The Hannover Revolution
Only after seating Prince Romul beside her did Adelheid finally permit the central envoy to speak and open negotiations. Even then, the envoy found himself unable to part his lips.
The Imperial Palace's entire strategy had hinged upon driving a wedge between Romul and Adelheid, shattering the traitors from within through renewed division. The plan had been to appease Adelheid by insisting that the civil war was merely an unfortunate misunderstanding—promising that the Crown Prince would even admit he had acted too harshly—while subtly planting seeds of suspicion regarding the Kingdom of Remus: how insolent and untrustworthy they were, and whether the insane host of two hundred thousand massed upon the border could truly be meant for mere military posturing.
From there, the envoy was supposed to present a compromise: dispose of Prince Romul, and the Crown Prince would turn a blind eye to Adelheid fleeing into exile abroad.
Yet with the very target of that intended wedge sitting directly beside her, broaching the subject was entirely out of the question.
"Princess Adelheid... are you truly in earnest?"
The envoy read Adelheid's posture with absolute clarity: I place my full trust in Prince Romul, and any slander directed at him will be met with hostility.
"Even if that man extended a hand to Your Highness, he belongs to a shameless breed that dared declare war upon our Empire! Until mere weeks ago, our men were slaughtering one another! To turn your back upon the Empire simply because your eyes have been turned by some loafer calling himself a prince—a man who has never set foot upon a battlefield, nor accomplished a single shred of martial—"
Shring—
The envoy's rising fury caught in his throat. A warm trickle ran down his cheek, and he froze as a single drop of blood splattered onto the back of his hand resting atop the table.
Wh-When did she draw...?
"Has the envoy from the capital come all this way merely to insult my comrade and this princess?" Adelheid asked, her piercing glare pinning the man in place. "If your loyalty to the Crown Prince is so profound that you have come to throw your life away for him, I shall honor it by cleanly severing your head from your shoulders."
She had drawn and swung her blade right before his eyes, yet she had moved so swiftly that he had not even registered the strike until his flesh split and the blood began to fall.
"If this lady has somehow misunderstood your purpose, then get out of my sight," she continued coldly. "I have nothing to discuss with one who comes under the guise of negotiation only to spew insults. In deference to military protocol, I shall not take your life. Return to the Crown Prince and tell him to bear full responsibility for the consequences of his choices."
"P-Princess! The Empire stands in grave peril! If Your Highness does not halt this madness here, the Empire may truly collapse!"
"Even if I do not stop, can the Crown Prince not simply stop himself?" Adelheid retorted. "I have catered to his whims and sacrificed everything for his sake until now. I will surrender nothing more to appease that fool's pathological paranoia. How many have lost their lives or their stations merely because he overreacted to every trivial slight? Even among those branded as traitors for speaking the truth, I cannot count them on all ten fingers."
As she prepared to vent the venom she had harbored for years, Adelheid's gaze fell upon Romul, who had been sitting idly by throughout the exchange like an unbothered spectator.
Seeing him lounge about so casually while she was worked up was somewhat exasperating. Yet over the past few days, how many times had he left her utterly stunned at critical junctures with his uncanny schemes and audacious demeanor?
The corners of Adelheid's lips curved upward. She decided to borrow a page from her benefactor's book.
"Ah, yes. I have yet to state our terms," she said, doing her best to mimic the playful smirk and mischievous tone she had seen him wear, demanding total surrender as though offering a generous favor. "Tell the Crown Prince to throw open the gates of the capital and yield the imperial throne to me. If he does, I shall acknowledge his brief tenure upon the seat and accord him the honors of a retired emperor."
"What utter madness is this?!"
Forgetting the blade that had grazed his throat only moments before, the envoy bristled in outrage once more. To deliver such a report under current circumstances would mean being put to death on the spot just to vent the Crown Prince's wrath.
Adelheid, however, had no intention of concerning herself with his plight.
"A pity if you find my demand unreasonable," she remarked flatly. "Since neither side has any intention of yielding, there is regrettably no point in continuing these talks."
Adelheid rose from her seat and swept out of the room without looking back. Caught off guard by her abrupt departure, Romul blinked in a daze before scrambling to his feet to follow.
Practically chased from the grounds, the envoy was forced to acknowledge that both he and the imperial court had gravely misjudged Adelheid's rebellion.
She had not launched a hasty coup merely as a desperate reaction to a purge. She was a traitor in the truest sense of the word, brimming with the resolve to overthrow the Crown Prince and seize the throne for herself.
To think Princess Adelheid, of all people, could transform so drastically in such a short span, no matter how cornered she was...
