103 — Entangled (8)

Eusebio knew he could not make Ana Rosa stay bowed for long this time. As if escorting her, he helped her up and whispered low.

“Good. Keep knowing your place, always.”

He meant her conduct was an eyesore. Ana Rosa looked up at Eusebio and smiled brightly.

“Thank you, Your Majesty.”

As if she had been praised.

Only then did Eusebio realize the person in front of him was not “a twelve-year-old girl who knew nothing.”

Just as he was about to say something, Ana Rosa stepped back with perfect naturalness. She showed no sign of leaning on either her rank as a princess or her relationship as his sister—she only looked like someone fulfilling her duties as a duke. And he could see the people’s eyes—full of goodwill—focused not on him, the king, but on Ana Rosa.

She was shining more than he was, in this very moment. It was something that must not be allowed.

Eusebio swallowed, dry-throated, and climbed into the carriage without another word.

An accident had occurred at the largest thanksgiving rite in history, and someone had died—yet the Grand Empress Dowager’s birthday party proceeded as scheduled. Only one person had died, the High Priest, and all the injured were on the priests’ side as well.

The nobles were startled, but soon they were more excited than ever. They laughed as if they were heroes of a battlefield and shared their “tales of valor.”

‘Had you seen the statue’s foot fall? Then the part below the knee fell too. Wasn’t it ridiculous when that count abandoned his wife and ran off alone…?’

After such talk circulated for a while, it naturally turned into this:

“Still—didn’t His Majesty point out Princess Ana Rosa’s fault?”

Norma had offered the thanksgiving rite to celebrate getting Ana Rosa back, but an accident happened and someone died. Worse, the priest who had been offering the rite to the goddess had died, which meant the goddess had rejected the thanksgiving rite.

The goddess rejected the princess. The princess was not the goddess’s daughter. Well, of course.

“Hasn’t she lived with heretics for nine years? There’s no way the goddess would forgive her.”

A moment ago they were calling her the savior of the poor, and now she was a heretic’s woman.

Ana Rosa calmly raised her glass despite noticing the looks shifting, then frowned.

“I was told not to drink this.”

She remembered how the imperial physician, after tasting the wine Molina had presented before, had warned her repeatedly that it contained lead and she must never put it to her lips.

When she told Molina, he had asked back, “Is lead bad for the body?” In Mun Nation its toxicity was known, but in Aussis they seemed to think the poison was negligible.

Aussis thought Mun Nation was backward. And to exactly the same degree, Mun Nation thought Aussis was reckless.

To Mun people, Aussis did terrifying things without hesitation. For the sake of scientific advancement, Aussis seemed ready to do anything. They threw away countless lives and used things indiscriminately, even when it was not certain whether they were safe.

People set out for a sea dangerous beyond measure, for a new continent. Everyone wandered, believing treasure was buried somewhere.

Those who dug the earth, those who drifted upon the sea, those who drowned in the madness called science. A world where everything once cherished became old and useless—that was the Aussis Mun Nation looked upon.

When Ana Rosa turned her head, she saw a woman smiling from afar, as if she had been waiting. Ana Rosa walked slowly over to her.

“Marchioness.”

At her greeting, the Marchioness Kodrit beamed, bowed with her husband, and introduced him.

“Your Highness, this is my husband, Marquis Kodrit.”

“It is our first time meeting since I was little, Marquis. I’m glad you look well.”

“Martigno La Hariado pays his respects to Princess Ana Rosa.”

Their eyes met.

For a moment, Ana Rosa stood still before the marquis’s gaze—cold eyes that did not match his polite voice—almost as if granting him time to appraise her. And in the instant Kodrit seemed to reach a conclusion about what she was—

She smiled brightly, like the most innocent girl in the world.

“Come to think of it, Marquis. I heard you pitied me nine years ago. I was so moved when I heard that. Back then, I thought you were frightening… Please forgive a foolish child’s misunderstanding.”

With a hand to her chest, shaking her head as she said she was sorry for misunderstanding him, her manner was easy and warmly approachable. Her face was simply bright, and her mourning clothes made her seem all the more pitiable.

At that moment, Marquis Kodrit let out a short laugh. And Ana Rosa moved so naturally—greeting someone beside her—that she drifted away from him.

Marquis Kodrit did not think the princess was better than the king. The king had the virtues of a power-holder. He valued power above all else. For power, he was the sort who could discard even the mother who had made him king. But this princess did not look like that.

A power-holder obsessed with power was always the safest. Better a man fixated on power—who would not do anything to lose it and could be controlled along that axis—than some “great man” who wobbled here and there, swept along by human feelings: craving love, whining in loneliness, seeking others’ approval, and so on.

But those who wanted to do what was “right” had too many variables. They could not endure the world’s contradictions. If they decided to fix one thing, they had to close their eyes to the rest—but they could not. So they tried to fix this and fix that and ended up ruining everything.

The princess did not have a power-holder’s eyes. But she did not look like someone pursuing only justice, either. If he had to name it—

“A mutant.”

The princess’s movements had a purpose.

“Probably revenge. Or the throne. Perhaps both.”

Yet, in truth, neither matched her conduct cleanly. People gossiped that the princess had been abused by a perverted old man, but from what he had learned, she had been raised like a jewel. The Mun Emperor had doted on his empress like a granddaughter and had personally taught her everything, including Mun script.

For nine years, the Grand Empress Dowager had asked in letters, again and again, about the princess’s bedchamber and pressed her on when she would conceive an heir, but the princess had always answered only that she was sorry—the emperor did not want it.

For a princess raised so tenderly to harbor vengeance simply because she had been “sent to Mun” made no sense. And coveting the throne?

No. In matters of power, Kodrit could smell instinctively. From the princess, he did not sense that distinctive air of those who lusted after power.

Even as he believed a person who did not crave power ascending to the throne would only throw the country into chaos, Kodrit had to acknowledge it.

Still—aside from that one point—this princess possessed qualities more attractive than Eusebio’s.

Her showmanship was superb, and she was skilled at controlling emotion. No matter what people said, she showed nothing but the feelings she chose to display. She looked like the ruling bloodline itself.

“How bitter it must be for Her Highness the Grand Empress Dowager.”

Kodrit looked toward Norma in the distance.

“That the child born with your very essence had to be a daughter. How cruel.”

Everyone knew Norma had placed her son on the throne. And Eusebio was treating his mother with more and more disregard as time went on. And then the daughter she had nearly discarded returned with better ability.

Eusebio thought his kingship would last forever, but it would not. He had left no heir, and his more impressive younger sister had returned and was constantly displaying the competence of a successor. Someone might want to change the king—and in truth, the method was simple.

If the king died.

Eusebio believed the goddess had bestowed the king. He believed everyone in the world must kneel and bow their heads before him. In a way, that was true.

But even if he knew, Eusebio did not want to admit that deciding “which king the goddess bestowed” belonged to those doing the bowing.

“Honey?”

His wife called beside him, snapping Marquis Kodrit out of his thoughts.

“I have nothing to do with Her Highness, it’s just that I accepted a request—”

Just as Irene, sensing her husband’s mood was strange, tried to make excuses, Marquis Kodrit cut her off.

“Nothing to do with her?”

Irene nodded at his question. Then the marquis, watching the princess’s back as it grew farther away, said,

“Make it something. Any kind of relationship.”

Irene’s eyes widened slightly. She glanced at the princess’s back and answered softly,

“Alright.”