Miss Carina was quite troubled:
"My nephew will not leave Tobesk City easily. Maybe I will be asked to take Resia's brothers to participate in the negotiations on behalf of the royal family. If that is the case, I will really have no rest time this spring."
"Will Leicia not be sent?"
Shade asked curiously, and the princess who was holding his hand finally leaned gently on his shoulder. Miss Carina was on the other side, so of course she couldn't see what Shade's hand was doing, but Ajelina, who was next to Leicia, could clearly see Shade's hand dancing on the beautiful stockings.
"Father will definitely not send me. Since I went to visit Willendale last summer, I will definitely not be there this time."
"I see. For balance."
Shad nodded.
"You really know everything. Sometimes I wonder where you get such knowledge from."
The witch took Shade's other hand and kissed him gently on the side of his face. Shade thought that Leicia would be angry, but Miss Carina stood up after the kiss and called the maids in the room to go to the side room with her to rest:
"I won't disturb your date. If we wait any longer, I'm afraid that Leicia will take the initiative to chase us away, which would be too undignified."
The golden eyes playfully winked at his niece:
"The knight's hands are quite warm, aren't they?"
Lecia ignored her completely, since she was the one who got the advantage anyway.
"Ajelina, what are you doing sitting here?"
The princess asked her sister curiously again, and the little princess finally realized what was going on and stood up, then looked back every step of the way and followed Miss Carina out of the room.
After everyone had left and the doors leading to the side rooms and corridors were locked, Her Royal Highness the Princess briskly kicked off her high heels, then put her arms around Shad's neck and sat in his arms.
"You must win the City Riding Competition."
The beautiful eyes in the darkness looked at Shade:
"Not for Delarion, nor for any honor, but only for me and Dorothy. Dorothy and I have already agreed that if you want to have a fun time at the dinner after the game, don't let us down, knight."
She grabbed Shade's tie and pulled him down to kiss her. Her Royal Highness seemed to be in a particularly high spirits tonight, so much so that when the kiss ended, Shade even suspected that his lips were bitten.
The opera "Don Quixote" performed tonight lasted a total of two and a half hours. Because of the success of the performance, after the last scene, when the actors went on stage together to take their bows, they bowed five times to calm the excited emotions of the audience.
The lights above the auditorium came back on, and the people who had come back to their senses from the opera were bathed in the light again, feeling as if they had experienced a whole new and strange life.
The lights in the private box above the auditorium were now on. In the central room, maids filed in to clean up the traces and help the princess tidy up her clothes. Ajelina obediently helped Lessia with her hair behind her.
Shade buttoned up his coat and stood up to see Miss Carina standing at the door, waving at him:
"Young people are really hot-tempered... Come with me, we have other things to do tonight."
"What is it?"
"An uncontained relic appeared in the opera house. I just got the news this morning. Fortunately, I have a good relationship with Queen Maria Opera House. To be precise, I own 27% of the shares here. The relic is still in the back. Come with me to see what it is."
Since she said so, Xia De had no reason to refuse. However, he thought about the fact that as a ring wizard, the probability of him encountering an ownerless relic alone was too small. Not to mention compared with Yin Luna, a chosen one who faced challenges almost every day, even compared with ordinary ring wizards, the probability of him encountering a relic was too low.
Since he was leaving with Miss Carina, Shade naturally had to explain his destination to Resia. The already satisfied Princess looked a little lazy at the moment. She waved at Shade:
"Since it is a relic, you can go and have a look with her. I won't say goodbye to you. Ajelina and I will go back to the Yodel Palace in a while. Knight, it's a good night."
This gave Shade the illusion that he was abandoned after playing his part. But fortunately, Leicia remembered to stand up and kiss him goodbye. The princess's wet kiss made him feel very happy.
The structure of the Maria Opera House in Tobesk is similar to that of the Wilde Opera House in Randall Valley. The opera house has a performance hall that connects the auditorium to the backstage, and there is only a guarded passage from the front of the opera house to the backstage to prevent the actors from being harassed during the performance.
Although Miss Carina did not place her followers in the opera house to monitor at all times, she also had her own spies and intelligence network in the local area, and the news of the relic was passed to her through this means.
