Marcus Aidonias let out a long, heavy sigh.

  He stood on the cliff edge and dropped his breeches.

  He tried hooking the tassets over his arm so they wouldn’t get wet, but they always slipped anyway and ended up soaked in piss.

  He hadn’t had a single day off since the new year.

  Ever since he’d been named captain of the investigation into Prince Heracleios’s assassination, he hadn’t been home once.

  Roughly one month after the incident, they had finally captured the suspect in the port town of Alba at the southern tip of the Targa Peninsula. After interrogating her and getting a confession, the contents were so explosive that his superior immediately ordered her escorted to the capital.

  The suspect was a twenty-two-year-old woman named Bato Sera.

  She was the daughter of Bato Levantus, owner of the Bato Trading Company—a grain wholesaler in the capital. Her guarantor when she entered palace service had been the second consort, Lady Luciana, daughter of Duke Pantios.

  He sent a runner to report at once.

  The messenger came back saying they couldn’t even get an audience; they’d had no choice but to surround the mansion.

  No one could question a queen.

  They continued interrogating Bato Sera.

  The woman hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours, hadn’t eaten, and was hanging there with piss and shit running down her legs.

  Her whole body was covered in bruises and her face was swollen beyond recognition.

  Even so, she blurted out something insane.

  She definitely said she had released a venomous snake into His Majesty’s tent.

  And that she had poisoned the prince’s late-night meal.

  Her mouth was so swollen it was hard to understand her, but multiple people confirmed they’d heard exactly those words.

  Everyone already knew the prince had been poisoned, but no one had known the late king had been murdered too.

  They all looked at one another, feeling that something truly monstrous was unfolding.

  They had no choice but to report it, so they sent another messenger to the capital. Following orders, they loaded the suspect into the escort wagon and headed north along the open eastern coastal road.

  On the way, Bato Sera suddenly started convulsing. They pulled her out of the wagon and called for the medics—at that exact moment, a single arrow punched straight through her right eye.

  The suspect was dead.

  They immediately spread out to search the area, but the archer was gone.

  While Marcus stood there wondering what the hell to do next, he suddenly needed to piss.

  The spot was a small rise, but right beyond it was a sheer cliff.

  His urethra burned. A groan slipped out.

  The tassets slid down again. He didn’t care anymore.

  He took another deep breath.

  A whole month of work, wasted.

  Standing on the cliff, the foaming sea below, a blindingly blue sky above.

  Dead men tell no tales.

  The only thing they had learned was that the murders of the late king, the prince, and the princess were all connected.

  And that whoever had shot Bato Sera had used the same black-fletched arrows as the one who killed the princess.

  He had to report this.

  It made him sick.

  His piss had finally stopped.

  When he looked down to pull his breeches back up, it was bright red.

  Blood.

  His vision swam.

  The next thing he knew, he was lying in the shade.

  Apparently he had collapsed.

  If he’d fallen the other way, he would have gone straight off the cliff.

  The report to the capital still hadn’t been sent.

  His men had apparently loaded the body into the wagon with the arrow still sticking out of the eye.

  He handed the written report to a runner and sent him galloping off.

  Then the unit turned once more toward the capital.

  ◇

  “Captain Aidonias of the Hundred, report the full details.”

  When he finally reached the capital he had apparently collapsed again; when he woke up he was in the military sanatorium.

  Even so, they showed him no mercy and demanded his report immediately.

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  He had begun the investigation with the poisoning of Prince Heracleios, interviewed the palace servants, and discovered that one servant had vanished right after the incident.

  Her name was Bato Sera, twenty-two years old, daughter of Bato Levantus, owner of the Bato grain trading company in the capital.

  Assuming the suspect had fled, been killed, or was in hiding, they split the search: one team sweeping the countryside, another combing the area around the capital.

  During the main investigation, the second princess was murdered. At the scene they found multiple bloodstains, signs of a struggle, and a shattered, burned-out carriage.

  The attackers’ bodies were gone.

  After the attack, the princess’s guard unit reported to Count Alias’s residence in the capital. Count Alias himself rushed to the site by carriage and personally escorted the princess’s body and the queen to his domain.

  When they questioned Count Alias, he stated the body had already been cremated and the arrows discarded.

  He described the arrows as having black fletching.

  The attackers numbered over twenty, including one mage whom the queen had killed with lightning—yet no corpse remained.

  Another was an archer skilled enough to pierce a girl’s chest from extreme range, also using black-fletched arrows.

  Meanwhile, Bato Sera had fled west from the capital, changed clothes near Reva on the Targa Peninsula, and kept running.

  They expanded the net north, west, and south. At the very southern tip, in Alba, customs officers caught her trying to stow away. After confirmation she was the suspect, interrogation began.

  In her statement she named Lady Luciana, daughter of Duke Pantios and second consort, as her guarantor for palace employment. He reported this to the capital.

  The messenger returned saying questioning had been refused and the mansion surrounded.

  Further interrogation led her to confess to poisoning both the late king and the prince.

  This was reported to the capital, and they received orders to escort her back.

  En route, Bato Sera suffered convulsions. They removed her from the wagon and called the medics—only for her to be shot dead. They searched the area but found no archer.

  That was the entire sequence of events.

  “Current status?”

  “We have obtained Queen Luciana’s testimony. She claims she only agreed to help because of existing business ties with the Bato Company and that she was begged to arrange employment. She denies any involvement in the incident. An investigation team is already heading to the Pantios duchy.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Well done. Go rest. Dismissed.”

