Elise stood up as soon as Lucas entered his room where she had been waiting.

“What did Earl Pelur say?”

“It seems you were mistaken.”

“Pardon?”

“Floyd would never join hands with Casar. Floyd utterly despises the entire Pelur family.”

“That can’t be, Your Highness. If not for that, why would he go through the trouble of coming all the way to Canta for an auction? He must be trying to help Earl Pelur. All the taxes collected from the auction house go to Earl Pelur’s hands, don’t they?”

“Not to Casar’s hands, but to Gania. Now all the treasures piling up in Ider Palace’s warehouses belong to Gania.”

“But…”

“Let’s stop talking about this.”

Lucas sat heavily on the bed, rubbing his brow as if tired.

“I spent unnecessary money believing only your words. I did this despite my father’s opposition, how will you take responsibility for this?”

As the arrow of blame turned towards her, Elise was bewildered. She wanted to know in detail what conversation had passed between Casar and Lucas, but it wasn’t the atmosphere to ask such things.

‘Surely Casar must have deceived Lucas with lies. If only I had gone along, I could have seen through it…’

Lucas’s expression of boredom bothered her. She didn’t want to be hated by him. She wanted to be a woman he could rely on, not make him wear such an expression of disgust.

‘What should I do? If there really is no problem, it’s a big deal.’

She didn’t know how much enormous cost it took to hold a festival in a foreign country, but she knew Lucas had pushed quite hard.

‘I need to create a problem. If the festival ends without any issues, Lucas won’t trust me anymore.’

Cold sweat ran down her back. It would be disastrous to lose Lucas’s trust when she hadn’t grasped anything yet.

Without Lucas’s support, she didn’t know when she might be removed from the position of lord of Kingteren. Not only the funds borrowed as the lord of Kingteren, but Elise’s personal loans for the business ventures in Kingteren were not insignificant.

‘If I’m driven out of the lord’s position, I’ll be left with only massive debts. No, that’s not right. Lucas wouldn’t abandon me over something like this. His feelings aren’t that shallow.’

Elise anxiously chewed on her lower lip. At other times, Lucas would gently press and remove her lip from between her teeth and kiss her, but now he was only sighing in irritation.

‘What should I do? Should I ask Hunter to hire an assassin? If an assassin targets Lucas while we’re here, he’d think Casar or Floyd was behind it.’

If even a small wound appeared on his beautiful face, Lucas would fly into a rage trying to find the culprit. At that time, if Elise’s side brought in a suitable person, tortured them, and made them say Casar ordered it…

‘It would confirm that he had ill intentions towards Casar, so the distrust towards me would disappear.’

But this was too far in the future, and it was uncertain whether it would work or not. A big move was needed right now. There had to be a scheme that could smooth out his furrowed brow that was twisted as if in disgust.

Suddenly, one thing came to mind.

Elise sat down close to Lucas, rubbing his thigh as she spoke.

“Your Highness, I have a good idea.”

“What are you thinking of now? Since it’s come to this, let’s just enjoy the party and go back.”

“Your Highness, this is a way to clear the false charges against you and make Casar never dare to raise his head to you again.”

Only then did the irritation disappear from Lucas’s face.

Lucas was already unbearably annoyed by Casar who was eyeing his position, and on top of that, he was furious that he had to make this troublesome journey because of it. If he could properly subdue Casar, there would be no need to be swayed by such things.

“Let’s pull the Franche family out of the well.”

“What? What nonsense is this…! If this gets out to the world, we’re finished!”

Lucas and Elise were unaware that Joseph V had secretly ordered Casar to search for the well.

“That’s right. We’re holding a bomb, so to speak. But we can pass this bomb to Casar.”

“How on earth…?”

“The people of Canta only saw the king’s head. They only know that the rest died as Your Highness announced. In reality, Roxiana was sold into slavery, but everyone thinks Roxiana died too.”

“So?”

“Your Highness killed the king of Canta for Gania, but you simply couldn’t bring yourself to kill the rest of the family who were once your fiancée’s family. So you kept all the Franche family members except the king imprisoned deep in Ider Palace, and only declared to the people that they were all killed.”

Elise’s whisper sweetly burrowed into Lucas’s ear.

