The Prince

“…Dame Noelle. Are you all right?”

Stella asked it with real worry, and no wonder. Noelle’s face had been drained of blood for some time now. Not even on a battlefield at Stella’s side had she ever looked this shaken, and ever since the Prince had led Aiden away, she had been like this without letup.

“If you are unwell, do take a short rest. I will make the excuses out here well enough.”
“…Then. I’ll step out for a moment.”

Noelle managed a smile with some effort and rose from her seat.

She slipped out of the hall for a little while. Beyond that noisy, glittering room, the cool night air rustled through her hair and tossed it about.

“…”

Noelle looked toward where the wind had come from, and her face hardened. To a superhuman’s senses the dark hid nothing, and she could see clearly what lay beyond it.

Aiden. And the Prince.

They sat across a table from each other, talking about something.

She drew a deep breath.

The right, to step in.

There was none.

Whatever might be said over there, she had no right to check the Prince. Given the kind of ‘past’ that tangled her up with him, that was only natural. She had not let Aiden go so meekly for nothing.

She turned away, meaning to put distance between herself and the two of them, because with hearing like hers, every word of that conversation would reach her even from here.

“Break off your engagement with the Lionhearted.”

…And she would have gone, had those words not reached her.

“In return, whatever it is you want, Aiden, I will grant every bit of it.”

“—”

Noelle stopped dead.

Before she knew it, she was searching Aiden’s face. She could not say why, but at words like those her first instinct was to read his expression, and somehow it felt like the thing she had to do. He, for his part, showed no particular reaction. He only watched the Prince’s face, expressionless, in a way that gave no clue to what he was thinking.

“…May I ask why you are demanding such a thing.”

Aiden’s voice came out thick, and at the question the Prince laced his fingers and propped his chin on them.

“The Daybreak is coming, Aiden.¹ Before long a great many interesting things will be happening inside the imperial capital.”

That unreadable smile still hung placidly on his face.

“I simply do not want a good and upright citizen like yourself standing beside a person that vicious and being dragged into such matters.”
“Did you just say Dame Noelle is vicious?”
“Ah, certainly. Of course.”

And then.

Like a snake’s tongue coiling.

“It runs rather long if I explain the circumstances, but to put it simply…”

The Prince’s voice wound itself around Noelle’s ear.

“…That woman ruined my future.”

For an instant.

“That woman known as the Lionhearted. She is a coward, a traitor, a failure, a murderer, and a runaway. She will not be able to deny it herself.”

Noelle’s breath stopped.

“Is that not reason enough to call someone vicious?”

“…”

“Prying you away from a woman like that is a thing to be thanked for, surely.”

“…”

“And I know who you are, Aiden Kellermain. I know what it is you want, as well.”

The Prince smiled as he said it.

“Get mixed up in matters above your station and great calamity is bound to follow. Are you not shouldering something right now that you cannot bear?”
“What do you mean.”
“It means I would like to give you peace.”

Aiden froze where he sat.

Even to Noelle, who had not known him so very long, it was unmistakably the face of a man caught ‘off guard’. The Prince went on regarding him with the same placid smile.

“I am telling you to rest at home a while. Leave the difficult matters to the great and mighty. And keep some distance from the risks of dying, too.”

The words fell one after another, full of certainty. The Prince laid them out calmly, like plain fact, as though it went without saying that Aiden would want exactly this, as though to drive home that the work had never suited him in the first place and somebody had loaded it onto him ‘by force’.

“And, above all else.”

Nor did it end there. The Prince let a pause build before he went on, like a man about to hand Aiden, without fail, the thing he ‘really’ wanted.

“Whatever may happen from here on. I will protect your family. No matter what comes. Even at the cost of my own life.”

“…”

“I will swear it on the honor of the imperial house. If that still will not do, I will bind myself in a covenant before Karva, the chief deity. I keep what I say.”

“…”

“Leave the woman who shoved that… ‘cruel’ fate onto you to me. Go back to the life you had. That is what I am saying.”

Noelle clenched her hand hard enough to draw blood.

He was not, in fact, wrong. Everything Aiden Kellermain was going through now had begun when he met her. None of it was anything he had done because he wanted to; all of it had started ‘because of’ her.

“…”

She let out a ragged breath and bowed her head. After all that had been laid out, the answer Aiden would give was obvious.

And.

A ‘rejection’ was rising in her.

…Why?

