It was exceptionally rare to see someone like him—someone who usually responded to most things with nothing more than a lazy smirk or an irritated shrug—genuinely startled to this degree.

 

Only then did the full weight of her crime crash over her. 

 

A sickening premonition of her own gruesome future clawed its way up her throat.

 

All because of this damned curiosity… and the raw, primitive instinct that had driven her to this ruinous moment.

 

“Y-yes… Please, go ahead. …I won’t look.”

 

Renata squeezed her eyes shut unnaturally tightly. 

 

The soft rustle of fabric being straightened filled the heavy quiet like a secret shared against skin.

 

Then came the scrape of the folding chair being dragged closer. He sat directly facing her and released a long, bone-deep sigh that seemed to pull the air from the room.

 

This time, at least, he placed the cushion primly across his lap—an almost comically earnest attempt at damage control.

 

A cold, razor-edged silence stretched between them, thick enough to taste.

 

Renata straightened her posture with painstaking care, fixed her gaze on the ceiling as though it might offer salvation, and finally broke the stillness.

 

“When I gave you time… you really should have put your clothes on sooner.”

 

“You’re the one who barged in after I explicitly told you not to. Don’t you think that makes this your fault?”

 

“If Your Highness had simply done his work when he was supposed to, none of this would have happened.”

 

“Putting off duties for a little while gives you the right to mock royalty? To lay hands on my body without permission? To trample over my… innocence?”

 

“I never went that far—!”

 

Theodore looked far too composed—far too lively—for someone who had supposedly suffered such an indignity. 

 

His eyes even sparkled with wicked anticipation, lips curved in a way that made her stomach flip.

 

…Is quitting really my only option now?

 

A cold certainty settled in Renata’s bones. She had stepped into something very dangerous.

 

“If you’re already plotting your escape, life is about to become significantly more miserable for you. You’ll have to pay for your sins, won’t you?”

 

“I—I didn’t mean—”

 

“I’m suspending you for three days. During that time, you will devise a suitable compensation plan for the profound mental anguish you’ve just inflicted on me.”

 

What could a mere commoner possibly offer a prince in reparation?

 

“If your proposal is satisfactory… I might even allow you to join the hunt. So think very, very carefully.”

 

At those final words, every scrap of Renata’s resentment evaporated. 

 

In its place rose something sharper, more resolute—and perilously close to surrender.

 

“Yes, Your Highness,” she answered, voice low and steady. 

 

“I will do my absolute best.”

 

The air between them seemed to hum, charged and unfinished, as though the real conversation had only just begun beneath their words.

 

🫧

 

“Bella, it’s dangerous to wander while the sun is still up. And… though I suppose going out alone at night isn’t exactly safe either.”

 

With the unexpected leave suddenly granted to her, Renata had spent the entire day wrapped in the simple, precious company of her younger sister. 

 

Now, on the verge of returning to the staff dormitory within the palace grounds, her feet refused to carry her forward. She paced the small house instead, restless, reluctant.

 

“You still think I’m a little kid, don’t you, unni?”

 

“How’s your body feeling?”

 

“Thanks to the medicine we started last month, it’s definitely better. I swear sometimes I feel like I could run forever again!”

 

Renata remembered the quiet, almost casual way she had once asked Theodore if he happened to know the most skilled physician in the capital.

 

He had tilted his head, amusement flickering in those dark eyes, and replied that all the truly capable doctors were already bound to noble houses as personal physicians—there was no one left to introduce. 

 

Then, with that maddening half-smile, he had added, Why not learn to compound the medicine yourself this time?

 

She hadn’t asked for an introduction, so she politely declined. 

 

But Theodore—languid and infuriating in matters of state, yet startlingly diligent in everything else—had immediately summoned an apothecary.

 

And gods, what an apothecary it turned out to be.

 

The man possessed genuine skill. 

 

Following his precise instructions, the ghostly pallor that had haunted Bella’s cheeks for so long slowly gave way to faint, living color. 

 

A fragile rose blooming beneath winter skin.

 

The cost was ruinous, of course.

 

Yet ever since she had become the prince’s aide, Renata’s purse had grown inexplicably—almost indecently—full. 

 

For the first time, money was not the wall between her and what her sister needed. She could simply… pay.

 

If she thought of Bella—of the way life was finally creeping back into her little sister’s laughter—If she thought of the man who had, without being asked, without making a production of it, given her exactly what she most desperately needed—

 

Then quitting… quitting would be wrong.

 

‘He even said that if things go smoothly, I could join the hunt. Just endure a little longer. If it starts to feel bearable… maybe I can stay.’

