The Emperor, smiling brightly like the sunshine, strode forward with his arms wide open and hugged Lewis tightly.

Frost, who had been loosely leaning against the wall, slowly opened his eyes and looked at the Emperor with a smirk.

The Emperor released the embrace and caressed Lewis’s cheeks. His white, long fingers trembled slightly. It was a clear intentional gesture to express his emotion.

“Let me see. Your face looks just like when you were a child.”

Transparent tears welled up in his blue eyes set in a sculpted face, sparkling in ecstasy.

“My younger brother has truly returned alive! Lewis!”

Justin hugged his returned half-brother Lewis to the point of crushing him.

Lewis, held in Justin’s arms, met eyes with Frost over his shoulder.

Frost gave a small nod and responded with his eyes.

‘Please play along appropriately.’

Lewis hugged the Emperor back firmly and responded in a louder voice.

“Yes! It’s Lewis! Lewis has come! I missed you so much, elder brother!”

It was a moment to fully demonstrate the acting skills he had honed for 3 years as Shavell Allery, the consort of the Grand Duke.

“Ah…! How disloyal of me to call Your Majesty elder brother. I must be out of my mind. Because I missed you so much…, because I’m so happy to see you…. Just once. Just this once… calling you elder brother… would you allow me to…?”

Lewis rubbed his tears that soaked the Emperor’s snow-white uniform and cried, shaking his shoulders.

The high nobles watching with bated breath couldn’t hide their bewilderment, glancing at each other. They had faces that didn’t understand the situation unfolding before their eyes.

As if competing to see who could act better, Justin also shed transparent tears down his white cheeks.

“What does it matter if you call me elder brother or Your Majesty. My younger brother has returned alive after 11 years…! Lewis. My one and only younger brother, Lewis Della Ponti!”

The moment the name Lewis Della Ponti came out of the Emperor’s mouth, a gasp escaped from the lips of the high nobles who had been watching in silence.

In front of the high nobles with sharply conflicting political interests, the Emperor had accepted his half-brother as ‘Della Ponti’, not Vandelli!

The Emperor’s maternal uncle, Duke Figuera, groaned in disbelief, squinting his eyes and glaring at his nephew.

Justin turned his gaze to the Grand Duke and gave a light bow.

“Grand Duke Ielheim. I’m truly grateful. You must have protected Lewis all this time, right? I’ll hear the details separately. The grace of looking after my brother, I will surely ‘repay’ it.”

Frost lightly bowed his head and smiled at the Emperor who was sending a murderous smile.

“It was merely this subject’s duty. Your Majesty’s joy is already a great reward.”

I had estimated the probability was half and half.

Either the Emperor would draw his sword right there and strike Lewis’s neck. Or he would reluctantly recognize Lewis’s eligibility as the Vandelli heir for now and have his shadows slit Lewis’s throat behind the scenes.

I thought he would reveal how crazy he was in front of the Empire’s high nobles.

But Justin made a third choice.

The Emperor shouted loudly to the high nobles.

“I will hold a banquet to celebrate the return of my brother. I hope each and every one of you will attend and grace the occasion with your presence!”

Frost narrowed his eyes and looked at the Emperor as if gauging him.

‘Why is he so calm?’

The southern high nobles were already in an alliance with the north, and while the western high nobles might avoid power struggles, they had a deep sense of indebtedness regarding Empress Gelsomina’s unjust death and the miserable end of the Vandelli family, the watchers of the west.

There wasn’t a single high noble here who didn’t know that the previous Emperor had tried to remove Justin from the position of crown prince and place Lewis in that position before his passing.

There were even public rumors that a secret document with the previous Emperor’s will was hidden somewhere in the palace.

Even if the west didn’t openly support Lewis, just by not siding with the Emperor trying to strike him down, the odds would overwhelmingly turn against the Emperor.

‘But why…?’

I thought I had dealt a big blow. What is this feeling of having swung at the air?

*

“Ah, I was really surprised. To think the femme fatale who enchanted the northern Grand Duke was Your Highness Lewis. We were completely fooled.”

Walking towards the carriage waiting in front of the Leone Hall after the high nobles’ meeting ended, Duke Jobell, the lord of the south, looked Lewis up and down with an amused smile.

