I Won’t Accept Your Regrets

"Your Majesty?”

Fever grew in his stomach. Something burst out from within. In a hurry, he covered his mouth with his hand, but that didn't completely stop the red blood from coming out.

"Your Majesty!" Duke of Croft, who saw him, quickly approached him and helped him.

Raymond straightened up and wiped his hands and mouth with a cloth.

"Poison! In the end, the Emperor too…"

Raymond quietly ordered the doctors:

"Bring the medicine that slows the spread of the poison too."

From the moment he fed the medicine to Carlisle, he was prepared for a similar outcome. What happened wasn’t surprising.

Doctors fussed about and brought him medicine. He immediately accepted it, turned to Duke and said:

"Don't let the Empress know."

“Okay… Your Majesty.”

"This is the order. In any case, it will be solved by taking an antidote."

Duke was silent.

"You guys watch your mouth too."

The moment he issued a warning to the doctors, the door opened and Ellie entered.

Raymond tucked the blood-stained cloth into his pocket with an imperceptible movement.

* * *

"Carlisle…"

I rushed straight to my child.

Fortunately, he was still breathing.

Somehow, he even looked more comfortable breathing than before.

"Has his condition improved?"

"That's not the point. We just gave him a medicine that slows down the spread of the poison."

“I see…”

The thin ray of hope was quickly extinguished.

I took the remaining pieces of apple pie to Jed, but he said that it would be difficult to install the poison, because he had no smell or color.

Now there is only one person left who could suggest an antidote.

"Your Majesty, is this really the work of the First Prince?"

“The First Prince said it was him. But the dessert was brought by a woman named Lily, Lisa's maid.”

"Lily?”

"Is that a familiar name?"

"She is a dangerous person, like Lisa's right hand."

She wasn’t an ordinary maid. And if it was she who brought the dessert… It is more likely that she is the poisoner.

“As soon as they came for her, she tried to commit suicide. She's in a prison now."

“Did you order the guards to arrest Lisa?”

"As soon as I found out about her maid, I gave such an order. Maybe we'll see soon…"

Carter entered without knocking.

"Your Majesty, we found her."

I wiped the red blood from Carlisle's lips and kissed his forehead.

"I'll be right back. You have to hold out until then, Carlisle.“

Someone who knows the ingredients of this poison, somehow I'll get him to open his mouth. I squeezed a bloody handkerchief and left the room with Raymond.

The distance to the prison wasn’t that great, but the road seemed too long, perhaps due to my nervousness.

I walked down the stairs with an impatient step and froze, watching the prison door open.

When I stepped inside, I saw Lisa on her knees and Leon lying next to me.

Lisa, who had previously gazed at Leon with a dead gaze, slowly raised her head and was now looking at Raymond.

She said, frowning as if it were a pity.

"Oh, if Your Majesty is still okay, the poison seems to have been ingested by the Crown Prince alone."

Raymond eventually got angry.

"How dare you!" Raymond approached and grabbed Lisa by the neck. Her face turned red, letting us know that she can’t breathe.

She twisted her body, but her hands and feet were tied, so she couldn’t escape. I looked around at Lisa, who was now suffering from suffocation.

‘If I cut off their limbs one by one. Will it be comparable to this pain I'm experiencing right now?'

But, unfortunately, it was impossible to kill her yet.

"Your Majesty," I grabbed Raymond's arm.

Raymond threw Lisa to the ground in response to my call.

"Cough cough!"

Lisa, whose hands and feet were tied, fell to the floor.

"Hahaha…!"

She cleared her throat and suddenly burst out laughing madly.

Tossing and turning on the dirty floor and laughing, she seemed to have lost all sanity.

"Do you think this will save the prince?"

Lisa stopped laughing and looked at Raymond.

It seems that she decided to refrain from further pretense.

Raymond's lips curled in contempt.

"You've hidden it well so far."

"Hide it? What did I hide from you? I have always done everything possible to protect myself and survive on my own. Who can't go crazy when they take away what's theirs?"

