Chapter 68

“Fa… Fairy…!”

“…He wrote ‘Melody’ and forced the reading ‘Song’…”

“The sense… is overwhelming…”

To a man, everyone was slumped over the table or their own knees, shoulders quivering. Even Morgan, who had been shrouded in a dark, ominous aura just moments ago, was now…

“…It’s electrifying.”

He quietly averted his gaze, his body trembling with suppressed emotion.

Despite having just delivered a social death sentence via humiliation, Heidemarie simply shrugged as if it were nothing. Then, acting as if the preceding poem had never existed, she smoothly brought the conversation back on track.

“You offered her poems, you offered her jewels, and you offered her a manor. A safe manor where no one could hurt her.”

“…!”

“Was your foolish pursuit of king-like power perhaps because you wanted to give her a Queen’s throne? Did you intend to give her the very thing your beloved wife once sought but could never grasp?”

“You’re wrong…! I don’t love her—”

Exposed to his most private shames and utterly shaken, Clemens still stubbornly shook his head. But Heidemarie fixed him with a look one might give a naive child.

“Now, Clemens,” she chided in a gentle voice.

“We are not here to judge you. We are criminals ourselves, and besides, you are only here because you have already been judged. Therefore—”

Even if you admit your love for her, no one here will hurt her.

At Heidemarie’s words, Clemens’s eyes widened, and he caught his breath.

“…”

A moment of absolute silence.

That silence was the entirety of the truth Clemens had been hiding.

Heidemarie spread her hands elegantly and smiled, arching a single eyebrow.

“To reduce power struggles, principles of action, and an entire life down to the simple emotions of love and longing… that is no small feat. It’s… wonderful.”

The sarcasm was blatant.

Having thoroughly retaliated, Heidemarie then stroked Clemens’s cheek with mock maternal affection.

“My dear, sweet, romantic Prime Minister. I’ve grown quite fond of you. Go on then—why don’t you try stripping away that final layer of your robe of truth with your own hands?”

“…”

Despite her words, there was no armor of bravado left for Clemens to wear.

Exactly as she had declared at the start, he had been stripped of his fortune, his social authority, and his hidden truths. He now knelt before the Queen of the Prison with the vulnerability of a man standing naked.

Finally, Clemens surrendered.

“…My wife.”

He admitted his love in a trembling voice.

“My wife… she is a good, pitiable woman. She was swept up in the convenience of those around her, married twice as she was told, and suffered two divorces. And simply because I desired her, she has been branded the wife of a criminal. She is a pitiable woman. So, please—”

He shamelessly took Heidemarie’s hand and pressed his forehead against it, begging for mercy.

“Please… let the granting of that land to her… to the woman who was so unfortunate as to be my wife… please, overlook it—!”

A heavy silence filled the room, so profound that one might have heard a pin drop.

Eventually, Heidemarie slowly curled her beautifully painted lips upward.

Then…

“—No.”

She sweetly rejected his plea.

At that merciless response, Clemens looked up at her with a face of pure desperation.

Collapsing from the sofa to the floor, Clemens looked ready to lick her very boots, but the beautiful courtesan dodged him with a giggle.

Then, she uttered words he never expected.

“Because, Clemens—that would leave a paper trail far too easily, wouldn’t it?”

“…?”

As Clemens lifted his face in confusion, she leaned down softly beside him.

She then reached out with her slender, shapely arms and helped the former Marquis to his feet.

“Even I, here in prison, can hear rumors this easily. No matter how many aliases you use, if she were to suddenly come into possession of land in Tremmel, anyone would grow suspicious of the circumstances. Just imagine if you, a fugitive, were to go and die in Tremmel just like that. Instead of being pitied, it would simply be concluded that it was your doing all along, and the land would end up being confiscated. In the end, Lady Fine would only lose the land of her memories even more surely.”

“…!”

Clemens, who had been somewhat intoxicated by his own tragic heroism—despite the genuine affection at its root—started at her words.

The courtesan watched her foolishly charming “guest” with an amused expression and added, “That’s why.”

“That is why we shall provide an alternative plot of land for you. It’s a very ‘clean’ place that Sloth once seized and Envy has thoroughly laundered.”

“…It’s a bit too good for the likes of him, but well, I suppose I can consider it payment for that entertainment earlier,” Morgan remarked.

“That poem is a slow burn, it’s still killing me,” Liesel added.

Morgan and Liesel seemed to have no particular objection to Heidemarie’s executive decision. They simply watched Clemens with faint, lingering smirks.

The former Prime Minister stood there dazed, unable to process the turn of events immediately, when Heidemarie held up a finger as pale as whitebait.

“Oh, one more thing I should point out. Your wife—she hasn’t actually divorced you.”

“…What?”

His brows furrowed in pure confusion. The Queen pulled out the first letter once again to show him.

“A continuation of the earlier part. It seems Lady Fine, having headed to Tremmel, intends to seclude herself there and offer up prayers. She means to wash away the sins of her husband—a great criminal who harbored terrifying ambitions while holding the position of Prime Minister, yet remained an irreplaceable husband to her.”

“…”

Clemens stood agape.

The words didn’t sink into his brain right away.

It made no sense. To his wife, he was surely nothing more than a partner in a political marriage. By all common sense, a wife should quickly divorce a husband who committed high treason and hide away in the countryside to avoid public gaze. Yes, that was exactly why he had been so frantic to prepare a land for her to use as a sanctuary—

“…You… you called her the ‘former’ Marchioness, did you not?”

“She is the ‘former,’ isn’t she? After all, you are no longer a Marquis.”

Heidemarie effortlessly shut down his barely-managed rebuttal and continued with a smile.

“Poetry truly is a wonderful thing. No matter how much you deny your love for your wife now or try to maintain your silence, those verses you dedicated to her in your youth speak of love more eloquently than anything else—and they are what drive your wife to such devotion.”

“…………”

Clemens said nothing.

Having been helped up, he simply lowered his face to avert his gaze. Whether the eyes hidden by his hair were moist for the first time in his life—

Fortunately, there was no one so uncouth in this prison as to go out of their way to check.