A little earlier, the moment Camilla arrived at the ducal house she had sprinted straight to her own room.
It was to bring a single item she had left there.
There was a gift Hersel, the previous head who had lost his Guardian, had left to her.
A fruit that looked like a seed, found by his grave.
‘He clearly said it would neutralize any poison.’
The instant she heard from Ferrol that the Duke of Sorpel had collapsed from poisoning, that seed-fruit came to mind.
Ssssk.
“Young Lady!”
“Just a second—”
Seeing Camilla bring an unknown medicine to the Duke of Sorpel’s lips, the healers cried out in panic once again.
“Quiet.”
Ludville stepped in front of them. At his low word, all the healers had no choice but to clamp their mouths shut.
Ludville rested a hand on Camilla’s shoulder without a word.
With his permission, Camilla no longer hesitated and put the fruit Hersel had left into the Duke of Sorpel’s mouth.
‘He said all he had to do was swallow it.’
She worried whether he would be able to swallow that in an unconscious state.
But contrary to her concern, the seed-fruit, which had had a hard texture, melted in an instant the moment it entered the Duke’s mouth and slid inward with a soft swish.
And then something astonishing happened. A faint light began to flow out from the Duke of Sorpel’s body.
After a brief moment, the light enveloping his body vanished as if it had all been a lie.
“D-Duke...!”
And in the next instant, everyone could tell. The Duke of Sorpel’s complexion was clearly different from just before.
The healers scrambled to examine the Duke of Sorpel’s body. Soon, their mouths fell open in a daze.
“My goodness!”
“It seems to be detoxified!”
“The antidote Lady Camilla brought has taken effect!”
His pulse and breathing had both returned to normal. His body, which had been cold as ice, no longer felt that chill.
“Haa.”
Only then did Camilla finally let out the long breath she had been holding back.
“Camilla!”
“...I’m fine.”
When her legs suddenly went weak and she staggered, Arsian hurriedly caught her.
“I was just a little tense...”
She hadn’t shown it outwardly, but in truth her heart had been pounding. Because it was an untested medicine.
She was using it solely on the strength of Hersel’s words, so her insides had been shriveling up with worry over what she would do if something went wrong.
The healers had said you must never use medicine carelessly, which had driven her anxiety to its peak—but it wasn’t as if there was some other method they could use.
“Thank goodness...”
Looking at the Duke of Sorpel, whose complexion really was clearly different from just before even to her own eye, Camilla let out another long sigh.
Then a mirror standing on one side of the bedroom caught her eye.
“...Ha.”
Seeing her own reflection there, a hollow laugh escaped Camilla’s mouth.
‘I look like a complete crazy bitch.’
Her hair was a tangled mess, and her clothes were still rolled and hitched up here and there from playing in the water.
No matter how generously you tried to see it, there was no way anyone could think of her as a duke’s young lady like this.
But at the time, she’d had no leisure to think about what state her appearance was in.
The moment she heard from Ferrol that the Duke had collapsed, her mind had gone completely blank.
At the words that he had been poisoned, the only thought in her head had been that she had to get the medicine she had and give it to him as quickly as possible.
She didn’t know how many times she had almost fallen while heading for her room after arriving at the ducal house.
It was a relief Arsian had grabbed her every time; if not for him, her knees wouldn’t have survived.
Remembering all of those actions, Camilla let out a small, incredulous laugh.
‘Why did I do all that?’
It was behavior that was far too unlike her.
Why had she done it? Why...?
“Ugh...”
“Father!”
With a small groan, the Duke of Sorpel slowly opened his eyes.
Ludville and Ravi rushed to him in an instant, and Camilla also checked his complexion again. Then their gazes met.
She forced her stiff expression to soften, and a dry voice quietly came from the Duke of Sorpel’s lips.
“You’re...back.”
At that single sentence, Camilla’s eyes reddened in an instant. The image of him standing at the entrance to greet her every time she came home rose up in her mind.
“Y-Yes, Father...”
Father. For some reason, that word felt unbearably overwhelming today.
Looking at him—at her father—smiling faintly at her, Camilla finally began to cry.
Chapter. Catch the Culprit
“You failed again.”
“T-That’s...”
“I believe I said I don’t accept excuses.”
“...I’m sorry.”
Rania bit her lip hard, as if protesting that she’d been wronged.
“The poison we provided you this time was something very special. A work we poured our utmost effort into for a long time.”
It was a poison that didn’t trigger poison-detection magic and for which there was no particular antidote. They had set up everything so it would respond only to Rania’s detoxification magic.
“A failure, you say.”
The sound of Priest Daniel clicking his tongue kept spilling from his mouth.
“I didn’t know there would be an antidote.”
After the Duke of Sorpel collapsed from poisoning, she had not immediately used magic. She’d wanted to push the situation to the extreme a little longer.
She already knew from Priest Daniel that the poison would not kill him right away, so she had dragged out the time as much as possible.
Her plan had been to save the Duke of Sorpel with detoxification magic at the most despairing moment, when the healers had all gathered and not a single one of them could neutralize the poison.
