#108. He Must Have Gone to See the Princess Anyway.
The man, groaning as his face was held in place, finally went limp after struggling for some time. By then, Isaac had returned, catching his ragged breath.
It had truly been ages since he had run this hard—probably not since those hellish training days of childhood that he could hardly even remember anymore.
“…One of the servants is dead.”
The moment Isaac spoke, Cryer bared his teeth in a grin.
What reason could there be for a servant of the Princess’s palace to die?
It might be a crime of passion, or perhaps an act of personal revenge, like the incident in the garden the other day.
If I didn’t know who the suspect was, it might’ve been a problem. But since I already know, I can just start with the tail and work my way up to the body. And I don’t even need to set bait myself—someone else is already fulfilling that role quite well. Makes things easier for me.
So then—was the dead servant the “tail” Olivia had mentioned?
But why kill that servant? Even the Marquis of Hainder would struggle to continuously plant spies inside the Princess’s palace.
Besides, when a servant dies like this, surveillance over the palace only grows tighter.
“Anything unusual?”
“None.”
If even Isaac hadn’t found anything suspicious, then the Marquis of Hainder’s eye for talent must’ve been sharp indeed.
A spy who played the role of a servant so well that not even a trace of suspicion was left behind.
And even if the servant had left behind some kind of clue, whoever silenced him had buried it perfectly.
True, the man had ended up caught pitifully by Cryer’s own hands, but as Olivia had said, he was more monster than man—something closer to a natural disaster. It wasn’t right to belittle the Marquis’s judgment.
After weighing the situation briefly, Cryer thought of Olivia—who had been so delighted at the thought of using a spy for her plans.
And in the blink of an eye, he decided to go to her.
The official excuse was to inform her that the spy had suddenly been eliminated.
But the truth? He simply wanted to see her.
He buried his greedy desire under the veneer of a plausible pretext.
“Deal with them both.”
He dropped the limp man at his feet and flicked his eyes toward Isaac.
Isaac instinctively reached out but tilted his head in puzzlement.
Taking care of the man sprawled before them, sure—but why the servant’s corpse too?
Wouldn’t it be a problem if something unsavory happened inside the Princess’s palace?
But the question soon died.
There were times to act on his own judgment, and times not to.
Right now, his survival instincts told him this was one of the latter. Instead of voicing doubts, Isaac moved to obey.
While he cleaned up the mess with no trace left behind, Cryer disappeared. The palace corridor soon seemed untouched, as though nothing had happened, save for a faint breeze that quickly faded away.
Only after confirming several times that Cryer’s presence had completely vanished did Isaac mutter under his breath, so quietly it could hardly be heard:
“…He must’ve gone to see the Princess anyway.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was someone waiting to see you?
The thought of “someone to meet” oddly conjured the image of pink hair in his mind, but Isaac shook his head hard, erased it, and went back to work.
Leaving behind the quiet deaths of two unknown souls, that night passed on.
In her chambers, Olivia had dragged paperwork from her office to her bedroom, working through it until her eyes turned red. To her surprise, she gained an unexpected companion.
Of course, more time was spent with their shadows overlapping than with her pen moving.
Greta frowned at Thyssen’s report.
“Gone, you say?”
“Yes. I couldn’t check the registry, but there was no one matching the servant’s appearance.”
The servant Bonita had supposedly planted in the Princess’s palace had vanished without a trace.
She couldn’t have recruited just an ordinary person who might simply quit—no, she must have picked someone with a firm purpose, a true spy.
“Any incidents or disturbances reported from the palace?”
“None.”
“Then that means he was simply removed.”
Greta knit her brows and glared toward the direction of the Princess’s palace.
Of course, her gaze carried no mourning for the servant’s death.
When she had ordered Bonita to plant a spy there, it wasn’t because she intended some grand scheme.
There are only a few usual purposes for spies: stealing important documents, recruiting others within that faction, or reporting regularly on the movements of a specific person.
But the spy Bonita planted had received no such orders.
He was meant for one thing only, someday: to deliver a single message.
To be the herald of the moment Cryer severed the Princess’s throat and spilled the most noble blood of the Empire within its palace.
Of course, Cryer had never once said he intended to kill Olivia.
