The jingle of keys is loud in Ignacia's ears as she stands in front of her apartment door and attempts to open it.
Moving on autopilot, she hauls herself through the doorway with some effort, finding her feet sore and her shoulders aching from a whole day fraught with tension and stress.
Well. At least I got his approval.
When His Highness Aspen made her promise she would return, it felt as though she was being begged - like he was desperate for her to say yes. At the time, Ignacia was stunned by the look on his face.
She hasn't seen his expression so blatantly emotional in so long, and it made her want to promise him everything within her capability.
If only he knew how much she wished she could stay.
But staying would be the equivalent of settling down to sleep in a den of snakes.
The capital, while certainly a familiar place she would call home, is teeming with all sorts of unsavoury characters.
From the noble and imperial factions to the individual parties that each support a different royal sibling in the fight for the throne, the city of Sancona is crawling with the same people who have been targeting His Highness Aspen since his reveal as the first prince.
If any of the prince's enemies ever discovered the existence of this child, it would spell disaster for more than a few people.
Herself, her family, His Highness, and the child - none of them would be able to escape scrutiny.
It is with this thought in mind that she builds her resolve. No matter what happens, she mustn't let anyone know about her pregnancy.
From the moment she saw those two parallel lines to the time she was waiting outside the Magenta Garden's interior circle, all she could think about was how best to convince His Highness that he should let her resign from her position temporarily.
While she certainly didn't lie about her one week break a month ago or the fact that she visited her doctor during it, it was a stretch to claim that her health is in dire enough condition to warrant a year's worth of vacation.
But it was the only thing she came up with to shift the suspicion of her sudden resignation off herself and onto the absolutely exhausted way she has been carrying herself lately.
She supposes that working late into the early hours of the morning for the past few weeks has finally come of use. Despite knowing it is not her ill health that is giving her such a pale complexion, even she herself has to admit that she looks terrible at this moment. She'll just have to keep the fact that it is mostly because of the shock and fear of her pregnancy being found out to herself.
Ignacia kicks off her heels, walking straight to the bathroom as she unzips her purse and reaches for the plastic container with the pregnancy test kit inside it.
She flicks on the light, eyeing the two lines that stare her dead in the face, before disposing of it in the sanitary bin tucked away in a corner of the bathroom.
She isn't about to take any chances with throwing the test kit into her normal trash bin.
Ignacia has seen all sorts of scandals being dug up about nobles in high society throughout her life so far, and she's more than aware of the dirty tricks people will pull just to bring someone down.
Hiring workers to rummage through an enemy's disposed trash bags is only one of the few things that those determined bastards are capable of. If it were up to her, shredding the test kit into unrecognisable pieces would be her preferred method of disposal, but as it stands, bringing the kit outside of her own home just to do that would leave too many tracks to be traced.
The best she can do now is disguise the kit as part of her monthly period's used products. She doubts anyone would willingly try to open a bag with the word "biohazard" printed on it.
For a while, she stands there, contemplating if this is a good enough idea to fool anyone who might be secretly tailing her or watching her every move.
It wouldn't be the first time she's been spied on.
As much as she loathes the thought of someone lingering in the area to keep tabs on her, being smart about a situation like this is essential.
It takes all of five minutes for Ignacia to come to a decision. A rather impulsive and bold decision, in fact.
As His Highness Aspen's secretary, she follows the prince on his various journeys across the country, whether for his campaigns or when he is dispatched to settle imperial matters.
There have been all manner of violent incidents caused by failed assassinations as they traversed the land to their destination and back to the capital.
Blood is something that she has grown accustomed to, and she's certainly not afraid of drawing it.
Ignacia only wavers for a second before she's going to her bedroom and grabbing the only weapon she has in her possession off her bedside table.
For someone who only has basic training of the art of self-defense - a skill that her father insisted she learn - a weapon is usually reserved for cases of extreme emergency.
The mid-sized dagger is sharp and glints dangerously under the bright florescent lights in her bathroom when she unsheathes it.
She's never had to use it for anything before, and it was more of a decorative deterrent for anyone who got it into their head that she was to be messed with.
But even though she isn't in immediate danger now, she doesn't hesitate.
Ignacia raises her arm, takes a deep breath to steel herself, and presses the dagger's edge to the middle of her forearm and makes a relatively deep cut. Not enough to cause her to bleed out and die, but certainly something a doctor would be appalled by.
She hisses as the pain spreads from that single point of contact with the dagger to the entirety of her forearm and even up to her bicep. Her muscles throb in protest from the abuse, but she grits her teeth to endure it.
