I’ll Quit as The Empress

“Your Majesty told me not to let anyone in.”

“But I still have to tell him.”

“Even if your Majesty is angry and takes down your head?”

“……Yes. I already swore when I joined the Black Hawk Knights.”

Logan was the epitome of a faithful knight. For him, there was no shortcut or trick in the world. His knight’s duty was to serve his master, and that was the only purpose of his life.

“It can’t be helped.”

Serus decided to accompany this young man and help him at least a little more than to send him alone. He knew this approach was wrong, but his body couldn’t betray his Black Hawk comrade.

“Your Majesty, this is Serus. I have some urgent news….. so I would like to see you.”

Serus stepped slowly into the room and walked a few steps closer to Fabian. Luckily he could see Fabian, who had buried his head in his lap, raised his head as if he had heard Serus’ voice. However, Fabian’s reaction afterwards was the same as he had expected.

“Nobody told you to come in!”

Serus sent a signal to Logan with his eyes, telling him to give up now. However, this difficulty couldn’t dampen the spirit of the young knight. Logan strode up towards him. Like a man who no longer cared about his life, kneeling in front of Fabian’s eyes.

“Forgive me for my rudeness. There is something I must tell Your Majesty.”

“Huh. Didn’t you hear my words? Or do you want to die right now?”

Just hearing Fabian’s icy voice was already like a blade. Logan, however, looked at Fabian with his back standing in a steady position. “I’ve been to the Felice Kingdom for spying. And … I’ve found what Your Majesty must know. This secret is too heavy for me.”

When the word “Felice Kingdom” came out, it seemed that Fabian had decided to listen to his story for a while.

“There weren’t many reports. But it wasn’t something to leave in text. and Lord Serus doesn’t know what it’s going on.”

It was then that Fabian realized the importance of this matter. Returning to his usually calm face, Fabian gestured towards him and then Logan raised his body.

Fabian called him one more time. And Logan carefully whispered a few words in Fabian’s ear.

“……This is more than that. I judged it to be a piece of reliable information.”

Fabian didn’t have a response.

“If Your Majesty doubts it, please send someone else. Because it’s something that needs to be clear.”

Fabian nodded heavily. Logan, who had just said the right thing, was able to step down after completing his task. But Serus anxiously kept watching Fabian from a few steps away.

After Logan spoke, Fabian’s face turned pale as if his blood had gone, and he looked like a plaster figure with a hardened expression.

“Your Majesty ……… What kind of news is that makes you look so serious?” Serus approached him impatiently. But Fabian stared blankly into the air, ignoring him.

“It’s too much…… nonsense……It sounds so ridiculous.” Fabian’s low voice rang from time to time, but his eyes remained in the air.

“But.”

Now Fabian wasn’t afraid to trample on the possibilities that he had just discovered.

“……… No, I need to hear it right again. Bring Sir Logan back. Right now.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

After a while, Logan returned to the room. Fabian’s face, sitting on his back, was still pale. Serus stood beside him, guarding his side. Logan looked at him with one knee bent in front of Fabian.

“Tell me again, the story before.”

“Your Majesty….” Logan gazed toward Serus, blurring his words.

“Serus is like my limbs. I have nothing to hide from him.”

Serus was deeply moved by his unbiased words which weren’t so Fabian, but he struggled to maintain his expression.

“So slowly, try to say it properly.”

Although Fabian said so, it seemed that he felt the most urgent. Logan bowed his head and expressed his courtesy before he managed to open his heavy mouth.

“The reconnaissance mission I received was about the content of the memo taken from the Vatican.”

Fabian nodded. The note was scribbled with short sentences as Paladin asked. About the Prince’s hair, and the death of his birth mother.

“As Your Majesty said, what the memo implied was Adrian, the little Prince of the Felice Kingdom.”

“No, not that part, but explain the conclusion in detail.”

It was the first time that Serus saw Fabian rushing out with anxiety. Serus watched the conversation between them, swallowing surprise only in his heart.

“First of all, I thought the prince’s birth mother’s death was the easiest to find …”

“No…Skip that part as well.”

“Yes. After that, I investigated and found that the birth mother was a dead woman, but she died in the late summer of the year when the Prince was born.”

Nothing appeared strange at first glance.

“…… did you mean it was early winter when the prince was born? “Yet Fabian was able to point out the mistake with his accurate memory.

“Yes. I dug in from there and came to the conclusion of the problem”, said Logan.

“Your Majesty….”

Serus stepped in the middle and asked for permission with a glance. Fabian nodded, and Serus also had the right to ask questions.

