Chapter 45

 Lea burst into tears. Ella bit her lip at the agitation that made questioning impossible. She turned her head and stared at Arthur. The young man with mature features and a firm jawline was looking at Lea. Their gazes suddenly intertwined. The gaze that instantly turned fierce poked at Ella.

 “Enough! You’re over ten years old and you burst into tears before me?”

 The king angrily rebuked Lea. Sir Arthur, who stood with a sharp edge, came before him and bent his knee. The king closed his mouth, looking at the knight with irritation.

 “I apologize, Your Majesty. Please give me the opportunity to state the facts on behalf of my young bedchamber maid.”

 “Speak.”

 “I was the one who first requested that she be allowed to use the empty room that the Duke’s bedchamber maid wasn’t using. Because my servant girl is young and couldn’t share a bedroom with me, I wanted to arrange for her to have her own room.”

 “Continue.”

 “Lea is innocent, Your Majesty. She merely stayed in the private room used by the Duke’s bedchamber maid and never touched her personal items. I provide my bedchamber maid with sufficient resources and support. I can assure you that she is not a child who would touch Her Highness the Queen’s ornaments.”

 Alexander sighed softly. Arthur’s stern eyes blazed with anger. He was clearly quite upset as his servant girl was dragged out, as he glared at the queen standing beside the king with his lips tightly closed. Just as he was pressing hard on his throbbing temples, the crying servant girl wet herself.

He looked at the girl’s red face and nodded to Arthur who was kneeling. The young man, distorted with anger, stood up and took out a handkerchief. The girl, trembling helplessly, glanced at her master. Arthur knelt again before the child who was bursting into sobs.

 “Lea. Enough. Stop crying.”

 At her master’s command, Lea closed her mouth with a gasp. He wiped her knees with the handkerchief and then put the girl on his right shoulder. Just as the two were about to leave the hall, a servant came running and whispered something in Alexander’s ear. The king and the servant exchanged conversation in low voices. The servant was a young man who worked under the chief servant of the palace. Ella tried to read his plain face but couldn’t gauge the situation. Not long after, Lady Eins arrived with a maid.

 “Aren’t you a maid from the eastern wing of the palace?”

 “Yes, I am.”

 “If you have something to tell me, speak.”

 The maid glanced at Lady Eins. Ella, pale-faced, looked at the maid and the viscountess. Lady Eins was the queen’s lady-in-waiting. She was one of the queen’s longtime confidants and one of the women who looked at Ella with disdain. To cool her head, consumed by fear and foreboding, she looked at Larque.

 He was staring at Lady Eins and the maid with a stern gaze. He had said there was nothing to fear. That there was nothing to worry about at all. He had said they would return home this afternoon. But given the current situation, wouldn’t she be escorted to the underground prison of the palace rather than the Duke’s mansion? Ella quietly put strength into the tips of her gathered fingers.

 “Your Majesty. This, this lowborn stole it.”

 “How can I believe your words?”

 The maid raised her head. Her frightened black eyes blinked rapidly several times. The king tilted his head to the side and looked at her. The maid glanced at Lady Eins and then opened her lips again.

 “This lowborn has this.”

 The maid fumbled in her pocket and took something out. Wrapped in a red velvet handkerchief, it looked quite heavy at a glance with its bulging shape. What was happening? Ella took her eyes off the velvet handkerchief and stared at Lady Eins. The woman, just like the day before, looked at Ella and smiled sweetly.

 “Bring it here.”

 The king’s heavy voice echoed through the hall. A knight took the velvet handkerchief from the maid and gave it to a servant. The servant placed it on a shelf and then brought it to the king. Elegant white fingers unhesitatingly unwrapped the velvet handkerchief.

 It took 1 minute or 2 minutes for the king to confirm what was inside. The maid trembled her chin and closed her eyes.

 “Do you take Tuloz?”

 “……”

 “I asked if you take drugs.”

 The maid didn’t answer. Ella stared intently at the shining object on the shelf. Gold coins and jewels. And shining white powder. Tuloz. Is that Tuloz? Was this maid taking drugs? Ella frowned.

