IWBAACTWITOS Chapter 33

"Shista, papa."

Rona called to us in her lisping pronunciation, toddling toward us before plopping down on the ground after only a few steps. Yan, Asher, and I clapped our hands and cheered for Rona to get back up. She glared at us with a sulky expression, but the moment I pulled out a cookie, she popped right up from her spot. Unlike her earlier wobbling, she walked toward us with powerful strides, and the three of us burst into laughter.

"Kakki!"

Rona reached our spot at last and immediately reached for the cookie. I obediently handed it over and sat her on my lap.

"Do you like kakki better than Sis?"

"No."

She said no, but judging by how absorbed she was in the cookie, it seemed she definitely liked the cookie better than me. When I looked hurt by Rona's response, the two brats on either side of me giggled.

"Then do you like these older brothers or Sis better?"

I never knew I could do the childish thing Julian does. At my question, Rona stopped eating her cookie and looked at Asher and Yan in turn. After a brief pause, she stuffed the cookie back in her mouth and answered.

"Shis."

"That's right!"

When I clenched both fists in a victory pose, Yan and Asher laughed as if they'd expected it. But they couldn't quite hide their slight disappointment.

"Then which brother do you like better?"

At Asher's question, Rona's eyes went round again as she looked back and forth between them. After wavering for a long time, Rona pointed at Yan with her finger.

A huge smile bloomed on Yan's face at being chosen. Asher laughed as if he'd expected this outcome too.

"Well, you two are always with Rona."

I'm just visiting. Asher said that while sneakily waving the cookie Rona was eating right in front of her eyes. Despite holding a cookie in her hand, Rona's attention drifted to the one Asher was waving.

Rona had a big appetite but tended not to want to finish one thing at a time. She eventually abandoned the saliva-covered cookie and held out both hands to Asher.

"Asheu, asheu."

Rona couldn't say "give me" yet, so she just repeated Asher's name.

"Well, try and take it."

And Asher had a worse personality than expected. He'd tease Yan and Rona like this even when he'd give it to them eventually anyway.

'Though not to me, of course.'

As long as I wasn't the target of his pranks, and since watching flustered Yan and Rona scramble was quite entertaining, I didn't bother pointing out his mischief.

Yan couldn't beat Asher, and I had absolutely no intention of helping, so Rona had to win the cookie on her own.

Unable to hold back any longer, Rona jumped up from her spot and tackled Asher. Asher lowered his hands to catch her, and Rona seized the opportunity to firmly grab his hand holding the cookie.

"Kakki."

Having obtained the cookie as payment for being held in Asher's arms, Rona grinned and popped it in her mouth.

"Rona, you have to finish that one, not throw it away. Otherwise, I'll tell Nanny so you can't have any more kakka today."

"Ung."

'She's just good at answering.'

I picked up the cookie that had fallen on the picnic blanket, set it aside on one corner of the plate, and popped one of our cookies into my mouth. Unlike Rona's cookies made with just oats and flour, the chocolate cookies had an added stimulating sweetness. I lay back without chewing the sweet cookie, just holding it in my mouth, thoroughly enjoying my boredom.

It had already been eight months since Yan came to the ducal mansion. Aside from watching Rona grow, it was a peaceful daily life with little to feel the passage of time.

'Except that we have to leave for the Holy Land soon.'

The journey alone takes two months round trip, and the baptism ceremony consumes a month, so three months of the short one year I could spend with Yan were about to vanish. Since only parents and siblings could attend the baptism, Yan, who hadn't been officially adopted yet, would stay at the Imperial Palace during that time.

While I did nothing, fate was flowing along steadily.

Julian seemed to be planning to gain the Prophetess's support for Yan's adoption this time, but only I knew that would be useless. When the adoption talk first came up, I'd been tormented by guilt, but now I'd mostly resigned myself to it.

To wake me up as I lay there with a cookie in my mouth, eyes drooping, Asher asked about the class the three of us took together.

"Tilly, did you do your homework?"

"Why would I do that?"

"It's homework."

"That's why I'm asking why do homework?"

At my nonchalant retort, Yan and Asher, who would have diligently done their homework last night, made dumbfounded expressions.

"The teacher will scold you if you don't do it."

"Let him scold me then."

"Count Troville will scold you too."

"...Ugh, how annoying."

I grumbled heavily and asked a maid to fetch my homework. Unlike the two who did homework at their desks at set times, I did it whenever I remembered, so by Nanny's special orders, a maid always carried my homework around.

I scribbled a few numbers while lying prone, then returned it to the maid.

"You're done already?"

"Yeah, all done."

Asher looked through my homework paper with disbelief, then turned to me with a stunned face. Unlike Asher, Yan was purely happy that I'd finished my homework so we could play together.

