Chapter 84
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 84
“Crown Prince Ferdinand.”
Ferdinand stopped in his tracks and looked back.
His crimson eyes were as cold as frozen rubies, yet they held a gaze of utter indifference toward the person standing before him.
“Dave.”
The Second Prince, Dave.
He was the son of Empress Carmi and a younger brother not much younger than Ferdinand himself.
Dave did not possess looks as striking as Ferdinand’s, but he was clearly transitioning into a ‘young man.’ He stood on the boundary between boyhood and adulthood.
Their father, Emperor Alexander, was a tall man. It was certain that as Dave aged, he would experience a significant growth spurt.
Dave clung to his mother’s words. She told him he would be different from this cursed Crown Prince, who would never grow tall no matter how many years passed.
“I heard you proposed to Lady Sophia Frezier?”
Dave continued with a smirk.
“She’s just the blood of a vassal, isn't she? An adoptee, at that.”
His words were laced with sarcasm.
If the Crown Prince were in a ‘normal’ state, there was no way he would have proposed to the adopted daughter of a mere vassal house, even if that house was Frezier.
Dave had felt such a rush of relief when he heard the news from his mother!
He had expected Ferdinand to try and save face by saying something like, ‘She is still a Frezier.’ He had hoped the boy, who always acted so noble and aloof, would at least try to defend his choice.
Step, step.
“……?!”
Ferdinand’s gaze was more dismissive than one cast upon mud on the ground.
With nothing more than that fleeting, worthless look, Ferdinand ignored Dave and walked past him.
No one in the world dared to ignore him—a Prince and the son of Empress Carmi!
And yet!
‘A defective product suffering from Divine Power Hyperaffliction dares to…!’
Dave seethed with rage, but he didn't dare block the Crown Prince’s path. The strict etiquette of the Imperial Palace forbade it.
Moreover, there was a strange difficulty in facing the Crown Prince. He wondered if his body was instinctively recoiling because of that damn overflowing divine power.
“Your Highness.”
Dave forced his lips into a smile and hurried after Ferdinand.
Unlike Ferdinand, who still had the height of a twelve or thirteen-year-old boy, Dave was much taller and could easily match his stride. He felt a subtle thrill of victory in that small fact.
“If it were me, I would have proposed to the lady who actually carries the Frezier bloodline.”
“The real bloodline?”
“Ah. That’s right.”
Dave chuckled.
“Now that I think about it, that lady’s name was… let’s see… Ah! Tulip…? Was it? Tulip! Ahaha! What a careless name. I suppose the rumors that she isn't the Marquis’s biological daughter are true after all—”
“Tulia.”
“……Pardon?”
“Her name is Tulia Frezier.”
It wasn't a name given carelessly.
“Dave Ewigkeit.”
Ferdinand corrected him, his brow furrowing slightly as he spoke in a low voice.
A beat later, Dave’s face flushed a deep red with anger.
‘That bastard!’
Was he calling him stupid?
It was true that Ferdinand, unlike himself, held the highest scores in almost every category among the imperial family’s history, but still.
‘How is that thing even human?!’
As his mother said, he could only achieve those scores because he was a ‘real’ monster. Dave felt that he, by comparison, was the one who was truly human.
Taking a deep breath, Dave managed to regain his smile.
“Yes. Though there are rumors that even this Lady Tulia Frezier is a fake.”
“…….”
“As expected, the Grand Ducal House of Frezier is all size and no substance. Like seedless grapes.”
To curry favor with Emperor Alexander, Empress Carmi had always taught her son, Dave, to subtly look down on the Freziers. The Emperor was always pleased whenever they disparaged the Frezier family to suit his mood.
Ferdinand stared blankly at the confident Dave.
He was truly the son of the woman who had betrayed her master to win the Emperor’s favor. He was doing his absolute best to hold onto the Emperor’s heart through such base methods.
“What is your criteria for ‘fake’?”
“Why, it’s when one is not the biological child born of a legitimate mother and father.”
