Chapter 24

“Stop it!”

Amidst the howling gale and the crackling arcs of wild electricity, a sweet, clear voice rang clearly through the glassless greenhouse.

“Fighting is a no-no!”

The dazzling flashes piercing my eyes made it impossible to identify the speaker. I strained to see, but the relentless flickering threatened to overwhelm my vision.

“Fighting is a big no-no!!!”

The moment that high-pitched, childish voice echoed, the wind died down and the blinding flashes vanished. Standing amidst the devastated greenhouse, letting her platinum-blond hair flutter in the air as she radiated a faint, sparkling glow, was a toddler.

Both the crown prince and the prince stared in stunned disbelief, fixing their eyes entirely on the little girl. The crown prince, in particular, looked slightly pale.

“You…!! What on earth are you doing in a place like this?!”

“I came to see the flowers! I was bored!”

As the little girl puffed out her chubby cheeks in an adorable pout, she felt strangely familiar. Platinum blond… wasn’t that Her Majesty the Queen? Eh?! If she was royalty, that would explain how she managed to neutralize both of their magic. She must have used her own magic to intercept them. Perhaps she was exceptionally gifted in spellcasting.

At any rate, I had been spared from a magical execution. As I let out a breath of profound relief, the princess abruptly spun around on her heel and glared straight at us.

“You! You messed up my flowers!!”

The person Princess Claudia pointed an accusing finger at was the prince.

Half-siblings or not, calling an older brother you…

When I stole a sideways glance at the prince, I let out a brief, involuntary squeak. The prince was glaring at Princess Claudia as if she were a speck of dust beneath his boot.

The sheer hostility woven into his demeanor caused the princess to shrink back, her eyes welling up with a sheen of moisture. Yet, she bravely stepped in front of the crown prince and threw her arms wide.

“Y-You’re not allowed to bully Big Brother!”

Seeing her trembling as she tried to protect her older brother strangely made my heart skip a beat, completely out of place though it was. She looked to be around five years old. Even the prince seemed thrown off balance by her presence; he clicked his tongue in annoyance and lowered the hand he had been shrouding in crackling mana.

Was clicking your tongue at a tiny child really necessary?!

“Claudia, move. I’m going to settle things with this fellow. If Dylan insists on defying me, I’ll simply erase him from the picture.”

“Big Brother ruined the flower bed, too! That’s mean!!”

The princess shouted over the crown prince’s words. Taken aback, the crown prince choked on his own breath and let out a heavy sigh.

The younger sister’s persuasive power was truly overwhelming.

“…I’ll say it once more. Claudia, go home.”

“No! I’m bored!!”

Shaking her head vigorously, the princess clung tightly to the crown prince’s leg. Even the mighty crown prince seemed entirely helpless against his sister’s stubborn whims; with a long-suffering good grief expression, he scooped the little girl up into his arms and shot the prince a venomous glare.

“I’ll let you off for today since we’ve been interrupted.”

The crown prince rattled off a classic, textbook parting line straight out of a fictional villain’s handbook. I suppose it was inevitable that he ended up looking a bit small-time in the process.

A bubble of laughter rose up in my throat at the sheer absurdity of a nation’s crown prince reciting such a cliché line, and as I desperately tried to bite it back, the prince interpreted my shaking as fear and pulled my shoulder into an even tighter, suffocating embrace.

“…However…”

The crown prince’s gaze shifted directly to me. I instinctively shrank back in fright.

Did he notice me laughing……?

“Bertia Tybus. You, at least, will not escape punishment.”

“……っ!?”

Eh, why?! I hadn’t done a single thing!

Pale with horror, I stood there with my mouth hanging open, unable to speak, until the prince murmured quietly into my ear.

“It’s fine. Anyone who tries to kill Bell, I’ll erase them myself.”

No, that wasn’t fine in the slightest!!

I couldn’t keep up with today’s prince, whose logic was completely untethered from reality. Please wake up already.

