The Prince's Nanny, Her Specialty Is Assassination - Chapter 111

Chapter 111: Alliance of Revenge (3)

‘Someone who was out of reach.’

Then it must not have been a lover, but a miserable one-sided love.

I clicked my tongue to myself.

‘Love is already shitty enough, and he went and had a one-sided crush.’

I really couldn’t understand it.

Giving your heart away when you know it will never come true.

‘And a woman that man loved, too. I have never killed a woman with my own hands in my life.’

I thought it over, then sucked in a sharp breath.

‘Don’t tell me it was a man?’

My head suddenly felt complicated.

The number of men I had killed was so high I couldn’t even count it.

‘I’ll think about complicated things later.’

It was not like I could figure out who Kayden had loved right this moment anyway.

I quickly erased Kayden’s talk of love from my mind.

‘And he says he will wipe out Breath of the Angel?’

Hearing someone declare to my face that they would destroy the organization I once belonged to should have unsettled me.

But for the current me, it was something to welcome.

‘If Ian is leading the organization, I can’t deal with it alone.’

Then, having even one strong ally would make revenge easier.

Of course, Edwin might help once he became Crown Prince, but did I really have the luxury of waiting until then?

“Your Majesty Kayden.”

They say the enemy of your enemy is your friend.

If we shared a common enemy, there was no reason we couldn’t join hands.

Even if he was the king of another country.

“There’s something I want to tell you.”

I laid my hidden trump card on the table before the dangerous man in front of me.

“Actually, not long ago, I ran into a member of Breath of the Angel in the Imperial Palace.”

Kayden froze with the rim of his glass at his lips.

A pair of golden eyes fixed on me.

“…You ran into a member of Breath of the Angel?”

The king slowly lowered his glass.

“Where?”

“At the Imperial hunting grounds.”

Kayden looked like he was thinking for a moment, then narrowed his eyes.

“At the Imperial hunting grounds, and not long ago you ran into one of them.”

He rolled my words around in his mouth and continued, “I heard the Imperial hunting competition was held there recently. Then does that mean you ran into them on the day of the competition?”

“…Yes.”

“I didn’t receive any report that an imperial family was attacked by assassins.”

His tone carried the certainty that if something like that had happened, he would have known long ago.

To grasp the situation across the continent, planting spies in other countries was basic, but this was the Empire. Even so, the way he was so sure of himself made me wonder if it was confidence or arrogance.

“…I saw it with my own eyes.”

“With your own eyes?”

Was that what I meant by ran into?

Kayden blinked slowly, twice.

“So, Lady Rachel Brown. You came face-to-face with an assassin organization member and returned alive?”

Sure, could he really believe that a mere prince’s nanny, a common woman with nothing to boast of, met a member of the continent’s greatest assassination squad and survived?

‘I wouldn’t have believed it either.’

Of course, that was only if the woman inside was not the former leader of the continent’s greatest assassination squad.

I did my best to wear a doubtful expression as I went on.

“It looked like they were waiting for a moment when His Highness Edwin was alone, but maybe they panicked when I caught them, because they just ran away.”

At my words, Kayden’s expression twisted into something stranger and stranger.

It seemed impossible to believe a mere nanny interfered in an assassin’s business.

In times like this, mixing a little truth into the lie was more effective.

“He said it right in front of His Highness the Prince. That Breath of the Angel would reach him.”

Of course, he hadn’t said that to Edwin, but directly to me.

The assassin who delivered those words was no longer in this world now, having taken his own life.

“If I may venture a guess.”

As if gauging Kayden’s mood, I dipped my chin slightly.

“It seems someone connected to Breath of the Angel is inside the Imperial Palace.”

I had phrased it carefully, but it was no different from saying that among the imperial family, there seemed to be someone who had hired Breath of the Angel to kill Edwin.

“I understand that even an attempted regicide is punished as high treason.”

Kayden stared at me and asked, “Why didn’t you tell the Emperor? If you told him, you might have been able to catch Breath of the Angel more easily.”

He didn’t know what he was talking about.

Breath of the Angel had maintained the organization for countless years by parasitizing the shadows of the powerful.

‘Hiring an assassin for private revenge or profit is something only the rich and high-born can do.’