“Well, in that case, the so-called ‘birth mother’ who came from outside the palace and died after giving birth to the Prince, is not his real mother.”

“Yes, because you can’t have children after you die. In case I misinterpreted something, I met the most famous midwife on the southern continent.”

Indeed, from this point, Serus sensed something flowed out of reach, but there was no way to stop it.

“Fortunately, the midwife isn’t far away, she lives comfortably in the pavilion given by the Duke of Akshire since she’s the midwife who helped the birth of the Akshire children?”

“What does that have to do with us?”

As the most fatal question was asked, Logan kept his mouth shut for a while and then opened it again.

“The midwife said that she suffered from dementia because of her old age. She talked a lot about her past because she mistook me as her friend. At that time, I heard it.”

Fabian, who already knew the backstory was still pale.

“The midwife boasted to me that …….she went to the Felice Palace to help give birth to a child. It was a hot day, but a healthy Prince was born.”

Now it was Serus’s face that hardened like marble. A cold sweat ran through his back.

“At the end,…..I investigated the royal guard at the back door of the royal palace. And they said that there was a woman who was wearing a black robe who told them to pass her carriage on a summer night. She was a very unusual visitor, so they remembered her.”

Logan was a capable and intelligent man. Since he had this much piece, he must have already completed the puzzle in his head. That was why he couldn’t write it or tell Serus because he had to tell Fabian right away.

“······All right. So, what about the midwife?”

“I brought her with me just in case. She has no relatives.”

Fabian slowly raised one hand, “Good work, and I will call you again soon.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Again, Logan set and example to Fabian. The only thing left now was Serus, who was sweating, and Fabian with an empty soul.

“So……”

Fabian, who was trying to arrange his table, dropped the pen. He couldn’t, by any chance, focus his mind because of the magical sweet word.

“Your Majesty, I’ll do it.”

Serus immediately picked up the pen Fabian had dropped and wrote down a few things. The more neatly organized, the more sweat on his forehead.

“Your Majesty…..”

Serus gave the paper with a trembling hand. Fabian glared at the paper with a piercing look. Fabian couldn’t say anything as he was so shocked that he almost forgot how to breathe.

“So… Prince Adrian was born in Felice Palace in the summer with the help of a midwife?”

“It looks like…”

There was a heavy silence. The first thing that Fabian did, who was barely sane, was to call the doctor who always examined the Empress.

A moment later, the doctor came in and set an example for Fabian. As instructed, he brought the journal when he was working at the Empress’s palace. Serus took it and folded the necessary date section and handed it back to Fabian.

Fabian read the diary carefully, biting her lips over and over again.

“…….Are all the facts?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Then this phrase, ‘She may be nauseating, so need to be extra careful to observe her.’ Is this also true?”

“Yes? Yes, ······”

“How come you didn’t say anything to me?

There’s a fit of anger rose in Fabian’s dark eyes.

“The initial signs were inaccurate, and the former Empress’ s period was irregular. Within the Imperial family, there’s a rule which we can only notify when the signs are certain and stable.”

Huh, Fabian sighed deeply. Serus noticed it and immediately sent out the doctor.

“It was strange.” Fabian’s voice sounded low.

“When I hugged that child…..Prince Adrian, I felt something strange.”

Fabian thought that maybe it was because it was a rare experience. Still, now he realized that it was because of a completely different reason.

“But what I can’t even understand. If he’s my child, …..how could she leave me?” Fabian couldn’t understand why she decided to divorce ahead of the birth of his precious family.

Or maybe ……it wasn’t his own child? But Fabian quickly erased that unclean thought. Evelyn wasn’t a woman who would do something like that, and Fabian was willing to bet on that. Above all, the date or time written side by side indicates that the child’s father was him.

“At that time… did she know that she had a child on the day she left me?”

This time, again, Serus was silent. When Fabian knew that what he had hoped for was came true, he became more confused. He wished to see the beautiful scene where Evelyn held his child, but Fabian wasn’t there.

“I’m not completely sure yet.” Serus managed to speak. “I will personally listen to the midwife’s testimony that Logan brought in.”

Only

But Serus was half-hearted as he recalled Prince Adrian’s black hair and black eyes.

“The child clearly resembled me.” Fabian even hugged him, so he knew better than anyone else.

“Adrian is my child.”

It seemed that Fabian had already come to a conclusion. Inside him, who looked calm, there was a turmoil of emotions that was felt secretly only by Serus.

A certain joy, a longing for the most desirable wishes, and also the peak of happiness … and Evelyn, who broke everything and left. All the emotions piled up heavy and filled his heart.

Fabian remained silent until two days later.

His eyes were deep because of the countless thoughts he had to think about.