The Prince's Nanny, Her Specialty Is Assassination - Chapter 113

Chapter 113: Alliance of Revenge (5)

Creak.

With the quiet sound of the door closing, Kayden’s eyelids slowly opened.

Lying neatly on his back, he lowered his gaze.

The person who should’ve been on the sofa was gone.

‘The Third Prince’s nanny, Rachel Brown.’

From the first time he saw her, his eyes kept drifting to her.

Since she was his only nephew’s nanny, he’d already finished a background check on her long ago.

‘She doesn’t seem like she’s lying, but….’

Just as Rachel said herself, she really was an adopted child of a count’s family.

‘She lost someone precious to Breath of the Angel.’

He didn’t particularly believe that.

Humans were creatures born with a knack for telling lies as if they were the truth.

To Kayden, anything he had no way to confirm was nothing more than a story someone made up until the truth was revealed.

Even so, there was only one reason he reached out to Rachel first.

‘She resembles her.’

Kayden drew his eyes into a long, narrow line.

‘Kyla, that woman.’

It wasn’t that their faces or builds were similar.

It was her upright posture, always keeping her neck and waist straight, and movements so fluid and quick they even felt oddly elegant. Those things were strikingly similar to those of that woman.

Even the way she was strangely sharp about her surroundings.

‘That expression was definitely one of realization back then.’

Kayden recalled the sword dance the two princes performed in the grand banquet hall.

‘Edwin, that kid’s swordsmanship was beyond anything I expected.’

His sharp eyes narrowed further.

‘Though the Second Prince’s temperament was even more surprising.’

The fierce drive to humiliate his half-brother was unpleasant beyond words.

So he threw a fork.

It wasn’t because affection for his nephew suddenly welled up and made him act on impulse.

‘When the Second Prince’s attack was knocked away, only two people looked straight at me.’

One was Duke Crowner.

And the other was the Third Prince’s nanny, Rachel Brown.

But when she came to see him, she didn’t bring up what happened in the banquet hall even once.

‘An orphan adopted into a count’s family.’

With his eyes lowered, Kayden fell into thought.

‘They say someone revived through a resurrection ritual comes back using another person’s body as a vessel.’

However, there were conditions. The one who became the vessel had to have at least some point of contact with the dead, and they had to have little time left to live.

‘Is there any point of contact between a prince’s nanny and Kyla?’

Kyla had no blood relatives.

And if Rachel Brown was also an orphan, that meant she didn’t have any obvious blood relatives either.

‘If she were a lost sister, their appearances are far too different.’

The only thing they shared was that mysterious eye color.

Resting his chin on his hand, Kayden let out a sigh.

‘She might just be someone with a similar personality.’

Just as there were parents and children who didn’t resemble each other at all, there would also be people with no familial tie who were astonishingly alike.

In truth, now that it’d come to this, something that small didn’t matter.

‘She said she lost someone she loved.’

To think the Third Prince’s nanny would be enemies with Breath of the Angel.

From Kayden’s perspective, it was actually a good thing.

‘I was just wondering who I should place at the Third Prince’s side, too.’

He still hadn’t acknowledged Edwin as his nephew, but if he had to choose someone among the princes he wanted to see become the next Emperor, Edwin was the only one.

‘Should I call it audacious?’

Telling him to stand on the Third Prince’s side even as a form of atonement.

For a moment, he flinched at the remark, as if she’d seen straight through him.

‘I’ve never once panicked, even when I was surrounded by hundreds of enemy soldiers on my own.’

A small, fragile woman who looked like she’d shatter if he closed his hand around her had thrown him off.

That fact unsettled Kayden even more.

‘Keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer.’

Kayden raised one hand and spread his fingers.

Between them, the ornate ceiling pattern wavered.

Among the colors, green stood out clearly.

A green tinged with the faintest hint of gold.

“Do you want to live? Then say it. Say you want to live.”

Faced with a color that made him remember someone, Kayden slowly closed his eyes.

Even if he couldn’t fall asleep again, he could still call up a face he missed.

‘Kyla.’

Kayden repeated the name of the one he could never call again now.

Until the night deepened and the morning sun rose.

***

“Why do you look like that? Like someone who stayed up all night.”

Sage, who was scribbling something on a large sheet of parchment, stopped and lifted one eyebrow.

“Didn’t you switch jobs to become a nanny? Don’t tell me you’ve got a side gig you’re doing in secret.”

“Quiet, you noisy.”

I leaned my neck back against the chair and rubbed between my brows.

“You’re the one who barged into someone else’s cabin whenever you felt like it.”

