The emperor failed to hide his surprise at her cynical disregard for his status, even though she knew who he was. He’d never been so dumbfounded in his life. He wasn’t offended in the slightest, though. Strangely enough, he couldn’t sense a single trace of malice, arrogance, or sense of inferiority in this woman. She was speaking to him as if he weren’t even there, as if she didn’t care.

This strange woman piqued his interest. Shea had caught his attention.

“I don’t think so.”

“What?” Shea’s eyebrows furrowed. She’d expected him to back off, for his ego’s sake.

The emperor appeared to be having fun. “I go wherever I please. Cafés aren’t meant to exclude anyone.”

“Mine is the exception,” she boldly declared.

“That does not concern me,” he replied. “Everything in this empire is mine.”

“…”

Her expression clearly displayed her disgust.

Eid burst out laughing, as if he’d seen something terribly funny. How many years had it been since he had laughed like this?

Edward watched this whole interaction in silence. “Have we met before?”

It was an uncharacteristically dumb question for Edward.

“I give you a two out of ten,” Shea replied nonchalantly. “Two points because you have an unnecessarily handsome face.”

Edward furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, not understanding.

“Your pickup line needs some work,” she explained. “It’s so outdated.”

Only then did he realize how his question had sounded. He hurried to defend himself, uncharacteristically flustered. “That’s not what I—”

“Whatever.” Shea had no interest in listening to his excuses. “But don’t expect any special treatment if you come again.”

“How disappointing.”

“Don’t come, then.”

“I do what as I please.”

She turned for the kitchen, returning with a tray of blueberry cream buns. She handed one to her son and placed the rest on the counter.

The café erupted into chaos.

Watching this scene with great amusement, Eid and Edward rose from their seats. It was time to go. They’d been gone from the palace too long.

As they left, they could hear Shea sighing inside. “Maybe I should quit.”

The customers immediately cried out in one voice. “No!”

Their screams convinced her. She let out another sigh and turned to Lucy. “Should we put up that sign?”

“Which one?”

“The one that says, ‘You are not welcome at Sangria.’”

No other establishment would ever consider putting up such a sign.

“Stop welcoming people as they come in from now on,” Shea continued.

“What should I say instead?”

“Tell them to stop coming.”

The two men outside burst out laughing and went on their way.

***

Shea had been serious when she muttered, “Idiot. You’re not welcome at Sangria. Please don’t ever come.”

Not that it mattered to Eid.

Back at the palace, he addressed Ace, who was guilty of a great many things. “Details.”

“Pardon?”

“About Shea Grande.”

Ace looked exasperated at the emperor’s demand. What about her? But since he was guilty, he kept quiet. He didn’t want to die yet. “Do you mean Shea Grande from the café Sangria, sire?”

“Yes.”

The gears in Ace’s head began to turn. Why would this tyrant, who had no interest in other people, ask about her? Of course, she was very different from most people, but he didn’t think she was different enough to catch the tyrant’s attention. Could it be because he was kicked out of Sangria? Because he’d never been treated like that before? Was he offended?

Ace began to form several hypotheses, strangely convinced that Shea Grande wouldn’t treat the emperor any differently even if she knew who he was. Sure, it was disrespectful, but the emperor didn’t care about that kind of thing. It wasn’t as though he was proud of the fact that he was emperor.

What is it, then?

He couldn’t come up with an answer.

As Ace struggled silently to formulate an explanation, the emperor goaded him with snide comments. “You must go there often, judging by the way you sold me out to get your hands on some pastries.”

Ah, such a blissful moment. Getting another taste of a rainbow roll cake after two whole weeks had been amazing.

The tyrant gave Ace a pointed look.

Abe, who was as guilty as Ace, hesitantly spoke up. “I don’t know much. She’s twenty-two and has a four-year-old son. You saw him, too.”

“Is she his real mother?”

“Yes. He’s officially listed as her real son.”

