"Congrats, you've involved yourself again. Keep up the good work," Ett muttered, snorting as her eyes lingered on the bloodied stains smeared across her hands from that clumsy slip earlier.
Ugh. That young man he looked exactly like the novel's illustration of the male lead, the one destined to topple the Adiand Empire, leaving rivers of royal blood in his wake.
But it wasn't him. She knew it. He had admitted the name she had spoken was his sister's. A loophole, a crack in the story's foundation. The woman she referenced sickly, twenty-five, unmarried was weak, pathetically so. How weak, Ett didn't yet know.
"Hah." In the novel, Ett schemed and plotted, but one family was untouched not out of fear, not out of negligence, but because neutrality was their shield. That was the male lead's family. They never declared allegiance, never made themselves targets. For the first time, Ett understood the delicacy of that neutrality and the danger in testing it.
"I really hate thinking…"
Her mind churned. When Guren had scolded the female lead for her irritating positivity, that had sparked a clash. If the male lead balanced formality and neutrality at fifty-fifty with the Emperor, after that moment it had become a full-scale, fang-bared confrontation, entirely centered on the female lead.
And the banquet… the assassin revealed there wasn't a mastermind behind the strike, only hired hands from the North. Even the Adiand royals and nobles could claim some measure of innocence in the hiring.
"Hmm."
No further news on assassinations from the Noble Faction. Usually Akan would have appeared by now, agitated and gossiping, if something had happened.
"Nice," Ett whispered, savoring the leverage.
Now she understood why the Ett in the novel had skipped the next bouquet, why others had hesitated. She was temporarily hemophobic, but this wasn't the time for the Great Massacre the time when Ett became numb, ruthless to the core.
The Ett in the novel had not uncovered Veralis' identity. Fear had paralyzed her, had made her faint. The young man had spared her, for reasons unknown. That spared her life, but spelled Ralis' downfall. The Emperor, learning of the banquet's events, had acted as warning to others, keeping his primary pawn his mother hidden.
Good. That kind of neutrality, fragile and calculated, would soon fracture between the North and the royals. So what if it was part of the male lead's family? Ett would turn every mishap into an advantage. Strike while the iron was hot.
If Veralis' death had once triggered the male lead's rebellion, if the female lead had been the final spark, this time the outcome could shift entirely. Ett was so lost in thought she hardly noticed she had wandered to the back of the palace, far from her quarters.
"Cough… where is this…?"
"The Empress Dowager is truly admirable," a calm, almost clinical voice said.
Ett froze.
!?
Guren was leaning against a pillar, eyes fixed on her. His viridian gaze glowed faintly in the darkness, unreadable, piercing. The features of his face their sharp symmetry were almost disarmingly beautiful, almost… adorable. No. Not now. Focus.
Ett said nothing. She wouldn't. How long had he been watching? Following her? Her mind spun. Coincidence. Yeah, coincidence.
"Death is not foreordained. I appear to still lack the skill of tact," he said.
Ett's lips tightened as she continued forward, the mantra in her mind steady: ignore him, ignore him, ignore him.
What death? So he's been here the whole time, seeing everything, hearing everything? Did this happen in the novel? Was this why the young man had died, and Guren had engineered a loophole?
Her thoughts raced even as she moved.
"You can't even look at your son," he added.
A shiver traced her spine. Someone's gaze was drilling into her back.
It wasn't that she couldn't look partly but she knew the chains that would unravel if contact was made. Not yet. She would follow the story quietly. Don't tempt him, don't tip the scales.
A memory from the novel sparked in her mind, that sentence nearly identical to Guren's voice: Even in the face of death, you still can't look at me. That expression would never be mine. He had said it with his trademark detachment, yet it carried an undercurrent of emotion, a shadow of pain that had haunted the moment he killed his mother.
The old Ett, who had followed the story from beginning to end and had a soft spot for villains, felt the raw sting of Guren's pain then. Even as a villain, he wasn't a murderer in the documentary sense. Theirs was a complicated bond mother and son. Even as an adult, a flicker of light had existed, tiny as dust, yet it had been extinguished.
Ett understood this fully as she walked. She wanted to save him. She truly did. But she feared disrupting the story, feared stepping beyond the script she'd been given. Changes invited chaos. Her past actions had already nudged the plot; every step forward grew more delicate.
She glanced up at the stars. Her tone was cool, indifferent, but internally… chaotic.
"Huh. Aiyo, this is troublesome. Why put me in this novel?"
Was she meant to patch up mother and son? To maintain neutrality?
To claim her own male lead, her own happy ending, or be sacrificed along the way? She didn't want the cliché of a stepmother replacing her in affection, the predictable arc. No.
Her thoughts were curses as she departed, footsteps silent on the cold pavement.
Guren watched her retreating form. Small, yet formidable, like mountains of ice unyielding in summer, colder than any enemy he had faced. She faded into the distance, obscured by shadow.
"Even today," he muttered. Nothing had changed.
The dream lingered in his mind a fragment of three months' unconsciousness on the battlefield. Vivid, muddy, turbulent, yet prophetic. Scenes of rescue, betrayal, the banquet, and the unremembered moment he had stabbed his own mother. Eyes dull, disinterested, frozen. Would it repeat?
Frustration prickled. The fragments he had pieced together now held truth, even if details shifted. Yet the little girl he called mother remained colder than memory.
"Can all dreams come true?" Guren wondered. He had never believed in second lives, yet the resonance of that dream lingered like ice in his chest.
"Your Majesty! I finally found you, Her Grace, the Dowager—" Xiwen's voice broke his reverie seeing the Dowager walking away.
"The Northern Duke, is he at the banquet?"
"No, Your Grace. Veralis, his eldest son, represents him," Xiwen reported.
"Keep watch. They'll serve better than the rest," Guren said, gaze fixed ahead.
Xiwen paused, a flicker of thought crossing his expression. He had met her…
"Understood. Shall we return to the banquet?"
"Cumbersome," Guren replied, already dismissing the notion.
"I will assume responsibility, Your Majesty. You should rest."
Froiz appeared at his side, chestnut hair bound in a high ponytail, bowing low.
"Your Majesty, I invited the child to your Drawing Room."
Guren's nod was slight.
"After this, return to Jushen." After all, Archduke Froiz just came quickly to retrieve something.
"As you command, Your Majesty."
As the door to the Drawing Room opened he saw the side of the person.
Guren closed his eyes for a moment. Reminiscing, observed the faces of the past, the fragments of dreams, and the boy, small, older than he appeared, present in reality. Yes, he only summoned this child just because of the dream. A sketch that had become true. A fickle of mere curiosity.
A boy, thirteen, sat stiffly, eyes wide, hands trembling. Hearing the door opened, he stand up straight and bowed.
"Greetings to the Firmament of Adiand, the Sun and Moon of the people. This humble servant, Lativ Éclair Mairn Yushon, pays respect to His Majesty and Archduke Froiz."
Silence followed. Lativ dared not look up. The Emperor's presence towered over him, ageless yet immense. One misstep, one careless glance, and the guillotine's shadow would fall.
"So, you're 'him.'" Guren's words cut through the air.
"…"
…Him who?