Descendants of Ann, it’s you
Asion stood at the entrance of the banquet hall, he glanced around as he greeted the guests who had begun to arrive one after another.
Jess was checking the interior of the banquet hall one last time.
The musicians had already arrived and were tuning their instruments, and the ornately carved ice sculptures were in place.
‘I think it’s all done to this extent.’
Jess sighed as he checked off his list one last time and his gaze met Asion’s outside the hall.
Through their silent eyes, the two simultaneously asked each other the same question.
‘His Majesty isn’t finished yet?’
Once again, it was Asion who made the first move.
“Even though it’s been a week since they last met, isn’t it too late for them to come out? The banquet will start soon.”
“You go in and take a look.”
“What? How can I?”
“Then what about me?”
The two people, embarrassed and troubled, simultaneously turned their gazes toward the back door of the banquet hall.
The fact that they haven’t come out yet means that the two are stuck together.
“I’ve…seen it many times….”
“What?”
“This and that. Everything.”
Asion hung there with a miserable face.
Jess, unable to shake the feeling that he was fed up, took the lead with a look of disgust on his face.
“Huh, huh-hem. Your Majesty.”
Jess opened the back door and pushed half of his body inside, deliberately keeping his gaze outside the door and making only a sound.
“Your Majesty, the banquet will begin soon. Please be ready and come out.”
But the reaction inside was strange.
Many signs didn’t fit the description of an ‘affectionate meeting’. Rough breathing, faint sobs. Even a voice that was faintly muttering ‘Please save me’.
“Your Majesty? Miss Riella?”
Jess’s eyes widened as he carefully turned his head inside.
The middle of the garden was a mess. At first, he thought only the table had fallen over, but upon closer inspection, he saw Herhan and Riella lying down next to it.
“Your Majesty! Miss Riella!”
As Jess ran towards him screaming, Asion, who was right behind him, also jumped into the center of the garden.
“Your Majesty! What’s happened?!”
“Miss Riel…! Uh?”
While Jess was waking up Herhan, Asion, who had gone to Riella, let out a single sigh of bewilderment.
The person who was lying down on the floor was not Riella, but some other woman. The woman was covered in tears and snot, and she had a blank expression on her face, with blood dripping from the corner of her mouth.
“What is this? What the hell is this…?”
That was when.
As soon as Asion helped her up, the woman shook off his hand and started running outside.
Even though she was limping and fell, the woman ran away on all fours, looking straight ahead.
Asion sensed an ominous atmosphere and was about to chase after the woman, but Jess called out to him.
“Asion! Just leave that woman alone!”
“But I think—”
“Just leave it alone! His Majesty is in more danger!”
Asion’s expression turned pale at the urgency of Jess’ words.
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong with His Majesty…?”
“It’s like a seizure.”
“What!?”
Asion was more shocked than when he found out that the woman who had been with his lord the whole time was not Riella, and when she ran away in such a creepy manner.
“Take care of his Majesty.”
Jess, who had handed over his lord to Asion, immediately began to look around.
A fallen table. Spilled drinks. A broken glass.
Jess’s hands trembled as he hurriedly scanned the lawn. Then, when he touched a shard of glass somewhere on the ground and bled, Jess gave up on finding clues and returned to Herhan.
“Your Majesty. Your Majesty! Can you hear me? Your Majesty?”
“Ah…Ugh…”
Instead of answering, Herhan only let out a groan of pain. Sweat was pouring down his forehead and his face looked pale, as if all the blood had drained from it.
Herhan didn’t recognize Jess or Asion. Even though his eyes were open, they were unfocused and seemed to be unable to see.
“Why? Why did he suddenly have a seizure?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s a seizure or not. First, let’s take some emergency medicine.…!”
Jess, who had jumped up as if to go get some medicine, opened his mouth wide before he could even take a step. He had completely forgotten to keep an extra supply of emergency medicine since his last checkup.
“Jess, this is not going to work. I’ll stay here, so you go out and get help right away!”
“You are the captain of the guard and I am a doctor. Who do you want me to call?!”
“Jess! Come on!”
Jess, who had been in a daze, realized who it was he needed to find right away, and he ran frantically toward the Lake Palace.
Riella Blinite. She is the only one who can save his lord.
‘please…Please, Miss Riella….’
But Riella was not in the lake palace.
“Oh, Miss Riella? I don’t see her…”
“What do you mean, you don’t see her!”
“I thought she had gone to the main palace because she hadn’t been in her bedroom since morning. Today is the day His Majesty is coming, so I thought she went out early to greet him…”
At that moment, a short girl with short hair yawned and came out from among the maids who were just blankly staring. It was Lou, the maid closest to Riella.
Jess immediately grabbed Lou’s shoulder.
“How long has Miss Riella been away? Where is she now?”
“Huh? Isn’t she at the main palace? I fell asleep early yesterday….Since last night, Loriel said she would take care of it herself…”
Loriell.
Jess’s heart sank at the name.
‘Now that I think about it, wasn’t that woman who ran away from the garden earlier Loriell?’
‘Wait a minute. The clothes that the maid was wearing.…That’s definitely the dress I gave her yesterday for Miss Riella to wear….’
