RAMHM Chapter 149

Bliea's Circumstances (4)

Rotsy had always said it.

No matter how diluted, the intense fragrance of something that kills cannot be hidden.

Having heard about poisons from Rotsy until her ears wore thin, Bliea needed only the briefest brush of a scent across the tip of her nose to tear loose a corner of her childhood memory.

'There's a poisonous plant here that only grows in Winster territory. Is it the soil? Bliea! Stop sniffing at everything!'

'Poison? Please. It's sharp in the nose, but it's just an herb.'

'It pretends to be a fragrance. Just the thing for killing a person. Give it to a vain little thing like you dressed up as the finest perfume, and you'd be dead on the spot. Your life would burn away in a single breath.'

"The fragrance is lovely, Your Grace."

Koff.

Adrienne had started coughing. She pulled a handkerchief from inside her dress and pressed it over her mouth, then looked down at Bliea. Through the gaps between her fingers, the white handkerchief was vivid with coughed-up blood.

Adrienne looked as though even coughing was a struggle.

"The imperial household has been taking such good care of me. Shall I share some with you? Your color isn't well—it's said to be good for the body, so it might help you too."

Adrienne answered with a flushed face, as though this sort of ordinary exchange with a maid were something entirely new to her.

And then, rising to the surface of her expression, was the hope—that if she shared the fragrance, this maid who had borrowed Bliea's face might deliver Novian's news to her directly, without going through the butler.

It was the first time. Pale green eyes, alive—just for a moment, flickering with it.

"It's a secret from Annie."

Evidently intending to actually share the poison, Adrienne disappeared back through the window, slowly.

Bliea stared blankly at the golden hair floating like dandelion seeds, then her mouth crumpled.

She pulled her lower lip tight between her teeth. She couldn't wait any longer for Adrienne, and she ran back the way she had come.

Curses poured from her mouth without stopping.

She ran as though someone were chasing her, and like that, she left the Grand Ducal estate behind.

She abandoned even the carriage that had come hurrying after her, and as the evening sun sank, Bliea walked and walked the streets like a lost child.

"My lady! I was so worried when the coachman came back alone! You even left the carriage behind—where have you been? Did you really go to the Grand Ducal estate?"

It was deep into the night by the time she arrived at the count's estate.

Yona had waited for her until late. Bliea couldn't give her any answer. She shut herself inside the pink room.

It was the room she had demanded from the count even before the wedding—she had imagined that a girl like Adrienne would live in a room like this.

Remembering how she had been not so long ago, full of twisted fury, only a mocking laugh for herself slipped out.

"Ha. Ah…… what the f*ck…… seriously……"

She slid down to the floor with her back against the door and buried her face in both hands.

She hadn't done anything wrong.

Why did it feel like something was wrong.

Why her heart kept clenching like that, why she couldn't look that girl straight in the face——

'Oh. So this is what it feels like to suffer.'

Something had gone wrong. From the beginning, something had gone wrong.

If only she had known. That Adrienne Pirreta lived like that. That she was a person like that—if she had known even a little……

'I would have tried talking to her.'

Somehow.

If only she had known that girl was a victim too!

Her nails, pulled sharp, raked through her hair in a tangle.

What was she supposed to do now.

'I was born stupid and impossible to deal with, so I don't even know where to start.'

Bliea thought, and thought, and thought again.

She stayed up the whole night like that, and the moment day broke, she abruptly left for Ellaconia and went to find Rotsy.

She hadn't been able to shake the old habit of seeking Rotsy whenever her heart grew difficult.

"How many days are you planning to stay this time? You're not out here doing something reckless because the wind's got into your head, are you?"

"……"

Bliea couldn't answer Rotsy's question about how long she planned to stay.

'Master.'

The darkness of Bliea's gaze swept over Rotsy's busy back.

I think I've done something very, very wrong.

I'm the victim here.

I wanted to find my father—that so-called duke—and beat him senseless. I wanted to make that little sister of mine who lived well and ate well pay for it, a lot. But……

My heart feels too uneasy.

It's not my fault.

I didn't intend for it to go this way.

Bliea had just begun on a string of self-justifications when she caught her breath for a moment.

'Am I really…… without fault?'

The tips of her fingers went pale.

'Have I never once thought, I hope she dies?'

She had made eyes at the man that girl longed for day and night, right in front of everyone.

And in the end she had agreed to become his mistress once that girl died. She had waited for exactly that day and laughed at the fool who would have her husband stolen without even knowing it.

'Am I truly without fault where that girl is concerned?'

Every time she confirmed that Adrienne was dying, she had gone and whispered love to Novian—that man—in front of everyone, even letting slip that she wanted to become the Grand Duchess.

'Am I…… really someone who can hold her head up?'

While the source of everything, Duke Pirreta, walked free and well.

Had she cowardly avoided the real fight by hoping only that the blameless Adrienne would die first?

Bliea despaired, very quietly.

Stupid Bliea.

The foolish one was not Adrienne. It was herself.

Bliea shoved her hands through her hair and twisted in agitation.

God, even your mood does whatever it wants, Bliea!

If she was going to be a f*cking disaster, she should've gone all the way. What on earth was she doing now, of all times……

And then.

Bliea had been glaring at the kitchen cabinet when she suddenly found it.

The living death medicine.

The small drawer above the cabinet where it was kept.

'What if I try bringing that girl back for once? If I revive her……'

'If I revive her, then somehow……'

Of course, a lightning-fast thought did flash through her mind—Rotsy's emphatic warnings about the medicine, given so that a volatile girl like Bliea wouldn't just swallow anything she found lying around.

But Bliea couldn't tear her gaze from that drawer, already beginning to kindle.

'And if it fails……?'

