“Oh no!”

Parnes was genuinely startled for once, throwing down the documents he was holding and rushing out of his office.

Duke Ludwig and the attendants followed behind him hastily, not understanding what was happening.

“Your Majesty, what is the matter all of a sudden!”

Ignoring the attendants’ calls and running out to the garden, he saw Kasallin sitting on the ground covered with grass blades like a small fairy that had sprouted from the earth.

Parnes gently grasped Kasallin’s shoulder as she dusted herself off and stood up as if nothing had happened.

Only now discovering him, her eyes widened.

“Your Majesty.”

“Are you hurt anywhere?”

“I’m fine. As you can see, it’s a soft lawn. Why were you so surprised?”

Parnes’s eyes quickly scanned Kasallin’s entire body.

When it was confirmed that, as she said, there were no problems other than some dirt on her palms and knees, a sigh of relief finally escaped from his tightly pressed lips.

“Really, you don’t give me a moment’s rest to look away.”

Parnes muttered in a reproachful tone while extending his hand toward the attendants who had followed him.

Duke Ludwig, who quickly caught his wordless instruction, brought over a handkerchief and handed it to him.

Parnes lightly dampened the handkerchief with the water gushing coolly from the fountain, then awkwardly wiped Kasallin’s hands that had become dirty with dust.

It was clearly evident that he had never taken care of or looked after anyone in his life.

The sight of his large frame bending down to dust off the dirt looked like he was playing an unsuitable game of house.

“Why were you alone in such a place with your unwell body.”

“I was painting.”

“That’s not what I’m asking. How were you moving that heavy art supplies by yourself without even one person to attend to you.”

Kasallin’s jet-black eyelashes that stretched straight over her large eyelids were trembling slightly.

Parnes, realizing his mistake, forced himself to soften his expression.

It seemed he had frightened her again.

It was because his intimidating attitude, which had become a habit since childhood, had hardened along with his naturally stern appearance.

However, Kasallin was simply thinking about how to explain the maids who had left without waiting.

“I had asked my assigned maids to run errands.”

Kasallin opened her mouth after finishing her brief contemplation.

“But they all seemed like they would be late, so I tried to go back to my room by myself. I was able to walk reasonably well with the help of crutches.”

Kasallin calmly made excuses with an unperturbed face, but Parnes easily realized that she was telling a white lie to protect the maids.

He could also tell from the atmosphere that the dedicated maids who should have stayed by her side and watched over her had left somewhere without taking care of her until the end.

Since Kasallin was naturally good at hiding her emotions, anyone who wasn’t perceptive would have been completely fooled by her words.

“Please don’t look at me with those eyes. I’m really fine.”

“……”

Parnes hated hypocrites the most.

He had seen countless flatterers who bowed and smiled obsequiously to make a good impression on him.

But she was always consistently the same whether dealing with an unidentified man napping lazily under a flower tree or when facing the emperor who was like the heavens.

So Parnes decided to play along.

At least in front of her.

“If I see you stumbling around alone and falling down one more time, there will be no forgiveness then.”

“Yes. I understand.”

Kasallin bowed, responding appropriately to his gentle threat that wasn’t scary at all.

When she tried to pick up the brush and paint palette that had fallen to the ground, Parnes stopped her.

“Just stay there. I’ll do it.”

Parnes knelt on one knee and gathered the art supplies scattered around the lawn.

Then the attendants standing a little distance away turned pale, and hurriedly began to help clean up following their master.

Parnes slightly raised his head and glanced sideways toward the second-floor corridor.

Two maids looking this way through the window gap were at a loss with panicked faces.

“I’ll do it. What would I be if Your Majesty does this.”

“You’re already using me as a wheelchair substitute, so there’s no need to be so formal.”

“That’s because Your Majesty arbitrarily carries me around like a doll… Wait!”

Kasallin stopped mid-sentence and raised her voice in surprise.

Parnes was reaching out to pick up the paper with his portrait drawn on it.

Kasallin shouted urgently that it wasn’t allowed, looking unusually flustered, but unfortunately his hand flipping the paper was faster.

“This is……”

A very rare bewilderment spread across Parnes’s eyes as they scanned the paper.

A face, drawn as precisely as if sketched from life, was depicted in an unfinished state.

Kasallin snatched the drawing away with a face clearly showing shame.

“I was going to throw it away.”

“……”

“There wasn’t much else around to draw, so I drew it for practice. I know it was rude, but I really had no other intention. I’ll go dispose of it immediately. I’m sorry.”

For someone who said she would go dispose of it immediately, Parnes was at a loss for words seeing how she protectively hugged the drawing with both arms.

Normally, if someone drew one’s face without permission, one should be extremely displeased.

Parnes frowned, pressing his chest that was beating irregularly as if something was broken somewhere.

“Good morning, Miss Kasallin.”

A woman with an air of refinement spoke while drawing back the curtains to let sunlight into the dim bedroom.

Kasallin, still drowsy from having just woken up, realized only after a while that she was not a maid.