“And you informed Casar, who became regent, of this fact and asked him to take care of the Franche family. You told him to wait for the right time, and when Canta was completely settled, to quietly release the Franche family and send them to a distant foreign country. But Casar found it so troublesome that as soon as he arrived here, he killed all the Franche family members.”

“Oh my…”

“Moreover, he was too lazy to even put the bodies in Adelia’s coffin, so he threw them into the well. And as soon as Your Highness arrived here, you asked about the Franche family’s well-being, and sensing something was off about Casar’s attitude, you had people investigate and discovered the Franche family in that well.”

Only then did a smile return to Lucas’s lips.

“Casar will say he didn’t do it.”

“But criminals always deny it, don’t they? If Your Highness finds the Franche family and severely rebukes Casar in front of everyone, no one there will doubt Your Highness.”

“And Casar will be…”

“The worst scum who killed even a child and threw them into a well.”

The two worst scums exchanged abominable smiles as they schemed to make another the worst scum.

And Lucas’s knights, who received the order, moved secretly.

+++

Floyd rented a splendid mansion a little distance from Ider Palace. The fact that the Grand Duke of Torkan was in Canta was already known, so there was no need to hide it anymore.

But the knights he brought were still moving secretly.

Floyd looked out the window at the garden visible outside, waiting for the knights’ report. In Torkan at this time, cool breezes would start to blow, but the wind blowing in Canta was already quite harsh.

‘So this is why the princess had such a hard time in summer.’

He recalled Roxiana, who easily became exhausted despite receiving help from the water spirit. She would wipe the beads of sweat on her white forehead with a handkerchief and whine uncharacteristically, “What terrible heat…”

‘Her heart must be in turmoil.’

The whole street would be full of memories. Even the smell floating in the air would be nostalgic, tearing at her heart.

He worried about what she might be thinking in the terrible loneliness of streets where memories with her family were piled up, but only her family was missing.

‘Surely she won’t try to die again.’

As he suppressed the urge to rush to her immediately to check, Arsen, who was tasked with finding Roxiana’s family members, entered. He walked quickly to Floyd and whispered quietly.

“…are not there.”

Floyd’s eyes widened.

“What do you mean? Did you search properly?”

“Yes, but… they’re not there. So I went down to check, and there’s a small hole in the well wall. It seems they might have escaped through there.”

“Do they have that kind of intelligence?”

“If they’re lucky, it’s possible.”

“You mean they accidentally crawled into the hole and accidentally got outside? How likely is such a coincidence?”

Floyd’s eyes darkened. Arsen cautiously asked.

“Shall we inform the princess?”

“No, keep searching for now. Undead have a tendency to try to return home, so they probably didn’t go far.”

+++

The knight who had received secret orders from Lucas returned and said in a low voice.

“There’s nothing there.”

“What? What do you mean there’s nothing!”

“Just in case, I went down to check myself, but there was nothing. However, I found a small hole in the well wall.”

“Could they have escaped through that hole?”

“That’s highly likely, I think.”

“Well, not just anyone can find that well…”

Deep in the palace forest, there was an abandoned well. A well that had been forgotten by everyone because it hadn’t been used for a very long time. A well whose very existence was unknown, covered by overgrown bushes.

Elise said she had found that well while playing hide-and-seek with Roxiana when they were young. And she said she never told anyone about the existence of that well.

-“When I was feeling utterly desperate, I wanted to throw myself in there to die. So that no one could touch my corpse… So that no one could find it…”

Lucas didn’t know that from the moment Elise discovered that well, she had dreamed of killing the entire Franche family and dumping them there.

Elise’s secret wish had come true, and they had dumped the Franche family’s corpses there and covered it with bushes again. It was a well that would be hard to find even if one looked for it intentionally, so there was no way someone had taken the corpses out of there.

“When we checked the passage, its end was connected to a forest quite far away. If they escaped through that passage, they might be wandering around that area before moving to another region.”

Since it was not well known that undead have a tendency to return to their homeland, Lucas and the knight, who had never dealt with monsters before, were unaware of this fact.

“Are there no people living in that area?”

“There is one village on the path leading from the forest to the mountains…”

“Go and find out. If there’s anyone who has seen what they shouldn’t have, make sure they can never open their mouths again.”