That way she would get more attention and could be more easily recognized by people.
But then that woman had appeared.
Camilla. The antidote she brought had taken effect immediately, and the Duke of Sorpel had woken up perfectly fine.
Remembering the tender look the Duke had shown Camilla, Rania bit her lip hard again.
The gaze that should have come to her had been stolen once more. Why did things get tangled up like this every single time!
“We need to deal with that woman.”
“You mean Camilla Sorpel.”
“Yes!”
“Hm.”
“She’s interfering with our work.”
“I’ll report it to those above.”
“Thank you!”
Priest Daniel nodded at once, apparently of the same mind as her.
“So, where did she say she got that antidote?”
He was curious. It was a poison the Order had prepared over a long period. Let alone an antidote, even its components were not properly known.
So he couldn’t understand how she had been able to have an antidote in her possession.
“Well...”
A hollow laugh slipped from Rania’s lips.
****
“...You’re saying it was Lord Hersel?”
“Yes.”
The Duke of Sorpel recovered quickly.
In less than a day, he was showing a condition no different from usual, leaving everyone clicking their tongues in disbelief.
Along with that, many people showed interest in the antidote Camilla had brought.
Everyone was curious where and how she had obtained the medicine that had detoxified the Duke of Sorpel’s poisoning, which even the healers had declared they were giving up on.
“I really did see it in a dream.”
To those people, Camilla used the same excuse she always did.
“A man with not a single hair on his head appeared and said his name was Hersel.”
She continued, mixing lies and truth in a very delicate balance.
“He said he was grateful I had reconnected the severed line of the Guardian and told me to come find his grave.”
“And then?”
“He told me to dig behind the grave...”
“So you dug it?”
“Yeah.”
“You actually dug it?”
“Yeah.”
Ravi asked again, at a loss for words.
He, too, did acknowledge her foresight ability to some extent, to the point of finding even a Guardian.
But hearing her say she had actually gone to a grave she’d seen in a dream and dug it up left him unable to hide his dumbfoundedness.
“And that’s where you found that antidote?”
“Yes. Lord Hersel, the previous head, died from poison, didn’t he? He said it was an antidote born from that poison.”
“......”
“I was half in doubt too...but I felt too uneasy to just ignore it, so I went to check once. And there really was something like a seed behind the grave.”
Everyone’s mouths fell open at her story, which was hard to believe.
“He said it would detoxify most poisons, so I had set it aside separately...but I never imagined I’d end up using it like this.”
Yet they couldn’t exactly choose not to believe it either. Just as she’d said, Camilla had been the one holding the medicine that had neutralized in an instant the poison no one else had been able to touch.
“So what about the culprit?”
She smoothly shifted the topic.
“We haven’t found them yet.”
At Camilla’s question, Butler Rube’s expression darkened. They had searched everyone who had come into contact with the food that day, but nothing had come out.
“Where are the kitchen staff right now?”
****
CLANK!
When the iron door opened and they stepped inside, a dim light spilled out into the space.
Following the long corridor, they could see several rooms here and there blocked off by iron bars.
This place, with soldiers standing guard at regular intervals, was the prison set up beneath the Sorpel estate.
“This way.”
Following Ludville a little farther in, they came to a fairly large space at the back. All of the kitchen employees were gathered there.
Camilla had asked. To gather them in one place and let her meet them herself.
“Young Lady!”
The first one to recognize her was Head Chef Jellard. His cheeks had hollowed as if he’d been through a lot of mental anguish over the past few days.
“I-I really didn’t do it! It’s the same for the others!”
His eyes reddened as he cried out earnestly.
“How could we possibly do something like that to food! How could anyone put something like that in food people eat...!”
[That’s right. That guy’s not the culprit.]
Ferrol took his side as well. Even if he was his disciple, it seemed seeing him locked up in a prison cell didn’t sit well with him.
[He’s absolutely not the kind of bastard who’d mess around with food.]
There were nine people currently locked up. The kitchen employees and the maids who had carried the food.
Everyone who had come into contact with the food the Duke of Sorpel had eaten that day was gathered here.
In other words, the culprit was among them.
“I know. That you’re not the culprit, Jellard.”
“Young Lady...”
Being in prison like this seemed to have been a real shock for him; at that single sentence from Camilla, trusting him, Jellard’s eyes grew moist.
“You know what ability I have, right?”
“What... Ah!”
His puzzled expression brightened at once. Camilla’s ability was already far too famous!
‘Yeah, that takes Jellard off the list.’
She had once exposed a con artist.
He’d been a man a certain noble, who had come to see the Duke of Sorpel, had brought along, calling him a business partner, and Camilla had seen at a glance that he was a fraud.
‘Because there was a ghost stuck to him.’
A male ghost who had been conned by that man and killed himself was clinging to him.
She had exposed him as a con artist through that ghost—but people who knew nothing of that believed Camilla, ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ who had foresight, had awakened yet another ability.
‘They said I have eyes that see a person’s true nature or whatever.’