“Is that so?”
Ferdinand let out a short laugh. His dark brown hair swayed elegantly.
“Yes. That is indeed what makes someone ‘real.’”
He offered no further explanation.
It was only after a moment that Dave realized the implication behind Ferdinand’s words, and he exploded.
“You—you bastard?!”
Had he just called Dave and his mother, the Successor Empress, ‘fakes’?!
“You insufferable prick! You monstrous defect!”
Dave screamed at the top of his lungs in a fit of rage, but Ferdinand had already turned the corner of the inner palace corridor and couldn't hear him.
In truth, Ferdinand didn't have the slightest interest in Dave.
He was scheduled to leave the Imperial Family soon to head directly into the battlefield, and he barely managed three hours of sleep a day. Even his Pneuma, Schuls Schmidt, had begun to worry about his health.
But for Ferdinand, such a life was familiar; he had never been allowed a moment of leisure since the day he was born.
However, he suddenly came to a halt.
Ferdinand looked at the inner palace garden, where flowers were beginning to bloom, and frowned slightly.
“…….”
He felt as though he shouldn't have told him.
The name of that young lady, Tulia Frezier.
Perhaps he should have just let him keep thinking it was Tulip.
He felt strangely unpleasant. Irritated. Even Ferdinand himself didn't know why.
After lingering on the pink flowers for a moment, he began to walk again.
Instead of heading straight as he usually did, his steps unconsciously followed the path of the pink blossoms and the greenery, though he still didn't understand the reason.
* * *
Meanwhile.
“Dammit!”
Dave only managed to calm his ragged breathing after smashing five expensive vases decorating the inner palace corridor.
“A defective product who’s getting engaged to some collateral adoptee… and he dares to call me a fake?”
Dave fumed. His anger boiled through his entire body as if he had been dipped in lava.
How on earth could he crush that monster’s pride?
He was a Crown Prince with no mother, someone even their father, the Emperor, avoided and kept at a distance.
Yet Dave had never once truly bested Ferdinand. No matter what he did, he was always left with a sense of defeat. Even now, when he had rushed over, excited by the news of Ferdinand’s engagement to a ‘vassal’s adopted daughter,’ it was the same.
“……Wait a minute.”
At that moment, a thought struck him.
“What if I were to propose to the real Lady of Frezier……?”
Dave’s eyes snapped wide.
Tulia Frezier.
He had forgotten the name for a moment, but Dave knew that lady very well. He had been greatly humiliated by Grand Duke Asis Frezier at the White Ivory Tower because of that damn woman!
His mother had scolded him so harshly in the carriage on the way back that for a while, he had been busy snapping and trampling every tulip he saw in the palace.
“Her face was quite—no, she was very beautiful.”
Even if she had been wearing a filthily soaked dress at the time.
“But Mother told me then that her personality is famously eccentric…….”
Because of that, despite Tulia’s outstanding looks, Dave hadn't felt the slightest romantic interest in her. A woman should be soft and gentle. He had no desire for a headstrong woman.
‘But…….’
Thinking about it again, once they were married, he would be the husband. He could simply teach her how to serve her husband properly.
“……Hmm.”
His mother, Empress Carmi, would surely be able to discipline a lady with a temper like a wild colt.
“Tulia Frezier……”
She was a lady without a mother, too.
It was an impulsive thought, but the more he chewed on it, the better the plan seemed.
“Wouldn't she be honored to receive guidance from my mother?”
While being educated on how to serve her husband, of course.
There was no way she wouldn't fall for him—the Second Prince and a rather handsome one at that.
‘I’m basically the definition of a Prince Charming.’
Furthermore, rumors were spreading that he, favored by the Emperor, might become the next Emperor instead of the ‘defective’ Crown Prince.
“…….”
And if he added the powerful backing of the true Frezier bloodline to that?
It would be killing two birds with one stone.
Dave looked up, as if possessed.
“……Then, this time for sure.”
I’ll be the one winning against that monster, won't I?
And for all eternity, at that.