“What did that guy say to you, exactly?”
The moment they stepped onto the terrace, Arsian asked again in a sulky voice.
“Arsian.”
“What?”
“I intend to live a long life.”
“What are you suddenly talking about?”
If you want to die, die alone! If you’re going to insult the Imperial Household, do it when I’m not there!
Camilla swallowed the words that were about to jump out and explained gently.
“It’s my birthday today.”
“I know. Why do you think I’m here?”
“So don’t make a scene.”
“What scene would I even—”
“......”
“...Fine.”
He kept knitting his brow, clearly unhappy that she still wouldn’t tell him what conversation she’d had with Edsen de Fable.
As she looked at him, Camilla’s eyes rounded for a beat. She was only now really seeing him.
Oh.
It was the first time she’d seen Arsian look this neat.
The hair that usually hung down messily, hiding his eyes, was brushed naturally back, and the all-black formalwear suited him extremely well.
His slightly lean frame only made his height look longer.
As expected, a man lives or dies by the suit fit.
Camilla, who already knew about the compact muscles hidden in that lean build—she had poked them with her fingers—kept admiring him inwardly.
“It looks good on you.”
At her compliment, Arsian’s expression turned a little awkward. As if this kind of dress was uncomfortable, he kept furrowing his brow.
Finding that amusing, Camilla let out a small laugh.
“Where’s the Duke?”
“That man’s busy. I came in his stead.”
“What? If the Duke had come, you weren’t going to?”
“N—no, that’s not what I meant...!”
When she put on a deliberately crestfallen face, he visibly panicked.
But soon, realizing the mischief written all over Camilla’s face, he sighed and thrust a box at her.
“That man told me to give you this.”
“The Duke?”
When Camilla opened the box he handed over, a small tiara studded thick with gems lay inside.
“Wow...”
It looked exorbitantly expensive at a glance.
“Tell him thank you.”
“Do I have to give that kind of thanks? For a mere gift like this?”
“...I’ll just thank him myself later.”
Sorry. I was asking too much of you.
“Let’s go back in.”
It wasn’t proper for the hostess to stay gone too long, so Camilla turned back toward the hall.
As before, Arsian followed quietly behind her.
“Keep it in mind, Arsian. It’s my birthday today.”
“I got it.”
After one more warning, Camilla stepped ahead.
“Hm?”
But a moment later, as she entered the hall, Camilla had to stop where she stood.
The atmosphere was very strange.
“Why...?”
The music that had been drifting softly only moments ago had stopped, and she couldn’t hear even people’s voices.
Everyone in the hall had frozen mid-action, staring blankly at one spot.
As Camilla followed their gaze, her expression slowly hardened.
“Oh? Lady Camilla!”
A woman broke that eerie silence and greeted her brightly.
Rania. The one they had met at the orphanage last time.
Camilla, smoothing her unsettled expression, held Arsian back from following and walked toward her.
Drawing a bit closer, she saw familiar faces gathered around Rania.
Ludville and Ravi, and... her father, the Duke of Sorpel.
“I heard today is Lady Camilla’s birthday? Congratulations. I didn’t even know, so I came with nothing prepared... I’m truly sorry.”
“How did you get in here?”
“Oh, I happened to get an invitation.”
You just said you didn’t even know it was my birthday—so who are you and where do you live? Are you kidding me? What happened to narrative coherence?
Well, that’s not what matters right now.
Rania’s smile was still pretty.
She waved without the slightest concern for anyone else’s eyes, and on her wrist, as ever, sat that bracelet.
The Duchess’s Bracelet.
“Ra...nia, was it?”
Staring a hole through the blue-gem bracelet, the Duke of Sorpel asked in a steady voice.
Camilla bit the inside of her cheek, noticing the tremor beneath that steadiness.
“I must have startled you, showing up like this.”
Rania’s expression changed in an instant.
Her serene smile and greeting lasted only a moment; then, with a face that looked on the verge of tears, hands clasped tight, she bowed her head deeply to the Duke of Sorpel.
“I’m sorry, Father.”
Father.
That single word was enough. Camilla fully understood why the air in the hall was like this.
Of course, she herself couldn’t speak for a while either. She needed time to absorb the situation.
Father, huh...
But the time was shorter than she’d thought. If anything, it felt like the things that had been nagging and chafing at her were dissolving.
How odd.
Even to herself, it was strange.
“Rania.”
Camilla stepped closer to Rania in place of the Duke of Sorpel, whose face had gone rigid.
“It sounds like there’s a lot to talk about. Would you wait in another room? As you can see, things are a bit delicate right now. Is that all right?”
“Oh! I’m sorry!”
Rania’s face fell at once.
“Did I ruin the mood? What should I do?”
Watching her, Camilla sighed briefly inside. Handle this wrong and the reputation she’d barely set upright would come crashing down.
“I was so set on seeing my father that I just ran here... I’m truly—”
“Rube.”
Cutting off her apology, Camilla called for the butler at once.
“Show her to the receiving room.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Then, unlike usual, ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) to the slightly stiff-faced man, she entrusted Rania.
He must have a lot on his mind too—both as a butler and as Chief of Black Shadow.
“A daughter, of all things...”
“What on earth is going on?”
“Could it be the Duchess...”
“She passed in a carriage accident.”
“They never recovered the body, though.”
“Oh! That’s right. They didn’t.”
