The rest of the evening’s dinner proceeded rather smoothly.
I mostly talked with Eleanor, completely ignoring Sigor’s presence.
He was clearly feeling entirely like a useless third wheel, and the glaring fact that I had completely ignored him right after he shalessly admitted exactly what he was only made him feel more awkward.
Thankfully for him, laid out upon the table were so of the finest dishes in the entire Kingdom, so he simply spent his ti aggressively eating them and shalessly asking the disgusted maids for more, while I thoroughly indulged myself in a highly pleasant, intimate discussion with Eleanor.
Conversing with soone exactly like Eleanor, noble, intelligent, and beautiful was definitely entertaining, to say the very least.
"The Rainbow Gardens?" I raised my brow.
"Indeed. It is undeniably the most magnificent sight I have ever seen in my life..." Eleanor nodded, her vivid green eyes softening profoundly as she recalled the mory.
"Hm. I have never personally seen them, though I have certainly heard countless grand tales about their beauty. Unfortunately, they are located deep within the very heart of the capital of Gardenia. I cannot exactly just casually wander over there to simply gaze at so flowers," I said thoughtfully.
"I am quite certain that you will inevitably be seeing them with your own eyes one day, Your Majesty," Eleanor giggled softly.
"One day, perhaps," I agreed with a slight, confident smile. "Hopefully with Diana at my side. Though I imagine, as a Princess raised within that city, she must have seen them far too many tis to the point of eventually growing tired of the sight."
"I doubt anyone could ever truly grow tired of beholding the Rainbow Gardens, Your Majesty," Eleanor replied, offering a gentle, knowing smile.
"It is a sha we cannot simply go see them right now. And since you are officially my wife, you will not be able to freely travel there to see them anyti soon either, will you?" I asked.
Our relation with Gardenia couldn’t be anymore worse right now after all. I couldn’t just go there saying I just wanted to get a look at the Rainbow Gardens and leaving quietly.
Yeah, it was never happening.
"Indeed... but I am happy here in Helios. This capital is also uniquely beautiful, and I constantly find myself amazed whenever I gaze up at the roaring golden fla," she said.
"Is it not magnificent?" I chuckled with a bit of pride.
She nodded. "A massive, roaring fla, a small sun positioned so close, yet it remains entirely unburning. It endlessly protects its residents, casting a brilliant light that is easily watchable even from the furthest outskirts of the sprawling capital, and for many miles beyond," she said, her voice tinged with admiration.
"Yes. And from the high vantage points of this castle, it is an even more spectacular sight, though I imagine observing it from afar must be quite the view as well. My divine ancestor certainly possessed quite a sense of aestheticism," I said, a faint smile playing on my lips.
She had genuinely looked like a whimsical woman entirely lost in her own beautiful, tragic world, but she had not been just anyone, exactly as expected.
Just vividly rembering the intense vision of her, her face, that blooming smile of hers, I suddenly found myself freezing slightly in place. My golden eyes lost focus, staring blankly ahead as my mind forcefully replayed that overwhelming scene of her standing amidst that greenery.
She was truly fascinating...
"Your Majesty?" Eleanor gently called out, pulling abruptly back from my deep thoughts.
I blinked, shook my head slightly, and stood up from my chair.
"This dinner has been wonderful. Now, I believe it is ti we all take a quiet evening stroll," I declared, casting a sharp side-glance toward Sigor, who was currently in the middle of widely yawning.
But the exact mont he felt my heavy gaze fall upon him, he frantically snapped his jaw shut and hurriedly scrambled to his feet.
"Yes! I absolutely, really need a long stroll right now!" He blurted out.
Eleanor sighed deeply for what must have been the umpteenth ti tonight, exasperated by his continued lack of basic manners.
Perhaps she felt a sense of personal responsibility toward him and his embarrassing behavior, considering she was the one who offered his services to .
Well, I honestly found him highly amusing. He was certainly not acting this way out of any disrespect toward or my court; he genuinely just seed to be completely, hopelessly clueless regarding high noble etiquette. And honestly, since Eleanor had explicitly vouched for him and brought him here, I could hardly judge his worth based solely on his terrible table manners.
