The Empty-Handed Prince
"Cassion, His Majesty asked you a question."
Julia pressed him for an answer. Those were the first words she had spoken to Cassion since he had entered the banquet hall.
All across the hall, nobles traded glances and silently exchanged their verdicts.
So it's true, then — the discarded prince. Nothing like the way they treat Prince Dayson.
Nothing like it is right. Not one of them said a word to him until His Majesty asked that question. I doubt anyone even glanced his way.
And look at those clothes. Ready-made, by the feel of them. Showing up without so much as proper dress — did he not even know what today was?
Tch. Best mind which line I stand in.
There's no line behind that one at all. He isn't even worth considering.
Watching those barbed glances flick back and forth brightened Julia's mood considerably. So she deigned to extend a small mercy.
"I hear you've been unwell."
She supplied an excuse on Cassion's behalf—
"I suppose attending a gathering like this is still too much for you?"
—and with it, a pretext to withdraw. It was a suggestion wrapped in silk: leave now, while I am being gracious. To Cassion and Diana, it was nothing less than a threat.
But Cassion did not leave. He held his seat with quiet stubbornness and endured every stare.
"It's true I've been unwell — but not so unwell that I would miss the birthday banquet of my one and only brother. Congratulations, Brother."
"What? Congratulations?"
The shout cracked across the hall without warning. Crimson-faced, Dayson seized a fistful of the tablecloth.
Karman's brow creased at the crude display — though Dayson never saw it.
Dayson felt profoundly betrayed by Cassion. When he had gone to visit, the man had whimpered that he couldn't walk so much as a single step — and now here he sat, bold as brass, in Dayson's own banquet hall.
Cassion was stealing the attention that rightfully belonged to Dayson, for better or worse — and what was more, he had brought along that darling little girl. The sweet, charming child had taken Dayson's fancy at once, yet she never spared him a glance; her eyes belonged to Cassion alone.
And they say she's a daughter of House Ehrenberg, no less?
He was far the handsomer, and he would be king someday. Yet every time their eyes chanced to meet, the girl would whip her head away.
Dayson's princely rank and handsome face had always made winning hearts effortless. If Diana showed him such hostility, then Cassion must have been poisoning her against him.
Angry with Cassion for all of it, Dayson had let his voice spike before he could stop himself.
"Dayson. It's a happy occasion."
Julia chided him in a silken tone. Karman's gaze never left his eldest son.
"You hardly needed to come congratulate me in person, not in your condition. Thank you all the same."
Dayson offered the words grudgingly.
"But where's your gift?"
His eyes dropped to Cassion's empty hands. A flicker of panic crossed Cassion's face, and Dayson let a sneer curl his lips.
A pauper like him couldn't possibly have prepared a gift. But the nobles don't know that — and they'll find it mighty strange that Cassion came to my birthday empty-handed.
Dayson was certain he had landed a masterful blow. It was, in fact, a colossal misjudgment.
"As it happens, we did look for something worthy of the occasion."
It was Diana who answered. The moment she broke her long silence, Karman turned to her with unmistakable interest.
"Unfortunately, however—"
Diana drew out her brows, her face a picture of genuine sorrow.
"—Prince Cassion has no private fortune."
A sharp intake of breath ran through the nobles.
"No private fortune?"
"Did I hear that right?"
The whispers were pitched low, but the hall was so silent that anyone who cared to listen heard every word. Those who caught on a beat too late clamped their mouths shut.
Hardly a surprise, Diana thought to herself.
Every child of the crown received a private stipend from the moment of birth. A fixed sum paid out each month, it was meant to seed the political groundwork they would one day need.
That Cassion had gone without it while living at his private residence might have been excused. That he had gone without it even after returning to the palace — that was, unquestionably, a problem.
"I cannot spend freely what my late parents left me, so I was unable to find a gift worthy of Prince Dayson. Your Majesty — will you forgive us our failing?"
Diana gazed up at Karman in the most pitiable expression she could muster. At her drooping brows and the tears brimming in her round eyes, the nobles wavered.
Oh, the poor lamb. So the dispute over the Ehrenberg succession still hasn't been settled?
Weren't they saying Count Kolkos had become her guardian?
Become, they said. From the look of things now, Count Kolkos won't.
From a few brief words, the nobles had pieced the entire picture together.
The corners of Julia's mouth and Count Kolkos's twitched violently. Both looked a breath away from detonating.
And yet the one who had hurled the bombshell and now bore the weight of every probing gaze was Diana herself — her face the very portrait of serenity.
Julia won't manage to twist this against me.
Diana had spoken nothing but facts — words with no slant to them at all. If Julia tried to persecute her over them, so much the better.
Harass me on some ridiculous pretext, and I'd be the one with cause to lose my temper first.
No — Julia would likely resort to subtler maneuvers. That was the harder game to play.
Forecasting Julia's next move, Diana waited for someone — anyone — to break the silence.
None came. A dead stillness swallowed the banquet hall; not a soul dared step forward to salvage the situation.
Dayson, nominally the one who owed an answer, half-raised a hand and mumbled that it was fine — a meaningless gesture if there ever was one.
