The Prince’s Nanny, Her Specialty Is Assassination - Chapter 151

Chapter 151. Reunion (2)

‘Insolent bastard.’

Helena was smiling, but there was no humor in it.

Inwardly, she kept imagining herself pouring hot tea over the head of the man sitting before her and slapping his face.

‘How dare a butcher who doesn’t know his place insult me?’

The Marquis of Radcliffe was indeed busy dealing with the fallout from Helena being accused of masterminding the attempt to poison the Empress.

On top of that, he was deeply disappointed that the Second Prince failed to outshine the Third Prince at the Founding Festival.

Ian had struck precisely where it hurt.

“That’s perfectly understandable.”

Ian, meanwhile, was no amateur who’d rise to an insult. He gave Helena a faint smile as she treated him with disdain.

“There I go again, worrying needlessly about matters above my station.”

He calmly took a sip of tea and replied with amusement in his voice.

“The Marquis would never make such an important decision without consulting you, Your Highness, yet I actually thought you might know nothing about it.”

There was no way Ian didn’t know how the Marquis of Radcliffe treated his daughter for failing to become Empress.

‘Father grants him a mere viscountcy, and suddenly he thinks he’s somebody.’

Helena gritted her teeth.

Ian wore a look of pity, as though he knew perfectly well that she was lying to preserve her pride.

“Oh, my.”

Helena kept smiling as she forced down her rising anger.

“I nearly gave you the wrong impression, Viscount.”

There was nothing she could do. Viscount Miller knew her personal weakness, and with it, he knew better than anyone that she couldn’t speak ill of him to the Marquis of Radcliffe.

‘Sly bastard.’

She could feel the blood rushing to her face, making it burn, but that didn’t matter.

Women of the imperial family generally wore heavy makeup to conceal every shift in their complexion.

“Still, thank you for your concern.”

“Not at all.”

Ian quietly set down his empty teacup.

“I’ve already finished surveying the area assigned to His Highness for the subjugation and made all the necessary preparations. You may rest assured that no dangerous monsters will appear.”

His eyes curved into narrow crescents.

“Though I can’t say what might happen in the areas assigned to the other princes.”

Helena’s rigid expression softened a little.

“…That’s a relief.”

“As you know, I’m quite thorough when it comes to my work.”

What a petty man, still holding a grudge.

Helena gave Ian a disapproving look as he rose from his seat.

It lasted only the briefest instant.

“The subjugation is drawing near.”

Ian bowed courteously to the Second Consort.

“Next time, I’ll see you with Prince Lloyd, Your Highness.”

***

Bang.

‘Why?’

The moment I returned to the prince’s palace, I fled straight to my room. Then I slumped against the door and sank to the floor.

‘Why…?’

Countless questions swirled through my mind all at once. Of course I assumed he was still alive, but I never imagined I’d run into him so suddenly.

‘Why is Ian at the imperial palace?’

Those peculiar gray eyes and dark ash-blond hair. The eyebrows that somehow made him look irritable, the strikingly open eyes that bordered on fierce, the handsome bridge of his nose, and even the lips that curved smoothly upward whenever he smiled, bringing out his dimples.

Ian looked exactly as I remembered.

“Yep, I’m okay!”

Emilia answered brightly when Ian asked if she was all right.

Then she tugged at my hand as I stood there in a daze.

“Achel, let’s hurry! Lia doesn’t wanna keep her brother waiting!”

At that moment, a curious gleam appeared in Ian’s eyes.

“Forgive me, but might you be Princess Emilia?”

“Huh? You know Lia, mister?”

“Of course I do. How could I not know the Empire’s one and only princess?”

Ian bent down with what one might call an affable smile.

“Please forgive my rudeness. I’m Ian Miller….”

The instant that bastard met the princess’s eyes and reached toward her little head, I snatched Emilia into my arms.

“Don’t touch her!”

Ian looked at me in bewilderment at my sharp cry.

It must’ve been embarrassing to have a woman he’d never met treat him like a molester trying to lay hands on the princess.

“…Please excuse me.”

I forced the words out and rose to my feet.

“Her Highness doesn’t like strangers touching her.”

It was a blatant lie. Normally, Emilia would’ve obliviously piped up to contradict me, but she seemed to sense that something was wrong.

The princess simply watched me quietly, sucking her finger.

Worry and unease rippled in those blue eyes that resembled Edwin’s.

“Ah, is that so?”

Meanwhile, Ian nodded as though he accepted my excuse.

“My sincerest apologies. Ah, I’ve neglected to introduce myself. I’m Ian Miller….”

