I wanted to drive the Empress out of the palace immediately and crush the Marquisate of Cherrie. But without any evidence prepared beforehand, I couldn't corner the Empress.
If I had known from the beginning that she was such a vicious woman, I would have exposed her infidelity and driven her out of the palace before she ever gave birth to Voltaire.
I shouldn't have let her off so easily...
I had thought she was merely an immature young marquess's daughter filled with vanity. I never imagined that such a terrifying and cunning nature was hiding behind that mask.
From the very beginning, for the sake of ensuring the stable succession of the throne for the deceased Crown Prince, who was the son of the previous Empress, I had no intention of having another prince or princess with Kiyen. After discussing and agreeing upon that with Kiyen, I brought her into the palace as Empress.
And then Kiyen had dealt me a devastating blow from behind.
I should have driven her out back then.
Regret came rushing in far too late.
If I were to expose the truth now, what evidence could I possibly find?
Not long after Kiyen left, Count Maron, who had been waiting outside, entered the room.
“Your Majesty…”
The count called out to the Emperor worriedly.
“Bring me a glass of water.”
“Yes.”
Count Maron elegantly poured water into a mug and handed it to the Emperor. Even those simple movements carried a restrained dignity. The Emperor quietly watched Count Maron as he tidied away the pitcher with his refined bearing.
“Count.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Voltaire’s… Hoo…”
As the Emperor let out a long sigh, the count quickly picked up on what he was trying to say.
“Are you speaking of Her Majesty the Empress and His Highness the Prince’s birth?”
The Empress had assumed that the Emperor had never told anyone, but in truth, he had told Count Maron, the chief chamberlain, about it.
More precisely, Count Maron knew about the promise that had been made between Kiyen and the Emperor before their marriage.
That was why, when the Empress became pregnant with Voltaire, the count had been just as shocked as the Emperor when the unexpected news of her pregnancy reached him.
Knowing that the Emperor was the sort of man who always followed through once he made up his mind, the count had been the first to suspect the Empress of infidelity.
In the end, the Emperor had confided the truth to Count Maron alone.
In fact, to the Emperor, Count Maron was a kind of insurance policy.
An insurance policy prepared in case he, the person who knew the truth, died without ever being able to reveal it to anyone.
A witness who could expose the truth if something happened to him, ensuring that Voltaire would never become Crown Prince.
“I need to find Voltaire’s biological father.”
Perhaps my decision to close my eyes to her sins has become poison.
Perhaps she thought I was an easy target because I forgave her.
I accepted a child who knew nothing as my own because I pitied him and didn't want him to bear the burden of his mother's sins.
And yet that woman has sinned against me once again.
The Emperor let out a long, sorrowful sigh.
Being young was far more inconvenient than I had expected.
Because I was young, people didn't want to tell me many things. Rather, they were even careful with their words so that I wouldn't learn too much.
So, for the first time since my regression, I summoned all of my maids.
It was after breakfast.
“Tell me. I heard that what happened during the hunting event has been resolved.”
Apparently, rumors had already spread throughout the palace, yet I was the only one who hadn't known.
I had found out by chance yesterday while going to pay my respects to Grandfather. On the way, I happened to overhear palace servants whispering about it.
The sense of betrayal I felt at that moment was indescribable.
“How could none of you tell me?”
When I scolded them, all of them lowered their gazes.
In the end, Jeanne stepped forward.
“I instructed everyone to be careful about what they said. I was worried that hearing about it might shock Your Highness. I was thoughtless enough to block Your Highness's eyes and ears, so please punish me.”
...No, if you put it that way, what am I supposed to do?
I suddenly felt a pang in my heart, wondering if this was somehow my fault.
I couldn't show it in front of them, so I merely pursed my lips sulkily.
“Tell me now, at least.”
When I spoke with my lower lip sticking out, Jeanne answered in her usual calm, businesslike voice.
“It was apparently a mistake made by one of the palace servants in the Empress's residence. The pink dye used for the handkerchief Her Majesty gave His Majesty on the day of the event was made from the blood of a young wyvern. Apparently, they accidentally used unrefined dye, which caused the incident.”
As she calmly recited what was supposedly known, I sharpened all my senses, trying to determine whether or not it was actually the truth.
“Who discovered that?”
There was no way my maternal grandfather, who had been in charge of investigating the incident, would have simply discovered one servant was responsible and ended things there.
Would he really just catch a single servant from the Empress's palace and call it a day?
He would certainly have thrown that servant into prison first, then assumed there was someone behind her and thoroughly searched the Empress's residence.
“Her Majesty the Empress caught her herself.”
So the Empress is the culprit.
Classic scapegoating.
“She confessed?”
“They say she confessed…”
Jeanne, who normally finished her statements cleanly, strangely kept avoiding my eyes.
She looked as though she was debating whether or not she should tell me something.
Once again, they were treating me like a child.
If I thought about it objectively, eight years old was young.
But there was no time for me to spend years knowing nothing simply because I was young.
If things continued like this, I would die ten years from now.
Just looking at this incident alone, Grandfather had nearly lost his life.
In my previous life, he had actually died.
I hadn't known it back then, but this time I had realized that it wasn't merely an accident.
Just like my parents' deaths, it had been deliberately planned by someone.
Those who had failed this time would undoubtedly try again.
In other words, there was no telling when Grandfather's life would once again be in danger.
Of course, Grandfather now suspected that the incident had been an assassination attempt and would be more careful with himself.
