Chapter 84

Chapter 84

While accepting the Princess’s visit, I was consumed in all sorts of troubles by myself.

‘…What if it’s a trick of this world to somehow turn Dimitri into a villain and kill him?’

Such a tragic development was pictured in my head, in which the god of fate, who tried to somehow move forward according to the predetermined fate, sent the Princess to Blois to conflict with Dimitri.

‘What if the cat shapeshifters make a big mistake with the Princess? What if the Cayetana or elders drive a wedge between her and Dimitri? Or what if Dimitri is blamed for an unavoidable accident…?’

It was evident that I was anxious and engulfed in negative thoughts all day long.

Dimitri asked, swirling the wine around.

“Do you have any concerns?”

He looked a little sleepy and languid as he asked that. He seemed very comfortable in his half-reclining position on the couch.

“Before we talk about my concerns, may I ask why you’re getting ready to go to sleep in my office like this?”

I widened my eyes and stared at Dimitri fiercely.

Recently, his office has been overrun with aristocrats who have an emergency regarding the slave trader of the Count of Bilbao, so I used that as an excuse to finally share the office. Viscount Villefranc, who was stomping his feet because Dimitri was distracted by me, was the most excited.

However, the Viscount wouldn’t have known that he would be stuck in my office like this ever since. Dimitri grinned shamelessly, his face languid and a little bewitching.

“There’s nowhere else in Blois that’s as quiet as this place these days.”

“Maybe the reason the mansion is so noisy is because Dimitri keeps disappearing, and the servants are looking for you?”

People have been desperately looking for Dimitri these past few days, and it made me wonder if cats might enjoy bothering people in some way.

“It’s because they bother me so much.”

Despite his words, it was clear that he was enjoying the situation, not that he was receiving the attention of the elders.

‘He’s like a mischievous cat.’

Shaking my head, I sneakily brought up the story about the Princess.

“Dimitri, what do you think of the First Princess?”

“Well, a fallen, unstable string?”

‘That’s not what I meant, but he’s right.’

The heroine, Elaine, was the daughter of the late Empress.

The Empress was abdicated after being caught for a ridiculous reason, but the real reason was that she had become politically useless.

For four generations, the Astor Imperial Family has been at war to conquer Pelsian, located in the far west.

Pelsian was a country with a vast territory, a very long history, and a developed culture. The Imperial Family had been fighting the Pelsian for a very long time, and finally, under the current Emperor, they succeeded in conquering most of the region with a stronger military force.

‘Dimitri had a lot of credit for that.’

However, the Astor family focused only on the goal of ‘conquest’ for too long and hadn’t thought beyond that.

How to govern that huge territory so far away from the empire?

As a result, there were constant insurgent movements to rebuild Pelsian in various places. So, what the Emperor finally came up with was the marriage policy.

He dethroned the existing empress and appointed the empress of Pelsian as the new empress, saying, “The Pelsian people have become my people, so I’ll treat them equally as equals to the people of my empire.”

This marriage policy was a classic political maneuver to appease the populace and prevent rebellion.

‘The ones who became pitiful due to that were the late Empress and her surviving Princess, Elaine.’

The new empress, a foreigner, was struggling to establish herself in a precarious position, and in her eyes, Elaine, a grown woman about her age, was an eyesore. And so, to protect herself, Elaine has been living very quietly in the imperial palace, erasing her presence as if she weren’t there.

‘But now she’s at a crossroads between marriage and seizing power.’

The Empress, desperate to get rid of Elaine before her eyes, has been whispering to the Emperor to send her away in marriage to a faraway land.

The Elaine I knew wasn’t greedy for power, but she hated marriage.

Thus, while trying to escape from the Imperial Family, she wandered around the imperial city looking for an opening to escape and stumbled upon a scene of hounds being mistreated. She helped an abused hound, who turned out to be the male protagonist, Cadis.

As she tried to convince Cadis to run away, she was stunned by his tearful loyalty.

‘…Just like I did when I met Cadis.’

Loyalty as straight and unwavering as a loyal dog to the point that it felt suffocating.

I knew how shocking it was because I’ve been through it. Of course, there was a curse spell that stopped the heart if you weren’t loyal to the Emperor, but the loyalty of the dog shapeshifters didn’t stem from that curse spell.

Their loyalty was a racial trait, albeit with some individual variation.

Seeing Cadis like that, she made a decision that she would become emperor and free the dog shapeshifters so that they could find for themselves a master who would cherish and love them for who they were and not take violent advantage of that pure loyalty.