Honest to a fault if viewed charitably, and simple-minded if viewed harshly, she had always made her complete disinterest in the succession known, dedicating herself solely to her duties as a general. Thus, everyone in Byron had assumed this was nothing more than a struggle to survive. They believed that while she harbored hatred toward the Crown Prince, her patriotism and her soldier's creed—which held mutiny as the ultimate taboo—would tear at her conscience, giving them leverage to exploit. But Adelheid was no longer the steadfast general they once knew.
He even began to wonder if she had been biding her time all along. Shaking off the thought, the envoy turned his mind instead to the secondary mission entrusted to him by the palace.
Leaving the revolutionary encampment behind, he slipped into a secluded cabin secured in advance. Waiting inside were ten assassins, their bodies and faces concealed from head to toe.
They were Nox, the imperial shadow unit dispatched directly by the Crown Prince.
"The negotiations have failed," the envoy stated. "From here on, we proceed with assassination. The targets are Princess Adelheid and Prince Romul of Remus."
"Priority?"
One of the operatives stepped forward, their voice warped by magic into an unnatural pitch that obscured both age and gender.
"Prince Romul. Even if you fail to take the princess, striking that whelp down will throw their ranks into complete disarray."
"Understood."
To an assassin, knowing the target was all that mattered.
The operatives vanished from the cabin the instant the brief exchange concluded. Glancing over his shoulder, the envoy swallowed hard when he saw they had already melted into thin air, yet a surge of relief washed over him.
"A prince from a nation of warmongers who has never once set foot upon a battlefield must possess negligible martial skill... Even if Adelheid or the Blade Wind guards him day and night, ten of Nox will claim his life regardless..."
Muttering the assessment provided by the imperial bureaucrat who had assigned them, the envoy did not wait for their return, departing immediately on his journey back to the capital.
Along the Empire's eastern border, two sets of trenches had been carved into the earth, separated only by a single boundary line.
In the trenches beyond the frontier, the two-hundred-thousand-strong host of Remus stood in plain view. Yet the imperial garrison dared not lift a finger against them.
Part of the reason lay in the overwhelming disparity in manpower, with the Remus forces outnumbering the border garrison several times over, as well as the presence of nearly a hundred tanks—state-of-the-art war machines born of Remus's vastly superior military technology. Yet the foremost reason was the oppressive presence of three young royals standing brazenly before the border line.
In the Kingdom of Remus, where new weapons harnessing gunpowder and science were constantly rolling off the lines, the royals were regarded as the realm's greatest military assets—for they embraced those very technologies more aggressively than anyone else.
"It still doesn't feel real," muttered Princess Luna, roughly tearing into a strip of dried meat as though irritated by having to stand idly like a scarecrow on the frontline. Still retaining an air of youthful brashness, she voiced her sheer disbelief as she recalled Romul's spineless demeanor. "That blockhead Romul pulled off something that insane? Proposing a coup to a princess about to be purged? Isn't it way more likely he got captured, had his supplies stripped, and just made up a massive lie?"
"They weren't supplies, but a reconciliation gift meant for the Empire... though given what was inside, it amounted to roughly the same thing," corrected Prince Dren, a tidy-looking man nearing the end of his youth, lighting a cigarette. He offered no defense against her doubts regarding Romul.
"Sister Aren, you're the one who's seen the most of him. What do you think?"
Despite being addressed as an elder sister by Dren, the stunning woman with short black hair appeared a decade younger than him. As the eyes of the other two settled upon her, Aren paused in thought before speaking.
"...It is certainly unexpected, but it wouldn't be a lie. That's just the kind of person he is."
"Is that so? To be honest, I've barely seen him myself. He might be my younger brother in name, but the age gap is massive, and I've been too busy marching across battlefields. Luna, you've probably seen him far more than I have."
To Luna, the granddaughter of the reigning king, the youngest prince Romul was technically an uncle, yet they were peers of roughly the same age—a peculiar dynamic. Moreover, since the next youngest royal after Romul had been Dren, who was now nearing forty, the royal court had been thrown into sheer turmoil when the King abruptly brought Romul in as a child born out of wedlock. Even now, hushed gossip lingered in every corner of the palace.
"Still, why on earth did Grandfather send that foolish uncle?" Luna grumbled. "It's not like we're short on royals, and now that moron has stirred up this whole mess. He can barely muster his aura as it is—I doubt he can even use the royal secret techniques."
Luna's petulant complaints were somewhat childish, yet Dren found himself silently agreeing. Sending a brother who possessed zero frontline experience to negotiate with a hostile empire had struck him as remarkably irresponsible.
Resting her hand on the pommel of her sheath, Aren spoke with quiet composure.
"I cannot pretend to fathom everything Father intended, but perhaps he foresaw things turning out this way."
"...That a civil war would break out in the Empire and Romul would jump right into the middle of it?"
"He is... quite an unusual boy. And besides..." Aren paused, searching for the right words before adding: "If negotiations broke down and disaster struck, he is the one among all of us most likely to return alive."