boarded the carriage.

Go and report. Tell them Patrick is infatuated with the black-haired princess, losing his mind over her.

He thought there might be shadows of the Emperor and Empress, Duke Parse, and perhaps even the Karsik Empress Dowager.

Patrick looked out the window. The carriage passed through Epi Street, known as the street of freedom where youth and passion boiled in the Karsik Empire.

Young nobles who had spent the night gambling and drinking stood in groups with summer jackets draped over their shoulders, buildings with colorful plaster walls thought to be courtesans’ lodgings, the beginning of the gloomy Oro Alley in the slums, the market, the square.

The densely populated area commonly seen in alleys slightly removed from the center of any empire or kingdom’s capital.

But.

Patrick uncrossed his legs and turned his body to carefully observe the street they had passed through the rear window of the carriage.

‘It’s different from Tane’s alleys.’

He had thought something was different when he took a round in the blue dawn.

Like the Kaosan area where mining had begun, the capital’s alleys were also neat and stably organized.

The vast territory, the Tane Empire wielding strong power and authority. An advanced country in culture, economy, and politics, the wealthy nation of the Arkan continent.

The stench and corruption, fraud and conspiracy, the smell of crime commonly found in Tane’s alleys were absent here.

There had been a human trafficking organization bust in the border city of Luken. A security force in Luken had arrested an organization that kidnapped and confined young boys and girls to be trafficked somewhere.

According to what Patrick had heard and reported, the security force that made the arrest was instead punished by the Imperial Noble Council.

.

.

.

‘Sigh.’

Carolina looked at Patrick’s cold and chilly profile. What thoughts could possibly make such a frigid expression.

‘I’m not in that man’s mind at all.’

He had changed like a different person from before boarding the carriage. Clearly, he had seemed as if he would pounce on her lips and bite her shoulders the moment they boarded.

But the moment he boarded, his complexion changed drastically.

From leaving Epi Street, passing the lakeside, until entering the approach to Karsik Palace, Patrick didn’t look at her sitting opposite him, only glaring out the window.

She too turned her head to the opposite window, but endlessly gazed at his profile reflected in the glass.

He had promised to submit a royal marriage proposal in a month. When Carolina said she wouldn’t interfere and would live her own life after the royal marriage, he told her to interfere. He said he would interfere too.

‘Was he sincere?’

Carolina had seen that cold gaze last night too. What could have made him so cold?

If he had even the slightest good feeling towards her, she wanted to remove his coldness and make him gentle.

As the carriage passed through the metasequoia-lined street, Carolina, unable to bear the awkward atmosphere, curled her fingertips resting on her knees and turned her head.

‘Eek!’

Patrick’s blue eyes were looking at Carolina, his chin resting on his knee propped against the armrest.

“Do you have something to say?”

“Tomorrow… evening, could we dine together?”

“…”

The carriage rushed towards the main Karsik Palace. Patrick looked at Carolina with an expressionless face. Carolina raised her gaze to meet his blue eyes. His look said to answer.

“What should I do? I have a prior engagement.”