“Still… well, perhaps that would be overly harsh.”

At the crown prince’s unexpected lifeline, I snapped my head up in hope. The prince’s aura immediately flared up with fresh hostility.

The crown prince shrugged with an air of weary exasperation.

“I suppose making you my concubine is one option. Though that would ultimately prove fruitless, I imagine. Bertia Tybus. Give me your answer to what I asked earlier. If you do, I’ll overlook everything that happened tonight.”

The crown prince stared right at me with a dead-serious expression.

What on earth was his question from earlier……?

This was the sole path to survival, and fumbling it here was not an option. As I frantically searched my memories, I recalled being grabbed by the shoulder and confronted with an intense glare just before the prince arrived.

‘Do you believe I can become a king?’

“I do.”

The crown prince’s eyes widened in shock, while the prince tightened his grip on my shoulder so hard I thought my bones were about to snap.

“Why do you believe so?”

“Because you possess the qualifications. You have the dominating presence to command people, and the charisma that makes others want to follow you.”

I hadn’t explicitly said you are the one who should be king, but my subtext must have gotten across, because the crown prince’s lips began to tremble slightly. Meanwhile, Princess Claudia was still whining softly in his arms.

“May I ask you one more thing?”

“Ask as you please.”

I blinked in mild surprise at the uncharacteristically humble tone coming from the crown prince. Beneath it all, he might genuinely possess a serious nature. It was just his methods that were profoundly messed up.

Naturally, that didn’t mean I forgave or overlooked what he had tried to do to the prince. I simply hoped he would indulge my petty, internal grumbling.

“If you commit discourtesy against me, you can hardly expect to escape unpunished. You are not so foolish as to be unaware of that. And yet… why did you offer me your counsel…?”

The crown prince furrowed his brows, looking at me with an expression that screamed of absolute bafflement and incomprehension.

“Well, that’s simple.”

When I answered without a care in the world, the crown prince’s scowl deepened further, and the prince squeezed my shoulder to the point where I feared my joints might actually dislocate.

“You are going to be my sovereign in the future, are you not? In that case, I will become your subject. A subject is someone who offers opinions to their lord and serves as their hands and feet. Wishing to be of even the slightest assistance to you, I offered my crude thoughts earlier, fully aware of the discourtesy.”

Since the prince was holding me close, I couldn’t drop to my knees, but I bowed my head as low as I could to convey my sincerity. Even to myself, I sounded like a fool. The honest truth was that I had wanted to dish out a little payback to this arrogant crown prince, but part of me also genuinely felt that I didn’t want to call him a tyrant when I grew up. Having a tyrant rule your generation was nothing short of an unmitigated disaster.

The crown prince let out a sigh, as if all the fight had been drained out of him.

“……Is that all? For a motive as trivial as that…… you offered me your counsel?”

“Yes.”

“……You truly are an idiot, aren’t you?”

“I cannot very well argue against that assessment. Please forgive my earlier discourtesy.”

I wanted nothing more than to drop to my knees and display my true sincerity…!

And yet, the prince kept getting in my way. The crown prince remained entirely unaware of the invisible, fierce turf war playing out between me trying to slip downward and the prince stubbornly blocking me.

“Enough. I understand. Bertia Tybus, I will accept your counsel as crown prince. Dylan, you ought to thank your fiancée properly.”

With those words, the corners of his mouth twitched upward into the very first genuine smile I had ever seen from him—one unmarred by mockery. However, it instantly vanished back into a scowl as he readjusted the sleeping princess in his arms and swept out of the greenhouse.

“Ha, haaaaaaah…”

The snapping of the taut thread of tension left my entire body feeling limp.

If the prince hadn’t been supporting my weight, I would have collapsed straight onto the floor.

“Bell is amazing, huh?”

The prince, who had remained entirely silent, finally spoke. Gone was any trace of his murderous hostility; his voice had returned to its usual, familiar cadence. When I glanced up, he was looking down at me with a gentle smile.

