Chapter 133 Two Letters
It was late at night, but the Emperor’s office was well lit. A gray-haired, saintly servant came in with a letter in his hand.
“Your Majesty, your correspondence has arrived.”
A wicked grin spread across Jonathan’s lips as he read the letter.
‘Things are moving along, good!’
He immediately picked up his quill and began to write. A moment later, after handing the two envelopes to the servant, Jonathan spoke up.
“Send them off at once.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The servant’s eyes widened in surprise as he recognized the names on the envelopes. One was addressed to Tate, the other to Onyx, a member of the Ashmore Intelligence Guild.
For a moment, the servant wondered bitterly at the contents of a letter addressed to both of them simultaneously at such a late hour, but his curiosity was soon quelled. It was one of those abilities that came with life in the Imperial Palace.
“And have the Imperial Guard ready.”
“You mean the Imperial Guard…?”
Not to question, not to ask, even if he did. It was a rule the older servant had followed for years, but this time he couldn’t help but ask. It seemed to him that something dangerous was about to happen.
Jonathan’s eyebrows wiggled as if he didn’t like the servant’s question.
“Yes. There are reports of a peculiar group taking advantage of the distraction to make their move.”
“My goodness… such a thing…! Yes, I am at your command, Your Majesty!”
A special group! Unsettling movements! Late at night, in the dark, plotting treason!
The chamberlain, who still remembered the civil unrest in the south five years ago, shivered at the coldness of the beads of sweat trickling down his back.
Jonathan smirked as he watched the panting servant run behind him.
“There are some things that are just plain unsavory. Bastards.”
His eyes glinted in the light, almost demonic in their gleam. With a satisfied grin, Jonathan rose to his feet.
He would lead the guard himself. He couldn’t afford to be left out of this moment, when they were about to extract the tooth that had plagued him all his life.
“I suppose this is one time we can take them all out at once.”
***
Onyx’s office. It was not easy to catch the kidnapper by the tail, and the mood was somber. A groaning sigh fills the room.
There was a knock on the door, and a guild member entered, handing Onyx a letter.
“It’s from the Emperor.”
“The Emperor?”
Onyx took the letter in surprise, much to the surprise of Veronia and Killion, who were also present at the late arrival of the Emperor’s letter.
Onyx put the letter down when he had finished reading it.
“I’m asking you to look into the situation at Oaks Manor, as I suspect Prince Tate is up to something.”
“Tate from the burned mansion?”
“Why would the Emperor ask you to do that?”
Veronia and Killion asked, their eyes wide. Onyx rubbed his face in confusion and spoke slowly.
“… It happened.”
He recounted his trip to the imperial palace just yesterday. He told her that the Empress Dowager he’d met at the Emperor’s dinner invitation was actually his biological mother, and that the Emperor had asked him to cooperate with him, using that bombshell as leverage.
Veronia looked at Onyx with concern as he continued to ramble on, as if confiding in a third party.
“Onyx, are you okay?”
“Me? What’s not okay?”
Onyx asked back, surprised by Veronia’s question.
“At least… you found your biological mother.”
“My biological mother… That’s right.”
“…”
“I told the Emperor, but just because I found my biological mother, and he told me to tell the Empress, doesn’t change anything.”
Veronia’s heart sank as she watched Onyx shrug his shoulders as if it didn’t matter.
In the original story, Sandra was executed, along with the rest of the imperial family, by a treasonous band of commoners and nobles. And it was not until much later that Onyx realized that the dead Sandra was actually her biological mother.
‘Although he had never met her mother, let alone loved him, Onyx’s affection for the executed Sandra was great.’
So he wanted to take revenge on Killion for overthrowing the imperial family and becoming Emperor, and that’s how he became the dark side of the original.
The original story is long overdue. Sandra is still alive, and so Onyx would not have dreams of revenge and malice against Killion.
But that didn’t remove the idea that she had a special affection for the woman who gave birth to her.
‘He’s acting like he’s fine, but he’s not.’
Onyx himself didn’t seem to realize it yet, let alone anyone else, but Veronia, who had read the original, knew all too well.
But she wasn’t in a position to pretend to know, and there were few words of comfort she could offer.
“To say the least, it must have been difficult for you to lose your mother so suddenly…”
“Yeah, what… a little bit, I guess.”
Perhaps she was uncomfortable talking about his birth mother any further, Onyx cut to the chase, her eyes once again locked on those of a talented member of the Intelligence Guild.
“Either Prince Tate is up to something, as the Emperor says, or it’s all a ruse by the Emperor, and there’s a very high probability that it involves our Jediel.”
Everyone listening to Onyx’s summation nodded.
“I suppose we’ll just have to go there to find out for sure.”
“We’ll be prepared.”
Veronia, Killion, Onyx, and Yassen stood up.
***
‘What the hell is this all about, when the plan was obviously to scupper the whole thing?’
A rather nervous-looking Tate sat in a carriage traveling through the dark streets of the capital, rereading a letter he had already read several times.
[Tate, I know the enormity of what you have done. You think you did it just to please your mother.
But you were wrong. Nia Lampert, the fiancée of the Lord Chancellor of Drea, is your sister Veronia, whom we thought dead.]
He read and read, but he couldn’t believe it. Veronia is alive! He saw her burned to death with his own two eyes five years ago!
‘Does that mean it was all a hoax, then? If she’d gone into hiding with such a big hoax, she’d stay in hiding, and why is she engaged to Killion again? Does that mean the child is actually Killion’s child? What the hell is going on?’
The unanswered question lingered in the back of his mind. Tate composed himself again and read down the letter.
[So the child you touched is to be our nephew. Same imperial family. I want you to fix this immediately.
I don’t think the people or I would forgive you if you hurt a member of our family, even if you were my precious brother].
To hell with my precious brother! Tate crumpled the letter into two fists when he finished reading it.
“What the fuck is this bullshit, holy shit!”
Tate’s face flushed bright red. He knew he needed to keep his cool more than ever, but he was having a hard time controlling his bubbling tantrum.
He had a plan. A plan he made with Sandra.
‘It’s so unfair that I’m the only one who feels the grief of losing my beloved child, I can’t bear it, and I’m going to get revenge on that Drea Chancellor who has the audacity to walk around with his face in the air, pretending to be the justice of the world!’
‘I think that will ease this tantrum a little, so that when I’m dead there will be a face to look upon my Caspian. Tate, why don’t you help me with that?’
‘… Of course, mother. Anything I can do to help, I’ll do.’
So, step by step, they devised a plan. The plan was to take advantage of Killion’s absence from the capital and kidnap the boy who would soon become his son.
But the plan was taking shape. For some reason, Sandra called off the plan. Not only that, but she didn’t even meet with Tate.
Heartbroken by Sandra’s sudden change in attitude, Tate briefly considered going through with the plan on his own. The desire to get back at Sandra by blaming her for the whole thing briefly reared its ugly head.
But he decided against it. The thought of taking on the Duke of Drea alone was too daunting.
‘So you’ve assured me over and over again that you’re backing out of the plan, but these guys!’
It seems that the guys from Kalmadi, the dark guild he had commissioned in the first place, had gone rogue. He remembered their furious reaction when he told them he was canceling the project.
‘They’re just trying to trap me and extort money from me.’
He’s molars clenched. It wasn’t hard to guess that they’d demand several times the amount they’d originally promised in exchange for my silence and reparations for what they’d done tonight. The thought of being ripped off by a bunch of thugs made his head hurt.
‘My brother will not stand idly by, and I wonder how many times he will take advantage of this weakness… I shudder to think of it.’
He groaned in agony.