As the first step to seizing power, she seeks to gain the Emperor’s trust.

To do so, it involved her uncovering the corruption of the Count of Bilbao’s slave traders and delivering a significant blow to Blois, whom the Emperor was wary of, and boasting her presence in the political scene.

‘…But I completely ruined it all.’

Although I hadn’t done anything wrong, since I knew everything about Elaine’s situation, I couldn’t bear to look at her.

‘I had to do it for my cats…’

I felt terribly guilty that I asked Dimitri to do it.

“You know, I personally like the First Princess very much, so I want to look good for her… very much. So Dimitri, if you don’t particularly dislike her, would you cooperate with me?”

“Do you know her well?”

The question made me think about what kind of relationship ‘Rowaine’ had with Elaine. I hadn’t thought about the relationship between ‘Rowaine’ and Elaine until now because I was thinking about the relationship between Dimitri and Elaine instead.

‘Wait a minute. Maybe this is a situation where I need to be careful, not Dimitri?’

In the original story, ‘Rowaine’ hadn’t yet come face-to-face with Elaine, and it wasn’t until she became the Emperor’s mistress that she did. For some reason, however, not only did she hate Elaine, whom she had never met, but she abused Cadis, whom the heroine loved.

‘Come to think of it, Elaine probably knows a little bit about Rowaine.’

…To the extent of being a shapeshifters abuser.

I swallowed dry saliva.

‘Wouldn’t she be upset since I stole the slave trader plan?’

That was what I thought, though she couldn’t really argue with me because she wouldn’t think I knew what she was doing. Nonetheless, it seemed unlikely that Elaine, who had been feigning ill health, would come to distant Blois at this time of year for any other purpose.

‘She’s coming to see me because you want to know what happened.’

I grew timid at the thought as my shoulders grew smaller before I muttered the words like an incantation.

“I don’t know her. I’ve never even seen her, but I like her so I hope she’s doing well. I’m sure she’s very, very nice, and I hope everyone in Blois is good to her, for my sake…”

Dimitri tilted his head.

“You look scared?”

I almost nodded my head in agreement.

‘I don’t want to die being branded as a villain by the main character.’

He then asked me, who was trembling with anxiety.

“Why do you like her so much? You said you’ve never even met her.”

“Ah, it’s… that…”

I couldn’t say that because she was the absolute protagonist in this world, so I decided to cover it up.

“Um, because she’s pretty.”

“….!”

Wasn’t appearance the obvious reason why you might be attracted to someone you’ve never met?

“I actually like pretty people. I happened to meet her by chance from afar, and her beautiful platinum hair and lovely pink eyes, as if dyed in cherry blossoms, left a deep impression on me. How dazzling was her smile… It was love at first sight.”

Dimitri stared at me with a strange look in his eyes.

“Beautiful? Are you saying that you like people by their appearance?”

“Yes, that’s just why. She was really dazzling.”

…I’ve never actually seen her, though.

Dimitri, who listened to me, straightened his back and sat up. Then, with a grumpy face, he raised the silver tray in front of him at an angle and reflected the light toward me.

I frowned and blocked the light with my hand.

“What are you doing?”

“This is what blinding actually is. Humans aren’t even luminous, so there’s no way you’ll be blinded.”

“Stop it!”

Dimitri stood up with a snort.

“I’m busy, so I’m going to leave first.”

He was truly an enigmatic cat.

‘What…?’

“You were there again, Your Excellency? I’ve been looking for you!”

Hyle, who spotted Dimitri coming out of Rowaine’s office, hurriedly approached him.

“There are people who have come to see Your Excellency gathered in the office, so let’s go see them first.”

He urged, but Dimitri was too busy trying to look at his reflection in the window.

“Hyle.”

“Yes.”

He turned to face Hyle and smiled.

“What do you think, dazzling?”

“….?”

At those words, Hyle replied, glancing out the window behind Dimitri.

“The sunlight is nice, though.”

“No, look at me.”

Saying so, Dimitri rested his chin between his forefinger and thumb before smiling again.

“Isn’t my smile dazzling?”

Hyle thought.

‘…The more people there are, the more problems there are.’

He swiftly gave the thumbs up of both hands and praised his boss in a fuss.

“Ah, such an obvious statement. Your Excellency is indeed the most handsome man in the Empire!”

Dimitri patted Hyle’s shoulder as if he was satisfied.

“I see. Let’s go to work.”

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