"Speaking of which, I wonder if your teacher, Miss Danister of the Thirteenth Ring, has ever mentioned this to you."
As the servants entered the backstage through the side door at the end of the corridor, Miss Carina lowered her voice and said to Shade:
"Since last spring, the frequency of lost-control relics in the material world, lost-control ring wizards, and natural disasters has increased significantly. The church discovered this when it was summarizing its work at the end of last year. Grassroots ring wizard teams like Yin Luna have long noticed that the accident rate throughout the year was not right."
On both sides of the walls of the backstage corridor of the opera house, there were curtain call photos of performances, with golden nameplates marking the time and the play. Xia De glanced at them with his peripheral vision:
"Miss Danister didn't mention it, but I heard Yin Luna complain about it. She was transferred from the Vatican to work here last spring. According to her, her friends in other dioceses also think that the frequency of strange things happening last year was a bit too high."
Xia De replied that this should also be the influence of the beginning of the epic of the Sixth Era. This is the real world, not the stage of an opera. It is impossible that problems only occur in one place while other places are calm.
However, the story of the chosen ones clearly began last summer when the strangers arrived, which Luvia could confirm. However, Miss Carina said that the frequency of various events increased significantly since the spring of 1853.
"It's the spring of 1853 again. A lot of things really happened at this time of year a year ago..."
The news that the Duchess had come backstage had already been reported to the theater, and the theater manager, upon hearing the news, trotted over, wiping the sweat from his face as they entered the backstage corridor.
He was a plump man, wearing a black suit over a fashionable plaid shirt. The silver watch chain extending from his chest pocket was tied to the third button from the top. He had a monocle on his right eye, with a small piece of chain hanging down from the right side of the frame. He wore a tall black silk hat that looked like it could hide a rabbit, which looked like a magician's outfit.
He obviously knew that Duke Carina Cavendish did not like the approach of strange men, so he stopped by the wall at a relatively far distance:
"Duke, welcome. Please forgive our poor hospitality. May I ask, what do you want..."
The fat manager, who couldn't guess what Miss Karina was thinking, bowed slightly.
Miss Carina didn't say anything, and Tifa smiled and explained:
"Good evening, Mr. Nesser. Mr. Shad Hamilton is very interested in the heroine of tonight's opera and wants to meet the beautiful girl backstage. Miss Carina came with him."
"Um?"
Xia De raised an eyebrow but did not object.
Mr. Nesser, the theater manager, was also very surprised. Of course, he knew about the relationship between Shade and Miss Carina. Almost everyone in the city knew about it, but he was still shocked by the Duke's doting on his "lover":
"Okay, no problem. The Alice Opera Company performing tonight will surely be happy to be noticed by Rejade's Hamilton. Oh, which leading actress does Mr. Hamilton want to meet?"
The fat man asked while wiping his sweat. In the "Clock Tower Lovers" just now, the role of the male knight was also played by a woman, so there are indeed two female actors who can be called the protagonists.
"He wants them all."
Tifa said with a proper smile without changing her expression:
"We'll be waiting in dressing room No. 5. We only need the two of them. They need to be in makeup and costumes, exactly the same as they were on the stage. You'll only be given 20 minutes to prepare. Mr. Hamilton doesn't have much more patience."
Shade felt that his reputation in Tobesk City would become much worse after today.
"Besides, no matter what happened tonight, the Duke doesn't want anyone else to know."
Tifa added.
To Shade, this sentence sounded like an attempt to prevent any more noise from being made when the relics were being stored, but to the people in the theater, it sounded like something unspeakable was going to happen here in a moment.
"Is that so? Okay, okay, I understand."
Manager Mr. Nesser wiped his sweat and nodded, then watched them enter dressing room No. 5. Miss Carina's two female attendants stood at the door, prohibiting others from entering, and the 20-minute countdown had already begun.
"That's it."
There are many dressing rooms in the Queen Maria Opera House. Dressing Room No. 5 is a large room that can accommodate at least 20 people for makeup. The tables with mirrors are arranged in three rows, seven in each row.
The reason why there are twenty tables instead of twenty-one is that the makeup mirror on the corner table was broken, and before it was replaced with a new one, it was placed in the corner and used as a storage table.