I Became the Villain Alpha's Omega (BL)

Chapter 323: A Messy Kind of Grief

The air in the lower chambers of the royal infirmary was bone-chilling. It didn’t matter how high the temperatures soared outside the palace walls. The cold never left this place. It clung to the stone beneath their feet, mixing with the bitter smell of herbs, vinegar, and old linen.

King Alderon stepped up to the heavy slate table in the center of the room. A long, incredibly heavy sigh escaped him, and he roughly pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut for a few long seconds.

He was tired. He was so incredibly tired. First the Solaric Princess was poisoned right under his nose, throwing the entire imperial banquet into chaos. Now a young maid had turned up dead on palace grounds. It was just one disaster after another. Each piece of bad news reminded him how heavy the crown truly was.

"What exactly happened here?" Alderon demanded, dropping his hand as his sharp gaze cut across the room. "Someone explain it to me!"

The Captain of the Imperial Guard stepped forward, clearing his throat. "Two of her fellow maids raised the alarm, Your Majesty. They claimed she had slipped away from the servants’ quarters during the early hours of dawn and hadn’t returned. They wanted to search the forest where she often gathered wild herbs. Sir Karson refused to let them wander alone, so he dispatched a small squad to accompany them into the forest. It didn’t take long. They found her body slumped against the roots of an old oak tree."

The Captain stepped back, nodding toward the elder man standing by the examination table to let him take over.

"The guards found this vial right next to her hand in the forest, Your Majesty," the physician explained quietly. The elderly man kept his voice low, but it did little to ease the tension hanging over the room. He held up a small glass container lined with a faint, dark oily residue. "We found nothing else on her, Sire. No weapons, no gold, no stolen palace property. Only the vial."

"Is it the same poison that was used on the Princess?" Yerel asked. He stepped closer to the table, his eyes narrowing as he studied the lifeless girl.

The physician didn’t hesitate, shaking his head as he held the vial up to the light. "No, Your Highness. This is crude hemlock extract. It’s common, accessible, and lacks any magical refinement. This girl died by her own hand, but not from the same source as the attempt on the Solaric Princess."

Yerel exhaled, his expression hardening into cold indifference. "A coincidence, then. A frantic servant taking her own life in the shadow of a palace scandal. How troublesome."

He turned away, clearly dismissing the body as a separate, unrelated headache. "Take care of her. We have a delegation to placate and a political crisis to manage. If she isn’t related to the last night’s banquet incident, there is no reason to..."

"Your Majesty," the Captain of the Imperial Guard interrupted, his voice hesitant. He stood near the doorway, shifting his weight. "We thoroughly searched the area after last night’s banquet, but nothing appeared out of the ordinary. However, during a more thorough search just now..."

The Captain stepped forward, reaching into his uniform coat. "We found this at the very back of her desk drawer."

King Alderon reached out, his large, calloused hand taking the paper from the Captain. He didn’t pass it to an adviser or ask a clerk to read it aloud. He smoothed the wrinkled edges himself, his gaze dropping to the shaky, unevenly written lines.

It was only supposed to make her sick, I swear. She wasn’t supposed to die. I know what you’ll do to me... I’d rather end it myself.

Yerel observed the sudden, rigid shift in his father’s posture. The heavy silence in the room stretched uncomfortably thin. "Father?" Yerel asked, stepping back toward the slate table. "What does the letter say?"

Instead of offering a verbal answer, King Alderon simply extended his arm, thrusting the crumpled, ink-stained parchment toward his son.

Yerel took it, his brow furrowing as his eyes quickly scanned the frantic, messy handwriting.

Silently, Alderon turned his back on them. He stepped closer to the heavy slate table, his cloak brushing against the stone floor. His gaze drifted back to the dead maid, taking in the cruel mismatch between her young age and the lifeless body before him.

He looked closely at her calloused fingertips, the hands of a common working girl, and the lingering dark trace of crude hemlock staining her lips. A tangled web of politics and security failures had culminated right here, on a slab of stone, because of an ordinary kitchen servant’s desperate act.

What could drive a girl like this to tip the scales of empires? Was it a burning hatred hidden beneath low bows and quiet compliance, or was she merely an ignorant pawn bought by someone far more dangerous? She had claimed she only wanted to make the Princess sick, a petty, spiteful act to ruin a banquet. She’d underestimated the poison. More importantly, she’d underestimated how quickly the imperial palace would move.

Without turning around, Alderon broke the silence, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly register. "Captain. Check her quarters immediately. Tear the room apart. I want to know if anyone else helped her smuggle the poison onto the floor, or if she acted entirely alone."

The Captain offered a swift, rigid salute. "My men are already on it, Your Majesty. A second squad has been dispatched to seal off the servants’ wing and search through everything she left behind. We will have a full background report by nightfall."

"Good." Alderon slowly turned back from the lifeless body. "Ensure the guards to look for anything unusual. If she managed to get her hands on something that dangerous, she might have left a trace behind."

Yerel had finished reading. The paper remained loose in his grip, his eyes reflecting a mixture of sharp comprehension and calculated annoyance. The difference between the two poisons no longer mattered. The note alone was enough to tie her to the attack.

The two men locked eyes across the bone-chilling dimness of the infirmary, the weight of the crown settling heavily between them.

Alderon’s jaw tightened, his expression entirely devoid of pity as he delivered the final, ruthless verdict. "It seems we have already found our culprit."