Chapter 4. Secret Meeting

Just a little, his throat felt dry.

While Calyx was captivated by an unknown impulse to crush those moist light green eyes, Lottie looked up at him, overlapping him with a not-too-distant memory.

— Sister-in-law.

A beast who, obsessed with the throne, destroyed an entire city and shot dead without blinking someone who was once family, claiming the divorced queen’s chamber might be hiding the king.

‘He was this kind of person from the beginning. A madman without a shred of human emotion……!’

For just a moment, she felt contempt for herself for having tried to beg this man for help, just like before.

“……”

Instead of pleading as he wanted, Lottie closed her eyes. As if to say, do as you wish with me.

Looking down at her, Calyx laughed softly.

‘So that’s your answer.’

His mind had cooled again, but his eyes had not. They searched intently for something that had disappeared behind closed eyelids.

“Do you know something?”

The quiet whisper scattered finely over her closed eyelids.

“The fellow outside, despite his appearance, has ears as sharp as a wild animal. He can easily distinguish even the unexpected breath of another person.”

Calyx’s hand, which had been holding her chin, slowly moved upward.

His thumb covered Lottie’s slightly parted lips.

Her eyelids, which had been closed, flew open at the unfamiliar sensation. Pleased to meet those light green eyes again, he laughed silently.

“The night is deep, and the surroundings are mercilessly quiet. So……”

Calyx’s remaining hand grabbed the woman’s right arm and lifted it. Like prey caught by the nape by a predator, her slender wrist was captured.

It was useless to try to escape.

When Lottie’s struggling hand showed a momentary gap, his hand darted in without missing the chance.

The two hands that had briefly touched on the doorknob became strongly intertwined again.

Like snakes entwining two bodies, like a demon’s tongue, each finger firmly pressed against the other, making it impossible to pull away.

“I wish you good luck.”

As his hand pulled away, Calyx flung the door wide open.

“Why did you take so long to open? Just now in the grand hall……”

The man who had been standing outside the secret room, watching cautiously, hesitated when he saw Calyx standing as if to shield the half-open door.

“What are you doing?”

“Two days later. Through the white bear.”

Lottie, hiding behind the door and holding her breath, heard the strange words exchanged between the two. It wasn’t Matilan, nor the languages of neighboring Triena or Deisnoya.

When the man outside showed signs of trying to look inside, Calyx waved a white satin glove in front of his face.

It was one glove he had taken from Lottie in a brief moment.

Since a man possessing a woman’s glove meant more than simply finding a careless woman’s lost item, the other man sighed with exasperation.

“Don’t overdo it. If you want to preserve what little life you have left.”

After the man who had reproached Calyx disappeared, the door slowly closed.

When the bright light seeping in from outside vanished, the room was once again captured by dim darkness.

“Breathe.”

The man who had appeared only as a broad back slowly turned to Lottie in the same manner as the closing door.

“You weren’t discovered. Unfortunately.”

“……”

“Well done.”

He smiled in the darkness. When one hand stretched toward her head, Lottie quickly turned her face away.

“I was going to compliment you.”

“……I don’t need it.”

“This either?”

Calyx lightly waved Lottie’s glove. Lottie’s brow furrowed.

“Give it back.”

“If you let me finish what I was doing.”

“No. Give it back. It’s mine.”

Lottie replied firmly. It was quite different from when she had been holding a stranger’s arm and pleading just moments ago.

Calyx silently swallowed his laughter at the sight that reminded him of an angry cat.

“Mine, you say……”

Calyx, meaningfully repeating Lottie’s words, slowly walked deep into the room.

After smoothly navigating the furniture in the darkness, he grabbed what appeared to be the edge of a curtain about ten steps away.

“I don’t want to.”

As the curtain was drawn, the darkness that had thickly enveloped the room was driven away.

In the moonlight pouring in from outside, the outline of the room, about 10 pyeong in size, was finally revealed.

The room, longer vertically than horizontally, was a secret retreat where royal family members, tired of palace life where walls had eyes and ears, had stayed.

However, rather than feeling liberated by the cleared vision, Lottie felt more anxious about the prince whose intentions she couldn’t discern.

Just as in her memory, he had a large, sturdy body, but he gave an impression of elegance and agility rather than mere size.

His neatly combed blonde hair shimmered softly in the moonlight. At first glance he seemed cold, but his features were more delicate than bold.

