The Poisonous Princess Who Successfully Infiltrated the Enemy as an Employee - Chapter 28

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 28.

***

I returned to my bedroom without removing my outer robe, pressing myself against the window frame.
The garden before the Separate Palace was bathed in the soft, late afternoon light.
Well-trimmed shrubs, flowers in every shade, stone paths laid in perfect lines.
A peaceful scene altogether—and yet my mind was anything but.
“The Northern Region may be sparse, but there were many noble families vying for the position of Grand Duchess. The Grand Duke, however, rejected every marriage prospect. Then he revealed directly that there was someone he had set his heart upon.”
Eleanor’s composed voice still lingered in my ears.
“Isn’t it possible he was just making excuses because he didn’t want to marry? Look at the man. Is that truly the face of someone who knows what love is?”
But Eleanor shook her head firmly.
“It was once a famous tale in high society. The fact that the Grand Duke had grown so lovesick over a woman that he fell ill—it spread through the mouths of former servants dismissed from the Grand Duke’s household.”
Who the woman was, whether she lived or had died, nobody knew.
Even the Grand Duke’s own servants had never laid eyes on her.
Yet this much was common knowledge among those nobility worth knowing: Grand Duke Barkan harbored a deep love for a certain woman.
As I recalled Eleanor’s words, I pressed my forehead against the window frame with a soft sigh.
More than the sudden news of a banquet at the Imperial Palace, Barkan’s tale of yearning first love was tearing through my mind in far more troubling ways.
“This is strange…….”
No matter how I thought about it, this was a time when the heroine Floria and Barkan should not be able to meet.
‘But what if Barkan already has a woman he loves?’
Could it be that they’d already met without my knowing?
‘Or perhaps those two share some childhood history that never appeared in the original work…….’
What if, in truth, the two of them had known each other since childhood, and these two lonely souls—a bastard of the Grand Duke’s house and an abandoned candidate for sainthood—had become each other’s solace and salvation!
That sort of heartrending backstory, really.
‘No, wait. Don’t tell me there’s another woman besides Floria?!’
My head throbbed for a moment.
“Ugh……. I have no idea!”
I ruffled my hair in irritation.
How was I supposed to know about a past that didn’t even appear in the original work?
Or perhaps, just as I’d first suspected, Barkan had fabricated the whole thing to avoid marriage.
Eleanor insisted that couldn’t be so, but maybe Barkan was simply that good an actor, fooling everyone around him like that.
‘Ugh……. As if I don’t have enough on my plate already……!’
Right, I’m extremely busy at the moment.
I still need to handle Helbayne, buy medicinal herbs while avoiding the Guild’s eyes, craft potions, plan my entry into the Lacrion Mountain Range…….
There’s no way I can worry about Barkan’s first love on top of all that.
And yet.
And yet……!
Tap, tap, tap. I drummed my fingertips against the window frame, murmuring softly to myself.
“This feeling is oddly… unpleasant……?”
So a secondary male lead is supposed to throw his very life away for Floria, completing a tragic love story all on his own—what?!
‘And he’s supposed to have a real love so deep that it left him bedridden?!’
That stiff, emotionless cold-blooded bastard!
Part of me felt spurned. Part of me felt spiteful.
A tangle of emotions I couldn’t name quietly churned inside my chest.
“No, wait. Why am I even this upset? Hah! What kind of relationship do I even have with him? We’re nothing to each other!”
So there’s no reason to be this agitated!
And then.
‘No, actually. No, wait.’
I have every right to be angry!
Regardless of whether it’s a Political Marriage and an unwanted one at that, I’ll be spending time as Barkan’s lawful wife.
Of course I can be bothered by my prospective husband’s deep, yearning love story! Of course I can feel hurt!
‘That’s right! It’s perfectly natural!’
Haaa…….
Haaa…….
“Calm down. Take a deep breath. You’re a princess. Maintain your dignity. Act like a princess. Hoooo……. Hoooo…….”
I gripped the window frame and huffed loudly, then took deep breaths, then suddenly shouted and returned to breathing exercises again.
Then I sensed movement behind me and turned.
I caught Seline and Ena stepping backward on tiptoe, trying to slip away.
“Where are you two going?”
I asked with my lips already curving upward, and Seline’s shoulders flinched before she answered carefully.
“Ah, well, it seemed like Your Highness might need some time alone…….”
Ena turned her head away and began to hiccup.
I released the window frame I’d been holding and turned to face them fully.
“I’m not angry.”
“Yes, we know.”
“Really.”
“Of course. Absolutely.”
Even as they spoke as though they believed me, Seline and Ena did not pause in their shuffle toward the door.
“Well then, we really must prepare dinner……. Just wait a moment, please!”
Seline and Ena hurried out and closed the door behind them.
I stared at the shut door and muttered softly.
“Another unintentional performance for today.”