Lewis, as if feeling awkward, brushed back his golden hair shining in the sunlight and blushed, then glanced at Frost who had been silent.

“Elder brother. What are you thinking so deeply about?”

“Isn’t it strange? The excessive welcome. Calling Your Highness Lewis by the name Della Ponti, not Vandelli, in front of the high nobles.”

“Haha. They say a crazy person knows a crazy person, right?”

Jobell laughed heartily.

“The already crazy Emperor must have been surprised to see his brother return alive and gone even more insane.”

“Right. He’s crazy. He was a madman.”

Frost muttered as if to himself, furrowing his brow and clicking his tongue.

“I knew it well. But I overlooked it.”

“What did you overlook, Your Highness?”

Duke Jobell asked with a puzzled face.

“I had meticulously prepared to face the Emperor, devised strategies to place Lewis on the central stage, and planned flawlessly according to the Empire’s political situation and power structure.”

At Frost’s words, Duke Jobell tilted his head, unable to understand.

“It’s going to be a fight for the Empire’s royal power, so of course you have to plan meticulously. What’s wrong with that?”

“I didn’t factor in the variable that the Emperor is a madman.”

“Pardon?”

Lewis looked at Frost with an uncomfortable expression.

“Elder brother. You have some inkling, don’t you? What is it?”

Frost’s expression darkened, sensing something was off, but not quite grasping what it was.

“Why do you think the Emperor sent Solas Moretti as the commander-in-chief for the northern subjugation? Haven’t you found it strange?”

Frost turned his gaze towards the golden roof of the Imperial Palace reflecting the late summer sunlight and continued answering his own question.

“Solas was a knight specialized in fighting magical beasts or subjugating barbarian tribes. But striking the north is different. It would make more sense for Duke Figuera, who is well-versed in the ways of politics and power, to lead it. Then why was it Solas?”

“Well, that’s…”

Duke Jobell lowered his large figure and whispered.

“They say the Emperor is a sodomite. And Solas was his lover. Wasn’t he trying to give Solas merits and elevate him to a high position by his side? Those blinded by love fail to see anything else. So blinded that he beheaded his own love.”

At the words that Solas was the Emperor’s lover, Frost frowned.

“Solas was not the Emperor’s lover. And not a man either.”

Jobell opened his eyes wide and shook his head.

“Whew. There are many surprises today. Shavell wasn’t a woman. And now you say Solas wasn’t a man?”

“If she succeeded in the northern subjugation, the Emperor probably planned to use that merit to persuade the Empress Dowager and give her a new identity so she could return as a woman. He must have been elated, dreaming of making her Empress, the closest position to himself.”

But Solas spared Frost, the Emperor’s rival, and returned. The disobedience was revealed to the world, and the Emperor, blinded by a sense of betrayal and jealousy, went completely mad by killing his own desperate love with his own hands.

“The Emperor is not engaging in a political struggle with us right now. He’s betting on the end of his crazy love.”

Thinking that way made the Emperor’s attitude today understandable.

“But Sir Solas is already dead, isn’t he? There’s nothing he can bring back no matter how desperately he wants to.”

Duke Jobell tilted his head. Lewis also looked at Frost with an expression of agreement.

“Is there more that we don’t know?”

Frost pursed his lips with a grim expression.

Seeing Frost’s unusual demeanor, Duke Jobell asked seriously.

“What is it? I need to know what the problem is to come up with a countermeasure too.”

Frost’s silence grew longer.

Even if they were blood allies, he couldn’t reveal the fact that Solas was in fact his wife Yuriella, and that the Emperor already knew it.

Just as the variable of the Emperor being a madman obsessed with his lost love, Yuriella, the object of that crazy love, could also be a major variable in the grand undertaking of changing the Empire’s ruler.

“Grand Duke.”

Over Duke Jobell’s urging voice, Empress Dowager Sophia’s clear voice overlapped.

“Lewis. Oh, Lewis!”

The Empress Dowager, her cheeks flushed red, quickly approached and grabbed Lewis’s hand.

“Lewis. Is it really you, Lewis?”

