[Lifespan Remaining: 30 days, 21 hours, 52 minutes.]
“Fifty wagons of limestone.”
The blade had landed beside an expense filed three weeks earlier: transportation costs for fifty wagons carrying excavated limestone from a northern quarry in Altaire.
“That’s a perfectly ordinary shipment,” Amelia answered with a calm face, looking at the entry.
“From a quarry that produced no limestone that week?” Noct questioned.
“You’ve gotten sloppy, sister. Or maybe you were in a hurry?”
“…”
“The wagons came from somewhere else,” he continued.
“And they sure as hell weren’t carrying limestone.”
Noct leaned forward again, inspecting her seemingly calm face.
But upon seeing a bead of sweat form on her forehead, he knew he had hit her secret.
“Sister…” he sighed quietly to himself.
“People who’ve done nothing wrong usually aren’t this afraid of being caught.”
Yet, seeing that she had no intention to answer him, Noct kept going with his unusually accurate assessment.
He took a look at another piece of paper, which was her list of purchases, all consolidated into a single sheet.
Amelia immediately snatched it out of his hands, but that was fine.
Noct had never needed to read it.
He only needed her to believe that he had.
Rather than react to her sudden movement, he calmly took the untouched cup of tea resting across from him.
“Wow, I mean…you really are one risk-taker,” Noct said, taking a sip.
“Buying and selling piles of worthless goods, moving them between warehouses, all to conceal the fact that a few of them—”
“Contained valuable mana crystals…”
Amelia was the one who finished his sentence, finally admitting to what she had done.
Her gaze dropped toward the cup in his hand.
“And that was my teacup…”
“Was it?” Noct took another sip.
“Then I suppose we’ve both taken something that didn’t belong to us.”
“But it does belong to me!” Amelia suddenly slammed her fist against the table, her frustrated expression clear as day.
“My merchants discovered that mine and my surveyors mapped it! I paid for everything that made it possible! Then Faust caught wind of it and ran his ass to Father and…”
‘Looks like she’s not keeping up appearances anymore.’
“Let me guess,” Noct decided to indulge her anger a bit.
“He ran his mouth, trying to take over what’s rightfully yours?”
“Yes…” she sighed, finally leaning back into her chair and pulling a hand across her face.
“Now Father has officially sealed the mine until we can ‘resolve our squabble’ as he called it.”
“But that doesn’t give you the right to continue excavating it?”
Amelia’s eyes snapped toward him instantly.
“How do you…?”
“I know you, Amelia. You probably realized you were going to lose to his connections, and decided to recover as much of your investment as you could.”
“Careful, Noct,” she looked at him with an expression full of hostility.
“I don’t know how you know this, but I could easily have you—”
“I’m not the one you need to be worrying about right now, Sister. Faust already knows, and he’s probably going to expose you at my birthday today.”
But before Amelia could say anything, she realized that Noelle was staring at her with extreme bloodlust.
She hadn’t reached for a weapon or made any overt threat.
Yet the murderous intent rolling from her was so thick that even Noct felt a chill crawl down his spine.
“Fine,” Amelia gave in somewhat, mostly to curiosity.
“How are you going to get me out of this rabbit hole?”
“Edward, your deputy bookkeeper,” Noct continued.
“Faust has been receiving several copies of your transport record through him.”
Amelia immediately reached for the documents.
“Then I’ll have him detained and move the crystals before—”
“And hand Feaust the mine yourself?”
Her hand stopped in its tracks.
“He is only the leak. Arrest him, and Faust will deny ever speaking to the man. Move the crystals, and his people will catch your wagons outside the warehouse.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“Nothing.”
“Excuse me?”
“Leave the crystals exactly where they are.”
Noct placed her teacup back onto its saucer.
“Before tonight’s celebration, report that an internal audit uncovered an undeclared stockpile in one of your warehouses. Seal the building yourself. Record every crystal and surrender the unpaid levy to Father’s treasury.”
“You want me to surrender everything I extracted?”
“I want you to admit to poor oversight before Faust can accuse you of deliberate theft and send you to jail.”
“Father will still refuse to grant me the mine,” Amelia frowned.
She emptied the tea Noct had drunk into the grass, then poured herself another cup.
“But he won’t give it to Faust either. Not while the source of his information remains questionable and both sides are accusing the other of misconduct.”
“So your brilliant solution is to preserve the stalemate.”
“For tonight? Yes.”
Amelia gave a humorless laugh.
“And what prevents Faust from trying again tomorrow? How can I win in the long run?”
Noct firmly met her gaze, making his stance clear.
“After tonight, sister. I’ll help you personally.”
“You…? Aren’t you supposed to—”
“Die?”
The word left his mouth so casually that it caused her to stiffen.
But now that Noct put everything into perspective, the letters he wanted delivered, the promises he had made in front of her so casually.
“Are you not actually going to…?” she started before cutting herself off.
“Actually, never mind.”
Amelia shook her head.
Whatever absurd method her youngest brother believed would save him, she could judge it for herself soon enough.
“I’ll humor you. How would you even catch Faust?”
“The bastard is overtly shady, yes. But he’s strangely competent at covering his tracks. Everyone knows what he does, but no one has ever managed to prove it.”
But instead of answering her question, Noct simply pushed the two letters he had brought with him across the table back to her.
“Deliver these first,” he said confidently.
“Tonight, you’ll see whether I can do what everyone believes is impossible.”
Noct met her gaze once more.
“After that, you can decide whether to trust me or not.”
“Tch…”
Amelia snatched up the letters and rose from her chair, taking a final swig of her tea.
“And what makes you think I won’t simply hand these over to Mother?”
“Because if you do, I’ll take everything I’ve told you to Stella instead,” Noct smiled faintly.
“I’m sure she would be happy with a shiny new mine.”
With only a glare, she exited the gazebo in a hurry.
But just as she took a few steps, she turned around to say one final thing.
“You’d better be right.”
And with that, the youngest daughter of Arcadia stormed off.
After waiting to see if she was really gone, Noct could finally release a heavy breath as he slumped over in his chair, exhausted.
‘Ugh…being a villain really is hard.’
“That was reckless,” Noelle said from behind him.
“What if she didn’t fall for the bluff? If she knew more about the situation, she would’ve easily deduced that you would have no way to contact Young Mistress Stella…”
“But she doesn’t,” Noct explained.
“Amelia understands her businesses, not the politics inside this estate. She’s away more often than she’s home, so of all my siblings, she was the least likely to know whether Stella and I had any means of contacting each other.”
“You couldn’t have been certain.”
“I wasn’t.” Noct sank farther into the chair.
“It was a gamble.”
Noelle put a thumb to her chin, thinking about the conversation they had.
“But Young Master, if delivering those letters was your only objective, why go through such a roundabout negotiation with Young Mistress Amelia?”
“Because it wasn’t my only objective, Noelle.”
Noct glanced toward the documents Amelia had left scattered across the table.
“The letters only keep me alive past tonight.”
His finger settled upon the expense report for fifty wagons of limestone.
Which were actually, in fact, fifty wagons of mana crystals.
“The mine is what keeps me alive afterward—”
“And I’m going to obtain it, no matter the cost.”