In exchange for protecting their clients’ filthy secrets, the organization could be guaranteed wealth and privileges beyond imagination. The privilege of doing business with human lives.

‘A kind of symbiosis.’

A sickeningly sticky symbiosis.

Like filthy grime stuck to the sole of a shoe, refusing to come off.

‘The Emperor is no exception.’

As much as he treated his children like spare organs, the Emperor wouldn’t have personally commissioned Breath of the Angel to kill the third prince.

‘But even if I told him the truth, nothing would have changed.’

Edwin’s position was not secure yet.

The Emperor was only considering Edwin as a candidate for crown prince, not truly thinking of him as a cherished child.

‘Until now, the Emperor has neglected Edwin. There is no way he would suddenly step forward and actively help.’

Rather, the process of exposing whoever was behind it would be likely to create noise.

For example, the person behind it might confess first and beg the Emperor to let it slide. Or Breath of the Angel might try to lobby the Emperor directly.

‘I used that method too.’

Remembering the past made my head feel heavy for no reason.

When I was young, I didn’t know any better. When I grew a little, it was to survive. When I grew older still, it was simply because it was what I had always done.

‘…There was a time when I used every vile, cowardly trick there was, excusing it with those kinds of reasons.’

Maybe the reason I was killed so miserably by the lover I loved was the price of living without thinking.

The price of scraping by, staining my perfectly fine hands with other people’s blood.

“Your Majesty Kayden.”

I opened my mouth slowly.

With a serious composure that would not look reckless to anyone.

“…I haven’t even been in the Third Prince’s Palace for a year.”

And in less than a year, I had realized one thing clearly. This Imperial Palace truly moved by the law of the jungle.

And the third prince I served, Edwin Anaxinian Ventrume, belonged to the weakest.

“Here, even pleading injustice is something you can do only if there is someone willing to hear it.”

Even saying this much, Kayden would understand.

That Edwin was not yet in a position where he could openly appeal to the Emperor, even if his life was threatened by other members of the imperial family.

“…Well.”

Fortunately, Kayden, just as I expected, seemed quick to accept it.

He let out a sigh as if he regretted it, then turned his gaze away.

“That could be.”

The Emperor’s reputation for being cold even to his own blood was something anyone on the continent knew.

After all, he was a ruthless man who had climbed to the throne by pushing aside his own siblings.

Kayden showed an oddly uncomfortable expression and flicked his fingertips.

I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

But it felt like this was my chance to persuade him.

“I think this is an opportunity, Your Majesty.”

“An opportunity?”

“Yes. They already failed to assassinate him once.”

Breath of the Angel was famous for never failing a mission.

The reason was surprisingly simple. They kept trying until the target’s life was cut off.

‘Clients who commission murder usually do not give up just because it failed once.’

Rather, even if it meant paying more and hiring more assassins, they would pursue the target’s life to the end.

“They will definitely attempt another assassination.”

I looked at Kayden, who still wore an expression I couldn’t read.

“If so, they will move inside the Imperial Palace before they try a second time. If we track that moving tail, could we not reach the body, or if we are lucky, even the head?”

Assassination was a delicate job that required far more work than it looked.

It might seem like all there was to it was breaking in at night and cutting a sleeping target’s throat, but the reality was nothing like that.

To break in at night, you had to memorize everything, from the number of guards and servants in the estate to their shift changes and placements, and to cut the target’s throat quietly, you had to learn when they slept deepest.

‘They missed a good chance like the hunting competition, so the next attempt will likely be right after the founding festival ends.’

During the founding festival, when so many foreign delegations visited, there were too many variables for an assassination attempt.

Instead, right after the delegations left, at that chaotic moment when the Imperial Palace was being put back in order, they would try again.

“So, right now.”

Kayden narrowed his brow and twisted one corner of his mouth.

He still looked like it was absurd.

“Are you saying you will personally find traces of Breath of the Angel and report them to me?”

“Yes.”

Kayden lightly swirled the wineglass in his hand.

“…Well. My eyes and ears are already spread all over this Imperial Palace.”

His thick, straight eyebrows lifted.

“What if I tell you I don’t need your help?”