Like mother, like son. Her expression naturally calling out to Lewis was the same, but…

“After holding a funeral for you and Gelsomina, there wasn’t a single day I didn’t pray for your souls. The Goddess took pity on my longing and returned you to my arms.”

The Empress Dowager hugged Lewis tightly and looked up at him with tearful eyes.

Beneath the clear tears, her violet eyes that looked as if they could stab and kill flashed coldly, failing to hide the murderous aura despite her picturesque smile.

“You could have at least sent word that you were alive. I visited your grave every year, offering flowers and shedding tears, not knowing you were alive and well like this.”

“I was almost dying to see you too. I had been longing for the day to meet Your Majesty the Empress Dowager and Your Majesty the Emperor. I worked myself to the bone to appear before you in a dignified and impressive manner.”

Lewis, whose acting skills could put the Empire’s top actor to shame, displayed a high-level facial muscle acting.

Seeing Lewis’s difficult act of smiling while crying, the Empress Dowager turned her arrow to the Grand Duke as if she was displeased.

“Frost. You’ve given this aunt quite a surprise gift.”

“I am truly delighted to see you pleased.”

Frost slightly bowed his head and smiled.

“Receiving such a grand gift, I’m at a loss for a suitable gift of gratitude. It may not be comparable, but it shouldn’t be shameful at least.”

“No thanks are needed, Your Majesty.”

“Refusing is no use. I’ve already sent it to your residence.”

At the Empress Dowager’s words, Frost’s expression stiffened. The madness in her smiling eyes was chilling.

Surely not. Again?

Frost didn’t even have the leisure to bid farewell to the Empress Dowager and immediately hurried to the carriage.

Lewis and Duke Jobell blankly stared at the Grand Duke untying a horse from the carriage, mounting it, and disappearing like the wind.

Watching Frost quickly vanish from sight, gripping the reins tightly and pressing his body close to the horse, the Empress Dowager burst into a delightful laughter that sounded like rolling beads.

*

Frost rode the horse towards the Grand Duke’s residence at a rapid pace, not caring that the horse was foaming at the mouth.

“Hiya!”

The swirling anxiety made his entire body feel as if his blood was turning cold.

‘Foolish. I should have thought..!’

He had prepared for a long time and thought a lot. He had the confidence he wouldn’t lose to them, which is why he had chosen the high nobles’ meeting as Lewis’s debut stage.

But that was only valid under the premise that the enemy he was facing was also a political rival using the calculations of politics and power.

However, the variable of Solas Moretti deeply engraved in the Emperor’s heart. The preparation for how far the mad mother who raised such an Emperor would go. Those were variables not accounted for in the scheme he had set up today.

He should have made cold calculations, knowing that Solas was Yuriella.

How the Empress Dowager must have felt seeing her son going insane. How she would view her son showing abnormal interest in the Grand Duchess. And the fact that her husband was the very person the Emperor had been jealous of and felt inferior to.

The Empress Dowager was a woman who had created over a thousand coma patients in search of Solas’s soul. It wasn’t an act of someone capable of strategic judgment.

In this situation where the prince he had burned to death had returned as an adult, he should have calculated where the sparks of anger would fly.

“Hiya!”

The horse, startled by the cold murderous aura emanating from Frost, neighed and writhed, but Frost tightened the reins further and increased the speed.

‘Yuriella…!’

As he approached the Grand Duke’s residence, Frost’s anxiety became reality before his eyes.

The smell of blood riding on the strong wind.

The pungent smoke smell stinging his nose.

Beyond the entrance road with thick green foliage, the elegant residence built of granite and marble was engulfed in raging flames.

Knights of the Angelus Order lay collapsed in the fountain and garden, covered in blood.

The head butler and head maid, their faces smeared with soot, were frantically trying to put out the fire, carrying buckets of water with the servants.

“Ahhh! Save me~!”

A maid who had turned into a ball of fire came running out of the entrance and tumbled down the stairs.

“Yuriella!”

Frost gritted his teeth, leaped off the horse, summoned the ice sword Ielo, and ran up the main stairs.

As the cold aura of the holy sword exploded out, it extinguished the fire around Frost as he ran and froze it white.

“Yuriella! Yuriella!”