I Became the Villain Alpha's Omega (BL)

Chapter 348: The King’s Headache

The private study smelled faintly of burnt wax and old parchment. Sunlight streamed through the tall windows, slipping between the heavy velvet drapes. It felt less like a seat of power and more like a cage.

Alderon sat behind his massive desk, his fingers dug so tightly into his temples that the skin showed white. Scattered across the dark wood before him were the official night reports, a couple of freshly broken wax seals, and a small, leather-bound book with frayed corners.

The maid’s diary. To anyone else, it looked like a trivial thing, but right now, it was a political explosive sitting right in the center of the room.

Standing in a loose semi-circle before the desk were Yerel, Karson, and the Captain of the Imperial Guard. None of them looked like they had slept. The Captain kept his helmet tucked under his arm, his jaw set in a rigid line that screamed internal panic, while Karson stood with his arms crossed, his eyes fixed on the floor.

"A maid," Alderon muttered, his voice dropping into a register that was dangerously quiet, thick with a mix of disbelief and pure, unadulterated humiliation. He finally dropped his hands, slamming a flat palm onto the desk. The inkwell rattled. "A single, low-ranking palace maid managed to carry out a poisoning right under our noses. In the royal banquet, no less! Do you have any idea how completely embarrassing this is for the crown? We are supposed to be hosting foreign nobility, showing them the absolute security of our capital, and instead, we look like fools who can’t even manage our own domestic staff."

The Captain of the Guard swallowed hard, stepping forward. "Your Majesty, every member of the palace staff is thoroughly vetted every season, but she had been with the estate for some time without a single incident. There was no indication..."

"I don’t care about indications after the fact, Captain," Alderon snapped, his eyes flashing with a rare, sharp anger. "The Solaric delegation is already breathing down our necks, demanding answers. If a maid can slip toxin into the drink, what stops the next one from slipping it into my wine? Or the Prince’s?"

Yerel took a smooth, measured step forward, his voice cutting through the rising panic like a calming balm. His posture was perfectly composed, the very picture of a dedicated prince carrying the weight of a crisis.

"Your Majesty, if I may," Yerel said softly, offering a respectful bow. "While the breach itself is undoubtedly a severe failure of internal security, it is an immense relief that we managed to identify and neutralize the source so quickly. Had the culprit remained at large, or had the investigation dragged on for weeks, we truly would have had no clean answer to give the Solaric empire. The fallout would have been catastrophic."

He had already reviewed the contents of that little leather diary before it ever reached the King’s desk. There wasn’t a single name mentioned within those messy, ink-stained pages that could even remotely suggest Wina was being ordered or manipulated by an outside master.

To the King, to the council, and to the entire kingdom, the diary painted the perfect picture of an isolated tragedy, a young, disgruntled maid acting purely on her own personal malice, harboring a secret, twisted grudge against the foreign visitors. The fact that she had missed her intended target in the dark and almost killed Iryna instead of her actual mark was just an unfortunate twist of fate.

"We lucky she was careless enough to keep a record," Karson grunted, speaking up for the first time. "Most fools don’t write down their crimes."

"It was her undoing," Yerel agreed smoothly, turning his head slightly toward Karson. "But we cannot rest entirely on a dead girl’s journal. Your Majesty, I have already taken the liberty of dispatching a special detail of the guard into the lower town. According to the notes in the diary, she purchased the poison from a merchant at the market. We are currently hunting for him."

Alderon leaned back in his heavy chair, his chest rising and falling in a long, weary sigh. "A merchant selling poisons like that in my territory. It is a dangerous thing to let a man like that just exist. He could have sold to a dozen others by now."

"Precisely, Your Majesty," Yerel replied. "Which is why we are treating the search with the utmost gravity. We must root out the supplier. If we can present the Solaric delegation with both the dead assassin and the captured merchant who provided the weapon, it will show that the crown is in absolute control of the situation. Our treaty with them is heavily jeopardized if they think our empire is a lawless breeding ground for assassins."

Alderon nodded slowly, the anger in his eyes fading back into the deep, exhaustion-lined worry that had defined his reign lately. He looked down at the reports again, tracing the edge of the maid’s diary with a thumb.

"You did well to move quickly on the market, Yerel," the King said, his voice heavy. "Do whatever it takes to secure that merchant. I want him in chains before the final treaty dinner. If the Solaric lords think we are weak, the peace treaty will fall apart before the ink even dries on the parchment. We need this settled cleanly."

"It shall be done, Your Majesty," Yerel replied, bowing deeply to hide the small, cold smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

But the fragile illusion of control didn’t even last the hour.

The study doors flew open with a deafening bang, the brass handles slamming hard against the stone walls. The sound tore through the room, cutting off the discussion mid-sentence. Every head snapped toward the entrance. Chairs scraped, hands moved on instinct, and more than one man reached for the weapon at his hip before he even realized he’d done it.

A lone Imperial guard stumbled into the room, his breath coming in ragged, painful gasps. His uniform was covered in a thick layer of dust, his riding boots scuffed and caked with dried mud, looking as though he had ridden a horse to the point of collapse. He didn’t even wait to be acknowledged, dropping to one knee so hard his armor clattered against the stone floor. He held a sealed leather tube in his trembling hand, his face pale beneath the grime.

"What is the meaning of this?" the Captain of the Imperial Guard demanded, stepping forward with a sharp frown. "Barging into His Majesty’s private study without an announcement is a serious breach of protocol. Explain yourself."

The messenger flinched, his head dropping lower as he tried to catch his breath, his hands still trembling violently around the leather tube. "F-Forgive me, Captain... Your Majesty... but..."

"Let him speak," Alderon commanded. The King stood up from his desk, his eyes fixed on the sealed tube. The irritation on his face had completely vanished, replaced by a sudden, cold dread. "What is it?"

"Forgive the intrusion, Your Majesty!" the guard gasped out, his voice cracking from sheer exhaustion and panic. "An urgent message from the South has just arrived."