I am about to return to the de Mare estate soon. After returning home, I don’t think I will have the chance to see you. I am writing this letter for that reason.

She suggested that it might be better to avoid forming a relationship between you and me. Honestly, I totally agree with that. Now is the time to keep my head down and avoid the wind.

I ask you to refrain from contacting me in the future. Neither letters to the de Mare estate nor encounters at official events seem appropriate. When the time comes, I will visit you first.

I wish you good health always.

With all my love, your faithful, Ariadne de Mare.”

When Alfonso confessed to Ariadne while trapped in the ‘inner chamber of the queen’, she recited the oath of loyalty that a knight memorizes instead of a love song. And that was the last day they met.

Alfonso had tried to think that her oath of loyalty was simply a promise to protect him at that moment.

He thought that it wasn’t a rejection of love, but beneath the layer of loyalty was love, and that love was the essential element of her feelings for him.

“……Perhaps.”

Was Ariadne really serious? Was her oath meant to relate to each other solely in a masterservant relationship? Had she really erased me from her heart?

Prince Alfonso, holding Ariadne’s letter in his hand, sprang up from his seat.

“It can’t be true. There must be some misunderstanding.”

Prince Alfonso risked everything for Ariadne de Mare. He abandoned his duty, rebelled against his parents, and committed his first murder in his life. It was an incident beyond national borders. And what he received in return was a farewell letter.

Did his mother put pressure on Ariadne? Did she tell her to give up her dreams because it’s impossible for her to be with him due to her social status?

Prince Alfonso had never doubted his mother before. She was always fair and kind, and she never turned her back on her son.

But now, even Marguerite, the Queen, was under suspicion in Alfonso’s world. It was less painful than thinking that Ariadne, the other world he first learned about after he was born, had erased him.

Prince Alfonso kicked the door and ran out.

The prince’s palace was less than 20 minutes’ walk from the queen’s palace. It was a moment’s run for a young man.

He could find the place with his eyes closed, but he opened the door he had never dared to open out of guilt.

The small guest room of the queen’s palace, which Ariadne used to use.

Bang!

“Ariadne!”

The maid cleaning the room looked at Prince Alfonso with a surprised expression. The room was clean without any sign of living.

“Your Highness…….”

Alfonso, with no time to maintain his dignity, asked urgently.

“Where has Ariadne, the young lady who was here, gone?”

“The guest who was in this room has already returned to her home yesterday.”

Thump.

Alfonso, whose legs had given out, collapsed on the spot. The startled maid stared at the prince with wide eyes.

The prince asked the maid urgently.

“Did she leave anything for me?”

The maid thought it was unlikely, but the prince’s words seemed to her as if he was pleading to her.

“…… I’m sorry, but there was nothing left in the room when you checked out.”

Prince Alfonso held his face in his hands. This couldn’t be.

Ariadne returned to the de Mare mansion in a royal carriage bearing the queen’s seal.

“Miss!”

Sancha ran out of the mansion’s entrance, tears streaming down her face, and embraced Ariadne.

“I thought something had happened!”

Queen Marguerite had sent a letter to Cardinal de Mare, saying that she intended to take ‘the second young lady, who is very special’ as her companion for about a day.

However, with the palace turned upside down due to the death of the head of the Gallic mission, the sharpwitted household did not believe the queen’s letter without question when she sent Ariadne home out of nowhere.

“There’s nothing to fuss about.”

Ariadne, who had jumped out of the carriage and cleaned up her bruises from scratches on the trees and bushes while being choked by Duke Mireille, entered the house with a relaxed smile.

But not all the faces she met when she came home were welcoming.

“Who would believe that nothing happened?”

A sharp voice echoed. It was Isabella, leaning awkwardly in the hallway leading from the entrance to the reception room, crossing her arms and staring at Ariadne.

“A grown maiden sleeping outside for ten days without a chaperone. Unauthorized. Who would believe your chastity?”

Ariadne’s eyebrows furrowed. Isabella was ranting, but she had an animalistic sense somewhere similar to her mother. She was fairly close to the reason why Ariadne had to stay in the queen’s palace without knowing anything.

But Ariadne was not the one to back down here.

“Isabella de Mare.”

Her voice was calm, and she was not hiding her displeasure.

“Are you saying you can’t believe the official document issued by the queen herself? Where is there a more reliable chaperone in the whole Etruscan kingdom than the queen herself?”

Ariadne glared at Isabella and retorted.

“Shut your little mouth before I complain to the palace that Isabella de Mare is doubting the official document of Queen Marguerite.”

Isabella bit her lip and bowed her head. There was nothing more to say. Nor did she have any other clever way to confront Ariadne.

She would have normally been upset and pounced, but it was a sign of growth.

“Tsk tsk, Isabella. I thought you’ve matured……”

Cardinal de Mare appeared from the secondfloor staircase. Isabella, caught redhanded by her father, bit her lip and bowed her head.

“But Ariadne. Your sister is partially correct. If you were going to stay out, you should have told the house in advance.”

“I’m sorry, Father. There was a situation.”

“Shall we hear about that situation?”

Cardinal de Mare pointed to his study.

“Will you come into my study?”

It was his office, which he never allowed anyone in except his eldest son. It was where he mainly worked and where important documents were piled up. Except for the accounting ledger that Ariadne held, all the important matters of the de Mare family and the San Carlo diocese were handled there.

Entering Cardinal de Mare’s study for the first time in both her past and present life, Ariadne bowed her head with a flushed face.

“Yes, Father.”