This was Calyx Valdea standing before her. He wore a black formal suit instead of a navy military uniform and looked somewhat younger than before, but that chilling feeling when he had called her “sister-in-law” with a smile remained the same.

“……”

A man who responded to her reasonable request to return her property with a refreshing “no.”

And then, finding something amusing, he swayed as he sat down on the sofa placed in the center. Clutching the woman’s glove, he sank into the moonlight pouring from behind him as if challenging her to try and take it.

“Having helped the lady as she begged, it’s only natural that the lady should pay a price in return.”

“……”

“Who are you?”

Multiple implications were entangled in that one question.

He was asking for her name and family background, why she had hidden here.

He was asking how she knew about this place that only royal family members should know about, and why she had so desperately begged him not to open the door earlier.

And consequently, he was asking how to dispose of a woman who had ‘seen what she shouldn’t have seen.’

“I am…….”

Not unaware of the deepest implication of the question, Lottie carefully chose her words.

But contrary to her submissive feelings, her mouth had already uttered “I,” a subject that placed herself on equal footing with him.

This was also a signal that Lottie’s emotions had shifted from fear to a slight anger.

— What if, after I let you go alive, you run to him and confess everything you’ve seen and heard?

Just like before, that man was arrogant.

Then as now, he firmly believed without a doubt that he held the power of life and death over others.

“Why should I answer that question first?”

Her counter-question was calm, making it even more audacious. The man sitting across from her was shaken.

Though it was a memory from nearly ten years ago, Lottie was certain. At this royal ball where she had promised to marry her ex-husband, there had been no place for the deposed crown prince Calyx Valdea.

It was months after Lottie had become engaged to the crown prince that Calyx, who had even been stripped of the royal family name, left his secluded mansion and returned to the palace.

Therefore, the man before her eyes was also in the position of a mouse that had sneaked in while the palace was distracted with revelry.

“You ask who I am, but who are you?”

Unlike Calyx’s question with its many implications, Lottie’s question contained only one:

‘Both of us have something to hide.’

She silently prayed that her rather brazen intention—let’s not get entangled with each other and go our separate ways—had been well conveyed to him.

He probably understood immediately. After all, he was once an intelligent crown prince who had received all his education necessary to become a sovereign.

“Are you…… asking who I am right now?”

But through the subsequent question, Lottie realized that all the education for becoming a sovereign had absolutely no connection with communication skills.

“Who am I? Even after seeing this face?”

The sharp gaze that had been glaring at her was gradually softening. He seemed somewhat dejected and a little dumbfounded.

As he set aside the wariness that had enveloped him like a second skin, what followed was an incredulous, hollow laugh.

“Ah, I see. No wonder. Your attitude has been strangely impertinent from the start if you knew my identity.”

When did I…… No! That’s not it!

She could only cry out those vehement words inwardly, because the man’s expression, as he made his own assumptions and conclusions, seemed strangely bright.

There was a greater sense of liberation on Calyx Valdea’s face than when the room, which had been immersed in darkness, was brightened by moonlight.

Unable to erase that feeling, Lottie couldn’t rashly shatter Calyx’s misunderstanding.

“If I reveal my name, will the audacious lady also tell me hers?”

He looked so helplessly pleased that Lottie missed another opportunity to explain. As if it didn’t matter, a strange light danced in Calyx’s eyes.

His eyes were a beautiful reddish-brown.

“My name is……”

The rest of his words were swallowed by the door being mercilessly flung open.

Earnestly hoping that the overly generous title of a secret space known only to the royal family would finally be laid to rest, Lottie turned to look at the open door.

Surprisingly, the person standing at the door was someone who fit the name of this place better than anyone else.

“What are you doing here right now……!”

Crown Prince Patrick’s surprised voice could not continue because of the man standing behind Lottie.

While Lottie was too frozen to see, Calyx was showing the radical courtesy of greeting his cousin, whom he was meeting again after more than ten years, with a slight wave of his hand.

“You…… how are you here……”

“……”

“My lady, surely he hasn’t done anything improper……”

Patrick, who had been looking back and forth between Calyx and Lottie, asked Lottie. Lottie did not answer.

Her ears were ringing, and she couldn’t hear the rest clearly. Following that, Isabelle’s cry calling for Lottie grew closer.

Isabelle embracing her grandniece who had disappeared without a word, and several ladies and gentlemen crowding behind her.

Among them whispering secretly, Lottie heard words she didn’t want to hear.

“Look at her hair. It’s exactly like the feather that was found in the garden……”