What if that girl survived and Bliea was found out and killed for it?

There was a plan forming at the edge of her thoughts. The important thing was that it might cost her her life.

In contradiction to all her complicated thinking, her hand, the one with bad habits, was already reaching for the medicine lying quietly in the drawer.

She moved the instant Rotsy stepped into her room.

Staying up through the night drinking with Rotsy—barely able to drink at all—Bliea finally said it, unable to contain the chaos in her chest.

"I might not see you for a while."

"Aren't you going to Ronteaux?"

"Really. I might not see you."

Bliea shook her head as if to say, don't ask anymore.

"If there comes a time when I'm back again…… it might be after I've already died."

"What kind of nonsense is that. Always with the random nonsense."

Bliea gripped tight the medicine pouch she had hidden in her pocket.

And that night.

Bliea, who had been sleeping in the room beside Rotsy's, vanished without a trace from the cabin.

Before crossing the border back into Ronteaux, Bliea had Yona spread a rumor about the medicine. Then she passed it on to an information broker so that Novian would seek it out himself.

A miraculous elixir that extends life when taken on the very threshold of death.

This rumor was to circulate only within the northern Trovika territory.

To have Adrienne take the medicine without any suspicion, she needed to use Novian. It was far more effective at earning trust than having the mistress who waited for Adrienne's death bring the medicine herself.

'If I spread word that the Second Prince is desperately trying to obtain it, he won't be able to stop himself from getting it.'

Even if she didn't know exactly what kind of person Second Prince Rhodness was—Novian was the kind of man who would send the medicine to his wife without question, his eyes wavering, if it was medicine that came from him.

All the preparations were in place.

To avoid arousing suspicion, Bliea shut herself in her room for several nights, forcing herself to rein in a heart that changed its mind dozens of times a day.

'Something's going on between Novian and the Crown Prince. It seems like there's something between Duke Pirreta and the Crown Prince too…… but there are limits to what I can find out as I am now.'

Bliea stared at the wrinkled portrait inside the newspaper.

"But if it were you, who knows both Novian and Duke Pirreta…… If it were you, who knows more than I do about any of it, you might be able to bring it to light."

She was curious too.

Why Adrienne had been made to live like that.

And why she herself had been discarded. Whether she truly had to be abandoned so wretchedly, for no reason other than that her mother had died giving birth to her.

Every time a frightening future flashed through her mind, Bliea wrote in her diary.

[Regret and guilt. Utterly useless emotions.]

[Count Acacia, too, is simply a person who will be used by Novian Trovika and then discarded.]

[Even as I want to leave everything behind and run away……]

[And then there are nights I can't stand the pity I feel for the life I lost.]

Even Adrienne, grown healthy in her body, might someday reach a moment when she wanted to run away.

Like that day when the Crown Prince's low laughter and Novian's incomprehensibly cold voice had crushed Bliea's heart like it was nothing.

Adrienne, too, would surely reach a moment when she wanted to leave everything behind and run.

[Do you want to run away?]

It was something she was saying to Adrienne. And something she was saying to herself.

[It's already too late to turn back.]

Yes. It was already too late to turn back.

She could not live the life of Pirreta's daughter. She could not undo the past when she had turned her anger toward a blameless Adrienne.

Adrienne too could not return to her healthier days, could not return to a time before the Crown Prince and Novian had deceived her. And if there was no going back, the only thing left was to fight.

[Don't run away. Go into the Grand Ducal estate. Bring every secret to light.]

She had already searched every external office she could find.

The count's office she had now slipped into secretly—there was nothing incriminating in it either, nothing connecting it to Novian, nothing connecting it to the Crown Prince.

Bliea used the key she had quietly stolen to open the count's safe.

Whether the principled Adrienne would reach as far as this safe—she wasn't sure. But if she asked the count to entrust her with the mistress's key once things had settled, she would open it if desperate enough.

[Don't run away.]

It was a desperate plea.

Having added those final words, Bliea was about to put the pink diary into the safe when she hesitated.

She opened the diary again and added one more line at the very end.

[Adrienne Swan Pirreta.]

It was the first time she'd written her little sister's name herself. In the imperial tongue.

On the Crown Prince's order—sensing that Adrienne's death was near—a mana stone coffin that had been sent to the palace and to the Crown Prince's scattered villas was this time directed toward the Trovika Grand Ducal estate.

Bliea knew instinctively that this coffin was for Adrienne.

Alone in the warehouse, Bliea poured every last bit of her mana into the coffin with all her strength.

Having pushed her power even into the small mana stone that would serve as the key, Bliea returned to the count's estate, her face visibly worn.

"Bliea. The Grand Duke has obtained the medicine you mentioned."

Yona had carried out everything Bliea had asked without a single question.

Bliea stared in silence at the diary.

[Poor Adrienne Pirreta.]

[Novian Trovika has finally obtained the medicine.]

[Adrienne won't live long regardless. The signs of death are already there—so very, very many of them. There is no time.]

[Poor Adrienne Trovika. In the end, she will not die because she is truly ill……]

[……She probably never even knew. That her husband had been killing her.]

Foolish Adrienne Pirreta, who didn't even know the Crown Prince was her real husband.

Adrienne Pirreta, who didn't know that the fake husband—Novian—was in league with that very Crown Prince.

Picturing her waiting for that kind of husband, pale-faced, made her blood boil.

'From the moment you enter my body, Adrienne might start thinking about divorcing Count Acacia.'

Bliea made her way to the office where she always hid the diary.

【A Guidebook for Divorcing Ladies】

The moment she pulls this book out—may she find the diary.

Whether such a simple method of stoking Adrienne's anger would work—she couldn't say.

This was all her head could come up with.