The Duke had clearly prepared his excuses, assuming Eric only knew of the surface entries within the household ledger he had taken.
And perhaps, even if Eric were to bring the matter before the Heavenly Sovereign himself, there would be no fault to point out—because the story of the frontier expedition was, no doubt, entirely true.
But the Sovereign likely had no knowledge of the royal treasury funds being diverted behind his back by the prince.
And then there were the words scrawled upon the hidden wall:
“I would never take my own life.”
Eric, expression calm as still water, lowered the pendant of his late mother that hung around his neck.
The Duke spoke.
“To be candid, I chose to stand beside Prince Robert. It is true that the Crown Princess has accomplished much in terms of merit… but she is far too careless with her reputation. Scandals swirl around her and the children of noble clans all too often.”
“That may be true,” Eric replied firmly, “but the Prince is no less entangled in worse.”
The Duke narrowed his gaze, as though to pierce through Eric’s dantian and read his inner thoughts—then his expression softened, taking on the tone of a father chiding a wayward son.
There had always been something subtly off about the Duke’s behavior.
Even now, he spoke to Eric—not as a man, not even as an heir—but as one would speak to a beast raised for hunting. A hound kept leashed, not yet released.
“I would prefer you not become too entangled with the Crown Princess,” the Duke said evenly.
“She is not one to offer genuine affection to any one person. Even if you were to wed her, she would surround herself with countless companions and seek to use our house—and theirs—for political leverage. I only wish that in your own household, at least, you might rest without scheming. That your blade may be sheathed at home.”
His gaze drifted to the late Duchess’s keepsakes lying atop the table.
“Your mother… was a good woman in that regard.
At least… before the madness began to show.”
A chill ran through Eric’s core.
Was his mother truly mad…? Or…?
He suppressed the tremor in his spiritual sea and kept his voice level.
“And Lady Helena? Does she bring you peace as well, Father?”
Helena Wedgwood.
Why had his father chosen
her
as a marriage partner?
Before, Eric had thought it nothing more than a political move.
The collateral branches of the clan had long urged the Duke to remarry, daily offering women tied to their own factional interests. Perhaps choosing a woman completely unrelated to those games was simply his father’s way of avoiding entanglement.
And Helena was beautiful—captivating even. With children from previous marriages, she had a flaw—one that kept her ambitions for the Duchy in check.
Her lack of lineage-based power meant she posed no true threat. She seemed like a safe indulgence.
That was what Eric had believed—until he began to suspect there was another side to his father.
“Helena? No, not really,” the Duke replied. “As I’m sure you’ve felt, she doesn’t bring peace. She brings… amusement.
She’s pleasant to be around—and… useful.”
Useful?
Eric was taken aback. Helena was clever in a cunning sort of way, but lacked any real knowledge or cultivation. What kind of
usefulness
could the Duke possibly mean?
The Duke rose from his seat and walked to where an old long-barreled spirit musket rested. He reached for it, running his fingers across the worn barrel.
Eric’s hand instinctively moved to the hilt of his sword.
The Duke picked up the weapon—Eric tensed, ready to draw.
But instead, the Duke simply grabbed a cloth from the table and said,
“You’re of age now. It’s time you found a match. Nothing wrong with that. But always remember, Eric—your wife shall be the next Duchess of Orléans.”
He began to polish the barrel of the gun with steady, unhurried movements.
“The next Duchess will gain access to many of this estate’s secrets,” he added.
The musket's barrel gleamed as the powder was wiped clean, reflecting the light like a blade newly forged.
“The next Duchess…”
Eric loosened his grip on his sword.
And then, like a flickering wisp of demonic qi, a strange thought surged through his mind—dark and intrusive, one that could only be described as… unnatural.
Just as Eric, caught in a strange haze of thought, finally finished preparing to head to the imperial palace, Lily arrived with even stranger news.
✵
✵
✵
The noble hall roared with laughter.
The loudest among them were mostly lower-ranked nobles, their laughter little more than sycophantic flattery aimed at the jokes of the central clans—each chuckle a desperate attempt to curry favor.
Hypocrites, the lot of them.
I turned away, only to see Philip and Mother among the crowd, struggling to gain the favor of high-ranking cultivators.
Right... We’re the biggest hypocrites of all.
I sat quietly in the farthest corner of the hall, playing the role of the "bumpkin from the Southern Territory." I wasn’t in any position to judge anyone right now.
I sighed, casting my eyes toward the nobles cackling so loud it could split ears.
Vivian Cavendish stood among them, laughing far too theatrically. My eyes remained fixed on her.
Any moment now, Vivian will walk up to Mother, "accidentally" spill her champagne, and pretend to apologize...
