Carolina instructed her maid to pack plum tea while preparing to go out.

Calmly finishing her preparations, she ordered her maid to have a carriage wait in front of the main palace and went to the Emperor’s office.

In the office, assistant Philip and Bern were discussing while looking at documents.

“Lord Bern.”

“Your Highness, please speak.”

“Did His Majesty really go to Luken? Not to the capital of Tane?”

“……”

“I’m going to meet Julia now. I’ll tell you when I get back. You should also think carefully about what you need to tell me.”

Carolina went out to the office terrace and descended the outdoor stairs. She stopped while walking towards the White Palace garden.

A young maid from Tane was sitting on a wooden bench looking up at the sky.

“Hey, you!”

The young maid turned to look at Carolina and silently bowed her upper body in greeting.

“Were you crying?”

At Carolina’s words, Annie let out the sobs she had been suppressing inside along with her breath.

“What’s wrong? Tell me.”

Annie wiped her tears with the back of her hand and looked up at the sky with her neck bent, gesturing. Carolina also stood beside her, looking up at the empty space Annie was pointing to.

A white eagle was gliding around the spire of White Palace.

“That, that eagle’s name is Bridge.”

Annie was worried sick because Eva and the Empress had disappeared without a word for three days, and the head maid of White Palace forbade even mentioning it. She was not in a position to ask anyone, nor could she complain anywhere.

She felt awkward staying in White Palace due to her sensitivity. But it also felt odd to stay alone in Notos Palace, so she sat in the garden looking up at the sky and discovered the eagle circling around the spire.

“Look closely. Do you see the white paper above its feet, under its wings?”

Carolina craned her neck and looked for a while. When the eagle’s large wings spread, a glimpse of white paper could be seen.

“Yes, I see it.”

“It’s probably a letter sent by Prince Patrick. But no matter how much I whistle, it won’t come down. It seems to know I’m not the Empress.”

“Try whistling again.”

At Carolina’s words, Annie grabbed her lower lip with her fingers and blew, “Wheee, wheee.” The yellow-beaked eagle seemed to pause in the air for a moment, then gracefully glided with its wing tips curved upwards.

“Well, even if it came down, I’m illiterate so I couldn’t read Prince Patrick’s letter or write a reply anyway.”

“I’ll read it for you and write a reply, try whistling again.”

“Yes, Your Highness. Wheee, wheee, wheee!”

“Wait a moment.”

Carolina went to the Emperor’s office and brought Lord Bern. Carolina told Bern that it was an eagle exchanging letters between Patrick and the Empress, and asked if there was a way to call the eagle down.

“Your Highness. Eagles trained for messenger purposes not only have excellent sense of direction, but their hearing is also sensitive, so it probably distinguishes the Empress’s whistle sound.”

“So, we have no chance of luring the eagle down?”

“Yes, Your Highness. That is correct.”

Carolina pouted her lips, then patted Annie’s shoulder and went to ride the carriage waiting in front of the main palace.

Bern looked up at the sky and suddenly realized.

There was a white letter attached to the eagle’s leg. So the eagle would return to where it came from after delivering the letter to the Empress and receiving a reply.

If it couldn’t hear the Empress’s whistle sound from here, it would expand the diameter of the circle a bit more to widen the area. That level of gliding could be seen from anywhere in Riswan and nearby.

In other words, the Empress is where the eagle lands.

The Empress would also observe the open sky from wherever she was and call the eagle, if she wasn’t badly injured. That’s how she escaped from Pana Castle too.

Bern kept his gaze on the eagle drawing regular circles as he walked towards the main palace. He desperately wanted a cigar.

Bern took out the cigar box he had left on the landing of the outdoor stairs of the Emperor’s office, cut it with a cutter, and lit it.

Keeping his eyes on the eagle gliding in the sky while smoking his cigar and habitually walking along the outer wall, Bern stopped in his tracks.

He hid the cigar behind his back and stood pressed against the outer wall. Past the shrub hedge, a white parasol was visible in the grass in front of the icehouse. It was where the blackened weeds had been.

The woman holding the parasol cut flower stems with scissors and placed them in the basket on her arm. A humming song could be heard.

‘A lady. Who could it be?’

Bern was about to approach but stopped. She was a woman inside the palace anyway. He observed silently, intending only to confirm her face.

While keeping the eagle gliding across the sky at regular intervals in view as well.

After bending over the flowers for a while, she straightened up with the parasol and spun around. Bern nearly dropped the extinguished cigar.

‘Huh. The Princess.’

Third Princess Alesia came out walking along the shrubs, twirling her parasol. She went straight into the main palace.

*

When Julia heard that Carolina had come to visit, her heart sank.

‘She’s finally here.’

She must have brought the news she’d been waiting for.

Julia had tried to gather information flowing from the imperial palace through knights and maids, but the palace had been quiet these past few days.