"How did you get them all right?"

"The fact that you know the answers means you got them all right too."

"I'm asking how you did it."

"Multiply, divide, add, subtract, done."

"Haa..."

"Don't sigh, I'm the weird one here."

Swallowing the words that I too used to count on my fingers and toes at your age, I smiled and tugged on Yan's cheek as he sucked on his cookie-crumb-covered fingers.

'It's quiet.'

I kneaded the soft cheek while turning my gaze toward the annex. When I suddenly shifted my gaze, Matilda, who'd been watching us from the window, hastily pulled the curtain. Seeing her properly for the first time in months, she looked much thinner than before, and her eyes were strange.

We'd only made brief eye contact, but goosebumps prickled down the back of my neck.

The feeling that something had gone wrong.

Given my dirty personality reflected in the worldbuilding, quiet usually meant extra villain characters were plotting something bad. And how those extra villains would act was unpredictable.

For several days now, Matilda had been unable to sleep after receiving a letter from the Queen. It stated that the ducal family had proposed Rayan's adoption, and the Second Prince faction was reviewing the matter positively, so she shouldn't do anything foolish for the time being.

'She told me to look for a chance to kill the Prince, and now she's saying they'll send him for adoption so don't do anything foolish?'

To begin with, Matilda was someone who could only stay by the Queen's side because of Rayan.

When she'd come to the Empire, the plan had been to keep Rayan alive as long as possible while receiving VIP treatment at the Imperial Palace, then kill Rayan when it was time to return to the Kingdom and collect her reward from the Queen.

But as soon as they arrived in the Empire, they'd ended up at the ducal mansion instead of the Imperial Palace. On top of that, Rayan, who'd never said a word no matter what was done to him, had suddenly revealed the abuse to people.

Since then, Matilda and Rayan's attendants had been living in near-isolation in the annex.

Their movements weren't restricted. But it was hard to approach Rayan, who was always with Thaleia or Aegis, and even if they did approach, they couldn't escape people's wary gazes. And those gazes were no different in the annex.

Because all the servants attending the annex despised the annex people. She wanted to pick a fight, saying their eyes were insolent, but she couldn't carelessly touch them since they were the ducal family's people.

She missed life at the royal palace so much, where she could do anything with Rayan watching her nervously and kept by her side.

'If I go back now, I'll truly be cut off.'

Even if he was adopted, he'd still be a child of the Three Families.

Rayan had only mentioned the tutor's excessive corporal punishment so far, nothing beyond that. If Rayan was formally adopted into the Remetio family and then revealed all of Matilda's secret bullying, Matilda would find it hard to escape the Remetio family's wrath.

Besides, the Queen and her maternal family weren't people who'd watch her back—they'd pin everything on Matilda if they could. They said the expelled tutor was eventually executed. Even if she kept her life, she wouldn't be able to maintain her count title.

'No. Not that. Anything but that.'

Matilda kept pacing her room, struggling to suppress her anxiety.

As if to torment her anxious state, a few days ago the Three Families' children including Rayan had been playing by the lakeside next to the annex. She'd been especially startled when Thaleia looked toward the annex.

Those purple eyes, so similar to Julian's as he'd smiled while pressuring Matilda, were chilling.

'The Duke must have said something to him about me. That brat must have tattled to her parents again. What have I even done besides look from afar? No, to begin with, I'm the Prince's—that little bastard's—nanny! Over just one moment of eye contact.'

Mentally cornered, Matilda's blame fell on Thaleia, with whom she'd merely made eye contact once.

If Thaleia had known, she would have laughed at the absurdity, but Matilda's inner thoughts only drifted within her dark room.

'This won't do.'

Matilda persistently picked at a hangnail under her fingernail. The red flesh underneath showed, but she had no mental capacity to even feel the sting properly. Suddenly stopping her hand, Matilda pulled out her jewelry box.

It was the jewelry box the Queen had given her before leaving for the Empire, telling her to use it when needed. At the very bottom was stored only a single pearl necklace. The gems that looked like pearls were actually poison solidified.

When she'd first received it, she'd been speechless. Unlike staged accidents or other assassination methods, poison would make her immediately suspect. Unable to refuse, she'd accepted it and then buried it at the very bottom of her jewelry box and forgotten about it. But now she had no other options.

'Children are less suspicious.'

They were less guarded than adults about what they touched and put in their mouths. Besides, she knew they didn't even properly check for poison, thinking no one would poison the Three Families' people.

'I'll kill him before the adoption talk goes through.'

Then she'd be a countess until she died.

Having finished deliberating, Matilda broke the necklace's string and carefully picked up each scattered bead one by one.