I Became the Villain Alpha's Omega (BL)

Chapter 321: A Little Walk in the Forest

The thing about sealing off a palace was that it didn’t stop life from going on. It just made everyone inside progressively harder to tolerate.

With the gates sealed tight after Iryna’s poisoning, the high nobles had spent the last several hours loitering around the palace grounds like beautifully dressed, deeply anxious ghosts. They couldn’t leave, so they gossiped. They picked at pastries they didn’t want, complained about the delay of the imperial banquet, and watched the guards with paranoid eyes.

Karson, however, didn’t have the luxury of loitering. He had spent the entire morning coordinating barrier checks, verifying supplies, and ensuring that the defensive circles around the main palace walls hadn’t been tampered with.

By mid-afternoon, he was running on pure adrenaline. He was crossing the lower stone terrace near the edge of the east gardens when a sharp flash of movement near the forbidden tree line caught his attention.

Two young maids lingered near the iron-wrought gate that separated the manicured lawns from the dense, overgrown palace forest. They were whispering frantically, one of them pulling at the latch while the other kept looking over her shoulder.

Karson sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Not today.

"Hey!" he called out, his voice sharp enough to make both girls jump nearly a foot into the air.

They spun around, their faces instantly draining of color as Karson walked over. "Where do you think you’re going? The entire estate is under a strict perimeter order. No one goes past the garden gates without permission."

The maid on the left, a petite girl with her hair tied in a messy bun, wrung her hands tightly against her apron. "S-Sir Karson! We... we weren’t trying to cause trouble, we swear. It’s just... it’s Wina."

Karson frowned, his authoritative posture softening just a fraction at the genuine panic in the girl’s eyes. "Who is Wina?"

"She’s our roommate. She works the dawn shift in the lower kitchens," the second maid chimed in, her voice trembling. "She left our quarters before sunrise to gather some fresh morning herbs from the edge of the forest path, just the usual stuff for the breakfast tea. But she never came back, Sir Karson. No one has seen her all day."

"Did you check the main kitchen?" Karson asked.

"We checked," the first girl muttered, looking anxiously over her shoulder. "The head chef said she never even showed up. Please, we just want to look down the path. We’re worried something might have happened to her."

Karson looked past them into the shadowed treeline. A maid vanishing right at time like this was not a good thing.

"Don’t go running in there by yourselves," Karson said, cutting them off. "Stay right here."

He turned and waved over a pair of Imperial Guards stationed near the terrace archway. "You two, grab a small squad. A kitchen maid headed into the forest at dawn and hasn’t come back. Go with them and check it. Make sure they go back to their quarters afterward."

"Understood, Sir," the guard replied.

Karson didn’t waste any more time. Leaving the guards to deal with the minor domestic issue, he turned back and headed back toward his works.

For the next hour and a half, Karson forced his mind back into his work. He stood over a wide table scattered with kitchen registry logs, debating back and forth with two senior guard captains about exactly how the poison could have reached Iryna.

They were going over the servant schedules for the hundredth time, trying to figure out who had access to the royal trays that morning before the food tasters arrived. The room was stuffy, their theories were just going in frustrating circles, and the endless bickering was doing nothing to soothe the growing ache in his temples.

BOOM

The door slammed against the stone wall with a violent crash.

Standing in the doorway was one of the guards he had sent into the forest earlier. The man looked as though the last few hours had taken years off his life. His chest heaving violently as he gasped for air. Sweat was pouring down his pale face, sticking his hair to his forehead, and his eyes were wide with terror.

"S-Sir... Karson..." the guard choked out, leaning heavily against the doorframe as he tried to catch his breath. He was breathing so hard he could barely get the words out, his hands trembling violently at his sides.

"What happened?" Karson demanded, immediately walking across the room and grabbing the guard by his shoulder to steady him.

The guard couldn’t even form words. He just shook his head frantically, his chest heaving as he lifted a trembling, mud-stained hand and pointed back down the corridor, toward the eastern gardens. "You... you need to... come see... Just come and see, Sir. Please."

A heavy, sickening dread dropped straight into Karson’s stomach. Without a word to the muttering senior guards behind him, he pushed past the guard and began to run.

The walk into the palace forest was a stark transition from the manicured luxury of the rest of the estate. The air was cool and damp, rich with the smell of wet soil and fallen leaves.

Karson followed the frantic guard deep into the trees, leaving the clear pathways behind as they pushed through thick, tangled briars and overgrown ferns.

As they drew deeper into the forest, the silence of nature was suddenly shattered by a sound that made Karson’s blood run cold.

It was a faint, agonizing cry. A choked, breathless sobbing.

Karson picked up his pace, tearing through a thick wall of ivy into a small, secluded clearing where the sunlight barely managed to pierce through the dense branches.

The two maids from earlier were there. They were dropped on their knees in the damp dirt, completely oblivious to the mud ruining their clothes. They were clutching each other, burying their faces into each other’s shoulders as they wept violently, their bodies wracked with heavy, uncontrollable sobs.

A few feet away stood the remaining imperial guards. One of them looked up as Karson burst into the clearing. The soldier’s face was grim, a hollow, hollow look in his eyes.

Karson’s breath caught in his throat.

He walked forward, his boots sinking into the soft moss. There, lying in a small depression between the massive roots of an old oak tree, was a figure wearing the dark, familiar uniform of the palace kitchen staff.

Karson approached slowly, the frantic crying of the maids fading into a dull hum in his ears. He crouched down on one knee, the damp cold of the forest floor soaking right through his trousers, and looked closely at the girl.

It was the maid they were looking far.

Her eyes were wide open, staring blankly up at the tangled branches above, completely devoid of life. There were no obvious signs of a violent struggle, no blood, no torn clothes.

Karson reached out, his fingers gently closing her eyelids. As he pulled his hand back, a heavy, exhausted sigh escaped his lips. He closed his eyes for a brief second, his mind instantly racing with the terrifying implications of a dead maid hidden deep within the royal grounds.

He slowly stood up, rubbing his face with both hands as a single, bitter thought echoed clearly through his mind.

A dead body was the absolute last thing he needed right now.