Chapter 172: Unwilling Insider

"Thank you for guiding Sir Streit, Mühe."

"I’ll do anything you ask of me."

Lady Mühe’s manner was very polite and courteous. Through Hilda, I had come to understand how beautiful a woman could be when she gave a genuine smile, and Mühe’s smile was much the same.

I had no idea what kind of relationship the two women had, but my head was a mess right now and I couldn’t think straight. The middle-aged woman in front of me had just introduced herself as the wife of Klugen, the Rose Knight.

I dug carefully through my memory.

When Old Man Bertheim had asked me to find Klugen, he’d said it was the dying wish of a handmaid he’d loved like a granddaughter. I’d brushed it off as just another story, but I never imagined I’d run into her here.

"I’m sorry for deceiving you against my own wishes."

"You’re perfectly alive. Why did you pretend to be dead?"

Faking your own death is how you hide from the eyes of the world. But why would a former handmaid of a marquis’s house need to do that? All sorts of questions ran through my mind at once.

The Manager Scouter confirmed that her claims and information checked out. What caught my attention was the group she belonged to. I’d never heard of an organization called "Hoenir."

And most importantly, her disposition was obsession (neutral).

It was the first time I’d ever seen Obsession listed as a disposition.

"Günter was a righteous knight who respected Baron Constance more than anyone. There were times I even felt jealous because my husband seemed to think more of the baron than of me."

The folly of our younger days, she said. The way Clara smiled, bittersweet, as if longing for that time, struck me as deeply melancholy. She must have loved Klugen profoundly. It was probably the happiest period of her life.

But Baron Constance’s death brought everything crashing down.

After the war ended, Klugen vanished.

For Clara, it must have been a bolt from the blue—sheer despair.

"I tried to find my missing husband, but the world isn’t kind to a woman alone. Unfortunately, the only people who showed me any kindness were the sort who wanted my body or wanted to use me."

So Clara came to rely on Old Man Bertheim, who was like a grandfather to her. As time passed, she joined Hoenir, the shadow of Altringen, with Bertheim at its head.

I finally understood the source of the old man’s information network. But was it really all right for her to be telling me about a secret intelligence organization working in the shadows of Altringen?

Knowing a secret like this would make me an unwilling insider with no way out. Clara seemed to read my concern and smiled gently.

"The marquis gave his permission. You’re worth that much."

"...He still thinks highly of me, I see."

"I owe him a great deal. He was like a real grandfather to me."

Clara had become the head of Hoenir thanks to Bertheim’s recommendation. And she had found Klugen and tried tirelessly to bring him back to who he used to be.

But Klugen had already gone mad.

"He was already a phantom. No, he was the phantom itself."

Clara loosened the front of her dress. I flinched in surprise, but the meaning of the deep scar running from her chest down to her navel was clear. A slash from a blade. Clara smiled mournfully and said,

"There was nothing more anyone could do. In the end, he would never stop hunting the crown prince, and someday... he might have succeeded. That’s why I approached you."

A useful piece for removing her beloved husband.

Clara took a sip of the red wine Mühe poured for her and added nothing more.

"..."

A heavy silence settled over the room.

I’d already guessed that Old Man Bertheim had approached me with some ulterior motive. Otherwise, would he really have offered up a splendid mansion like Rosengarden just to find one man?

Knowing the old man’s disposition, I wasn’t particularly shocked. He’d already used me once before to save Viktor. And I’d received plenty of help from him in return.

I’d already made my peace with it, but Clara seemed to want to set the record straight so I wouldn’t resent the old man. She made it clear that the whole thing had been her plan.

"Don’t misunderstand. The marquis never used you. He simply granted my request. Engineering a connection between you and my husband was my doing."

The old man had retired when Grand Duke Karlus took the throne and was no longer deeply involved in such matters.

Hearing her explanation, I caught myself feeling relieved that my friendship and warm feelings toward the old man hadn’t been in vain.

"I still have nightmares. If I’d just tried a little harder, maybe I could have saved him. Nothing but belated regret, over and over."

Clara’s face was slowly contorting. From the pain, perhaps. As bright red as the wine sloshing in her glass, blood was running from the hand that gripped it. The wound seemed to speak for what was inside her.

"Your hand is hurt!"

"It’s fine, Mühe."

Startled, Mühe tried to tend to her hand, but Clara refused.

She gazed at the blood trickling from her hand as if admiring it, and said,

"The one who got Baron Constance killed was Queen Alexandra."

"...And yet Klugen went after the crown prince?"

"Because he had gone too mad to hear my voice anymore."

She was just muttering to herself now.

"Foolish, pitiful man. Why did he howl in pain like that and turn his face from the truth?"

A sigh escaped me unbidden.

How could the threads of cause and effect be tangled this badly?

"The moment my husband died at your hands, I tried to end my life too. But I had one more reason left to live. Revenge against the queen. That alone kept me going."

"Because the queen had Baron Constance killed?"

"If only she had never done what she did in the first place..."

Madness, and obsession. I could read the desire for revenge in her eyes.

I finally understood her disposition.

"You’re revealing yourself to me because you’ve judged I can be trusted, haven’t you?"

"You’re the person who has come closest to the secrets of the royal family. Normally, we would have used one of two methods: eliminate you, or bring you in. The fact that we’re sitting across from each other now, unarmed, is proof of that."

The decisive factor was that Old Man Bertheim had been shielding me, which kept Hoenir from eliminating me as I crept closer to their secrets. They had decided to reveal themselves and cooperate with me instead.

So I’d been able to stay safe all this time because the old man was behind me. That was why he’d told me not to enter this world. But I’d done my duty and ended up here anyway.

This was no coincidence. It was inevitable.

And then I asked about the most important part.

The relationship between Baron Constance and the queen.

"Queen Alexandra and Baron Constance were originally lovers."

"Lovers? But the queen is from Strasbourg."

"Rosenheim and Strasbourg had a great deal of exchange. So naturally, they met."

It was perfectly natural for the lord of Rosenheim and the daughter of a powerful house in Strasbourg to cross paths. But the late king had made a mistake in his eagerness to absorb Strasbourg.

He arranged a political marriage between Crown Prince Karlus and Alexandra.

"...And Baron Constance?"

"The man resigned himself to reality. The woman could not. And that led to one wrong night, and from that night, the crown prince was born. A tragic outcome."

That was why Baron Constance suffered his whole life. Being the righteous man he was, he couldn’t deny the existence of an illegitimate son born from one night’s mistake. And he was afraid—afraid that he had betrayed his beloved friend.

"The more righteous a man is, the more lethal the poison. The baron, and my husband too. They were so righteous that they couldn’t bear the weight of their own wrongdoing, and they collapsed under it. Red blood flows through all of us, like this wine. How can we be so different? The queen killed the baron out of fear that the crown prince would be exposed as a bastard."

Obsession bred more obsession.

So that was her obsession with the crown prince.