Young Blair sat with her neck stretched, looking at where Esmeralda had been a moment ago. Earlier, she witnessed Esmeralda opening the floor and burying something there.

“What are you hiding on the floor?”

“…You saw everything, huh?”

“Maybe… treasure hunting?”

Blair, who had been speculating with a serious expression for a moment, burst into laughter at Esmeralda’s response.

“Well, it’s similar. It’s something very important to me.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a secret. Very important.”

Esmeralda raised her index finger to her lips, gesturing secrecy.

“So, can you keep what you just saw a secret?”

“A secret?”

“Yeah. Don’t tell Mother, Father, or Brother. Of course, don’t tell anyone else. Not even my maids or servants.”

“So, it’s a secret only I know?”

“That’s right. Blair, only you know the secret. Even Herdin doesn’t know.”

Blair’s eyes sparkled at Esmeralda’s words.

Sharing a secret means getting closer to that person.

That much signifies that Blair has become someone special to Esmeralda.

“Promise, can you keep it?”

“Of course! I’ll keep the secret. I haven’t told anyone about Anna’s secret or Karen’s secret either.”

Looking at Blair confidently making promises, Esmeralda, as if finding her adorable, extended her hand.
Realizing the meaning, Blair hooked her finger with Esmeralda’s little finger.

“Promise!”

“Yeah, promise.”

After Blair stamped her finger, Esmeralda chuckled and gently stroked Blair’s head. The touch was infinitely affectionate.

As Blair quietly received that touch, her heavy eyelids slowly descended, irrespective of her will.

The eyes, tenderly gazing at her falling asleep, glimmered behind closed eyelids and soon vanished into complete darkness.

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“Huuk…!”

Blair woke up, breathing heavily. Outside was still covered in darkness, an early dawn, to put it vaguely.

Blair groped her two hands with trembling eyes.

The touch of Esmeralda that had been caressing her, the gaze that had been watching, the touch… still vivid.

‘How did I live forgetting about this?’

It wasn’t a memory from the accident, yet she had lived completely forgetting.

The suddenly returned memories for the past few years were probably due to the hypnosis. Apart from that, there was no other triggering factor.

Regardless of the cause, the returned memories conveyed one thing.

‘There is something left by Her Majesty the Queen in the Queen’s Palace.’

Of course, it could be something genuinely precious to her or an emergency fund.

But a strange premonition lingered.

There, in the Queen’s Palace, on the floor, something crucial related to the fire accident of that day might be present.
There was no evidence. It was just an instinctive intuition.

‘I have to find what Her Majesty the Queen left behind.’

The Queen’s Palace that Esmeralda used was left neglected after the fire incident.

Following her, Katrina, who became the queen, refused to use the building, considering it ominous, and since the unoccupied palace didn’t require immediate repairs.

So, if she went there, she might find what Esmeralda left behind.

‘But if I go in broad daylight, Mother will find out.’

Blair, still looking out into the pitch-dark window, rose from the bed with determined eyes.

It was the pre-dawn, a time when even Katrina would be asleep.

The opportunity was now.

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As the dawn twilight began to settle, Blair’s carriage, bound for the Duke of Denmark’s mansion, stopped in front of the palace.

The palace gatekeepers, who were yawning and chasing away sleep, were surprised to see Blair.

“What brings you here at this hour, madam?”

“I urgently need to see Mother.”

The gatekeepers were puzzled about what urgent matter could bring her at this early hour, but there was no reason to prevent a daughter from seeing her mother.

The carriage swiftly passed through the entrance of the palace. However, the destination of the carriage was not the Taihoanghug Palace, but the abandoned Queen’s Palace.

Blair, getting off the carriage, instructed the coachman to wait and stood alone at the entrance.

The Queen’s Palace, revisited after nearly ten years.
It was time to vaguely confront the memories that had been avoided for ten years.

Blair glanced at the door for a moment, then finally opened the closed door as if determined and entered the Queen’s Palace.

Creak—

Inside the building, which had been neglected for a long time since the incident, the scent of burning still lingered.

Blair, fumbling through the faint memories of her childhood, climbed the stairs leading to Esmeralda’s bedroom.

With each step Blair took, the younger Blair from that time, with an excited expression, rushed ahead and climbed the stairs, surpassing her.

Following the chubby, light footsteps of the little Blair, a familiar corridor appeared. However, unlike the scenery in her memory, the corridor filled with black marks exuded an eerie atmosphere.