***

That night.
In the Grand Temple, not far from the Imperial Palace.
The sacred flame within the temple did not die even in darkness, swaying as though dancing.
As though possessed of some peculiar power to absolve the sins of mankind, the firelight devoured the pitch-black shadows around it.
The towering marble columns, majestic in their ascent, and the murals that covered the walls as if to boast of the divine’s supremacy, all seemed to writhe with life as they caught the dancing light.
On the topmost level of the temple.
At the end of a corridor where access was strictly controlled, there lay a private prayer chamber.
The High Priest knelt before a colossal statue carved in the image of the divine, offering his prayers.
His hands were clasped in an attitude of reverence—so still, so utterly motionless, he might have been carved from stone himself.
Then.
A long shadow draped across one corner of the prayer chamber suddenly split open.
And from within that shadow, a man in black cloth mask and black garb stepped forth.
He was the head of the Bellum Guild—the intelligence organization that had made Evelyn a false princess and implanted Helbayne within her body.
Sensing the alien presence behind him, the High Priest kept his eyes closed and opened his mouth.
“It seems our trail has been discovered.”
The Guild Master replied with indifference.
“So? You’re speaking of the box that held the Osnis Claw, I presume—but those fools who opened it certainly coughed blood and died where they stood. The poison gas I placed in that box is no ordinary toxin.”
The Guild Master chuckled dismissively, and the High Priest spoke slowly.
“……But that poison was one that should never have been revealed to the world.”
“What is there to fear? So long as the poison gas was made from Osnis venom, no one—not a soul—could survive in those fumes. Neither the one who stole the box, nor those who tried to trace it back to us. Everyone would be dead, and the trail would end there.”
……
The High Priest maintained his prayerful posture, offering only silence, and the Guild Master’s lips twisted in irritation.
“Did you summon me merely for this? The temple could have handled a matter of such small consequence on its own.”
At the Guild Master’s rebuke, the High Priest finally opened his clouded eyes, slowly.
The flickering sacred flame trembled within his dim pupils.
The High Priest rose to his feet and turned to face the Guild Master.
“The Stigma we planted in the Grand Duchy has been broken.”
“……The Stigma?”
For the first time, the Master’s voice wavered.
The Guild Master, who had remained unmoved even at news of the black market operation’s exposure, stepped forward.
“Suddenly? Surely something sealed centuries ago couldn’t have awakened again. When, exactly? Why has it broken?!”
The High Priest shook his head heavily.
“I do not know.”
“You don’t know?”
“When I checked three months ago, it was intact. The last time I confirmed it was two days past.”
The Guild Master muttered low.
“Then it broke sometime in those three months.”
“Yes.”
“Have you investigated what occurred in the Grand Duchy during that interval?”
“I’ve heard that everything proceeded as usual.”
……
“However.”
The Guild Master’s brow furrowed.
“Except?”
“About a month ago, when a false princess entered the Grand Duchy.”
At those words, the Guild Master let out a hollow laugh.
“You’re saying the false princess and the broken Stigma are connected? You’re serious about this?”
“I’m considering the possibility.”
“So you’re suggesting that the Primordial Force—which hasn’t stirred in centuries—suddenly erupted violently enough to shatter the Stigma, all because of a false princess we happened to snatch from the forest and forcibly push into the Grand Duchy?”
“Is there anything else that strikes you as suspicious?”
……
“The Stigma’s destruction suggests there may be a flaw in the power that seals the Primordial Force. If something troubles us, we cannot ignore even the smallest detail, can we?”
……
The Master’s jaw clenched.
For a moment he locked eyes with the High Priest like a silent challenge, then spoke with a hardened expression.
“What would you have me do?”
“I must see her myself.”
The Guild Master nodded.
“Very well. If you’re this uneasy about it, you should verify it with your own eyes. A banquet is being held at the Imperial Palace, as it happens.”
“Is that so.”
“The false princess will attend alongside the Grand Duke, so you can observe her directly then, yes?”
A smile—at once merciful and grotesque—bloomed across the High Priest’s lips for the first time.
“Yes, I would be grateful.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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