Chapter 23

Standing right there was my fiancé, his hair shining with the same golden hue as the crown prince’s, and his jewel-like blue eyes dulled into a murky haze. He cast a single, fleeting glance at me, completely frozen in place.

This is bad. This is exceptionally, terribly bad.

The prince had expressly forbidden me from speaking alone with the crown prince. Even though it had been entirely a force majeure (unforeseen circumstances beyond one’s control), this was the worst-case scenario.

“….You were here.”

“Yes, I was looking for Older Brother. Was it perhaps, ‘I’ll make you my concubine. I won’t treat you poorly. Just get away from him’?”

The prince smiled cheerfully, with a grin so eerie it was terrifying in every sense of the word. The crown prince, however, didn’t show a shred of intimidation and responded with utter detachment.

“You heard, did you? How distasteful.”

“I hardly think I need to hear that from an older brother trying to steal his own younger brother’s fiancée.”

“What I choose to do with your fiancée is entirely my own prerogative.”

The prince was dishing out venom with a cheerful smile far beyond what I had ever imagined. The crown prince furrowed his brows, clearly growing irritated.

Should I try stepping in between them? No, I had a feeling that would only stroke the prince’s nerves the wrong way….

“….That is something I cannot simply overlook.”

A sudden gust of wind swept through, whipping our hair up into the air.

The prince’s entire aura shifted drastically. His cheerful smile vanished, replaced by an absolute lack of expression that sent a chilling shiver straight down my spine.

I had never seen the prince look this angry before.

Whether it was a murderous aura or pure magical power, I couldn’t tell, but a heavy, oppressive atmosphere hung in the air, pressing down on us like physical weight.

“Bell… made into Older Brother’s concubine? Don’t make me laugh.”

His tone slipped into something harsher, and the wind whipped up even stronger.

The crown prince, on the other hand, didn’t look particularly surprised.

“Do you intend to bare your fangs at me?”

“You always, always take away the things that are precious to me.”

The word take away caused the crown prince to flinch sharply. The flowers swayed so violently they looked ready to be torn straight out of the earth. I had no time to intervene, forced to use every ounce of energy just to protect myself from the howling gale.

“I won’t forgive it. I will never forgive you for taking Bell away from me.”

The prince glared fiercely at the crown prince, growling the words in a low voice that seemed to crawl straight up from the ground.

The very next instant, with a tremendous CRACK-SHATTER sound, the glass-paned windows of the greenhouse pulverized into a million pieces. I gasped in shock, but the fragments of glass didn’t fall. They hung suspended in midair, as if time itself had frozen.

“…I see. To point your blade at me, you’ve certainly grown quite bold, haven’t you? Is your fiancée really that precious to you?”

“Yes, of course she is.”

As the prince smiled brightly, the tips of all those suspended glass shards shifted, concentrating entirely on the crown prince.

This had long since crossed the line of mere discourtesy. This was treason… Attempted murder of the crown prince. The best-case scenario would be imprisonment for the entire family.

“Your Highness! Stop it!!”

Before I knew it, I was screaming at the top of my lungs.

Even if they were of the same royal blood, there was no one to shield a prince with zero backing. I had heard that the prince’s mother, a concubine, had already passed away, leaving the prince at an absolute disadvantage.

There was no need to throw our lives away right here. Especially when all of this started simply because I was propositioned to be a concubine.

“Please calm down! You’re just acting out of sleep inertia, right?!”

The crown prince shot me a look as if to say, What on earth are you blathering about?, but I couldn’t afford to care about that now. Whether people called me a fool or an idiot, I had to ensure the prince’s actions could at least be written off as a tragic accident. It might already be too late, but if we acted now, the three of us could still figure a way out.

Please! I believe that the prince will understand me!

“Bell… Are you… are you taking Older Brother’s side…?”

“…Huh?”

My desperate efforts proved entirely in vain; the prince clearly wasn’t in his right mind and was incapable of rational judgment. The floating shards of glass let out an ominous, rattling clack-clack sound.

The instant the prince’s despair-filled eyes locked onto me, a blinding white blast of light assaulted him. He was violently thrown backward with a loud, destructive crash of breaking objects.

“Your Highness?!”

Panicking, I rushed over to the spot where a cloud of dust had kicked up from the flashy impact. This had long since surpassed the scale of a mere sibling quarrel.

The one who had seized the prince’s opening to launch an attack was undoubtedly the crown prince. When I looked toward him, he was casually cracking his knuckles while silently staring down at the prince.

The glass shards suspended in the air simply rained down harmlessly onto the ground.

“Dylan, you are hopelessly soft-headed. Whenever you get excited, you lose sight of your surroundings. Your magical power may be immense, but your control is still painfully amateurish. And yet you dare bare your fangs at me? Have you forgotten that I am royalty and the crown prince? You fool.”