“I’m the one who should apologize. We must be going, as we can’t afford to delay Her Highness’s schedule.”

I left without so much as meeting his eyes.

Then, as soon as I reached the knights’ quarters, I collected Edwin and all but ran back to the prince’s palace.

“Rachel, what’s wrong?”

“Nanny, what happened?”

Now I was back in my room after practically thrusting the two imperial siblings into Catherine’s care.

My head was still spinning, and nausea churned in my stomach as though something might rise up my throat.

“Are you all right?”

Ian’s voice asking if I was all right kept echoing in my ears.

“Burn her. Leave nothing, not even ashes.”

It was no different from the cold voice that ordered my body burned after he plunged a blade into my back. Only the words had changed.

“….”

I slowly lowered the hands covering my face.

Seeing the faint tremor in them somehow made me feel calmer.

‘I’ve sworn revenge, yet this is all it takes to shake me.’

The moment I saw Ian, memories of betrayal and death flooded over me, and I let them drive me to act rashly.

‘Keeping a level head is the foundation of everything. All those years in the guild, wasted.’

I didn’t want to discover this way that I, too, was just one weak human being, easily swept along by anything.

‘Get a grip, Kyla Angel.’

This was no time to sit around in a daze.

I clenched both fists and thought furiously.

‘If Ian’s here at the imperial palace, then he must have close ties to someone within it.’

Miller, not Angel.

I distinctly heard Ian introduce himself as “Ian Miller.”

‘So the name I saw at the Empress’s palace was his after all.’

A noble surname.

Did he buy it himself?

Or was it a reward for something?

‘Either way, he clearly intends to leave life in the guild behind.’

I was told that Breath of the Angel, the assassin guild we belonged to, had been wiped out. But the members loyal to Ian seemed to be following him still, carrying out assassination contracts.

‘Of course. Even if Ian got rid of the guild, he wouldn’t do something as inefficient as getting rid of all its members.’

Achieve whatever you set your mind to, by any means necessary.

To that end, use everything at your disposal.

Those two principles were practically Ian’s personal creed.

‘Then did Ian deliberately spread the claim that Breath of the Angel was wiped out?’

For now, that seemed the most likely explanation.

I drew up my knees and wrapped my arms around them.

‘Ian has no reason to mobilize the guild members to kill Edwin.’

An assassin only set out to kill someone when there was a contract.

‘So he is working for the Second Consort’s side after all?’

Surely it wasn’t the Emperor.

I immediately dismissed the possibility, which made my head spin just thinking about it.

No matter how I looked at it, the Emperor wasn’t the sort of man to trust a former assassin like Ian enough to grant him a title.

‘The Empress didn’t seem to think all that badly of Edwin, either.’

She sent him hunting clothes as a gift for the hunting competition, and she believed Edwin and me without prejudice during the attempted poisoning.

‘But you can never know what those in power are really thinking.’

After all, the Empress was also working to put her own son on the throne.

Deep down, she might see Edwin as an irksome obstacle.

‘Still, the more likely suspect than the Empress is….’

I thought of Helena, the Second Consort.

Those venomous red eyes flickered through my mind.

‘But does the Second Consort have any reason to keep Ian close?’

Helena had commissioned an assassination from the guild in the past. And the one who accepted and carried out her request was none other than Ian.

‘Wouldn’t it make more sense for her to try to kill him or send him far away? There’s no reason to keep him close….’

There was. There was a reason Helena had no choice but to keep Ian close.

I let out a disbelieving laugh at the thought that flashed through my mind.

“Ha. You certainly live up to your former position as second-in-command of the continent’s greatest assassin guild.”

Someone who held another person’s secret could never be at a disadvantage.

“You’ve got some nerve. Turning the tables and blackmailing an imperial consort from a marquis’s family.”

But hiring someone to commit murder was hardly much of a secret in the imperial family.

‘If there were any circumstance in which that could become a problem…’

It would be if she killed someone whom neither a marquis’s daughter nor the Second Consort could ever be permitted to kill.

That was the only possibility.

‘For instance, if she murdered someone of the Emperor’s blood.’

In that case, Ian’s blackmail would’ve worked very effectively on the Second Consort.

‘Second Consort Helena ordered the First Consort’s death.’

But there was one thing she didn’t know.

At the time, the First Consort was carrying the Emperor’s child.

“…Honestly.”

I let out another disbelieving laugh as I recalled Ian’s immaculate appearance when we met a little earlier.

“You really were one hell of a son of a bitch, Ian Angel.”