The week at the imperial palace passed quickly.

Hans was managing the business well, and good news came that Elmur had been selected as the central commercial district.

Naturally, land prices skyrocketed and Esika’s wealth became one of the top five in the capital.

As Esika was flourishing, the empress did not easily reveal her claws.

That was until yesterday.

“Who was the child who brought the food today?”

When Esika asked in a rigid tone, several maids exchanged glances.

Then one maid came forward hesitantly.

She was a young girl, perhaps fifteen years old.

“Everyone except this child, leave.”

After sending everyone else out except that child, Esika no longer hid her fierce killing intent.

As intense energy suddenly descended like lightning in the calm air, the maid began to tremble.

Shaking violently, she hid her hands behind her back.

“Show me what you’re hiding.”

“Your… Your Highness the Crown Princess.”

“Do I need to cut off your wrist to receive it?”

When those harsh words came from her lips in a kind tone, the maid’s face turned even paler.

And finally, she held out what she had been hiding.

A small bottle with blue liquid on it looked like it had contained liquid until recently.

“Who ordered you to sprinkle this on my food?”

Esika asked calmly, crossing her legs.

The maid confessed the truth, sobbing.

“It… It was Her Majesty the Empress… The Empress ordered me to sprinkle this medicine…”

Esika stared at the maid with a cold gaze.

The culprit was revealed quite easily.

But this shouldn’t be so easy. The empress is not such a simple woman.

“Several thoughts come to mind…”

After pondering for a moment, Esika stood up.

And she grabbed the arm of the child kneeling and pulled her up.

“First, let’s fall into the trap. I’m curious how she’ll react.”

And she took the maid to the empress.

Esika’s eyebrows twitched when she learned who was with the empress.

Princess Astia Lucein, who had recently returned to the palace, and next to her was Riona, Esika’s former mother-in-law.

Riona’s dress wasn’t as tattered as expected, but it was shabby enough compared to before to be satisfying.

And two noblewoman who spread gossip well.

Riona openly glared at Esika, but Esika ignored Riona’s gaze.

She simply stood before the empress, dragging the maid, faithful to what she needed to confront now.

“What brings the Crown Princess here when I didn’t summon you?”

At her question revealing her twisted mood without hesitation, Esika quietly stared at the empress.

When Esika kept looking at her without opening her mouth for a while, the empress’s eyebrows twitched.

Her gaze soon turned to the maid Esika was holding.

Only then did Esika open her mouth.

“You mixed something into my food.”

The ladies watching this suddenly tense situation covered their mouths, going “Oh my.”

Riona twisted the corner of her lips, going “Ha-“.

“You tell her.”

“Yes… Her Majesty the Empress… *cough*…”

At Esika’s words, the frightened maid immediately confessed.

The empress’s brows furrowed sharply, as if she hadn’t expected such a direct confrontation.

But she didn’t easily get angry.

She only retorted in a cold voice.

“The Crown Princess’s tone seems quite disrespectful. I merely had them put in a nutritional supplement good for conception that was difficult to obtain, could you possibly be suspecting me?”

Astia watched the situation quietly with a smiling face, holding a teacup without intervening.

Esika went “Hmm” and looked around.

The trembling maid’s breathing was gradually becoming labored.

There were so many possibilities that she couldn’t easily guess, but now she seemed to understand this trap.

“Are you afraid I might have ordered poison to be given to the Crown Princess?”

As soon as the empress’s question ended, the maid vomited blood violently.

The maid who had fallen to her knees began coughing loudly.

Continuous bloody coughing. The empress watched that scene with a cold gaze and said,

“To harm even a maid due to baseless suspicion, that’s too much, Crown Princess.”

“……”

The empress slightly raised her chin and said to Esika.

“If you’re still suspicious, call the royal physician to analyze the components of the medicine. You’ll easily know whether I tried to kill the Crown Princess or help her.”

It was the finale of the empress’s low-level scheme.

“I also fell for something like that.”

Riona exaggeratedly acted like she had a headache to the noblewomen.

