The Abandoned Palace
The 3rd Prince's Palace, where Cassion lived, sat tucked away in the farthest, most lightless northern corner of the vast royal grounds.
It occupied a spot normally reserved for servants' dormitories—and not for the proper attendants, but for the lowliest hands who did the palace's dirty work—and the scenery around it matched. Ornamental trees left untended had grown into a hopeless tangle, their branches spilling out over the path until not even a carriage could pass. One look at the approach was enough to understand exactly how Cassion was treated within the royal palace.
"Anyone would think this palace was abandoned." Jenice had put it perfectly.
And yet, regrettably, this ruin of a place was home to the kingdom's 3rd Prince—the trueborn son of the King and the late Queen, who had once been the object of every subject's admiration.
"Still, a prince does live here, so the inside has to be well kept, right? Ooh, I'm so excited!"
Unlike me, who had occasionally come to the palace with my father, this was Jenice's first time, and she was giddy with anticipation. I coolly brushed aside the fantasies she'd built up around palaces. Today, it seemed, I would not be able to live up to them.
The closer we drew, the louder grew the sound of Jenice's expectations shattering to pieces. Even as flattery, it would have been a stretch to call the palace maintained.
To think that path was the best-kept thing on the grounds.
The grass in the front garden was so thick that a snake leaping out of it would have surprised no one. Knee-high growth crowded in dense on either side until I flinched to set my foot down.
Discarded.
The palace, and the prince alike.
The King has no interest in Cassion, Dayson is too busy tormenting him, and his stepmother Julia would never lift a finger—so naturally, it came to this.
At the sorry spectacle those grown adults made, my face burned—adult in soul though I was, at twenty-one. I knew Dayson bullied him, but... this is just cruel!
And it wasn't only the King and Queen who scorned Cassion. I remembered the looks the servants used to give him when he passed—looks steeped in shallow contempt. Perhaps the palace's neglect had been no one's order at all, but simply the servants' own quiet choice. The less power a person held, the more nimbly they scurried to wherever power drifted. They had known Cassion was cast off, and so had found no reason to care.
Confirming that Cassion had been thrown away by the King, by the royal family, and even by the palace's own servants left a sour taste in my mouth. A heavy stone settled somewhere beneath my ribs.
"This way, my lady." Jenice tugged me along by the arm.
Where she pointed, a path emerged—a slender track packed down by someone's footsteps and nothing more.
This isn't some kind of event, but every layer I peel back is a brand-new surprise. My disappointment only swelled the nearer we came to the 3rd Prince's Palace. There wasn't even a single knight guarding it. It was pure luck that Dayson and Julia had never thought to send assassins; had they done so, Cassion could have been dead on the spot.
I'll have to look into hiring him an escort, too. The name of a skilled knight floated to mind—someone with peculiar interests whom no one but a person who knew the future could hope to win over, and who would never betray his charge lightly. Where in the world might that man be right now?
"This place looks haunted! Whoa, there are so many rats!"
Jenice's clamor jolted me back to my senses, and I took a slow, deliberate look over the 3rd Prince's Palace. Vast and untouched by human hands, it was bleak and forbidding, exuding a sinister air grim enough that I'd have believed a ghost wandering its halls at high noon.
Speaking of which, how does she know there are so many rats I can't even see?
"My lady, they say hardly anyone comes through here," Jenice announced, as though she'd heard it from someone.
There wasn't a soul around but the two of us, and there she went with that phrasing. It didn't bother me much, but it was the kind of habit that would strike anyone else as deeply strange.
"One moment, my lady."
She scurried off toward a dead tree, then stood before it muttering to herself for a good long while. I'd opened my mouth to say something when, overlaid on that ridiculous sight, another Jenice rose before my eyes—the one who had staked her life on shielding me at the execution grounds.
A little oddity is cute. Of course it is. All at once, the spectacle that would have made anyone else recoil looked simply endearing. I abandoned my remark and made for the doors instead.
Jenice came bouncing back and flung the doors open without a moment's hesitation. "My lady, they say there's no one keeping watch here."
"A prince's palace with no one in it? Does that even make sense?" I said, easing her aside.
She muttered that it really was true, but I didn't want to believe her even if it was. Because if it were, it would mean Cassion was living all alone in this desolate, spectral place.
But regrettably, Jenice spoke the truth. We pried through the rusted, groaning doors and stepped inside, and still I could find no trace of another living soul. Alone, in a palace this size. If he died in here, no one would ever know.
Throwing caution to the wind, I even risked calling out to ask if anyone was about, but no answer came. Somehow, my heart began to race. As a child, Cassion had been too frail to go outdoors; from what I knew, he had spent nearly all his time within the palace—and if this was what that palace had been like...
My careful steps quickened little by little. And when I reached the topmost floor, a voice drifted down the corridor.
"Cassion, you can't even solve this one?"
Younger than I remembered, but a voice I knew all the same.