‘Well, it’s such a big incident and with Harchen absent, they’re probably quietly handling and dealing with it at the imperial level.’

But after three days with no news, she started to get anxious. However, she couldn’t enter the palace with her body injured from the carriage accident.

She was bothered that she couldn’t dress up as she wanted due to her injured arm and leg, but above all, she wanted to confirm something through Carolina first.

Julia’s bedroom and reception room were in disarray. She had just thrown vases and glass bottles of cosmetic water in frustration and anxiety, and the maids were in the middle of cleaning up.

Even though she was on informal terms with Carolina, she didn’t want to show this kind of appearance.

Unlike most women, Carolina didn’t like flowers. For princesses, waiting for about an hour in the botanical garden wouldn’t be a boring time. But Carolina had no interest in flowers, so she disliked garden walks.

“Guide her to the second floor study. Tell her she’ll have to wait an hour.”

Julia sat in a movable chair and checked if her bandaged legs on both sides were well hidden by lifting the hem of her dress.

“Fix my hair, tie it up tight in one strand, quickly.”

After speaking more harshly than necessary, she thought. She should at least pretend to cry upon hearing of the Empress’s death.

“No, don’t tie it up, just leave it down and brush it.”

She was worried that if she pulled her hair up tight, it would be easy to detect her smiling expression as her cheekbones rose.

The Empress’s death. What an exhilarating phrase.

Julia tried acting out crying by bowing her head deeply and covering it with her hair while grinning.

Carolina entered the study guided by a maid. The maid set down tea and cookies on the table, emphasizing that Julia had severe fractures and was getting up after lying in bed.

She said it would take at least an hour to get dressed, so please wait comfortably.

“Princess, please call if you need anything.”

“You may go.”

After the maid left, Carolina got up from the sofa and went to the bookshelf. She had wanted to look at Julia’s bookshelf anyway. Three 5-tier bookshelves of red cherry wood stood side by side.

‘Goodness. How could this be.’

The bookshelves literally contained titles of almost every kind of romance. Most were romance novels with blatant titles that clearly revealed the content.

How to seduce a cold Englishman, The process of making an affectionate Englishman, Techniques to make him fall for you in three meetings. There were quite a few book titles that could be called methodologies for winning love.

Carolina pulled out a book called “Techniques for Handling Arrogant Men” and flipped through it halfheartedly.

With all these books under your belt, why couldn’t you seduce Harchen? In the end, learning from books and real practice are different. No, isn’t liking someone and the emotion of love something that flows naturally like water, not something to be unilaterally obtained or won?

“Carolina, I have no time to kindle the sparks of love in my current situation. So I’ve coldly cut you out of my mind, clearly.

But on the night I ride towards my homeland Tane.

When I look up at the sky, I find myself pressing my lips to your mysterious black hair.

Your hair spreads across the pitch-black night sky. The sky is filled with you.

When this is over, I will come to you. If you miss me, if you have something to say to me, go to Notos Palace.

Take out any book from the library and write a letter. Someday I will find and read every bit of your heart.

Yours truly, Patrick, captivated by the mystery of the night.”

Carolina recalled Patrick’s letter, which she had memorized from reading too many times.

A man who looks up at the night sky and thinks of her black hair, of her.

Yes, Mother. I love him. I have no emotions to give to anyone else.

Click.

Julia entered the study, leaning back in a movable chair carried on both sides by knights. After the knights set down the chair where Julia pointed, a maid who followed placed a purple silk cover over her knees.

“Julia. You’re badly hurt, I wonder if I’m disturbing you.”

“It’s fine. I was feeling stuffy anyway.”

Carolina held out the plum tea she had brought. Julia received it perfunctorily and exchanged pleasantries.

Julia frowned, feeling impatient even for the time it took the maid who brought in the dessert set and finger food to brew tea at the table. She barely suppressed the rising questions while examining Carolina’s expression.

“Carolina, did something happen? You don’t look well.”

‘That can’t be.’

Carolina’s cheeks had just been flushed with thoughts of Patrick. She was in the process of cooling her heart while looking at Julia sitting in the movable chair.

“Mmm, there was a minor incident at the palace.”

‘A minor incident?’

“Child, stop pouring tea and leave us.”

Unable to wait any longer, Julia sent the maid away.

“What do you mean a minor incident? What happened?”

Carolina closed her mouth and stared at Julia. She was a friend she had known since the cradle. Unlike Isabella and Alesia, she had poured deep affection into her.

There was a time when she worked hard to arrange her love with Harchen. She could tell Julia’s emotions just from her expression.

What words do you want to hear that you’re so anxiously excited, Julia?

“The Empress has gone missing.”

‘The Empress isn’t dead.’

Julia almost shouted out loud.

“What do you mean missing? How?”

Carolina read the look of disappointment that flashed across Julia’s face for a moment.

“Julia. You had an audience with the Empress, didn’t you?”