“My daughter-in-law Yuri was also falsely accused like this, she said.”

The empress was looking at Esika with fierce eyes, as if upset.

But the smile hidden beneath was clearly visible to Esika’s eyes.

She probably planned to take care of the honor of the Klaus family due to Riona’s misdeeds while at it.

“Since you’re not answering that you’ll call the royal physician to analyze it, it seems you understand. You must know how much it violates proper conduct to reveal discord in the imperial family due to your suspicions in front of my guests?”

The maid who had been coughing up blood went limp as if she had lost consciousness.

She probably won’t open her eyes again. They must have fed her poison with this intention from the start.

The fact that she didn’t spare human lives in women’s political games was just like the empress dowager from her past life.

Esika, who had been standing quietly for a moment, opened her mouth.

“…It seems I made a big misunderstanding. I deeply apologize, Your Majesty the Empress.”

The empress’s eyebrows twitched at this unexpected response.

She had prepared her next move thinking Esika would refute, but is she really submitting here?

“You think a mere verbal apology will suffice?”

The empress said to Esika, twisting the corner of her lips.

Esika only stared at the empress with calm eyes.

“I am very disappointed in you.”

**

“As the Crown Princess misunderstood and falsely accused me, making it appear as if I killed my loyal maid, I too shall give the Crown Princess the same punishment. It’s to teach you a lesson not to act so rashly again.”

The empress continued.

“You will soon know what my punishment is.”

When Esika returned to her room after leaving the empress’s chambers, she found one maid who had hanged herself.

It was the maid who had served closest to Esika all week.

Her feet were dangling on Esika’s bed.

Behind her, she heard the maids’ gasps.

Some of them will report Esika’s reaction.

Normally, a woman would faint upon seeing a corpse hanging on her bed.

But Esika looked at the corpse with indifferent eyes.

“……”

The empress had killed two young maids in a short time. She had also cruelly killed Cella.

This was probably warning about Cella’s incident again.

It’s different from Riona, who had beaten and chased away maids but hadn’t killed them.

But it doesn’t matter.

The apology was merely for observation,

The enemy is clear, and grasping the enemy’s behavior pattern again will help with future plans.

Esika quietly raised her hand to have the maids remove the corpse.

And she wrote a letter to Hans.

She ordered him to employ the families of the dead maids in the business, writing down their names and personal information.

It wasn’t out of cheap sympathy.

On a day in her past life when human lives were extinguished as easily as flies, the spirit stained her hands with a terribly large amount of blood to survive.

Of course, she never punished innocent people, and most were fools who rushed at her like moths to a flame.

But when the spirit herself harbored resentment, she saw that justification wasn’t important in matters of life and death.

Life is precious, and those who take someone’s life lightly will someday receive karmic retribution.

So this is… just a very small atonement.

**

“There was a soldier who was going on about how beautiful you are, so I asked if he really thought so and he fainted.”

Esika raised an eyebrow at Resban’s muttering as he poured wine into a glass.

How much did you scare him with your gaze for a soldier to faint?

Then Resban chuckled.

“I’m joking.”

It doesn’t seem like a joke.

“But no matter how I think about it, I don’t understand.”

Resban approached Esika with a glass and sat down beside her.

The emperor’s condition was still the same, and he was practically handling all of the emperor’s state affairs.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking. Why aren’t you using Astia right away?”

Of course, even in the midst of his busy schedule, he had time to protect Esika and intimidate those who might threaten her.

He was also doing that to those who wanted to curry favor with the empress.

But knowing Esika, he’s also looking forward to what she might be plotting.

“Well.”

Esika smiled faintly.

And looking into Resban’s eyes, she asked.

“What do you think I’m thinking?”

After a moment of silence, Resban reached out and cupped Esika’s cheek.

Esika’s lips were smiling, but there was always a cool flame in her eyes.

“Since I learned who I am, there hasn’t been a single day I haven’t thought about revenge.”

She wanted to have a real conversation about the karmic ties and relationships continuing from her past life with Resban at least once.