And then she’ll say:
“You’re quite talented, aren’t you? Always finding a new husband less than a year after the last one dies.”
That’s how it usually went.
The nobles of the capital had little interest in Southern affairs. That was why someone like Vivian—despite her influence in the Southern cultivator clans—barely attracted any attention here.
The capital clans believed themselves the center of the world. To them, everything and everyone outside their circle was irrelevant.
Thanks to that arrogance, all they knew of my mother was that she was some lowborn lady from the South who’d managed to ensnare a powerful duke and remarry.
They had yet to learn about her truly fearsome history—four husbands, all dead.
But thanks to Vivian, that skeleton was about to be dragged out of the closet for all to see.
The plan was clear: expose Mother’s past, let the capital cultivators scorn her, and then have the Duke step in to “save” her.
It would make Mother trust him even more.
And yet... the Duke was nowhere to be seen.
Tch. If he won’t play his part, I’ll do it myself.
And while I’m at it, I’ll rip every single hair off Vivian’s head.
I glared toward Mother.
From now on, I would protect her—just like she always protected Philip and me.
Through all the short-lived husbands, through every storm…
Then again, with a past like Mother’s, most clans wouldn’t even get royal permission for another marriage...
…But this was House Orléans.
Other than the Grand Duke of the North, no clan on the continent possessed more spiritual wealth or political influence.
The King had no reason to oppose their union—in fact, he welcomed it.
A powerful Duke marrying some Southern bumpkin meant he wasn’t joining forces with another powerful clan.
That’s how the saying came about:
"After His Majesty comes the Princess. After the Princess, the Grand Duke. After the Grand Duke, Duke Orléans."
And then comes Prince Robert.
Prince Robert, meanwhile, was watching the Princess coldly as she danced with a string of powerful cultivators.
The Princess wielded her reputation as a flirt like a sword—gracefully, and with intent. She moved from one elite to the next, forging invisible ties with each.
Smart woman…
The Prince, on the other hand, brushed off every noblewoman who approached, sending them back as if he stood before the mouth of Hell itself.
Perhaps the Duke chose to side with the Prince
because
he was this easy to manipulate? Turn him into a puppet-king, and control the realm from the shadows?
It made sense.
Better a petulant prince than a clever, flirtatious princess with more qi than she lets on.
Just as I thought that and turned my eyes back to Vivian—
…Huh?
Vivian was gone.
I shot to my feet.
Now that I looked, Mother was missing too.
In the short moment I had looked away—both women had vanished.
I suddenly felt the tide of events slipping beyond the reach of my control, and a ripple of unease swept through me.
I stepped out from the quiet corner and began roaming the grand ballroom, scanning the crowd in search of my mother.
Splat!
Just as my eyes darted aimlessly about, a chill spread across my chest—a cold wetness seeping into my gown.
“…?”
I blinked and looked up. Vivian Cavendish stood before me, holding a champagne glass tipped just enough to have spilled its contents all over me. She looked down with a syrupy voice.
“Oh dear, my apologies.”
Her face didn’t show a trace of remorse.
I tilted my head.
“Wait… isn’t this different?”
Wasn’t she supposed to splash the drink on my mother instead?
But my mother was nowhere to be seen. In her place stood Vivian and her ever-faithful entourage—faces I remembered from the dressing hall.
“It’s a relief to see you looking so healthy, Emelline. After throwing that little fit at the boutique and disappearing without so much as an apology, I thought you’d taken ill,” she cooed.
Whispers stirred nearby. The noble crowd had clearly been waiting for this gossip to surface, their murmurs buzzing like flies.
That was when I realized why things weren’t aligning exactly with what I saw in the dream.
My actions—born of foreknowledge—had altered the future ever so slightly.
Vivian Cavendish still wanted to disgrace our family. The Duke still wished to send us to the underworld. But the methods… the timing… those had changed.
So the Duke hasn’t appeared yet because I’ve disrupted the sequence…?
It brought me a strange sense of relief to think even he was reacting to my upheaval, even if it didn’t show on the surface.
I looked down at my soaked dress, strangely satisfied, before raising my head.
With a frosty expression, I locked eyes with Vivian. She flinched, her fingers instinctively rising to touch her hair.
“…You’ve learned how precious each strand is now, haven’t you?”
Her victorious smirk froze.
Fear bloomed across the face of the once-confident noble lady. And rightfully so.
When I lived in the southern territories, all I ever did was scare her.
But after experiencing the strength of my grip firsthand in the boutique, Vivian now knew exactly what my spiritual pressure felt like. She would come to crave the memory of my grip—again and again, poor child.
“Is it a wig? Can I touch it?”
I asked sweetly, reaching out toward her hair like a breeze caressing flower petals.
Vivian recoiled, eyes wide with dread, clutching her champagne flute like a weapon.