We quietly walked through the grand stone corridors in the dead of night. The main source of illumination pouring through the high, arched windows was the Sacred Fla. Even though it was located on other side we were walking on, its brilliant, far-reaching rays still bathed the entire city in a perpetually beautiful, eternal twilight.
Aside from that celestial glow, there were also ornate iron sconces set into the walls, burning brightly with glowing, Pyris-essence stones.
By the way, Leilah was noticeably absent. It was certainly a bit strange that my supposed new bodyguard was nowhere to be seen, but I purposefully chose not to ask Eleanor about her whereabouts just yet.
We casually walked for about ten minutes. I continued to chat pleasantly with Eleanor, while Sigor lazily dragged his feet behind us, occasionally letting out a heavy yawn before imdiately trying to stifle it.
Finally, when we reached a highly specific, secluded room deep within the keep, I gently pushed the door open.
"Co. Enter," I said.
Eleanor elegantly stepped inside first, offering a polite smile, and Sigor though visibly confused by the sudden change in location, quickly followed her inside.
After securely closing the door behind us, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a smooth, pale-white gemstone pulsating with concentrated essence.
"You should cover your ears tightly, Eleanor," I warned her softly.
She did not ask questions; she imdiately pressed her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.
"Huhh...? What?"
I entirely ignored Sigor’s confused gaze and forcefully hurled the white stone directly against the stone ceiling.
Booom!
The condensed essence exploded outward with a concussive crack. A brilliant shower of glowing white particles rained down from the ceiling, rapidly expanding until a faintly translucent, shimring white barrier completely coated the interior walls of the entire room.
"G—Gods above... what was that?" Sigor grumbled, keeping his hands tightly pressed over his ringing ears as he winced in pain. But as he blinked away the blinding flash and looked around the newly sealed room, his eyes widened in sudden realization. "A Silence Stone?"
"You seem to have sharp perception. That is a very good start," I said approvingly, calmly walking over to an oak table in the center of the room and taking a seat behind it. "I honestly did not want to resort to using sothing so extre, but the privacy it provides is simply too good to pass up. Anyway."
Eleanor uncovered her ears and approached the table, and Sigor, still looking thoroughly bewildered, stepped up beside her.
I stared at Sigor with intense scrutiny for a long mont, the silence clearly making him increasingly nervous.
"You abruptly left Gardenia. You ran away like a coward. Why?" I asked him again, my voice dropping all pretense of pleasantry.
"They...demanded that I help them. They wanted to actively cooperate in tracking down the hidden, loyalist nobles, the key political figures actively working against the new regi... the ones still secretly supporting the fallen Crown and the missing Princesses..." He said.
"You refused their demands, and so you sought desperate refuge with Eleanor?" I asked, raising a brow.
"I—I was not exactly searching for Lady Eleanor specifically. I was rely running. She happened to find ..." He replied defensively.
"I recognized his face on the roads, Your Majesty. We had spoken briefly a few years back when I was accompanying my father to Princess Diana’s grand birthday gala," Eleanor said quietly.
I nodded in understanding, my mind briefly processing the tiline. "So, you do actually possess so lingering shreds of pride. Or, perhaps, a hidden loyalty to your fallen Crown?" I asked him directly.
Sigor chuckled softly, a bitter, hollow sound. "Loyalty... I honestly never believed I possessed such a noble thing. I thought I was entirely devoid of it, right up until the bitter end when the King was brutally murdered, and the vile usurpers turned the beautiful capital I had grown to love into a bloody, burning battlefield. They aggressively demanded that I help them drag the Princesses back. Because I personally knew the royal family, and because I had managed to beco sowhat close to the previous King, they fully intended to use my knowledge to get close to the girls and threaten them into submission."
"Threaten them exactly how?" I asked, my golden eyes narrowing into slits.
Sigor swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously as he instinctively glanced around the sealed room.
"No one outside this barrier can hear you. Tell ," I ordered.