But I couldn't help worrying.
Having tasted failure, they would be even more cautious than we were.
Meanwhile, Jeanne was still hesitating to tell me something, so I finally urged her on.
“Keep going. If she confessed, then why?”
“The only person who heard that confession was Her Majesty the Empress.”
“What do you mean?”
“They say the maid personally confessed her mistake to Her Majesty the Empress. Her Majesty then cut out her tongue and severed her fingers on the spot, and presented them to His Majesty the Emperor the following day.”
The sheer cruelty of it made bile rise in my throat.
But if I showed my disgust here, Jeanne would never again tell me everything honestly until I grew up.
So I desperately suppressed the nausea rising inside me.
I nodded as casually as I could.
“She might have been innocent.”
At my words, Jeanne and the other maids flinched.
Of course, I knew perfectly well that what I had just said was not something an eight-year-old would normally think of.
I quickly changed the subject before my maids could dwell on it any further.
“Let's go see Grandfather. Make me pretty. As cute and adorable as possible.”
I was going to unleash a full barrage of cuteness.
I needed to ask Grandfather to hand over the maid whom the Empress had discarded.
A splendid, enormous pink carriage left the Imperial Palace and headed toward the Marquisate of Serpis.
The carriage was decorated with delicate flowers carved densely along its corners.
Ironically, however, the emblems engraved on both doors had nothing to do with flowers or pink.
They were dragons—the symbol of the Empire.
In other words, it was a carriage belonging to the Imperial Family.
The childish, excessively pink carriage with flower patterns beautifully adorning its corners could only belong to the young imperial granddaughter.
There isn't even a trace of dignity in this thing.
I really should replace the carriage soon.
I slightly drew back the curtain covering the carriage window and looked outside.
People stopped in the middle of whatever they were doing and bowed toward the carriage in greeting.
“They should just keep going on their way. It's not like I'm going to look at them just because they do that…”
What an inefficient system.
Was this why members of the Imperial Family weren't supposed to wander around outside the palace carelessly?
Next time, I should sneak out.
“Tsk, tsk.”
Clicking my tongue, I closed the curtain again and sat quietly in my seat.
Every time the carriage jolted, my bottom bounced hard against the floor of the seat.
Thanks to the cushions that had been laid down, it wasn't as painful as it could have been, but my stomach churned and I began to feel carsick.
After traveling for some time, the carriage finally stopped at the Marquisate of Serpis.
Grandfather himself had come out to greet me.
“It has been a long time, Your Highness.”
“Grandfather!”
I hopped out of the carriage and threw myself into my maternal grandfather's arms.
Then I unleashed my full arsenal of cuteness.
“I want macarons. The macarons made by your pâtissier taste better than the ones in the Imperial Palace.”
“Hahaha. Of course. You may eat as much as you like.”
Grandfather and I sat in the greenhouse of the marquisate, eating macarons and chatting.
Once our conversation had softened and warmed up nicely, I casually brought up the real subject.
“I heard you investigated the accident that happened during the hunting event, Grandfather.”
“Ah, yes. I did.”
Since we were sitting alone in the greenhouse, with no prying eyes around us, Grandfather naturally spoke to me more comfortably.
“It's a relief that they caught the culprit. They said it was a mistake made by one of Her Majesty the Empress's maids?”
“You've already heard that much?”
Grandfather wore a complicated expression.
He seemed unsure how much I had heard, and therefore how much he should or shouldn't tell me.
So I simply revealed everything I knew.
“She only made a mistake, but they cut out her tongue and cut off her fingers, too. Sob, sob. That's so horrible.”
“No, who told you that?”
Grandfather asked with a look that suggested he would gladly crush whoever had told me the truth.
It seemed irrelevant that I had practically bullied Jeanne into telling me and that she had only done so because she couldn't refuse me.
“The rumor has already spread throughout the Imperial Palace, you know? When I walk around the palace, I sometimes happen to overhear the servants talking.”
At my excuse, Grandfather clicked his tongue.
“Tsk, tsk. To think people who work for the Imperial Family would have such loose lips…”
The conversation seemed about to go in an undesirable direction, so while Grandfather briefly picked up another macaron and put it into his mouth, I quickly interrupted.
“I want to take that maid in.”
“What?”
“Send that maid to my estate. Give her a new identity.”
“...Because you feel sorry for her? Hmm… Amelia, you're still young. When you grow older, you'll understand, but the Imperial Palace is… Well…”
“It's not because I feel sorry for her.”
I said it firmly.
“That wasn't actually the maid's mistake, was it?”
“...!”
Grandfather couldn't answer.
He merely stared at me with his eyes wide open.
Before he could recover, I rapidly poured out my reasoning.
“They didn't cut out her tongue and fingers because they were afraid she might say she was innocent. Evidence can be fabricated whenever you want. So she must have known or seen something that she absolutely wasn't allowed to reveal. Whether she herself knew what it was or not.”
“And Her Majesty the Empress probably decided that the maid wasn't useful enough to be worth the risk of keeping her alive.”
“Hmm…”
Grandfather stared at me with narrowed eyes.
He seemed utterly confused by whether such words could really come from the mouth of a child.
“And if I were that maid, I'd curse the Empress who used me as a scapegoat. I'd wait for an opportunity to get revenge someday.”
I smiled.
“And I'm going to give her that opportunity.”
Grandfather listened to me for a long while.
He breathed heavily, then gulped down water again and again.
After that, he stared blankly into the air, closing and opening his eyes.