Jess’s mind went blank.
‘Oh my god. What the hell is going on!’
* * *
Riella opened her eyes, feeling nauseous, at the constant noise and vibration.
Her eyelids felt heavy and her head felt dizzy.
The ceiling above her was low. She was startled by the shaking in her bed as if there had been an earthquake, and when she sat up, she found herself inside a carriage.
‘Carriage…?’
For a moment, Riella thought she was in a dream. She was confused about where she was going with the carriage.
Suddenly, she came to her senses and felt goosebumps rise up her spine when she saw through the window at the front of the carriage who was driving the horse.
“That…El!”
Riella’s call was like a scream.
Even though El knew that Riella had woken up, he didn’t look back.
The carriage was going full speed ahead.
“El! What are you doing? Where am I?”
It was only then that Riella realized that her wrists were tied.
The fact was that she was wearing only the thin indoor clothes she usually wore and that there was no one else there besides her and El.
It was clearly a ‘kidnapping’.
‘But why me? Because I know his true identity? To deal with me?’ Riella clenched her fists and shouted forward.
“Sir El! Stop right now. Stop the carriage! Sir El!”
Of course, El didn’t even pretend to hear. Riella looked around anxiously and then kicked the carriage door open.
—Bang!
The carriage was going so fast that the open door rattled and fell off under the weight and speed.
Only then did El slow down his horse, but he never turned back.
“Sir El!”
“It’s dangerous. Please sit still.”
“Stop the carriage!”
“Even if you make a fuss, there is no one here who will save the Ambassador.”
“Stop! Or I’ll jump!”
She saw El’s back flinch slightly.
Riella shouted louder, gaining momentum.
“I swear!”
“Ambassador.”
“I’m really going to jump!”
Riella stood up awkwardly from her seat.
The carriage was rattling violently, and the door was falling off, and she could have easily fallen out.
But Riella was confident that El would stop the carriage, and her prediction was right.
“What are you thinking? If you had fallen, you could have died!”
A carriage stopped in the middle of a deep forest.
El stepped down from the coachman’s seat and immediately pulled Riella out of the carriage and shouted loudly, but Riella did not give in and just looked straight at him.
“Wasn’t Sir El going to kill me anyway, even if I hadn’t fallen from the carriage and died?”
El bit his lips for a while before finally responding to the gaze that was staring straight at him without avoiding it.
“Why should I kill the Ambassador?”
“Because I know your secret. That you are looking for a ‘descendant.’”
Elle laughed bitterly.
‘As expected, you know everything.’
But what Riella said next was a little strange.
“What do you plan to do with his Majesty? Are you going to accuse His Majesty of being a descendant of Enril and have him removed from the throne?”
“Do you think I was after His Majesty…?
“Don’t pretend you don’t know, I know everything!”
As she said that, what Riella pulled out from the back of her neck was Iel’s necklace.
“This. It was a tool to determine the descendants of Enril. I clearly saw the color change in front of His Majesty.”
Only then did El realize that Riella had figured out a lot, but she had not yet reached the full truth.
“That’s right. It’s a magic stone that reacts to ‘descendants.’ It turns blue in front of Enril’s descendants.”
“So it’s—”
“and it turns red in front of Ann’s descendants.”
“….!”
At those words, Riella forgot about her plan to attack El and immediately became dazed.
“What did you just say?”
“What I was looking for was the descendants of Ann.”
El drove a wedge into Riella, who couldn’t believe it even after hearing the truth.
“Ambassador. I mean you.”
“I guess His Majesty hasn’t told you yet. I thought you would know by now.”
“Don’t play around.”
“I can prove it right here. Take off that necklace right now and throw it far away. It will turn black again.”
“You’re lying….”
As he said, It’s completely black.
El was right.
As Riella took off her necklace and threw it far away on the sandy ground, the red light began to fade like a fire dying down.
Then, when she approached it again and picked it up, it turned red again as if it was burning.
‘You mean it wasn’t always this red? It’s reacting to the descendants of Antu?’
Riella lowered her head, trembling.
That necklace, which she had been wearing around her neck for several days as if it was her own, seemed strange to her as if she was seeing it for the first time.
The term ‘descendant of Ann’ was also like that. Even though she had heard it through all sorts of research books and Herhan’s mouth, it still felt difficult and confusing to Riella, as if she was hearing it for the first time.
‘How can I be a descendant of Ann?’
That was the first thought that came to her mind when her vision went black as if she had been hit hard in the head.
All of Ann’s descendants are gone. They no longer exist.
“I don’t understand, but I do know one thing: if I’m really a descendant of Ann, and that is why Sir El was targeting me from the beginning.”
Riella, who had been muttering with a blank expression on her face as if she had lost her mind, suddenly picked up a stone from the floor.
While El was confused by the sudden action, the stone thrown by Riella broke the carriage window.
Riella picked up the largest, sharpest piece of glass that had fallen to the ground and held it to her neck.
“If I do this, Sir El will be in a lot of trouble.”
“Ambassador!”
“Right? Am I threatening Sir El right now?”
* * *