"The Queen... is still alive..."
Eleanor widened her eyes in shock upon hearing that, snapping her head toward him. It seed even she had not been trusted with that piece of information until this very second.
Well, was that truly so important?
"You an Diana’s mother? I had always been told she was dead," I said, a frown creasing my brow.
"It is complicated... The King had officially declared her dead to the public, while in truth he had secretly exiled her over thirteen years ago. But to everyone else in the entire world, she was dead and buried..." He explained nervously.
"Why exactly was she exiled?" I asked him, curious.
I never heard of such things after all, be it in this life or in the Gastory in my past life.
"I honestly do not know much about the true reasons behind it... but Queen Viola eventually seed to have mysteriously escaped from the remote place of exile where she was being heavily guarded. The King secretly ca to at that specific ti, ordering to find her..." He confessed.
"Is that the real reason why you were being kept within the inner circles of the royal court of Gardenia, despite your low status?" I asked him, the fragnted puzzle pieces finally clicking together.
He nodded slowly. "The King explicitly wished for to remain permanently at court and try to subtly pry any hidden information from the other high nobles. He heavily suspected that if Queen Viola was truly still alive and free, she might have actively made contact with certain sympathetic nobles still lingering in the court. But I never managed to find out much of actual interest regarding the Queen’s true whereabouts, just a few vague whispers and dead-end clues that ultimately led to nothing..."
I fell completely silent, digesting the revelation.
I had never heard a single word about Diana’s mother, Queen Viola, secretly still being alive within the original ga. Well, I had only ever completed the Academy Arc, so perhaps she was destined to make a dramatic appearance in the subsequent, higher-level arcs where the political fate of Gardenia was focused? I was surprised, because from Diana’s personal perspective, her mother had been dead for over a decade, but now I understood the complex situation much better.
Both Diana and her younger sister believed their beloved mother had died, but she had not. Their own father had exiled her, buried the truth beneath a mountain of lies, and forced the entire kingdom to believe she was dead.
"Why on earth was she so secretly exiled, though..." I muttered aloud, my frown deepening.
I an, I honestly wanted to gently tell Diana that she actually still had living family out there, but sothing felt strange and dangerous about the entire situation.
"Your Majesty..." Eleanor called my na softly.
"Hm?"
"I... I heard briefly from my father many years ago that Queen Viola was rumored to have been unfaithful to the King..." She said, her voice dropping into a hesitant whisper.
It was a dangerous kingdom-shaking revelation, after all.
"Unfaithful," I repeated.
She nodded. "So whispered rumors even claid that the King had personally executed her himself for the treasonous slight..."
"I highly doubt King Henrich was truly that kind of brutal, vindictive man, though..." Even as I said the words, I honestly could not be entirely sure. Plenty of complete, raving psychos managed to look entirely, perfectly sane on the outside, after all. And my brutal, bloody experiences from my past life were more than enough to know that terrifying fact very well.
But King Henrich... That man had genuinely seed like a good, honorable man. I had personally seen him a couple of tis whenever he traveled to Helios to visit my father.
Regardless, the present was what truly mattered now.
"So... now the vile usurpers potentially have a legitimate royal bloodline they can use to officially sit upon the stolen throne, do they not? Have they already managed to find her?" I asked, looking directly at Sigor.
"It seems highly unlikely they have actually found her yet. Otherwise, they would not be this desperately keen to drag both of the Princesses back to the capital, would they?" Eleanor correctly reasoned.
"Yes. That sounds exactly right..." I thought briefly before I snapped my gaze back to Sigor. "So, they wanted to threaten the two sisters by promising to torture and kill Queen Viola if they did not surrender?"
"That is highly likely, Your Majesty," he nodded grimly.
"Now that is problematic..." I sighed heavily, leaning back against the solid back of my chair, my mind working thoughtfully.
If those two devoted Princesses ever learned about this twisted secret, would they not simply jump blindly straight into the wolf’s den to save her, even knowing it would permanently turn their own lives into an inescapable nightmare?