 

That day, the thing she had unexpectedly seen…

 

‘It was only to confirm His Highness’s health. A proper aide must know even the smallest details about the one they serve. Of course. Naturally.’

 

She repeated the justification to herself like a prayer, like a shield.

 

But the memory refused to stay clinical.

 

The long, lean line of his back.

 

The unexpected vulnerability of bare skin in the afternoon light.

 

The way his breath had caught—not in anger, but in something far more perilous—when their eyes met for that single, suspended heartbeat.

 

Renata pressed her fingertips hard against the windowsill until the wood creaked.

 

She told herself it was duty.

 

She told herself it was gratitude.

 

But deep in her chest, something else stirred—something warm and reckless and entirely too alive—whispering that perhaps she had already stayed far longer than any sensible woman should.

 

While Renata was still busy weaving elaborate justifications inside her own head, Bella—already finished packing her sister’s bag—gave her a gentle but insistent push toward the door.

 

“I’m fine on my own, so stop worrying. Oh—look at the time! Sister, you’re going to miss the carriage!”

 

And so Renata boarded the stagecoach bound for the palace, staring absently out the window—until her brows suddenly pinched together sharply.

 

There, just beyond the glass, a familiar length of silver hair brushing the nape of a neck she knew far too intimately.

 

Heart lurching, she pressed herself to the window like a woman starved, face almost touching the pane.

 

The tall, silver-haired man accepted the small crowd forming around him with nothing more than lazy nods—then turned and disappeared inside the salon Fog.

 

That back. That indolent, aristocratic stride. 

 

The casual way he dismissed even nobles as though they were background noise. Every line of him screamed one name.

 

“Wait here just a moment, please.”

 

Without a second thought, Renata stepped down from the carriage and followed.

 

His visits to salons were hardly scandalous anymore.

 

His reputation—tarnished, glittering, impossible to ignore—meant he drifted through places like this as casually as breathing. 

 

Every few weeks another headline, another whispered outrage splashed across the front page of the weeklies.

 

Wait.

 

Come to think of it… she still hadn’t discovered what he had hidden beneath the sheets that day.

 

‘At this rate he’ll claim the front and the second page.’

 

The last thing she needed was twice the mess to clean up.

 

So she told herself this was surveillance. Purely professional. Necessary.

 

She stepped through the doors of Fog. The doorman recognized her instantly—the prince’s ever-present shadow who had come to drag him home more times than either of them cared to count—and silently swung the door wide.

 

“Thank you,” she murmured, offering a wry, tired smile.

 

Then she looked ahead.

 

Twenty paces away, Theodore, surrounded by a glittering knot of extravagantly dressed nobles.

 

But the man who usually toyed with her like a cat with a half-dead mouse—eyes dancing with wicked mischief, lips curved in perpetual amusement—was wearing an entirely foreign expression.

 

Cold.

 

Drained.

 

As though every feeling had been leached out of him.

 

He spoke to someone in low, clipped tones, face carved from winter stone. Then, abruptly, his features twisted in raw irritation. 

 

Long fingers raked roughly through his silver fringe, shoving it back in a gesture so violently impatient it bordered on pain.

 

And then—without warning—he turned his head.

 

Their eyes collided.

 

For one suspended, airless second the clamor of the salon vanished.

 

No music. No laughter. No clink of crystal.

 

Only him, the sudden flare in those pale eyes, recognition flashing into something darker, hungrier, more unguarded than she had ever seen.

 

Only her, pulse roaring in her ears, fingers curling hard into her skirts to keep from reaching out.

 

He did not smile.

 

He did not smirk.

 

He simply looked at her—as though she were the only real thing in a room full of ghosts, as though he had been waiting, without knowing it, for exactly this moment to remember how to breathe.

 

And in that single, searing glance, every careful lie Renata had told herself cracked wide open.

 

No—she thought their eyes had locked.

 

But he seemed not to have seen her at all.

 

He scanned the room with slow, languid sweeps, as though the glittering crowd barely registered, then turned and drifted deeper into the salon without a backward glance.

 

‘…Is he already drunk?’

 

If so, then following him all the way here meant she had no choice but to trail after him and drag him home before he did something irreparable.

 

Renata quickened her steps—only to realize, a few paces later, that he wasn’t heading toward his usual haunts. She glanced around, pulse stuttering.

 

“Good gods… what is this place?”

 

Chandeliers blazed with obscene brightness, their light caught and shattered into a thousand white sparks within drifts of perfumed smoke. 

 

The interior was so extravagantly opulent it felt like trespassing into the private halls of divinities. 