Sage grumbled in an irritated voice.

“You told me to stay holed up here during the founding festival and not even think about going out, and then you come knocking first….”

“Sage Rill.”

Maybe because I barely slept while staying by Kayden’s side, my nerves were raw.

Because of that, even to my own ears, my voice came out pretty chilly.

“W-w-why, you brat! You think I’m going to be scared just because you’re calling me by my full name now? What does a soon-to-die old man have to be afraid of….”

Sage jumped to his feet and thrust his bony fist forward.

Watching an old man get startled like that didn’t make me feel very good.

“…I just had something I wanted to ask.”

“What?”

Sage’s expression softened, as if all the strength drained out of him, and he flopped back down.

Then he started grumbling again.

“Then just say that. Why put on such a threatening mood?”

“You’re the one who made it threatening. If I called your name twice, you looked like you were going to swing a sword.”

“You wouldn’t know, you brat, because you’ve never been threatened with your life! When you call my name in that voice, it sends chills right through me.”

I’ve never been threatened with my life, but I have lost it.

I swallowed the words that rose to the tip of my tongue and changed the subject.

“Do you happen to know anything about Kayden Ram?”

“Kayden Ram? The King of Adamant?”

At my question, Sage’s wrinkled face scrunched up even more.

“Why?”

“Because I’m curious.”

I tossed him a glance.

“I heard you gave His Highness Edwin an assignment to find out how to take Adamant Castle.”

Since the King of Adamant came as a guest to the Third Prince’s Palace at this exact time, Sage wouldn’t have given that assignment for no reason.

Sage was smarter and more sly than anyone.

“Didn’t you give him that assignment because you also want to know more about Kayden Ram?”

“Well, it’d be a lie to say I’m not curious.”

Sage nodded with his arms crossed.

“He’s famous enough that even when I was trapped in a plague village, I heard his name a few times.”

A mysterious figure about whom almost nothing was known compared to his fame.

That was Kayden Ram, the King of Adamant.

“Look at you. Haven’t you found out anything about Kayden Ram? If you’ve been guarding Edwin’s side, you must’ve run into him a few times.”

Not just a few times.

I furrowed my brow and spoke.

“What I found out.”

Even in a short period, I learned quite a lot about him.

I recalled the things about Kayden one by one.

‘First, Kayden Ram has a tendency to obsess over eye color.’

The first thing he said when we met in the Imperial Palace was that he liked my eyes.

‘Second, Kayden Ram can’t fall asleep alone.’

As if he had some illness that kept him from sleeping at all unless someone was beside him.

‘Third, Kayden Ram is so strong it’s beyond anything I can even dare to predict.’

And the most important thing of all.

“Kayden Ram looks like he knows me.”

“What? The King of Adamant knows you?”

“Yes.” I murmured quietly, “He called me Kyla.”

“Damn it!”

Sage sprang to his feet.

His face went pale.

“Then isn’t that a disaster? If he found out you’re the Prince’s nanny….”

“He was crying when he said my name.”

“Huh?”

At my words, Sage’s expression suddenly went blank.

Mouth hanging open, he blinked like a carp, then asked in a fairly serious voice.

“…Don’t tell me you tried to collect a life price from Kayden Ram in the past too?”

“No way.”

If I had, there was no way I wouldn’t remember.

To begin with, the people I demanded life prices from were already well-known back then.

“…I don’t know.”

Kayden Ram.

I learned so much about him, and we even talked about an alliance, but why was it?

The more I thought, the harder it was to get a read on what kind of man he really was.

Even what kind of relationship he might have had with the old me.

“I really don’t know.”

***

“Hup!”

Edwin stood in the Third Prince’s Palace garden and swung a wooden sword.

He must’ve practiced relentlessly, because the grip of the wooden sword was blackened with use and polished to a glossy sheen.

Whoosh.

Each time Edwin swung, a faint sound of air being cut echoed.

After repeating the same motion dozens of times, sweat poured down his forehead like rain.

“Huff, huff.”

Edwin lowered the wooden sword, breathing hard.

The young prince’s head was filled with the sword dance he performed in the banquet hall.

Whenever he remembered the gaze of the half-brother who truly tried to kill him, his stomach churned.

No matter how much it was supposed to be a sword dance, the more he recalled how he ended up falling to the floor at the end, the more embarrassed he felt.

“You’re working hard.”

At that moment, a voice he still wasn’t used to came from behind him.

Edwin hurriedly pulled his clothes into place and turned around.

Someone was leaning against a corridor pillar beside the garden.

It was Kayden Ram, the King of Adamant.