"Yours? What can be said to be yours?"

"The throne of the Empress! My son's Crown Prince seat! This all is mine in the first place!"

Lisa's dim eyes turned to me.

"It's theft to claim what doesn't belong to you," Raymond responded coldly.

Lisa took a bold step and tried to poison Carlisle. This is probably because the future, painted by her illusions, completely collapsed.

No matter how low Marquis fell, it would be strange if Lisa gave up so easily.

"I won’t give the title of heir to a boy who isn’t even my son."

Edmund's lineage… If it turns out that Edmund is not Raymond's son, no matter how hard she tries, she could never reach the position of Crown Prince.

Arriving at the prison, I guessed the reason for the poisoning and I was sure that Lisa wasn’t at all surprised when she saw Leon, since she also expected all this, I try to play.

The corners of Lisa’s mouth seemed to twitch. But she soon she said with a strange smile as if her mouth was going to split.

"Yes. That's all right. Edmund is not your dirty son."

At that moment, Raymond's face turned to stone, and the knights in the prison held their breath and looked at each other.

The first prince is not the blood of the Emperor. It was a great and terrible truth.

Although he had doubts close to conviction, Raymond couldn’t hide his shock when everything was confirmed.

Lisa hastily moved her red lips, as if she wanted to play a trick on Raymond, to annoy him even more.

“He is not the son of a bastard, who came out in a low lineage, but the son of Crown Prince Astor, he is the eldest son of His Majesty Astor. Legitimacy itself is different from yours, bastard."

These words infuriated Raymond even more.

His eyes flashed with fire, as if the explosion was inevitable.

"You want to die with your limbs torn from trying to poison the Crown Prince, as well as tricking me with the Emperor's blood."

The black eyes flashed. If he could, he would have already killed Lisa with her eyes.

The knights shuddered in fear for their lives, but Lisa didn’t stop talking.

"I have no place in this world anyway. Shouldn't I at least make one last attempt to put my son on the throne, who is the true heir to the imperial family?"

Lisa shook her head with a smile.

“But my silly son couldn't even put the poison in correctly. Stupid, how stupid you are."

Edmund came to mind, standing there with his head bowed, without a word in his defense.

‘How can you order your own son to kill others? No matter how blind you are with revenge, how can you do that?'

"You have led your precious child to death. Don't you feel sorry for him?"

"He has already prepared a life that will be worse than death. If he dies anyway, why not walk away proudly with revenge? It is better for Edmund to die now than to live like a miserable prince."

"…You're really out of your mind."

If she was trying to poison Carlisle in order to protect Edmund's position, I might think that it makes sense.

However, I will never understand Lisa, who sent her child into a suicidal attack for personal revenge.

I was saddened by her delusional laugh.

What's broken in your head?

‘She was once a woman whom I admired and envied.’

However, now she was so insignificant that even anger towards her would be a waste of energy.

“This is all because of you, Ellie Croft. If you hadn't come back here, if you hadn't had Carlisle, Edmund would have already sat on the throne!" Lisa shouted, looking at me with eyes full of hostility.

The last time I looked at Lisa, crawling on the floor and shaking her empty head, I stepped back.

"Really… you are crazy, just crazy."

I turned to the side where the voice came from.

This was said by none other than Leon Sios.

Leon's green eyes were full of confidence in the midst of all the commotion.

“At one point, I wondered if there was hope for my sister, but she eventually turned out just like my father, no, uglier than my father," Leon's voice was full of discouragement.

"…What would you know?”

"Yeah, I don't know anything. I don't understand the power that my sister and father wanted so much. But I know something."

Leon bit his pale lips.

"At least people should not live worse than animals. How can you push your child off the cliff! How can you give poison to Edmund?!"

Leon's angry voice sounded in the basement.

Finally throwing a contemptuous glance at Lisa, Leon now turned to me.

"Your Majesty. I know where the antidote to the poison is."