Chapter 29

“What do you think I’m talking about?”

Abenr Di Mays looked around. This was the imperial palace. Even the Crown Prince couldn’t act as he pleased here.

The master of the imperial palace was the Emperor, not the Crown Prince.

Moreover, servants who kept the Crown Prince in check were scattered everywhere, becoming the eyes and ears of their true masters as they monitored him.

Despite this, when she saw him smiling in front of her, while his eyes glared at her with an expression like he was about to commit murder, her mouth felt parched with fear.

“I-I don’t know what you mean……”

She unconsciously picked up the tea placed before her. For a moment, she wondered if it was safe to drink, but the Crown Prince drinking the same tea seemed fine.

As she gulped down the tea, Callisten stopped smiling and looked at her.

“Did you not know Bri had a shellfish allergy?”

“I didn’t know, really! I swear!”

Former Grand Duchess Abenr Di Mays hastily put down her teacup after seeing Callisten’s expression. Then she waved her hands, insisting she really didn’t know.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes!”

“Do I look like a fool who would believe such words?”

“It’s true!”

Callisten smiled again. Abenr Di Mays couldn’t tell if he was genuinely smiling this time or forcing a smile because he was angry.

“Seize her.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Yes!”

“Aah!”

At that moment, knights behind her grabbed Abenr Di Mays’s arms and restrained her. They pressed her down so she couldn’t rise from the chair.

“Your Highness! What are you doing! Your Highness! Crown Prince!”

When the former Grand Duchess Mays shouted, Callisten smirked and stood up.

“Make her drink.”

“Ugh…! Ack…!”

One of the knights firmly grabbed Abenr Di Mays’s jaw to force her mouth open, added something to the tea she had been drinking, and poured it down her throat.

“Kack! Cough…!”

The hot tea that rushed into her nose and mouth seemed to contain some dangerous liquid.

“Release her.”

“Urgh…! Kack, huck…!”

Abenr Di Mays tried to gag to vomit the liquid that had been forced down her throat, but it was useless. The liquid that burned her palate and throat had already gone inside her.

“Aren’t you curious what was added to the tea?”

“…Your Highness!”

“It’s poison. What you drank will make you blind in 24 hours. Then deaf. Finally, your vocal cords will burn, and you won’t be able to speak.”

“Your Highness! How could you…!”

“If you don’t drink the antidote within 24 hours.”

Abenr Di Mays trembled with fear as she looked at Callisten.

“Shrimp for someone with a shellfish allergy. What I did is not much different from what you did.”

“Your Highness! I have committed a sin worthy of death!”

“That’s right, isn’t it? A sin worthy of death?”

“Yes!”

Callisten genuinely smiled at those words and said:

“If you’ve committed a sin worthy of death, then you should die.”

“Your Highness! I-I’m too young to die! I haven’t even seen my grandchildren yet…!”

“The world would be better off if you died.”

Callisten gestured as he spoke. A nearby servant refilled his teacup with more tea.

“Your Highness…! How can you do this to an old woman who doesn’t have much time left anyway!”

“If you’re going to die soon anyway, why not die early? I’m saying I’ll send you off because I think more people will die due to your stupidity.”

“Huwick…! Your Highness…! If you kill me like this, will my daughter-in-law be okay? She’ll suffer from guilt for the rest of her life.”

“Oh, right.”

Callisten took another sip of his tea and crossed his legs the other way. Abenr Di Mays prostrated herself on the floor and looked up at him as if begging.

“Briseyes is such a delicate child…! If I die like this, she’ll suffer for the rest of her life!”

“Then I should make it look like an accident. Mayson, the sword.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Mayson immediately handed the long sword he was carrying to Callisten.

“If you tense your neck, you won’t die in one strike, so relax.”

He then drew the sword from its scabbard and pointed it at Abenr Di Mays’s neck.

“I-I’ll apologize to my daughter-in-law!”

At the former Grand Duchess’s words, Callisten’s sword moved to the side of her neck.

“Would she want to accept your apology?”

“S-she will want to!”

“Hmm.”

“I will apologize to my daughter-in-law! If she accepts my apology, please spare my life!”

Abenr Di Mays grabbed Callisten’s leg with trembling hands as she spoke. Callisten smirked when he saw the disheveled former Grand Duchess.

He smiled as if he had been putting on an act all along for this moment.

“Fine, then. If Bri accepts your apology, I’ll give you the antidote.”

“Y-you promised.”

“Yes. But don’t do it at night.”

“It’s 8 PM now, Your Highness! If not at night…!”