She couldn’t understand where yesterday’s two indifferent maids had gone and why a noblewoman had come in to attend to her.

“Excuse me, but who are you?”

“I am called Grantia. Though it’s a temporary position, I will be serving Miss Kasallin for the time being. It is a great honor to meet you like this.”

She offered her greetings in a very elegant posture.

Feeling embarrassed to receive such a wonderful greeting while only in her disheveled nightgown, Kasallin quickly returned the courtesy.

‘Speaking of which, the Grantia family, I feel like I’ve heard of them somewhere.’

Kasallin, thinking deeply, remembered that she had once overheard nobles talking about the Grantia family at a banquet.

They were one of the distinguished families in the Renel Empire, and if her memory served her right, this noblewoman in particular would have been one of the attendants who closely served the previous empress.

Why was the mistress of such an illustrious house suddenly appearing to attend to her?

“The weather is warm. It would be nice to have breakfast and get some sunlight.”

“Indeed.”

“What would you like for fragrance? The jasmine that came in today seems nice.”

“Then please use that.”

Countess Grantia spoke gently while combing Kasallin’s hair.

Her delicate yet meticulous touch was, frankly speaking, on a completely different level from yesterday’s maids.

“By the way, I don’t see the two people who were my assigned maids yesterday.”

“Those two probably won’t be coming anymore.”

“Why?”

Countess Grantia made a meaningful expression.

“Well. Perhaps they have their own circumstances?”

“I suppose so? I was wondering if some trouble arose because of me.”

“What I can tell you is.”

Countess Grantia continued while pinning a pretty butterfly-shaped pin in Kasallin’s hair.

“His Majesty the Emperor is someone who shows no mercy.”

“No mercy, what do you mean by that?”

Kasallin looked at the lady reflected in the mirror with a puzzled expression.

She made an “oh my” sound a beat late, then unnaturally closed her mouth, saying she had spoken unnecessarily.

An ordinary person might have passed it off as nothing, but Kasallin, who had more than a year or two of social experience, noticed that she was hiding something.

What was even more confusing was that she wasn’t trying to hide that secret, but was subtly dropping hints to her.

Like luring a stray dog with appetizing snacks.

‘Lady Grantia wants to tell me something.’

Kasallin decided to watch her for a while, harboring small suspicions in her heart.

Kasallin quickly became close with Countess Grantia.

She became a small source of vitality in Kasallin’s daily life, like a kind mother or perhaps an older sister.

Despite having lived her entire life as a high-ranking noblewoman, she was neither arrogant nor pretentious, but rather had a gentle personality.

Around the time when Kasallin had completely let down her guard, thinking that the strange conversation on the first day was probably due to her own oversensitivity.

“Miss. Aren’t you going to continue drawing that portrait?”

Countess Grantia said while glancing somewhere.

Parnes’s half-finished portrait was left neglected in a corner of the room, half-hidden by a curtain.

Kasallin shrugged awkwardly.

“Why? You drew it quite well.”

“Drawing His Majesty’s visage without permission in the first place would be a crime worthy of punishment.”

“You say that, but you haven’t actually been able to throw it away, have you?”

Countess Grantia hit the nail on the head.

She would act docile but occasionally throw in pointed remarks.

“I tried to throw it away several times, but it seemed a bit wasteful.”

“Why don’t you finish it and present it to His Majesty? He might surprisingly like it.”

“If I present something drawn with such clumsy skills, His Majesty would be displeased. He’s such a kind person that he would say thank you on the surface though.”

Kasallin spoke casually while continuing to read her book.

Countess Grantia, who had been knitting as a pastime, suddenly stopped her hand holding the needle.

She harbored deep bewilderment in her eyes like someone who had heard a ghost’s wail.

“You said His Majesty is kind?”

“Yes. What’s wrong?”

“No…… it’s nothing.”

Countess Grantia briefly held her tongue and put her knitting needles in the basket.

The knitting yarn that had been taking beautiful shape in her hands was now tangled up in a mess.

“My lady?”

“Do you know why the atmosphere in the imperial palace has been quieter than usual lately?”

Kasallin silently shook her head.

Countess Grantia picked up her teacup with hot steam rising from it and continued.

“It’s because the anniversary of the previous emperor’s death is coming in a few days. So every year around this time, all the ministers take care of themselves.”

“Take care of themselves?”

Countess Grantia put down her teacup and came closer to sit down.

Then she took Kasallin’s hand and lowered her voice even more.

“His Majesty is more frightening than you can imagine.”

Countess Grantia slowly applied pressure to the hand she was holding.

“What made me think this way was long ago, on the day the previous emperor passed away. I had sent my maid to run an errand to the imperial palace. But she happened to pass by a building called the Crescent Moon Palace and……”

While Countess Grantia was continuing her story,

An attendant spoke from outside.

“His Majesty the Emperor has arrived.”

Parnes, who entered through the opening door, saw Kasallin and Countess Grantia sitting unusually close together and faintly frowned.

He crossed his arms crookedly and muttered.

“It seems you’ve become quite close while I was away.”