Chapter 21

Tonight, Lyssel would be joining them for dinner.

As a married couple, the two of them were supposed to sit together at the head of the table, but Iberin always ate next to Ether.

She didn't want to leave Lyssel sitting alone either, though, so all three of them ended up crammed into the head seat.

"I'll just move over to the side—"

"It's our first meal together. Can't we just sit together?"

"Can't we?"

When Ether jumped in too, eyes wide and sparkling, Lyssel stayed put.

"Thank you!"

"I'm only sitting because you'd pester me otherwise."

"Still, thank you."

"Tank you."

Elvin, who walked into the dining hall just then, took in the three of them sitting in a row with a thoroughly bewildered look.

"Wait, the seating…?"

"His Highness will be joining us for dinner tonight, so we ended up like this."

Elvin shot a look at the servant standing in the corner.

The servant squeezed his eyes shut, his face crumpling, and Elvin's expression twisted into something monstrous.

"Is it not uncomfortable?"

"It's fine."

Looks like the food I dosed got mixed in with the rest.

Elvin trembled faintly as he took his seat.

Iberin, who had no idea what was going on, watched the food at Elvin's place with a smug little smile.

The elixir Rotte had mentioned was finished, so the dose had already been mixed into Elvin's food.

"Help yourselves."

Iberin watched, deeply satisfied, as the food disappeared into Elvin's mouth.

But maybe he'd lost his appetite, or maybe Lyssel was scaring him—he kept eating with this anxious, twitchy attitude, glancing around, and barely made it through half his plate.

According to Rotte, though, even a single drop was enough. Once it was in, you had no choice but to tell the truth.

"Baron, is the food not to your taste?"

Iberin tossed out the casual question.

"It tastes fine, but I can't tell if it's going down my throat or up my nose."

"Why?"

"{Because I dosed the Grand Duchess's food with poison, and the dishes got mixed up. Damn it. N-no, that's not—why am I…?}(#mqqp1h6h3qxj)"

Elvin spilled it all in one breath, then started flailing, looking utterly thrown by the fact that his own mouth had betrayed him.

"What?"

The words caught Iberin off guard too, and her eyes went round.

Poison.

She whipped around to check Ether, panicked he might've eaten some, but the boy looked perfectly fine.

A glance at Lyssel beside him—Lyssel looked fine too.

Either way, someone had clearly been up to something.

"What kind of poison?"

"Horn of a Lerishark. Kills a monster in a single drop."

She had no idea what that was, but it sounded like serious stuff.

Everyone besides the clueless Iberin and Ether had gone visibly shocked.

"You were planning to assassinate me? Why?"

"Because you were getting in the way!"

The elixir was potent—every answer came back the instant she asked.

Elvin's face had gone past white and was creeping toward blue.

"Getting in the way of what?"

"The conditioning. He told me it'd be easy in an isolated estate, with no one around him! But you—you kept ruining my conditioning!"

The voice was furious, a stark contrast to his sickened face. Iberin had clearly gotten right under his skin.

Iberin shot Lyssel a bitter look, then—deciding Ether shouldn't hear any more of this—signaled Tami to take him out of the dining hall.

Ether took Tami's hand without a fuss, and once the sound of his footsteps faded, Iberin asked,

"What kind of conditioning?"

"Your mother doesn't love you. She hates you, and she's using you. Once you're truly happy, she'll cast you aside cruelly. You want to keep being loved? Then you'll listen to me."

Iberin slammed her hand down on the table.

"You—!"

Her face flushed scarlet with rage, but she ground her teeth and forced herself to calm down.

"…Why that kind of conditioning?"

"Because a Lecashe can't be happy. They can't know love, can't settle into the present. Once I'd finished conditioning him about you, I was going to condition him on his duty to guard the Forest of the World Tree, the meaning of his existence—I was going to hypnotize him!"

"Who put you up to this?"

That was when it happened.

Elvin's expression contorted in agony, and he spat blood.

"Khhrgh—!"

He clawed at the table, writhing, and Iberin shot to her feet and rushed over, but his breath had already stopped.

"…What is this."

Iberin stared, dumbstruck, at Elvin, soaked through with blood, eyes rolled back.

Did he end up eating the poison himself?

The thought had just hit her when she heard a small cough beside her.

She turned. Lyssel had gone ashen, blood on his lips.

"Your Highness!"

"Hhhk…"

"You ate it?"

"It seems so. Fortunate, though. Lecashe have a strong resistance to toxins."

Lyssel wiped the blood away as if it were nothing.

"How is that fortunate? Resistant doesn't mean it doesn't hurt!"

"This is nothing to me."

His brow was clearly furrowed in pain.

Granted, if Iberin had been the one to eat it, she'd have died instantly—so Lyssel wasn't exactly wrong—but that flat, matter-of-fact attitude still ate at her.

A servant had bolted for the physician, who came rushing in moments later, took one look at the dining hall, and ran straight to Lyssel in alarm.

---

According to the physician, Lyssel would clear the toxin on his own with rest.

Lecashe didn't go down easily to most poisons, but the Horn of a Lerishark that Elvin had prepared wasn't just any poison.

A single drop could send a monster to the afterlife. Vicious stuff.

There wasn't even an antidote.