“Don’t do it at night. Bri needs to sleep too. I don’t want Bri’s schedule to be disrupted because of me. She’ll hate me for that.”

He remembered that it was the time when Briseyes would be studying hard. She studied in the evening and would obviously fall asleep.

And that she would really hate having that time interrupted.

“Then in the morning…!”

“I can’t visit in the morning because of the Academy, so around 4 PM when the Academy ends would be good.”

“T-then if my daughter-in-law accepts, you’ll give me the antidote right there…?”

“I’ll give you the antidote right there.”

Callisten taunted Abenr Di Mays by shaking a long glass bottle containing a transparent liquid that he had in his possession.

Abenr Di Mays returned to the Grand Duke’s residence like that.

⁕⁕⁕

“Is there really such a poison in the world…?”

After returning to the Grand Duke’s residence, Abenr Di Mays sought out a doctor first. However, the doctors of the Grand Duke’s family didn’t even know such a poison existed.

At the Imperial Central Hospital where Briseyes was staying:

“Is there really such a poison in the world?”

“Ah, I think I’ve heard of it.”

Three of the doctors making rounds said so.

“What kind of poison is it?”

“From what I’ve heard, it’s a poison from Biaten.”

The Emperor of Biaten was the one whose neck had been cut off by Callisten’s hand. The Biaten Empire was now in the process of being absorbed into the Cropus Empire.

“There’s really such a poison?”

“I can’t remember the name either, but I’ve heard of it. If you drink it, after 24 hours, you go blind, deaf, and lose your voice.”

So if it was a poison from Biaten, which Callisten had personally conquered, it was entirely plausible.

“That’s terrible.”

“Is there no way to get an antidote?”

“We don’t even know exactly what poison it is. Who would use such a hard-to-obtain poison here?”

The doctors examined Abenr Di Mays and said:

“There’s nothing wrong with you, so you can go home. It seems you didn’t drink any poison and are mistaken.”

“That can’t be! I’ve been poisoned!”

“You’re normal. Please go home. The emergency room is always crowded with patients, so if you’re not sick, please return home promptly to help the Empire.”

Thus, Abenr Di Mays had to return to the mansion after being discharged from the emergency room.

⁕⁕⁕

Even late at night, Abenr Di Mays couldn’t fall asleep.

The knights’ rough hands restraining her, the hot tea pouring into her mouth, and the poison that might have been mixed in.

“Huwick…”

She couldn’t sleep at the thought that she might die soon.

Coincidentally, this was the day when Demian and Delilah were staying at a hotel to spend time alone while Briseyes was away from the mansion.

The matriarch, left alone in the Mays Grand Duke’s residence and trembling with anxiety, burst into tears of sorrow.

“If I had known… I should have at least asked which hotel they were going to….”

She had readily agreed when her son and Delilah said they would spend intimate time together, hoping their relationship would grow closer while Briseyes was hospitalized.

She had agreed so readily that she hadn’t even asked where they were staying.

When she sent servants to find out, she heard that they weren’t staying at the hotel the servants knew about. Perhaps they had changed their minds and decided to stay somewhere else.

“Ahuhwick…!”

The former Grand Duchess Mays felt the world was too cruel, wondering what she had done so wrong to experience this.

“That, cru, el wench…! If it weren’t, for her…!”

She hated Briseyes so much, feeling that Callisten was doing this all because of her.

At the same time, tears fell from fear at the thought that she might die tomorrow. She had never experienced such humiliation in all her years.

“Huwick…!”

She bit her trembling teeth hard with anger and said, filled with rage:

“I will never… let this in, justice go!”

She felt so pitiful that she cried all night.

⁕⁕⁕

The next day at 3:50 PM.

Abenr Di Mays was already waiting for Callisten in front of the Imperial Central Hospital.

The Academy ended later than expected, so Callisten, Casius, Saturn, and Evusi arrived at the hospital where Briseyes was admitted at 5:30 PM.

“Oh? It’s Demian’s mother.”

“Former Grand Duchess Mays, Your Highness?”

When Saturn and Evusi greeted her, Abenr Di Mays looked at Callisten with a face flushed red from anger and embarrassment.

“Ah, it seems the former Grand Duchess came because she has something to say to Bri?”

Callisten said this calmly.

The former Grand Duchess Abenr thought that if she could just get through this hurdle and receive the antidote.

“I was worried about my daughter-in-law.”

She would definitely get revenge, she thought as she went upstairs.

“Then let’s go up together.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

So the five of them headed to Briseyes’s hospital room.

At this time, former Grand Duchess Abenr wouldn’t have known how meticulous Callisten was.