But during her unpleasant yet necessary meeting with him after coming to the Empire, he had said something else:
“Starting a war in Norden is a waste of time.”
Cryer had casually discarded his original plan—to plunge the continent into a sea of blood through war, then summon the Old God to purify it.
Even without so much as a discussion, Greta had believed he would still bring fire and blood on a scale equal to continental war.
That much was necessary to summon the Old God into this land.
“I will remain in the Empire. At the Princess’s side.”
Greta interpreted those words as she pleased: that he would begin by burning down the Imperial Palace with the Princess at its heart, from which the beautiful flames of purification would spread across the continent.
Her faith was rooted in Cryer’s very identity—he was the first warrior and slave of the Old God, resurrected from death through the first Mark.
Never once did she think that he, who had overcome death and been granted new life, would dare to hate or oppose the divine.
Back when he lived with her and her mage father, Cryer’s complete lack of words and expressions had only deepened her misinterpretation. And after meeting Olivia, he consciously hid his hostility toward the Old God.
Meanwhile, in the underground chambers of Norden’s central palace, the altar had been successfully completed, and the gathering of blood sufficient to summon fragments of the Old God had begun—slowly, but surely.
Her tool, Thyssen, had entered the Empire quietly and remained loyally by her side.
“Ugh…”
Greta pressed the throbbing vein bulging on her forehead, suppressing a groan. But Thyssen, being nothing more than a tool, did not spare her even a glance.
And neither of them cared. Tools had no reason to worry about humans.
The pain receded like an ebbing tide, but she knew it would soon surge again.
This is the price of wielding divine power.
Her father’s murmuring voice echoed in memory—the father she had long since slain with her own hands.
A mage who had stumbled upon the Old God while craving power, he had made Greta bear every cost, every price of serving the divine.
She no longer remembered her feelings at the time she first received that power. But ever since finding Cryer, Greta willingly bore the burden.
If proper blood and flesh weren’t offered, then the price would be her own body consuming itself.
Of course, she had no intention of dying as a sacrifice. She and her god alone were to carry forth divine will.
Still, she never hesitated to use power when it was needed.
She was certain that tomorrow would bring the fulfillment of her desires.
That was why she had branded Thyssen with the Mark herself, without her father. And because she couldn’t offer the proper price, she bore all the backlash alone…
On top of spending much of her strength controlling Norden’s puppets, it was reckless.
But she only needed to endure a little longer.
She hadn’t yet gathered enough blood, but with a tool at hand, she could simply command him to hunt.
And if everything went according to plan, soon he would move.
When the continent was purified in fire and blood offered to the god, she would be freed from this burden.
Greta’s blind faith and hope only grew unnaturally large, matching the scale of the price she bore for wielding power beyond her means.
Though she worshiped a god who sought to burn all things, and though she no longer saw humans as human, she herself was still only human. She could not adapt to the pain that assailed her without warning.
So she endured it, again and again, her nerves growing sharper by the day, her patience thinner and thinner.
And her faith and hope were still only for a future that had not yet come.
Though she firmly believed she was on the glorious path of the divine, in truth, cracks and friction had already begun to form.
Grinding her teeth against the pain rising anew, Greta snapped irritably:
“When I say so, bring Bonita to me in secret. I’ll at least give her a chance to explain. If the spy has been removed, we’ll need a replacement anyway.”
“Yes.”
Thyssen obediently nodded, though there was something unsettling about him.
His dark red eyes—similar to the color of life’s blood—held not the faintest spark of vitality.
Gazing into those eyes, Greta recalled Cryer’s crimson gaze, burning hotter than the sun and colder than glaciers. Then, as if a thought had just struck her, she asked:
“How much of the power can you control? When he begins the Purification, you must at least not become a hindrance.”
Thyssen started to answer, but closed his mouth and turned his eyes toward the door.
Greta twisted her lips at the insolence of a tool refusing to answer properly—just as a knock sounded.
Knock, knock.
Her already foul mood soured further, and she was about to ignore it, but Thyssen’s flat voice cut in:
“A knight has come.”
Greta’s eyes narrowed sharply, then paused.
Ah, right—the Empire had assigned her a “guard” to keep watch.
“Come in.”
At her permission, the door opened without a sound, and a tall knight with brown hair stepped inside.
“I was told you summoned me.”
