Inside Florence's royal palace, all was silent as the grave.
Though calling it silent as the grave was perhaps an exaggeration; there were hardly any people in the palace to begin with.
The supreme king, the great Lorenzo, sat upon his throne with his eyes closed and a calm expression. Yet the aura around him had already formed an almost tangible pressure. If anyone stood beside him, they likely would not even be able to breathe.
The smile had vanished from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's face, replaced by a thoughtful look. Though he addressed Lorenzo as Master, the relationship between the two was somewhat unusual.
Piero, who had vanished during the execution, had reappeared in the palace at some point. His eyes were deeply sunken in their sockets, making his thoughts impossible to read. One could only vaguely sense that he seemed to be looking at his son.
And lying in the middle of the palace—
"Credi."
Lorenzo opened his eyes.
"You are too weak."
He looked down at the barely breathing Credi and said this.
Credi slightly raised his head, seemingly wanting to look in Lorenzo's direction, but his neck no longer had even the slightest bit of strength left.
"I gave you chances to kill Lawrence—not once, but many times. Yet every time, you disappointed me, leading to... today's outcome."
"You were not at fault. Perhaps... I was."
Lorenzo said those words sincerely.
He would not be a king incapable of self-reflection.
The execution had failed, and the prisoner had been rescued by rebels. He did not believe the fault lay with anyone else.
If he had simply used the sword in his hand to cut off the heads of the three Verrocchio Workshop members from the very beginning, there would never have been so much messy trouble afterward.