 The king was unusually grim. His eyes, distorted with anger, were fierce. It couldn’t be helped. This was the royal palace, not just anywhere else. Even in ordinary noble houses, drug use was a severely punished crime. Moreover, it was Tuloz.

 It wasn’t a medicine that should be found in the hands of a maid who wasn’t even a physician. Though it happened over 100 years ago, Kylaq was a country that had already suffered greatly because of Tuloz. Kylaq remembered those who, under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs, butchered their parents and committed unspeakable acts against young children, from ordinary citizens to high nobles.

 It was such a terrible thing that even Ella, born after 100 years had passed, knew the name, so the damage and side effects were enormous. But to think that Tuloz would come from the hands of a palace maid. Perhaps some, no, quite a number of the palace servants might be addicted. This was why the king couldn’t help but be grim with anger.

 “Your Majesty. Please spare me! Her Highness the Queen ordered me to. She ordered me, ordered me! I, I……”

 “Speak truthfully before your flesh is scorched.”

 “This, this lowborn didn’t know it was Tuloz, so…… I had been suffering from insomnia for months, and thinking it was medicine…… She said she would report me to the police bureau if I didn’t do as told…… Huk. The, the Queen, the Queen……”

 The maid let out a tearing cry. Ella listened to the cry and looked at Guinevere. The woman still had a white face. Her bloodless, pale face was as beautiful as a white peony. Her gaze, looking down at the maid without even twisting her lips, was calm. Unfathomably deep, or mysterious…… She couldn’t understand that woman’s inner thoughts. She didn’t want to know. She prayed that today would be the last.

 *** 

 In the returning carriage, Ella was holding Eselmund. The child, still just an infant, had a faint smell of milk. Perhaps because she had consistently fed him her own milk except for the time they were apart, her young son had her scent. Ella, holding the child tightly, looked at Larque with relaxed eyes.

 “Did she betray Her Highness the Queen?”

 “She took the practical option. The viscount’s wife is wise.”

 “The position of the queen’s lady-in-waiting must be quite a lofty position.”

 “It’s a collapsing hut. The position of the royal consort’s lady-in-waiting would have been better. To the citizens, the queen is just an uncomfortable foreign princess.”

 Ella nodded. It was also the royal consort who had given birth to the king’s two children. From the time of his marriage to the queen, the king had loved the royal consort and seemed to have intended to find his successor from the native royal consort. Unlike Treden, Kylaq was a kingdom centered on pure blood. The Roxus as the ruled class, the Loingl as the ruling class, and over time, although the Loingl combined with the Roxus who made up most of the lower classes, the higher the nobility, the stronger the tendency to combine with the Loingl.

 So while an heir could be born from the womb of a Roxus woman, it could never be born from the womb of a Rung woman. Perhaps it was only natural that the citizens did not love the queen. Even with a peace treaty, Treden had long been pirates who troubled Kylaq’s coastline.

 Who would welcome a prince born from a princess of such a country becoming king? This was why the royal consort held more power than the queen despite her lower status. Ella blinked slowly and stroked the child’s head.

 Adela de Eins was an illegitimate daughter. The reason she could rise to the lofty position of the queen’s lady-in-waiting despite being illegitimate was because she was practical. It would have been more important to achieve remarkable results in a new nest than to rely on the queen as an old crutch.

 But to backstab like this. What a frightening woman. Did she not care what happened to the queen’s reputation? As she patted the child’s back, she thought of the maid who had been dragged to the police bureau. For a woman who didn’t know it was a drug strictly prohibited by the state, taking Tuloz was a weakness that made her unable to resist the queen’s unjust orders. From the maid who first handed her the drug to the viscountess who noticed it…… The blade piercing her throat was chilling.

 “Ella.”

 “Eselmund’s celebration day is approaching.”

 Ella, awakened from her thoughts, smiled faintly toward Larque. San Parvale, just ahead, was splendid under the sunlight. Larque, who got out of the carriage first, escorted her and entered the castle. Servants and maids who were busy preparing for the young master’s blessing day paid their respects. The wide garden and the straight path at its center. Flowers and trees of at least dozens of varieties. Half of life and the end of childhood…… Ella returned to the “home” she had longed for.