If Lyssel hadn't volunteered to come to dinner tonight, Iberin would've died on the spot.

"How long does he need to rest?"

"About a week should do it."

"I see."

Iberin turned to look at the sleeping Lyssel.

He'd walked himself all the way here, gotten treatment, and dropped into something close to unconsciousness.

She wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead and said,

"I'll stay here and look after him for now."

This had happened because of her, and she wouldn't feel right unless she did at least this much.

"I'll have my things moved here."

"Ah, but he'll recover on his own if you just leave him be…? And His Highness wouldn't want this."

The physician spoke carefully.

He'd been watching over Lyssel for a long time and knew the man hated having anyone near him, refused company even when he was ill.

And his recovery rate was something else.

Lyssel healed on his own with nothing more than a few days' rest, no prescriptions needed—enough to make the physician feel like a physician in name only.

"…I'll talk to him about it. More importantly—Baron Elvin."

She got that Lyssel had eaten the poison meant for her thanks to Elvin's scheme, but what the hell was Elvin?

"It appears there was a seal on him."

That was the physician's read.

"A seal?"

"Yes. Designed to kill him if he spoke certain words."

The last question Iberin had put to Elvin was who's behind this.

Her gut said imperial family, but she had no proof, so she'd asked to be sure—and she hadn't expected them to go this far.

He'd been forced to talk by the elixir, so the moment his mouth opened, he was dead.

Iberin's brow knit.

"…Ha."

The tutor sent by the imperial family was dead.

The small mercy was that Elvin's admission of attempting to poison her had been recorded.

If she played that right, maybe she could do something with it.

"Physician."

"Yes?"

"Is there any way to undo hypnosis?"

The way Iberin saw it, the conditioning had been reinforced with hypnosis.

To make it hold more firmly.

If that was the case, Ether wouldn't be under any hypnosis—Elvin had failed there—but Lyssel would be.

"You'd have to call in a hypnotist to know for sure."

"A hypnotist?"

"Yes."

"So Elvin was a hypnotist?"

"Possibly. Though hypnosis is banned in the empire as a heretical art. It's quackery, essentially."

The empire enshrined a god, so just about anything that wasn't related to holy power was outlawed.

"Then it's highly likely the bastard who used to be His Highness's tutor learned hypnosis too."

"If your guess is right, then probably."

"Then can only that bastard undo the hypnosis on His Highness?"

"Yes."

Roto Civelli, who was now a marquis.

She'd been planning to head to the capital eventually because of the six nobles, but with this Elvin business piled on top, the trip wasn't optional anymore.

---

How long had he been asleep? Lyssel cracked his heavy eyelids open.

Looking out the window, he could see the world tinted in the faint pre-dawn light.

His mouth was bone dry, and he was about to sit up to find water when he spotted Iberin slumped beside his bed, asleep in an awkward position.

Something in his chest dropped, hard.

"…Ah."

He hadn't expected anyone to be there.

He'd always suffered through illness alone, recovered alone. That was just how it went.

"Why… here…"

Lyssel reached out to wake her, then froze and slowly let his hand fall.

He'd thought she was strange, and apparently she really was a strange woman.

She didn't need to go this far. He'd have been on his feet again in no time.

The physician would've known that too.

Which meant Iberin must've insisted.

Lyssel kept staring at her, like he was caught in a spell.

He'd clearly moved because his throat was dry and he wanted water, but he stayed frozen exactly where he was—from the moment the dawn brightened into morning, until the sun climbed high and the physician finally came by, Lyssel didn't move.

For fear that the smallest motion would wake her, he held still all that time.

He didn't know.

Why he couldn't move, whether Iberin woke or not.

Or even that it was because of Iberin.

He just figured it was because the unfamiliar warmth of another person in his room felt strange.

---

When Iberin opened her eyes, Lyssel wasn't there.

Somehow, she was the one in Lyssel's bed, sleeping soundly.

She startled awake, all but leaping upright, looked around, and threw the door open.

Rotte and Ether were standing right outside, eyes wide.

"Oh, we were just about to knock…"

Rotte's voice trailed off uncharacteristically, like she'd been caught off guard.

"Hic."

Ether even had the hiccups.

It was so cute Iberin let out a small laugh, scooping him into her arms and patting his back.

"Sorry, baby. Did Mommy scare you?"

"I-I'm okay… not scawed at all. Hic."

"Aww."

When Iberin clicked her tongue softly, Ether shook his head emphatically.

"No! Ether didn't get scawed!"

"Okay, okay. What brings you here, then?"

"I wanted to be wif Mommy."

"Aww, did you? Mommy wanted to be with Ether too."

"Weally? So you opened the door fast cuz you wanted to see Ether?"

"Huh? Yeah, of course!"

It wasn't really that, but with Ether's face lighting up like that, she couldn't bring herself to say otherwise.

She looked over his shoulder at Rotte and mouthed,

Where's His Highness?

He's awake. In the next room.

Iberin let out a dry little laugh at Rotte's answer.

The ingrate. After all my nursing, the man moved rooms behind my back.

In any case, Lyssel had been out for a full three days.

Iberin took Ether's hand and knocked on the door of the next room to check on him.

She'd been expecting no answer and was already reaching for the handle.

—Come in.

But the response came back, much to her surprise.

Iberin threw the door open.