"Carl."
It was Karman who shattered the silence.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Carl, the aide who had long attended Karman's side, stepped forward.
"Miss Ehrenberg appears to be under a misunderstanding. See that it is cleared up for her."
Carl withdrew briefly. When he returned some time later, a thick sheaf of documents lay in his hands.
"The private stipend allotted to Prince Cassion is as follows—"
Drawing himself upright, Carl recited the full account of the stipend assigned to Cassion.
It was a pittance beside the sums granted to Dayson or Yumire — but a legitimate stipend had been allotted to Cassion all the same, and it had been paid out faithfully, month after month.
Cassion was living like a beggar — and the stipend was being disbursed all along? Was someone pocketing it somewhere in between?
This, truly, was dumb luck. Diana had taken for granted that the stipend had never been paid in the first place. Because Cassion had come from a private estate, she had assumed it was the sort of thing that simply slipped through the cracks unless someone troubled themselves to look after it.
So that wasn't it at all! Julia, then. It has to be Julia.
Diana fought to keep her gaze from straying toward Julia. To look at her now would be to make her suspicion as good as established fact.
She could never let a hint of fondness for Julia show — but neither was the moment ripe to bare her enmity outright.
"Has the misunderstanding been cleared up, Lady Ehrenberg?"
"I'm afraid it was Prince Cassion's misunderstanding that needed resolving, not mine."
Her initial shock settled, Diana answered with perfect composure.
"So it was. Lady Ehrenberg is quite right. Cassion — is the misunderstanding resolved now?"
Cassion said nothing. When Diana turned, she found him with his head bowed low, his clenched fist trembling.
Cassion's mind was in turmoil.
I had a stipend? All this time, I thought they were simply refusing to give me one.
He had spent years blaming Karman. That his father had cast his mother out for failing to bear a child. That even after her fall, he had come to her, fathered Cassion, and then turned his back. That when she died, he had summoned Cassion to the palace only to ignore him. All of it—
I thought he had thrown me away for good.
So even Karman possessed the barest shred of a father's conscience.
Perhaps this isn't the worst of worlds after all.
He had never wanted Karman's love. Cassion had only wished to stand on the same footing as Dayson.
No — even a step behind Dayson would have done.
All he needed was for Karman not to have shoved him out of the nest entirely. Only then would he have a chance to fight.
The reason he had drifted through life so powerlessly until now was that he believed himself already cast out. He was convinced that however desperately he struggled, he would never so much as raise a blade against Dayson or Julia.
If I was wrong about that—
Cassion bit down on his lower lip, careful that no one see it.
—then I will set it right. Properly.
He turned his head and looked at Diana. As though she had sensed his resolve, she gave a small nod.
"Yes, Your Majesty. I have been remiss — it escaped my notice entirely."
The answer cost Cassion visibly, but he forced it out. The suffocating tension eased, for now. With the man himself declining to press the matter, no one else could make an issue of it.
Diana arched a brow.
This can't be allowed to end here.
The nobles were trading uneasy glances, wondering whether the meal might finally begin — and Diana turned to Karman with a radiant smile.
"By the way, Your Majesty."
Count Kolkos wanted to weep.
Every time Diana opened her mouth, Julia's mood turned graver. He could see, plain as day, the twitch at the corner of the Queen's mouth worsening by the minute.
But what did Diana care for Count Kolkos's worries — or his feelings? What did it matter if this banquet fell to ruin? If anything, ruin was precisely what she hoped for.
True to form, she never once glanced his way, her red lips moving without pause.
"Might I ask who oversees the private stipends of Their Highnesses the Prince and Princess?"
The one charged with managing the stipends was the Minister of Finance — and the Minister of Finance was Julia's creature.
The current minister is Neru — a man Julia recommended, or so Dayson once let slip.
Before her regression, Dayson had once thrown a tantrum over the finance minister's handling of his duties. At the time, Diana had advised him to report the man's blunder to His Majesty and have him dismissed — and that was when Dayson had told her.
Well, well. This affair is turning out rather entertaining.
Cassion, given the circumstances, had chosen to fall back a step — but Diana was the sort who, even in retreat, made sure to plant a bomb in enemy territory.
She smiled to herself.
"Lady Ehrenberg — the Minister of Finance."
Karman, evidently believing she asked out of genuine ignorance, answered graciously.
"I see."
And with that, Diana let the conversation die. This much was enough. Unless Karman was a fool, he would look into the finance minister — and he would find Julia waiting at the end of that thread.
To press the exchange any further would amount to an open declaration of war against Julia.
Oh, everyone knows I can't stand Julia. But the picture needs to stay muddy.
Still, it stung to yield even that single step. Swallowing her regret, Diana lifted her fork.
Julia, who had been watching Diana's every move, felt her mouth twist upward. Very slowly, she closed her eyes and opened them again.
The evening had turned against her. It was Dayson's birthday — she had meant to steer the conversation, ever so casually, toward investing him as crown prince before long.
Those wretches have ruined everything.
Julia clenched her fist.