“D-Don’t come any closer!”
She thrust the glass out as if it were a talisman. A few watching nobles chuckled quietly behind their fans.
Truth be told, what happened at the boutique between Vivian and me had ended on an ambiguous note.
She and her companions spread venomous rumors in the immediate aftermath, but then fell into sudden, eerie silence.
It was likely the Duke of Orléans had intervened—especially with that forged note Philip had crafted.
Still, I had no excuse for tearing out her hair. And so, the Duke’s household never made any official statement about it.
In the end, the supposed "victim" had gone quiet, and the "attacker" somehow stood unbothered. The capital’s nobility, sensing the Duke’s shadow, gossiped only in whispers.
Vivian must have found that stalemate deeply unsatisfying.
But this time, it won’t end with a few strands of hair… poor, pitiful soul.
I welcomed it.
Right now, I needed the reputation of a chaos-sowing villainess. Anything to ruin my mother’s wedding.
I glanced around.
Eyes glittered all around us. The nobles, hungry for spectacle, were watching our confrontation with childlike glee. My mother, Philip, and the Duke were nowhere in sight.
Ah… what a flawless setup.
I looked straight at Vivian and gave her a cold, slow smile.
"Foolish Vivian. Didn’t you ever learn that pouring spiritual wine over someone’s robes won’t kill them? If you want to strike someone down, you’ll need something sharper than that."
As I subtly slipped my hand into my robes, Vivian flinched and took a step back. Of course, I wasn’t carrying any sword or dagger—so I raised my empty hand.
"What’s got you so scared?"
Laughter rippled through the onlookers. Vivian’s face flushed crimson as she shouted back.
"Are you insane?! Even in the Southern Territories, you weren’t
this
shameless!"
Back then, I had no choice but to behave—after all, getting cast out of the Wedgwood estate meant having nowhere else to go.
Did she really think it was
her
I was afraid of?
Vivian stood fuming for a moment, then composed herself, drawing a deep breath as if preparing to unleash her trump card.
She stepped closer with an eerie calm and slowly unfolded her fan, whispering under her breath:
"Right… you always dragged scandal with you, even down south. Like that rumor about you… silencing the Blue-Beard, Lord of the Biolord Merchant Guild."
She traced her fan gently across her neck, mimicking a throat being slit.
Biolord...
The moment she uttered that name, my entire body tensed. Goosebumps crawled over my skin.
My fist clenched without thinking.
An instinctive reaction—born from years under the shadow of that man.
The Lord of the Biolord Guild.
My biological father.
Vivian flinched and took a step back.
Tch. Coward.
I narrowed my eyes at her.
"Sounds like you’re itching to become the next name in a dark rumor."
Vivian panicked and grabbed my clenched fist with both hands, her face pale.
“I-I just meant… well… the rumors might not be just rumors anymore. The southern magistrate—they found something new about Biolord’s death. Something that turned up at the crime scene... l-like a pearl hairpin or something…”
Her voice trembled, but the way she got all her words out made it clear she’d practiced this.
A hairpin?
The memory struck me like a meteor—sudden, blinding, undeniable.
“Let’s go, Emelline. We’re escaping this cursed house.”
“Right. No matter what, family stays together. Emelline!”
Philip, grinning like an idiot. Helena, gently holding my hand.
And the bright light pouring in the moment we stepped out of that tiny, suffocating room.
We thought our future was radiant, just like that light…
Until Helena screamed.
“
Aaaaugh!
”
“Ungrateful wench! You think you can run?! And take my daughter with you? Stealing from the Biolord Guild, too?!”
The silver candlestick. The scattered gemstones.
And my hairpin… slipping from my braid.
No. No, I didn’t… I couldn’t have dropped it. Did I?
Was it a memory Vivian had forced into my head, or the truth?
Did I really drop that hairpin? That day?
As I stood frozen, cold sweat pouring down my back, Vivian took a smug step backward.
And then, loud enough for everyone nearby to hear, she announced:
"Oh, and by the way—someone said they spotted you at the Midnight Bloom last night. Was it the Marquis of Halo’s eldest son, perhaps?"
But I barely registered her voice.
I was already sinking into a ten-year-old memory, one I hadn’t thought about in so long…
I—I can’t breathe…
For something that happened so long ago—something I told myself no longer mattered—
Why did it still hurt this much?
Just then, a familiar figure stepped out from behind Vivian.
The same man who, just last night, had tried to drag me away from the Midnight Bloom by force.
I gave a cold, sardonic smile as I glanced between the man and Vivian.
Vivian spoke sweetly, “He said he simply had to see you again, so I thought I’d give you a proper introduction.”