"Ha! Did you forget everything I taught you already? I told you—anyone who knows a bit of simple arithmetic can work it out."
The dismissive, looking-down-his-nose tone was equally familiar.
"You really are hopeless. Better to just quit studying. I suppose studying isn't for you."
Between each remark, the man with the familiar voice let out sigh after heavy sigh.
"I told you, didn't I? This is something a prince ought to know by default. Your swordsmanship is hopeless, your stamina is weak, and honestly... Have you memorized all of Ibrail's paintings yet?"
If I were Cassion, I'd have kicked that man in the shins by now.
"What? You couldn't even manage that? Then don't do anything at all. You fail at everything you try, so it's better for everyone if you simply don't."
Unless Cassion was staging a one-man show at his own expense, this was someone deliberately trying to grind him down. A vile temperament oozed from the voice that jeered beneath a show of concern. I knew the culprit at once.
Dayson, you rotten piece of work!
I had long known Dayson disdained Cassion. But this was the first time I'd caught him tormenting his brother so openly.
"I'll be off for today, so we'll meet next time. Next time, I'll see about bringing study material suited to your level."
From the shape of the conversation, the bullying had clearly been going on for a long while. Even a few minutes of it set my blood boiling—and Cassion had been listening to this continuously?
Get angry! My fists clenched before I knew it. I wanted Cassion to swing a punch, or at least to raise his voice.
"Thank you, brother..."
But the words out of Cassion's mouth fell far short of my hopes.
Good heavens—how can anyone hear words like that and say thank you? Had he grown so accustomed to Dayson's venom that he could no longer tell cruelty from kindness?
"I'm off now. Stay put and behave. And don't go running yourself ragged with all that exercising."
I heard Dayson deliver his parting words and step out of the room.
We have to hide. There's no way I can cross paths with Dayson now. And where has Jenice gone? I whipped my head around to find Jenice peering down at me, fascination written all over her face, as I stood there with my ear pressed to the door. I snatched her wrist and hauled her through a door on the opposite side of the corridor from Cassion's room.
"My lady, what are we doing he—mmph!"
"Shh, Jenice."
Her eyes went perfectly round. Ignoring the curiosity brimming in them, I waited until Dayson's footsteps had faded entirely.
"He's gone."
Even after the sound had vanished altogether, I waited a good while longer. It was still too soon to cross paths with Dayson. If he ever learned I had any interest in Cassion, there was no telling what he might do. He might torment Cassion all the more cruelly—or he might suddenly take an interest in me. In my past life, he had only turned his attention my way after Count Kolkos became my guardian, but there was no harm in being careful ahead of time.
Dayson's a greedy creature. If he saw me showing interest in Cassion, he might start minding me as well. Getting tangled up with him was the one thing I wanted to avoid at all costs.
"My lady, are we playing detective?" Jenice, who had borne it all with admirable patience, finally asked.
Watching her enjoy the situation left me speechless—though it beat watching her panic, I supposed. I let go of her wrist.
"More importantly, who was that? You were hiding from someone just now, weren't you?"
"Not telling."
Explaining everything, from why we'd come to this palace at all straight through to Dayson, would take more than a day. And if she pried into the details, I'd have nothing to say.
"Tsk. I can figure it all out even if you won't tell me."
Jenice went back to murmuring at some spot on the wall. My brow creased at the sight all on its own. It was cute, but was that... a condition of some kind?
"It was a prince, by the way. Though that prince who just left doesn't have much of a character, does he?"
...How on earth does she know that?
My puzzlement was considerable, but the urgent matter at hand was Cassion.
"Let's go, Jenice."
I flung the door wide open. Just across the corridor, beyond that wooden door, waited my future husband.
Cassion let out a breath. He could not tear his eyes from the seat where Dayson had sat.
His damp eyes and slumped shoulders might have called to mind a kitten that had lost its mother. It was a piteous, wretched sight indeed.
"Like a damn dog."
Yet it took only an instant for that creature to turn into a beast brimming with venom. Kindly eyes lifted at the corners into something chilling, and coarse curses poured from between his red, finely drawn lips.
"So what if I've got no head for studying?"
Cassion riffled through the books Dayson had left behind, then shoved them beneath the desk. His heart wanted to hurl them straight out the window, but he lacked the strength even for that.
"This godforsaken body!"
He gnashed and grumbled until the fury ran out of air, then collapsed onto the sofa, breathing hard. Dayson's words flickered at the rim of his ears. All that pretending to worry—talk like that ate away at him like rot. His temper longed to seize Dayson by the collar and shake him until his teeth rattled, but, just as Dayson said, he was a weakling who could not properly lift a single sword.
Even with strength, he would never have dared stand up to the one who tormented him. Dayson, showered with the King and Queen's favor, against himself, the discarded one—he could see the outcome of that fight as clearly as if it played out before his eyes. In the end, all Cassion could do was mutter in bitter self-mockery.