She could not tell why she was reacting this way. She and he were bound by a contract, and nowhere in it was there any occasion for the two of them to lean on each other emotionally. If Aiden accepted an offer the Prince had put to him like that, she need only find somebody else and fill the place somehow. Theirs was supposed to be a relationship in which neither granted the other any worth beyond that.

But.

I don’t, want to hear it.

She did not want to hear that man refuse her. For reasons she herself could not grasp, the thought had come to her before she knew it. She wanted to leave that very instant, but her legs, as though nailed to the spot, would not even take her weight.

Then Aiden quietly opened his mouth, and Noelle squeezed her eyes shut.

“Your Highness.”

But.

“There’s nothing you won’t say about my fiancée.”

The words that flowed out next were nothing like what she had expected.

…Noelle’s eyes flew open as wide as they would go.

A chilly air settled over the table.

Right after someone had hurled abuse at a member of the direct imperial line, a mood like this was only to be expected.

“…It seems you do not know yet.”

The Prince was silent for a while, but when he spoke, even after hearing that, his manner had not changed at all.

“That person’s public reputation is good, yes. Because the imperial house and the military ‘manufactured’ it that way. But—”
“There will be propaganda mixed in. There must have been no end of terrible things in the middle of a war. I never once thought Dame Noelle was pure white and blameless.”

“…”

“Just as Your Highness says, Dame Noelle may well be a different person from the one she is shown as. I will not deny it.”

Aiden carried on calmly.

“But, even so.”

Calmly, yet with finality, he let the words drop.

“I have no intention of breaking off the engagement.”

What the Prince had just brought up had certainly been unexpected from first to last. He plainly had some bad history with Noelle as well, which had to be why his hostility showed this openly.

But.

No matter what dark and enormous matters lay behind it, Aiden had a reason why he absolutely could not give up this marriage.

There was his reason, spelled out and hammered home in the plainest possible terms.

Is this bastard trying to get somebody killed…!

No matter what happened, he could not give up the relationship with Noelle…! There was no answer but to keep it going, do or die…!

“…You will find yourself facing a great many things you cannot bear.”

The Prince spoke gravely, and Aiden inwardly gritted his teeth. No, he understood perfectly well what the man was saying, but…

If I break off the engagement I die on the spot, I’m telling you…!

He turned that desperation into an unhurried smile and somehow batted the words back.

“I am prepared for it.”

The answer came at once, and the Prince fell silent a moment. He seemed to be sizing Aiden up, unable to tell what on earth he was thinking.

“…You had best think this through properly.”

The Prince’s voice had gone chilly. No doubt he meant it as a warning that things could turn hostile between the two of them as well.

And what am I supposed to do about that…!

Better than dropping dead on the spot, you jerk…!

“It makes no difference to me.”

He said it without a hitch, and the Prince looked at him like a man lost for words.

“…What is your reason for going that far? You are merely bound to Dame Noelle by a contract, are you not.”

What reason? He was doing it because he had to…

But there was no point explaining a thing like that. Whatever he said, the man looked set to keep clinging like this.

So it was time to put his head to work.

He had no idea yet why the Prince wanted the engagement broken off, but at the very least he had to stop the man from getting in their way like this from now on. It was an enormous bother. So the best pretext for shutting it all down in one stroke would be, well…

Ah.

As it happened, there was one. It would solve nothing, but it would cut off at the root any attempt by the Prince to worm his way in and ‘persuade’ him.

“Erm.”

Aiden broke into a broad smile, the picture of sincerity without a particle of falsehood in it.

“I like her.”

…He brought the lie out without batting an eyelid, with all the brazenness you would expect from a man who swindled for a living.

“…”

For the first time, the smile peeled away from the Prince’s face. He looked like someone who had never so much as imagined an answer like this.

“…You like her, you say?”
“Yes.”
“…For nothing more than a reason like that, you would set yourself against the Imperial Crown Prince? Against the man who will rule the Empire?”
“Yes.”

Silence fell, far heavier and more desolate than the one before, and time ran on that way for a good while.

“Ha.”

One short breath out.

“Hah-hahahahah—!”

And presently, a great roar of laughter followed.

“…?”

At the system window that floated up next, Aiden’s face screwed up. He had never seen a window like it in his life. Until now, skills had been copied as favor went up, so what in the world was all this about a Malice stage and a mutated skill?

But before he could even finish turning the question over, another window floated up right after it.

“…”

And what was it with this one now…?