The person who jumped up in surprise from behind the garden tree couldn't even get away. Shortly thereafter, the Crown Prince smiled as he checked the face of the person who was dragged by the bodyguards and prostrated herself.
“Just in time. If I kill another one, it'll be a hassle to deal with.”
“I… I-I didn’t see anything, Your Highness!”
Lirel fell on the floor and trembled while answering in a scream. She came along to watch for a while but then got caught up in a terrible thing. If he could kill Rosalyn of Marquisate Thiolan casually, he'd treat her like something comical.
The Crown Prince sat down on one knee and grabbed Lirel by the shoulder.
“Hiick!”
Then, his hands gently patted her shoulder.
“Calm down, calm down. Breathe.”
“I-I don’t see…”
“No, we have to see the facts as they are. What was your name?”
“I, I am Lirel, I… Your Highness. I didn’t see—”
“Right, Lirel.”
“…Yes, yes, Your Highness.”
As the Crown Prince grabbed her chin, fixing her face, he met her eyes.
Lirel couldn't avoid it and looked into his. He had such a calm and warm look in his eyes that it was hard to believe that he had just committed a murder. So, she was even more scared.
The Crown Prince kindly asked Lirel, who was shaking uncontrollably, once again.
“So, what did you see?”
Tears ran down her nose. He didn't seem to want her to say she didn't see it. Lirel couldn't even move her face and answered with trembling lips.
“Your, Your Highness, str, stra-strangles… Mi, Miss, Rosa, Rosalyn…”
“Yes, what next?”
“Miss, Miss Rosalyn is de—dea, dead…”
“Yes, that's right. You saw Rosalyn dead, then what should you do?”
“…Yes, yes?”
“You saw Rosalyn strangled in the Palace, but you’re just going to say ‘oh, I see’ and move along?”
“….?”
The Crown Prince clicked his tongue in frustration. Lirel was definitely dumber than Rosalyn. He regretted killing Rosalyn for nothing, but it had already happened, so he couldn’t help it. He should use her even if he had to teach her.
“Wouldn’t you normally scream at times like this?”
"Ah, ah…!”
“And you heard there were people who saw the two of them fighting earlier. So, who is the prime suspect?”
"Ah!"
Lirel, who finally understood the meaning of the Crown Prince's words, nodded until her neck would break.
“Okay, so can you do well?”
“Ye-yes, yes!”
Even Rosalyn, who went against the Crown Prince’s will, ended up dead. She could have been killed if the Crown Prince didn't like her answer. Fortunately, he gave a passing grade to Lirel's enthusiastic answer.
“Then, I look forward to your cooperation.”
The Crown Prince released her chin and disappeared. Moments later, Lirel was left alone with Rosalyn's corpse, whose eyes were wide open.
A tearing scream pierced the party.
* * *
It wasn't a shriek made lightly as a joke.
“KYAAKK! AAAAHHHK!”
It didn't end at once, so the people at the party glanced at each other and became agitated at the continuous screams.
"…What is it?"
"No idea."
It was the same with Selina and Kalcion. Because he was inside the Palace, the guards were unable to accompany him, so his hands and feet were tied.
Anxiety instinctively rose in the unusual atmosphere.
It seemed that someone had approached the direction where the sound came from. After a while, the screams became two.
“WAAHH! Murder…!”
"Murder?"
Surprised, Selina turned to Kalcion. Kalcion shook his head. There was no foreshadowing of what might happen. If someone had a plan and plotted it, some information would have come in though there was no such thing. It just happened suddenly.
People rushed towards where the screams came from.
Selina approached it as well, thinking she would have to check it with her own eyes. Her heart quivered with anxiety with each step she took forward through the maze of tall garden trees.
“Waahh!”
The screams of the people who went to check burst out one after another.
Reaching the source of the sound, she was astounded by the sight before her and froze like a statue. Rosalyn's corpse was splayed on the floor. And beside her, Lirel was sobbing with a guard supporting her.
“Heuk… heeuungg.”
Lirel, who was trembling all over her body and howled, couldn't even get her words right. Everyone knew that she was a weakling who couldn't kill a fly properly, let alone murder. Although she may have been the first discoverer, she was unlikely to be a suspect.
Soon, people who came to their senses belatedly began to hum.
“What is going on here, Miss Rosalyn?!”
“Anyone from the Thiolan family!”
“Today, only Miss Rosalyn from the Thiolan family participated. Aahh, how could this happen!”
There was nothing good about being in this atmosphere for a long time.
“…Let’s leave for now.”
Selina grabbed Kalcion’s arm and tried to escape through the people, muting her presence. However, at that moment, Listening to the guard's question, Lirel glanced up at Selina with her eyes pouring out tears.
“Th-the last thing I saw Miss Selina… Miss Selina was arguing with Miss Rosalyn…!”