  His superior left.

  Thankfully, no one blamed him for the suspect being silenced.

  Still… it looked like he wouldn’t be going home anytime soon.

  Who the hell was the mastermind?

  The thread had been cut.

  Where was that black-fletched archer hiding?

  ◇

  “Bullshit!”

  Another furious roar leaked from the lord’s office.

  Every time it happened, the new red-haired servant girl waiting outside the door flinched and shrank into herself.

  Normally a veteran servant would stand there, but for the past few weeks Duke Remedios of Pantios had been in such a foul mood that the others had shoved the duty onto her and fled.

  “You okay?”

  She looked up with a start and saw Talia’s gentle face. Relief hit her so hard she burst into tears.

  Talia offered her handkerchief. The girl—who had only just turned fourteen—wiped her face.

  The tears were fine, but when Talia took back the snot-covered cloth she frowned. Remembering her teacher’s words—“Train hands and feet from childhood”—she quietly stuffed it into her pocket.

  Talia was in her fifth year as a mid-level servant at the Pantios ducal residence, yet she held absolute trust from colleagues, the head butler, and even the duchess herself.

  This was because she possessed medical knowledge and could use magic.

  Three years earlier, the duke’s five-year-old nephew had broken his arm playing in the garden.

  While the household panicked and the doctor—who was apparently ill—showed no sign of coming, Talia offered to examine the boy.

  The distal radius of his left arm was completely fractured.

  While the child screamed and his mother grew hysterical, Talia calmly reset the bone, splinted it, and bandaged it.

  By the time she finished wrapping, the boy had stopped crying and was snoring softly.

  He must have cried himself to sleep.

  When the elderly doctor finally arrived and examined the boy, he simply said, “Nothing more I can do,” took no payment, and left.

  The mother calmed down and followed all of Talia’s aftercare instructions.

  After that, Talia was called whenever anything happened. She now secretly received the second-highest salary in the household after the head butler.

  Talia was a graduate of the Magic Academy but had never joined the Mage Division. She had taken this local post instead.

  The dean back then had been Lunaflare, and Talia had belonged to her research lab during her student days.

  Although Lunaflare was dean in name only—the vice-dean ran everything—she had zero interest in the academy’s standardized curriculum. The one thing she had personally created was a lab she named “Moon Shadow.”

  At first, many had rushed to join, thinking they would study under the kingdom’s strongest disaster-class mage. Instead, Lunaflare deliberately chose the misfits—talented students who couldn’t be properly evaluated because of status, family, or teaching style.

  There they learned not only secret magic techniques never taught elsewhere, but also medicine, pharmacology, and even military hand-to-hand combat.

  The instructors had been poached from the academy and the army itself.

  One of them was a woman who had blown up a laboratory, scarring half her face and losing her right eye and her job—yet she still continued her research.

  The lab’s graduates each went their own way, but none ever made big names for themselves.

  Because of that, Lunaflare’s lab was mockingly called the “misfit lab.” She didn’t care.

  Because every single person who had passed through “Moon Shadow” had become her eyes, ears, and mouth—her own personal shadows scattered across the kingdom.

  Talia was one of them.

  “I’ll take over here. The serving staff are short-handed for dinner prep, so go help them.”

  The girl answered “Yes!” and hurried away.

  Talia had been listening carefully to the conversation inside the office.

  It seemed Bato Levantus had given false testimony.

  Duke Pantios had apparently confessed that he had pressured Levantus to place Bato Sera in the palace.

  Because of this, the military now suspected the duke of being the mastermind behind the late king’s poisoning—or possibly even Prince Heracleios’s assassination. They were preparing an advance investigation team of one hundred men, plus a follow-up force of ten thousand troops in case things turned ugly.

  In truth, he had begged his business partner to find his daughter a job and even paid money for it—only to be repaid with betrayal.

  The advance team had already pitched camp just outside the duchy and would send a messenger soon.

  Come to think of it, wasn’t the teacher in this area right now? Talia suddenly realized.

  The Moon Shadow members constantly exchanged information with Lunaflare’s two closest aides—not through letters, but through telepathic magic.

  According to the latest contact, Denaris and Lunaflare’s party had left the Alias domain two days ago. Given the current situation, they had probably taken the western road instead of heading toward the capital.

  That meant they should be somewhere in the eastern part of the Pantios duchy right about now.

  She was thinking the teacher would be fine when someone came running up the stairs in heavy armor.

  The man stopped in front of the office door and knocked.

  A close aide peeked out. The messenger whispered his report, then stood at attention in front of the closed door.

  “What is it this time?”

  Duke Remedios’s irritated voice came from inside.

  “The security patrol captured a suspicious group traveling the eastern road. The woman who seems to be the leader claims to be Alias Lunaflare. Awaiting instructions…”

  The moment Talia heard “Lunaflare,” she almost burst out laughing. Inside, Remedios choked.

  “Did you ask about her appearance?”

  “Uh… extremely eccentric clothing, and hair like snakes, they say…”

  Talia had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.

  Snake hair—during travel she always braided it. So this time it was snakes? So like the teacher.

  The messenger glared at her, so she quickly lowered her head.

  “W-well… there’s no doubt it’s the former vice-commander. Invite her in. And be extremely courteous…”

  The aide relayed the order to the messenger.

  The man flinched, then hurried off as fast as he could.

  He probably thought he had just been rude to an actual monster.

  Talia sighed.

  Looks like dinner preparations were about to get even more chaotic.

  Thank you so much for reading! ??

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