May did not even get the chance to curse her properly. Her vision faded at the edges, went grey, and she passed out on the drawing room floor.
Some time later, the physician finished his examination and delivered his conclusion. She had been exposed to a small quantity of poison — not nearly enough to kill her, thankfully. As long as she took the medicine he had prescribed, she would recover fully.
And right on cue, May opened her eyes.
Everything was hazy at first. She tried to work out where she was and who was nearby, but her vision refused to resolve. Two figures stood talking at her bedside. She squinted, focused, and made out the taller one.
Reheim.
An idea arrived in her head fully formed.
This was it. This was the classic poisoning event. In stories like this, the heroine is poisoned and lies hovering near death, and the male lead — standing over her in dramatic silence — finally understands his own feelings.
It was practically romance law.
And May, being May, was not about to let an opportunity of this quality slip past her.
So she kept her eyes shut and went on being unconscious.
When the Emperor stepped closer to the bed, May began internally panicking. He was not saying anything. He was simply standing there, looking down at her with such intensity that she was reasonably sure he could burn a hole through her face.
For one horrible second she wondered whether she had been caught.
No. He had not caught her acting. Instead, he laid a hand gently across her forehead to check her temperature, and she felt him let out a breath when he found the fever had gone down.
Unfortunately for May, the closer his face came, the faster her heart went, and her face began heating in a way that had nothing whatsoever to do with poison.
Mercifully he drew back before she fully combusted, and called across the room.
"Gail. The maid who was attending her. Anything?"
"We have searched everywhere, Your Majesty. There's no trace of her. Not a single clue."
Reheim's expression darkened.
The cleanup was too perfect. That was the trouble. It looked less like a servant fleeing a crime than like a piece of work that had been planned from the beginning, with the exit prepared before the poison was.
He thought of the unknown enemy who had been sending assassins after him ever since his coronation. And then a worse thought arrived.
Had they added May to the list?
Because if so, she was caught up in all of this because of him.
"Form an investigation team," he said. "You have my authority. Use any means necessary to find that maid."
Alarm bells began ringing in May's head.
Because if the truth came out — if the fake April were exposed as the culprit — then it would be her sister's body that paid the price for it.
There was no time left to pretend.
May's hand shot out and caught the Emperor's arm before he could turn away.
Reheim came back to the bedside immediately, firing questions at her about how she felt, whether she was in pain, whether the physician should be called back.
"I'm fine," May said. "That's not why I stopped you." She wet her lips. "Please cancel the order to pursue the maid."
"Why?"
May was shaking very slightly, and she pushed on anyway.
"Because everything happened according to my own plan. I needed to stage a poisoning scene in order to persuade the villainesses. I misjudged the timing, that's all — I take responsibility for that. But it wasn't the maid's fault. None of it was."
"You're telling me," Reheim said, "that all of this was an act."
"I'm sorry for worrying you. It was my doing."
His tone dropped. When he spoke again it was cold and sharp enough to cut.
"Who gave you permission to risk your life?"
May's mouth opened.
"I don't recall ever instructing you to do something so reckless. So explain it to me. Why do you treat your own life as though it were worth nothing at all? Is it really that cheap? Cheap enough to gamble away over something so trivial?"
The room went silent.
Then, after that sudden burst of anger, Reheim let out a long breath and sat back down in the chair beside her bed.
And that was when May understood.
He was not furious. He was frightened.
She smiled softly and thanked him for worrying about her. Then she told him, gently, that it had not been a trivial matter at all.
"And in that moment," she added, half to herself, "I finally understood what Your Majesty has wanted from the prime minister all along."
Reheim looked up.
"His acknowledgement."
And as though the word itself had summoned him, the prime minister appeared at the door — at either the perfect or the worst possible moment — with grim news.
A new problem had surfaced.
Shortly afterwards, Reheim sat at his desk turning through a thick stack of reports while the prime minister stood on the other side of it and explained each one in detail.
The first went back a month.
A strange epidemic had broken out on the Ratana estate, in the central southern region of the empire. At first it was contained there. It had now spread to the neighbouring estates.
Dean Chad Demish of Elrash Academy, a well-known expert in pathology, had been dispatched urgently and had identified bedbugs as the source of the disease. He had begun putting countermeasures in place.
Then, before he could finish that work, the Emperor had stripped him of his title and thrown him in prison.
As a result, there was still no proper solution to the epidemic.
And that was not the worst of it. On the next page: pirates had begun looting the Mastan coast, doing serious damage to the towns along it. That coast had once been untouchable under Admiral Carl's control — pirates would not even turn their heads in that direction.
Then the Emperor personally sent Admiral Carl to the gallows, and the sea turned lawless within the month.
Then the capital itself. Crime rates had climbed sharply. Violent crime, which had stood at eight per cent half a year ago, had more than doubled.
Reheim did not wait for the explanation. He supplied it himself.
"That happened because I exiled Commissioner Ferdy." He looked up from the page. "Tell me honestly. Do you believe Ferdy should have remained in his post after it came out that he abused his position and trampled on women who had no power to resist him?"
"As I have said before," the prime minister replied evenly, "I have no objection to punishing corrupt nobles. My objection is that purging all of them at once was an administrative mistake."
The air pulled tight.
Before the argument could develop into a full war, May stepped between them and told both of them to stop.
"The problems the prime minister has listed can all be solved quickly," she said, "if he gives me a little time. I already have talented people ready to fill those empty positions."
The prime minister was not convinced.
"Twenty people," he said. "You believe twenty people can handle problems on this scale? What exactly do you intend to do with so few?"
Reheim's composure cracked instantly and he snapped at him.
The man did not back down an inch. He did concede, in the same measured voice, that Lady May had a sharp eye for talent — that her idea of employing capable daughters from noble houses reminded him, in fact, of the late Empress.
"However," he said, "the difficulty remains what it was. Twenty is simply not enough to manage this many crises at once. Frankly, it is irresponsible."
"Marquis Graham." Reheim used his name like a hand on a hilt. "Stop insulting my fiancée."
He was clearly prepared to continue, but May spoke first.
"If the problem is manpower," she said brightly, "then there's nothing at all to worry about. My master will be handling that part."