The surrounding nobles began whispering, and the Marquis’s son shared a smirk with Vivian, their eyes gleaming with some unsavory understanding.
So that’s it… That bastard must’ve been the one who spread rumors about Emelline and the princess. And now he’s fed Vivian my secrets too.
A meeting at “The Rose That Blooms at Night”—a gathering ground for unmarried cultivators and rogue nobles. Such rumors wouldn’t tarnish the reputation of a nobleman, but for a woman like me… Vivian clearly thought it would be devastating.
But she couldn’t be more wrong.
The cold sweat forming on my brow wasn’t from her petty schemes. My trembling wasn’t because of shame.
I should’ve torn out every single strand of her hair that day...
The Marquis’s son approached, bowing with an air of arrogance masked as charm.
“Lady Emelline Wedgewood, you seem rather different from when I saw you the other night. It’s an honor to meet you again…”
All eyes turned toward us. Even the princess had paused mid-dance to watch.
As the Marquis’s son knelt before me and tried to forcefully take my hand, preparing to press a kiss to its back—
Someone interrupted, grabbing his wrist mid-motion.
“…?”
Vivian and the Marquis’s son both stared upward, brows furrowed.
I, too, looked past the hand shielding me—and saw a familiar back.
Hair as black as obsidian, skin pale as snow, lips tinged crimson—he stood like a panther, coiled and ready.
Eric Orléans.
So fate had shifted: a daughter had stepped in for her mother, and now, the son replaced the father.
My chest felt tight, and I instinctively clutched it, trying to calm my breath.
Eric smiled gently, still gripping the Marquis's son's hand.
“I’m rather pleased to see you again, Gary Halo. I trust your leg’s healed since our last meeting? The one you broke when my wooden sword struck it during the knight trials?”
Gary's expression contorted. His forced smile cracked.
Broke… his leg?
Most aspirants got through the entrance trials with barely a scratch. A broken leg from a wooden blade meant one thing—he’d been thoroughly humiliated.
The nearby nobles began to murmur among themselves, clearly thinking the same. They cast glances toward Gary’s legs with subtle amusement.
Red-faced, Gary stumbled to his feet, stammering.
“Ah, E-Eric! You’re here... I-I didn’t know your father had arrived yet…”
He had likely waited for the Duke’s absence to stir trouble, thinking me unguarded prey.
Thwack!
Eric kicked Gary’s leg without hesitation, sending him toppling.
“Ow! What in the heavens are you doing?!”
“What do you
think
I’m doing?” Eric said coldly. “I’m delivering a righteous rebuke to the man who dared to seize my sister’s hand uninvited. A true gentleman and knight knows to withdraw when his advances are rejected.”
Sister…?
Who’s... whose sister…?
Gary and I both grimaced at the same time.
“I-I never! And besides, every cultivator knows that attending The Rose That Blooms at Night alone is a silent agreement to courtship…”
“My sister attended that gathering under invitation from the princess herself,” Eric cut in. “Her Highness wished to ask her about the Southern Territories.”
Eric’s gaze shifted to the princess. She winked at me, a playful sparkle in her eye.
“Ah, yes. The red-haired maiden of passion.”
The nobles around us nodded quietly. That wink was confirmation enough—Eric’s words were true.
With his cold eyes locked onto Gary, Eric continued. “And even if that weren’t the case, my sister still has the right to be wherever she wishes, with whomever she chooses, and on her own terms. She has the right
not
to be dragged around under the weight of some unspoken agreement, only to be humiliated by it.”
Several noble daughters began murmuring in agreement, turning their scorn onto Gary. It seemed he didn’t have the best reputation to begin with.
Gary clutched his knee in pain, casting a pleading look toward me—a silent cry for mercy, just once.
To some, it might’ve looked like a satisfying moment, a scene of righteous retribution.
How laughable…
I tore my gaze from Gary and looked at Eric.
Absolutely pathetic.
Eric’s face remained unreadable. Calm. Unshaken.
I turned away.
I felt sick.
Old memories began bubbling up again from deep within. Back when I was nothing but a spineless village girl—helpless, naïve—who waited for someone strong to save her.
It was like being dragged back to that exact moment in time.
I didn’t speak to Gary. I didn’t speak to Eric. I simply walked away.
Even when someone called out to me from behind, I didn’t look back.
Repeat it, Emelline. Biolord’s death wasn’t your fault. You didn’t kill him. And you are Helena Biolord’s daughter. Say it—say it now!
Helena’s words echoed endlessly in my ears.
And like a girl who’d regressed to her twelve-year-old self, I whispered:
“I… I didn’t kill him. I’m… I’m Helena Biolord’s daughter.”
Breathing heavily, I looked around and realized I was standing in the heart of the palace’s shadowy inner garden.
Chapter 22