One by one, people's eyes focused on her.
"Huh…”
Selina hesitated at the completely unexpected flow and took a step back.
Quite a few people saw the fight between Selina and Rosalyn in one corner of the garden. Since then, she had been at the party all the time though people's heads must have already started to be framed with misunderstandings.
Her chest sank, and she grabbed Kalcion's arm with strength. As if to reassure her, he stroked the back of Selina's hand with his other hand.
"It's fine."
Kalcion's consolation could not change the current situation.
“What is going on?”
The Crown Prince’s voice, who appeared a little late, came from behind.
“Your, Your Highness…! Something unpleasant has happened inside the Palace.”
“…Rosalyn?”
The Crown Prince hurriedly examined Rosalyn's body. However, Rosalyn's body, which had already stopped breathing, only swayed helplessly.
“…Unbelievable. How could this happen?”
As someone whispered cautiously to the Crown Prince, who staggered with a pale face, his gaze turned to Selina.
‘D*mn it.’
Selina muttered a curse in her mind, wondering if she should turn around right away. Nonetheless, there were guards standing around the two of them already.
“…Your Highness, now this is.”
She spoke to the Crown Prince, but he gave short orders, avoiding her gaze.
“Catch anyone suspicious.”
Then, he left without even listening to her story. She didn’t know what he ordered, but the guards approached several people besides Selina.
“What?! Why me!”
“Can’t you let go of me?!”
Even though people were indignant, they couldn't shake off the guards. As long as they are here, they must all be from prominent families, although it was a matter of justification.
This was the Palace. If they protested or wouldn’t cooperate here, they could even get accused of the assassination of the royal family. No family, no matter how strong, could oppose the Crown Prince head-on.
Except for one family, Renbird.
“You dare to drag my woman down in front of me?”
When Kalcion resisted the Crown Prince's command without blinking an eye, the soldiers were perplexed by the unexpected situation.
“This is under the name of His Highness the Crown Prince. If you refuse, it may be treason.”
“Did His Highness tell you to bring ‘Selina’?”
Selina noticed the soldiers' attitude as they turned to each other, even more flustered when he pointed her name. Even though she didn’t know if Rosalyn was really dead or not, she wondered if this was a trap to set her in.
On the other hand, it could have been a trap to bind Kalcion.
“I won’t let you take her. Bring more proof.”
“If you don’t come, we may use force.”
Seeing the soldier held on tightly but did not back down, Kalcion's eyebrows twitched as he soon saw their hand reaching for the sword at the waist.
“You dare threaten me with a sword right now?”
There was no one who did not know Kalcion's swordsmanship. The story of how he single-handedly defeated the beasts of the Beasts Mountains with a single sword was a legend that even a five-year-old child would know.
For martial artists, they were arguing in front of a living legend. Still, they could die this way and die that way so it was the same. If they couldn’t take Selina with them, they would be killed by the Crown Prince's sword.
The atmosphere got unusual, the soldiers who were in charge of the other side also came and surrounded the two. They calculated that even Duke Renbird would not be able to handle this large number of people alone.
“Do you think anything will change significantly if the number of people increases?”
Kalcion got into his position in earnest. In case of emergency, he was ready to steal their weapon and go into slaughter.
"Don’t do that."
Selina hastily tugged at his arm.
"Why?"
Kalcion asked without taking his eyes off the soldiers.
“I’ll just go.”
"What?"
Finally, he looked back at her. Selina clenched her teeth to calm herself from trembling before raising her lips, pretending nothing was wrong.
“You know. This is a trap, expecting the Duke to run amok.”
“On the contrary, it could be a trap to make you think about it and willingly give up instead.”
Kalcion did not fall over it easily. He rather pulled her shoulders over him and locked her in his chest. An anxious heartbeat echoed towards her. Has Kalcion's heart ever beat so uneasily?
Selina gritted her teeth and closed her eyes tightly.
"I don’t think they were trying to kill me now. At the very least, they intended to scratch the Duke's pride. But raising a matter here is treason. It gives them an excuse to kill us both.”
“If they tried to kill me, do you think they could kill me?”
“….”
For the people who literally believed in the word ‘that there was nothing scary in the world,’ they would have changed their thought after witnessing the scene right here.
“Then, there could be a real war.”
“….”
Kalcion couldn't even say anything like war.
“If you think something will happen to me, please come and save me then… but not now. Please let me go for now.”
As Selina pushed his chest, Kalcion held out for a while and was reluctantly pushed away.
"I'm letting you go now, not because I think I'll lose or because I'm afraid of the Crown Prince."
"I know."
“Because you asked me to let go of you.”
She held her breath and glanced up at him.
“My Cion listened well from the beginning.”
She didn't know if she would look cute even when she was like this.
Selina smiled bravely.
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