But it was their mother... no matter how twisted, disgraced, and unfaithful the woman might actually turn out to be.
I sat and thought deeply for a long minute before finally coming to my decision.
"Do not breathe a single word about Queen Viola being alive to either Diana or her sister," I said seriously.
"Your Majesty?" Eleanor glanced at , not visibly against the sudden command, but clearly questioning my harsh reasoning.
"King Henrich chose to hand over his precious daughters to the protection of Helios despite fully knowing he still had a living wife out there. Consequently, my father specifically had Diana to marry to ensure she remained perfectly safe. I am going to follow both of the late Kings’ final decisions and wishes. I will keep the girls safe here," I said seriously.
Eleanor looked slightly surprised by my words, but she quickly smiled a little, respectfully placing a hand over her heart. "You have my solemn word, Your Majesty. I will never tell anyone about this."
I cast a sharp glance toward Sigor, who simply chuckled lightly. "I honestly had no intentions of telling anyone else to begin with, but Your Majesty is the little Princess’s official husband, so I felt obligated to tell you."
"Good," I smiled, finally satisfied. I swiftly pulled a fresh, blank parchnt toward , picked up an inked feather pen, and began rapidly writing, deeply confusing both of them.
I quickly wrote down just two specific nas, then turned the parchnt around to show Sigor, subtly prompting Eleanor to look at the nas as well.
"Over the course of the last year, or quite likely even longer, these two individuals may have quietly brought several new workers into my castle. They could easily be young scullery boys, serving girls, maids, or perhaps even minor nobles themselves. I want the complete, detailed list of every single one of them. Put your unique, invasive talents to good, productive use but exclusively for ," I instructed, my tone deadly serious.
Sigor stared intently at the written nas for a mont, then looked up at , appearing slightly puzzled.
"Do you truly trust , Your Majesty?"
"I did not, right up until you willingly spilled the buried truth regarding the missing Queen. I could easily tell you were not lying about that secret, and you were sincere in your delivery," I explained.
Sigor chuckled softly, looking perhaps a bit awkward under the sudden praise. "I will get it done," he said.
I smiled, and with a re flick of my wrist, I instantly incinerated the parchnt into white ash using a tiny, controlled spark of my fla.
"You perfectly morized them?" I asked.
There were only two nas, I hope he did.
"I did," he nodded.
"Then, for your next task," I said, sliding another blank piece of parchnt across the table and offering him the feather pen. "I want you to write down the nas of every single noble who is still actively, secretly supporting the fallen Crown and the missing Princesses within Gardenia. However, I want only the most trustworthy of the lot. I do not want any opportunists who are constantly swinging in hesitancy between the two opposing factions. I want only the most blindly faithful ones. You have survived within that royal court long enough to at least fully understand exactly which ones were always the most devoted toward King Henrich, correct?"
He stared at for a long mont, looking highly impressed before giving a nod and getting to work.
When he was finally finished writing out the dangerous list, I carefully took the parchnt, briefly scanning the noble nas to commit them to mory before tightly rolling it up and tucking it away.
Then, I took one last blank parchnt, dipped the feather pen in fresh ink, and began writing down a set of brief instructions.
Once I was finished, I carefully folded the parchnt and handed it directly to Eleanor.
"Handle this for , Eleanor," I said.
She unrolled it and read the brief words. I watched her erald eyes widen slightly in slightly shock, and I could clearly see deep confusion mingling with her surprise, but she quickly recovered, tightly rolling the paper back up and offering a nod.
"It shall be done at once, Your Majesty."
"Well, that will be all for tonight," I said, leaning back in my chair. "And ensure you are both careful and entirely stealthy regarding these. It will be better for everyone’s continued survival that way."
They both offered serious nods of understanding before quietly taking their leave, slipping out of the room.
Once I was alone, I slowly propped my boots up onto the edge of the table, suppressing an exhausted sigh as I pinched the bridge of my nose and shook my head in the quiet dark.
"My dear, beloved Father... into what unmitigated ss have you truly thrown ?"
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