Instantly, blood beads to the surface of her broken skin, and before it can spill over onto her white tiles, she steps on the paddle that opens her sanitary bin and lets the deep red liquid drizzle onto the plastic container with her test kit inside it.
When she deems the item sufficiently coated in her blood, she grabs a fresh towel off the shelf on the wall and presses it to her wound to stop the bleeding.
The first thing she does is find something to tighten the towel around her forearm. When she looks around her living room, a piece of ribbon that pokes out of her sewing box, laying right there on the coffee table from when she forgot to return it to its cupboard, catches her attention and she pulls it free, wrapping it around the towel and securing it firmly in place with her free hand and teeth.
Then, she returns to the bathroom, where she grabs the end of the toilet roll and tears several sections of the thin paper to make the bloody mess in her sanitary bin even more grotesque.
Once she's satisfied with her work, she releases the paddle from under her foot.
If all that blood doesn't deter any spies from rummaging through her garbage, nothing will.
With the way those arrogant nobles operate, there is always a high chance that the people they hire to do their dirty work have certain lines they refuse to cross even with the promise of payment.
The high and mighty often end up commissioning people who are just as egotistic and proud.
With the country's best information networks currently monopolised by or under the constant watch of the royal family, even influential nobles would have a hard time getting into contact with highly skilled spies.
The espionage business has long been saturated with those who boast performance worthy of huge sums of payment, when the reality is the complete opposite.
Contrary to many formidable reputations plucked straight from the mouths of gossiping locals, such meagre, hastily-trained individuals are, more often than not, simply getting a kick out of dipping their toes into illegal ventures.
Getting one's hands into a bag full of disposed sanitary pads and blood would be more than any ordinary person could handle. If they were willing to handle it in the first place.
For now, the likelihood of anyone being desperate enough to look through her trash is low due to the punishment that the most active of His Highness Aspen's opposers, Marquess Grisel, has been ordered to observe.
The third prince's party is certainly not without other pillars, but Marquess Grisel is undoubtedly the one who directs the other party members to carry out his sly schemes. Being the brain behind their activities, without his instructions for the duration of time that His Highness orders his punishment to be, the third prince's party is bound to flounder and stumble without a leader.
As for the marquess, as cunning as he is, he will not risk contacting the rest of his allies while His Majesty is furious with him, that's for sure.
Ignacia wrinkles her nose when the pain in her arm begins to radiate, and she decides enough is enough. It would take up too much of her brain power getting worked up about the possibility of her plan being foiled, so she'll refrain from overthinking.
In any case...
I'd like to see them try and dig through my trash with the smell coming from it.
Fresh blood smells like iron and stings the nose for certain sensitive individuals, but old blood is another horror altogether.
Making a mental note to prepare a bottle full of rancid fish oil to "accidentally" spill all over her trash bags when she takes them out later, Ignacia turns off the light in her bathroom and steps out to look for her first aid kit.
She'll have to wash and disinfect the cut once most of the blood has been staunched. But now, all she has on her mind is how she'll explain the presence of a bandage on her forearm to His Highness tomorrow when she goes in for work.
With any luck, she'll be able to pass it off as an unfortunate moment of carelessness during her dinner preparation, but somehow, she doubts it will be that easy, especially with the prince's knack for seeing through her best-told lies.
Ignacia chuckles as she recalls the times he called her out playfully for lying about her love for chocolate. She had been beyond embarrassed by her inability to stop stuffing her face during one of their private discussions, so much so that she had instinctively tried to pretend she was hungry, when the truth was that she had spotted a large plate of her favourite pastries and couldn't resist reaching for more than a few.
The laughter that ensued between them that day was miraculous, considering His Highness Aspen's tendency to adhere to social etiquette. It was a dream to be able to see his lips widen beyond the false, close-lipped smiles he gave the nobles, or the tiny, indulgent but still no less restrained one he only shows around those in their small social circle.
She hasn't had to tell many of such lies in all the years she's been by his side, and even if she did, it was never about something as serious as a life-threatening secret.
One more time wouldn't make much of a difference, would it?
She shakes the thought from her mind before she can dwell too deeply on it.
As Ignacia gets around to making dinner after fixing up her injury, she tells herself one thing, trying not to focus on the way her heart pinches sharply as she begins to make plans for her eventual vacation.
It'll be fine. No one will know. Not even His Highness himself.
And she prays to every god in existence, if they do exist, for her wishes to hold true, blissfully unaware of the events that fate has in store for her.