“But doesn’t she look so much like the Duke?”
“She really does.”
Naturally, the party’s mood afterward was a wreck. People couldn’t stop whispering about the one who had suddenly appeared claiming to be the Duke of Sorpel’s daughter.
So this year’s a bust too, huh.
Fate? Is my birthday fated to end in shambles this year no matter what?
Clucking her tongue inwardly, Camilla smiled as brightly as she could.
She knew too well what people would start saying about her in society starting tomorrow the moment her face stiffened here.
The real Duke of Sorpel’s daughter appeared, and the fake burst into tears in shock!
...Rumors like that would spread easily.
“There it is again, that smile.”
Watching from the side, Crown Prince Edsen clicked his tongue softly.
****
“What is the meaning of this, Father!”
The party fizzled to an end.
But no one had the leeway to care about that. Before talking properly with Rania, they first needed to speak properly with the Duke of Sorpel.
“......”
At Ravi’s question, the Duke of Sorpel couldn’t easily open his mouth.
“A daughter? How could...!”
“Brother.”
Unable to hide his agitation, Ravi was quietly called to heel by Camilla.
“Won’t you have some tea?”
“Is this really the time for tea?”
“If you don’t want tea, should I have them bring a different drink?”
“I don’t ne—!”
Ravi, who had been snapping at Camilla for throwing out useless lines, faltered.
The moment he saw her eyes, calm and settled, he realized one thing.
Damn it.
His nuisance of a little sister’s birthday had ended in a mess.
The one who should be more flustered and angrier than he was was sitting there with a flat face asking about tea, and he had nothing to say.
She may look composed, but she can’t be okay inside. And instead of being any support as her brother... Ravi Sorpel, you idiot.
With a touch of self-reproach and a bit of embarrassment tinting his ears red, Ravi finally let out a short sigh and took a seat.
Unconsciously, his gaze slid toward Ludville, who had taken the seat beside him.
Wasn’t the most bewildered person here probably that man?
A woman who would be his full sibling—the daughter of the mother said to have passed long ago—had suddenly appeared. How absurd must that be.
“......”
But reading the expression of his oh-so-perfect younger half brother wasn’t easy. As always, Ludville drank his tea with eyes that conveyed no emotion at all.
As if it made no difference whether the person who had come today was his real sister or not.
Before their eyes could meet, Ravi jerked his head away.
“Camilla.”
“Yes, Father.”
After a moment, the Duke of Sorpel finally opened the mouth that had stayed shut.
“Have you met that girl before?”
“I saw her at the orphanage I visited a little while ago.”
“An orphanage?”
“Yes. She was there for volunteer work.”
Camilla briefly recounted her first meeting with Rania.
She also spoke of the bracelet on Rania’s wrist and the Recording Orb she had found in storage.
“Camilla, that—”
“Father.”
She stopped the Duke of Sorpel before he could go on, his face set hard.
After turning over everything she’d seen these past few days and thinking and thinking again, she had come to one conclusion.
“Anna Sorpel—she didn’t die in that accident, did she?”
Anna. The former Duchess’s name. Ludville’s birth mother, and, if Rania’s claim was true, her mother as well.
She was said to have died in a carriage accident when Ludville was five.
And yet the daughter of Anna, who was said to have died, had appeared.
Anna Sorpel’s one-of-a-kind bracelet—the only one in the world she wore—was on that girl’s wrist...
And Derrin, the butler-ghost’s reaction when the bracelet came up.
[Was it a woman in her forties!?]
Forties.
Camilla fixed on that word.
If Anna Sorpel were alive, she would be about that age now.
Through this and that line of inference, she had reached this conclusion.
“She was alive, wasn’t she?”
Contrary to what was publicly known, the Duchess hadn’t actually died.
There was no other way to make sense of this.
“What nonsense are you talking about?”
The first reaction burst from Ravi. He couldn’t hide how absurd it sounded, and his brow kept furrowing.
“That she’s alive—what are you—”
“I’m sorry.”
But at the Duke of Sorpel’s words, exhaled with a sigh, Ravi had to snap his mouth shut.
“Father...”
“Camilla is right.”
The story that began with an apology was enough to shock them all.
When it reached the part about Anna being a gypsy-born dancer—how the Duke of Sorpel had fallen for her at first sight for her beautiful dancing and looks—Camilla squeezed her eyes shut.
Good grief, Father.
She let out a short sigh inside. Why is it always that kind of person with you...
Love matches weren’t impossible, but that only applied when the parties’ stations were equal.
In a noble society that treated marriage as merely one means to an end, there must have been countless people who leapt to their feet when they heard about the Duke of Sorpel’s intentions.
To be frank, Camilla’s mother hadn’t come from good stock either.
She’d been a drifter chasing work—by the Duke of Jevillan’s words, a family as low as they come.
And Ludville’s mother was the same...
At his children’s peculiar expressions, the Duke of Sorpel gave a sheepish smile.
With a faint smile at his lips, he went on.
“There was no problem between us. Or rather... I thought there wasn’t.”
The Duke of Jevillan and many others opposed the marriage, but it did no good.
Already smitten, the Duke of Sorpel pushed the wedding through in one stroke.
And contrary to others’ worries, the Duke of Sorpel and Anna built a happy home. Enough that even those who had opposed the marriage nodded along.
But that happiness didn’t last.
“She left.”