The crown prince berated the prince with cold, merciless words.

Lying before me on the ground, the prince had numerous deep cuts, likely slashed by the bricks of the flower bed.

“Please pull yourself together! Can you hear me?!”

Blood was streaming down from his head.

I couldn’t even tell if he was still conscious.

I instinctively reached for my handkerchief to apply pressure to the wound, only to remember I had given it away to that beautiful girl. Left with no other choice, I used a fragment of a brick to slice through the ribbon of my dress.

The wound on his thigh looked terrible, too, so I wrapped the fabric tightly around it.

“…You have no need for a fiancée, do you? That was precisely why I offered to take her as my concubine. A failure like you has far less demand than a concubine of the future king.”

As I hurriedly administered first aid to the prince while letting the crown prince’s words drift past my ears, the prince twitched slightly.

He was conscious!

“Your Highness! Do you know where you…!”

Even forgetting to address him as a royal Highness, I called out to him in sheer desperation as the prince’s arm reached out and wrapped tightly around me in a crushing embrace. I smelled the scent of the prince mingling with the heavy stench of blood.

Bits of crushed brick sitting on his hair cascaded down every time the prince shifted. I wanted to tell him not to move, but with my face pressed firmly against his chest, I was struggling just to breathe.

Right now, the prince was definitely not in his right mind. Normally, he would have been capable of making a much wiser choice.

“Ugh…!”

The prince groaned as he tried to stand, prompting me to frantically support his body. Dragging his right leg, he somehow managed to force himself up.

Even so, the strength of the arms holding me in an embrace never once loosened.

“Your Highness, stop! We need to treat your wounds first…”

Lifting my face just barely away from his chest, I pleaded with him in a whisper.

The prince, who had been staring blankly ahead, finally turned his gaze toward me. The blue eyes peeking through his disheveled golden bangs burned with an unearthly, dangerous light like I had never seen before. It made me shrink back in terror, like a frog paralyzed by the gaze of a snake.

“It’s fine, really. Even if Bell took Older Brother’s side, you’re still my fiancée in the end.”

“I am not taking anyone’s side! Think carefully. This is for the prince’s own good!”

My immediate counterargument brought a fraction of light back into the prince’s eyes. His tense expression softened just a hair.

“For… my own good, is it?”

“Yes! If things continue like this, we won’t even be able to talk about an engagement. Forget playing together, we might never see each other again for the rest of our lives!”

While the prince might perhaps escape with mere imprisonment, there was zero guarantee of safety for someone like me caught in the middle. There was always the distinct possibility that the royal family, wishing to sweep the ugly incident under the rug, would pin the entire plot on the Tybus family.

If that happened, Father, Mother, and Will would all suffer the consequences. It terrified me because I couldn’t even begin to imagine how much collateral damage my accidental presence here would cause. I refused to be used as a convenient pawn.

“Then I’ll just have to erase him.”

“…Eh?”

“I simply cannot fathom a reality where Bell and I can’t be together.”

Still keeping one arm wrapped securely around my shoulder, the prince turned his gaze back toward the crown prince.

“Ha! Erase me? If you do that, your fiancée’s entire clan will be executed without a doubt.”

“Is that so? Then I’ll die right alongside her.”

No! Prince, you’ve got it all wrong!!!

With tears welling up in my eyes at the horrific future he had just painted, I shook my head frantically inside the circle of the prince’s arms.

“Your fiancée seems rather unwilling to die, though?”

“……”

Sparks of magic crackled and danced across the crown prince’s body as he sneered. The crown prince was fully prepared to fight, too.

The prince’s face was hidden behind his bangs, making it impossible to read his expression.

Filled with a sickening sense of dread, I clung to him with all the strength I had left. It was a final, desperate act of defiance. If this didn’t work…… there was nothing more I could do. I couldn’t use magic myself, leaving me utterly powerless to stop the two of them.

“Stop… it.”

Abruptly, for just a single split second, the tension drained out of the prince’s body. But the very next moment, he began condensing magical power into his palm once more.

“……Bell, you don’t want to die, right?”

I had thought he regained his sanity, but that wasn’t the case at all. He simply stood there, staring down with a hazy, unfocused gaze.

“Even so, I have no choice.”

Twisting his face in deep hatred, the prince bit down regretful on his lip.

Of all people, Bell, I don’t think I can ever hand you over to anyone.

The final words were swallowed up by a howling gust of wind and the crackling sound of spitting sparks.

Wait, if this ends in mutual destruction and the crown prince somehow wins, the prince is going to die, right? And then, as a convenient byproduct, I’m going to die too, right? Huh?

Struck by that terrifying realization, I whipped my head around to look at the prince, only to lock eyes with him as he offered a bright, cheerful smile. What on earth was the meaning of that smile?

Before I even had a chance to let out a scream, the prince’s hand was raised, ready to strike.