“She actually gave birth to him?” The emperor seemed skeptical. She treated Elias very much like a mother, but Shea didn’t look like a woman who had ever given birth.

“No, she didn’t,” Abe replied. “She took him in after he was abandoned on her doorstep as a baby. As you know, the temple orphanage isn’t reliable. Everybody knows this. She introduced him as her son one day out of nowhere.”

“…”

“She doesn’t seem like a woman who would ever have a child of her own,” Abe continued. “Even if claimed to be his biological mother, nobody would believe her. And I don’t want to think that she was abandoned by some bastard and is a single mother.”

Ace thought his brother was being pretty bold in front of the ultimate bastard, who wouldn’t hesitate to kill his own child and its mother if he wanted to.

“That’s all we know,” Abe finished. “There are people in the Ministry of Finance who might know more, though.”

“The Ministry of Finance?”

Yup, since we can’t go to Sangria as often because of you. Ace refrained from speaking his thoughts, biting his tongue. “Yes, many of them stop by Sangria before work in the morning, so they probably know more than we do.”

That was enough to convince Eid, who headed straight to the Ministry of Finance. It was faster to ask around there instead of calling them to his office one by one.

Baron Morris, the vice minister of finance, sprang to his feet from where he sat behind mountains of documents. The emperor told him to sit down and got straight to the point.

“She is Viscountess Grande,” Morris explained.

“What?”

“Are you not speaking of Shea Grande of Sangria, Your Imperial Majesty?”

“She is a viscountess?”

A noblewoman? While her appearance and mannerisms were refined, he hadn’t expected her to be a noble. He hadn’t sensed any sort of aristocratic pride in her, despite her elegance.

Morris seemed exasperated by Eid’s question. “You awarded the title yourself, sire.”

“What?”

“The Grande family. Don’t you remember? The Grandes.”

Grande, Grande, Grande… He finally remembered. “The Grande who earned a commendation for providing dwarven-made weapons?”

Morris nodded. “The Grande you rewarded with a viscounty for providing weapons in the war you led as soon as you ascended the throne, sire.”

“Wasn’t the reward and the territory that I awarded extorted, so all Grande was left with was the title?”

“Indeed. The Grande family gave up the title, since it didn’t mean anything, which led you to notice what had happened. You had all the corrupt nobles involved executed, and then you awarded the Grandes with better land and much more money as an apology.”

The territory he’d given the Grandes was large and fertile, since he’d added the territories of the executed nobles as well. She should have been enjoying the luxuries of high society as the daughter of a viscount. So why…?

“I remember now. But if she’s part of that family, why is she living like that?”

Morris had an answer for this as well. “By the time you found out what happened, Viscount and Viscountess Grande were dead. Shea Grande inherited the title. I heard that your involvement, on top of the funerals, made her life much more complicated. They say she even cursed you in her sleep. All that extra work because of you, and all the attention from the other nobles… I suppose it must have been incredibly frustrating for her.”

“…”

Only then did Eid realize why Shea felt such spite for him. “What about the territory?”

He had no memory of the territory’s being returned.

“Shea thought about selling it to someone, but the residents caught wind of that and begged her not to sell. They wanted her to rule the territory. She decided to keep it. It’s grueling work that she isn’t familiar with, so she appointed someone to do the work for her and lives comfortably off the profits from the land. That’s why she runs her café however she pleases.”

Morris added that he, along with many others, would love for her to take the business seriously. He wasn’t the only one to think that way; many people had become slaves to Sangria’s temptations long ago. The Maxwell brothers, standing behind the tyrant, and the other finance officials nodded in agreement. Morris’ words struck a chord with them.

“But how do you know this?” Eid asked.

“I’ve been a fan of her since Wordwith’s. I followed her around back in school.”

“Wordwith’s?”

Morris seemed surprised by the emperor’s confusion. “Didn’t you know? She went to Wordwith’s. A lot of people here, including people from military affairs, probably know her from back then. She beat up a lot of them.”

“What do you mean?”