 

Past all that splendor lay a dim corridor, narrow and hushed.

 

At the head of the staircase descending into the basement, Renata faltered.

 

A cold, instinctive warning flashed through her: she should not step foot here.

 

But the hesitation lasted only a heartbeat.

 

Whatever disaster he was about to ignite, she would be the one forced to extinguish it. Better to know the shape of the fire in advance.

 

She descended into absolute darkness.

 

The final step brought her to faint, flickering light ahead. She softened her footsteps to near silence and crept forward.

 

Closer now, thick velvet curtains—opera-house heavy, theater-blood red—muffled voices on the other side.

 

“Any changes to the plan?”

 

That voice—his voice—low, velvet-edged, unmistakable.

 

Renata’s fingers tightened on the curtain’s edge, ready to ease it aside, when the reply sliced through the air like a blade.

 

“None. The merchant vessel will sink in the Opus Strait as scheduled.”

 

Sink?

 

In the Opus Strait?

 

‘That’s a deep-water channel—nothing but massive trading ships ever pass through.’

 

So… the prince was orchestrating the deliberate sinking of a trade ship? A catastrophe disguised as accident?

 

‘What in the hells is happening right now?’

 

The sheer scale of it—of what she had just overheard—rooted her in place. Her grip on the velvet turned white-knuckled; she might as well have been nailed to the floor.

 

The next question came quieter, colder, almost intimate in its menace.

 

“And the crown prince? Any movement on his end?”

 

The words hung there—calm, precise, lethal.

 

Renata’s breath stopped entirely. She stood frozen behind the curtain, heart slamming against her ribs, every instinct screaming at her to run… and every deeper, more treacherous part of her refusing to leave him.

 

Because the man on the other side of that velvet divide—the one whose careless smirk had once made her want to throttle him, whose bare skin had burned itself into her memory—was no longer the indolent, teasing prince she thought she knew.

 

He was something else entirely.

 

Something dark.

 

Something plotting.

 

Something that could ruin kingdoms—and perhaps already had.

 

And still—gods help her—Renata could not make herself turn away.

 

She stayed.

 

Listening.

 

Breath shallow.

 

Body trembling not only from fear… but from the unbearable, magnetic pull of the man she had sworn was only her duty.

 

“They’re quietly recalling the troops we had stationed on the outskirts—using the hunting festival preparations as a pretext. We’ve already succeeded in capturing two of the groups. The people confined inside the cargo wagons they were driving… we’ve rescued and are now protecting them.”

 

“Were they… alchemists, by any chance?”

 

“Yes. Eight out of ten were. The recent surge in missing-persons reports may be also connected to… the Crown Prince’s side…”

 

The man presumed to be one of the prince’s subordinates continued his report, but Renata could no longer properly hear the words. She simply lowered her gaze in stunned silence, panic quietly swallowing her whole.

 

The person issuing commands in that dignified, resonant voice… could it truly be the prince she served?

 

The low, velvety timbre was unmistakably his—yet the sharp, authoritative edge that cut through every syllable felt utterly foreign, almost dangerous.

 

On top of the plan to sink the trade ship, the disappearances of alchemists, and now open references to the Crown Prince…

 

The weight of topics far too heavy for her to bear came crashing down all at once. 

 

Instinctively, she decided to retreat—slip away for now, collect her racing thoughts somewhere safer, and try to make sense of this nightmare later.

 

“Everyone has likely already guessed, but the reason the Tower Master is attending this hunting festival is to investigate the alchemist disappearances.”

 

The moment the Tower Master was mentioned, her feet froze against her will.

 

“Originally, to avoid unnecessary suspicion, I intended to skip the event entirely and arrange a discreet, private meeting with her…”

 

Theodore paused mid-sentence. A soft, deliberate hmph escaped him.

 

The silence that followed stretched far too long to be merely him catching his breath.

 

That particular stillness… she knew it intimately.

 

It was the exact same habit he displayed whenever she stood outside his office door, knocking, waiting—while he lingered inside, leisurely contemplating exactly how he would tease and torment her the moment she stepped in.

 

‘…Oh god.’

 

The realization hit like a spark against dry tinder.

 

That sudden, playful little sound—he was doing it now because he already knew she was here.

 

Swish—

 

The heavy curtain was drawn aside in one smooth motion.

 

Beneath the warm, intimate glow that softly illuminated the darkened chamber, a long table stood at the center like an altar.

 

And there he was.

 

Watching her.

 

The air between them thickened, charged with something unspoken and electric—his gaze dark, unhurried, and far too knowing.