He was back to his usual self.

He was smiling, and his voice was soft.

“To successfully wrap Older Brother around your finger like that is no small feat. As expected of my fiancée.”

The expression with which he smiled down at me was no different from before. The murky darkness in his eyes had recaptured the brilliant luster of gemstones.

……And yet, why did it feel so deeply unsettling? I should have been overjoyed that he returned to normal operation.

“I’m sorry. Dragging Bell into this. I frequently clash with Older Brother, but this time, I was the one who provoked him.”

That bit about clashing frequently was a lie.

Though the crown prince’s expression had barely shifted, he had undeniably been shaken. The prince’s counterattack must have caught him entirely off guard.

Normally, this would be the point where I got mad at him.

I’d usually blurt out something like, ‘What on earth were you thinking doing something like that!’ without hesitation. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it with the prince right now. For some reason, it terrified me.

It felt less like he was radiating a murderous aura and more like someone quietly tightening a noose around my neck.

“Say, Bell, how do you think a person stops being able to walk?”

“Eh?”

The abrupt question made me blink rapidly in surprise. The prince narrowed his eyes at my reaction, wearing a look of immense, almost saccharine satisfaction.

“W-What’s wrong? All of a sudden.”

As I stammered, letting my eyes wander in confusion, the prince drifted closer, wrapped his arms around me, and pulled me flush against his chest from the front.

Though we were still at an awkward height difference, the prince’s face came to rest right level with my ear. Without a shred of hesitation, he slid his hand beneath my hair and pulled me into an airtight embrace.

“It smells like Bell…”

“Eh……?”

I had no idea what was happening.

Was he feeling lonely? Or had the reality of the situation finally frightened him?

I couldn’t quite read him, but since he had been holding me this tightly for a while now, perhaps he wanted me to hold him back. When I wrapped my own arms around his back, the prince let out a pleased, purring sound in the back of his throat.

“How can I stay by Bell’s side forever…?”

“By getting married…… I suppose?”

“……That’s true. But don’t you think that’s not quite enough?”

Uncomprehending, I tilted my head in confusion.

I found myself utterly transfixed by the prince’s blue, sapphire-like eyes as he pulled back just slightly. It felt as though I had been put under a spell, completely captivated.

“I always think about it. How can we stay together for eternity? An idea crossed my mind just a moment ago, you see…”

The prince offered a bright smile. It was a smile that refused to accept any objections from anyone. I fell headfirst into the terrifying sensation of being snared and captured like prey.

“Right now, I could actually make it happen.”

Plucking a single strand of my hair, the prince pressed his lips to it before looking up at me through his lashes with those piercing blue eyes. A bone-chilling, indescribable shudder raced straight up my spine.

And in that instant, regret hit me. I deeply regretted coming here tonight and speaking with the crown prince.

The one thing that was crystal clear was that the prince was still furious, and he had not forgiven me one bit.

“Big Sis──!”

Will’s voice carrying from the distance snapped the spell, and the prince’s expression shifted instantly. With a look of profound reluctance, he released my strand of hair, keeping one hand wrapped around mine while raising his free arm.

With a motion of his hand, the shattered glass flew back into place like a rewound tape, and the destroyed flower bed restored itself seamlessly. It was the prince’s magic.

While the flowers couldn’t be brought back to their original blooming state, everything else was configured precisely as it had been when we first arrived.

Then, with a sharp snap of his fingers, the surrounding space seemed to warp faintly.

“A sound-dampening barrier. Just in case. Though it didn’t seem to work on the princess.”

Lowering his gaze, the prince reluctantly let go of my hand, lingering as if he couldn’t bear to break contact.

Will’s voice drew closer.

The prince gently brushed a strand of hair from my cheek.

“See you later, Bell.”

“……Wai—!”

Before I had even a second to stop him, the prince slipped away and vanished entirely into the shadows of the night.