The Prince Who Broke His Chains
If their closeness was noteworthy enough to be mentioned at the summit, then the relationship between the two ran considerably deep.
"Mirror Flower, Water Moon."
Arriving at the residence where the delegations of the Allied Kingdoms were staying, I slipped carefully inside under the concealment of Mirror Flower, Water Moon. The doors barring my way yielded easily to the Dullahan's ability, and Caym had already located which room the Second Prince occupied.
"Caym. While you're at it, find out what the Third Princess of Ludelia looks like and how she speaks."
The Hundred Ghosts were said to share their memories with one another, so everything Caym uncovered through his ability would reach me in real time regardless.
Just as I'd anticipated, it wasn't long before Miho transformed into the Third Princess of Ludelia using the memories Caym had shared with her.
Before long, we stood at the door of the room where the Second Prince was staying. After sending the Dullahan back, Miho—now wearing her disguise—glanced sidelong at me and knocked, slow and deliberate.
I had more words of warning I wanted to give her, but the time allotted for conversation had already run out.
"Luvia?"
But because Miho revealed herself so openly, Mirror Flower, Water Moon was effectively seen through—and so I wasted no time casting Rapid-Fire to temporarily lift my limit on uses, then layered Conversation and Mirror Flower, Water Moon once more to veil both myself and the Succubus where we stood.
"Get ready."
At my words, the Succubus nodded without a sound.
"I have something I must tell you, so I came to see you…… may I come in?"
As Miho, disguised as the Third Princess Luvia, spoke in a honeyed voice laced with her charm magic, the Second Prince noticed nothing amiss and drew her into the room. Timing it so the closing door wouldn't lock us out, the veiled Succubus and I slipped in after them.
Charm was Miho's signature ability, one whose effect deepened the longer it had to work on its target. By the end, even if the man regained his senses, he wouldn't register that anything about it felt wrong.
"Tomorrow may be the last day we ever have together."
"Luvia……!"
As if seized by anguish, the Second Prince bit his lip hard and pulled her into his arms. A peculiar disgust welled up in me, but this was simply an extension of necessity—nothing to be done about it.
"If there were any other way, I would have found it……!"
Tears even spilled from his eyes as he poured out the suffocating weight in his chest. Miho, still in Luvia's guise, soothed that pitiful figure while steadily ratcheting up the intensity of her charm, until at last the Second Prince sank to the floor with a vacant expression.
I watched him for a while, then turned to the Succubus. She could interfere with dreams as well, but her most versatile ability was undoubtedly the persuasion of baseless logic—the power to plant an idea that defied all reason and make it feel like indisputable truth. It came with the limitation that she could never use it on the same target twice, but honestly, calling that a flaw was a stretch.
"Then how about this—two days from now, at the summit, you say it openly, in front of everyone?"
"Say it openly……?"
"That you wish to marry Luvia. That you were not born a prince of the royal house so you could be used as a tool."
The charm had taken deep root, and yet the Second Prince still hesitated, stammering over the words—which was proof that he, as royalty, truly understood the gravity this summit carried.
"Would it be all right if she was thrown beneath Veronica and brutally violated? A virgin you couldn't even claim for yourself, torn apart, carrying another man's child, becoming another man's wife—is that what you want? Her voice, her touch, her warm embrace—in two days, none of it will be yours anymore."
As if to declare that no room for hesitation would be tolerated, the Succubus pressed on from behind Miho without pause.
"I won't allow that!"
"A princess like her holds no power of her own. If the time you two shared is not to remain a mere memory of the past—if it is to reach toward the future—then there is no way but to shoulder the risk and sacrifice yourselves. And she seems to want to remain your wife forever, you know."
My heart grew anxious. I could only hope the historical record of the serpent that persuaded Eve to eat the forbidden fruit was accurate. In the end, the Second Prince, swayed by the Succubus's words, nodded.
At the same moment, the Succubus was dismissed and Miho released her charm—and the Second Prince, his senses restored, shot to his feet.
"Your Highness?"
Miho blinked up at him innocently.
"Don't worry about a thing. Now go back to your room for today."
Looking down at Miho-as-Luvia with gentle eyes, he softly drew her into his embrace.
Right after that, having successfully concluded the job, I stepped back outside—and there was Miho, still not returned, hovering at my side with a sheepish look. I regarded her for a moment.
"……I'm utterly ashamed of myself, Master. I've gone and soaked myself in another man's scent, I fear."
「 If you held that against me after what we just pulled off, that wouldn't make any sense, would it. 」
I stroked her hair and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek. Her nine tails swaying pleasantly, Miho finally departed, and I too returned to my quarters and closed my eyes. Barring any unforeseen blunders, in two days' time the Second Prince would untangle this knotted engagement all on his own.
The two short days granted to each side slipped away, and the summit resumed.
"We would first like to hear the Empire's position."
At the words from the Allied Kingdoms' side, my father closed his eyes once, then nodded.
"We shall accept. The terms of the agreement will be honored as written; let us set a date."
The Allied Kingdoms seemed to believe this outcome would come together without difficulty, judging by their remarkably impassive expressions. Well, of course—Aria was, after all, the daughter of an empress who had plotted treason. Faced with a pact sealed through marriage to a woman bearing that stain, they'd assumed the Empire wouldn't refuse.
Leaving the table as the fine-tuned negotiations began, I stole a glance at the Second Prince. He sat there tense as a drawn bow, clutching the hand of the princess beside him—Luvia—tight in his own. Perhaps she knew this moment was the last, for she made no move to pull away and held his hand just as firmly in return.
Then I saw the Second Prince's lips move, whispering something—but his voice was so small that even these ears of mine couldn't make it out. Still, judging by how the color drained from Princess Luvia's face at the end of that whisper, that night's work was clearly taking full effect.
Clack!
The Second Prince rose from his seat, his face set with resolve. Princess Luvia's hand desperately clutched at his sleeve, but the dice had already been cast.
"I have something to say."
"Hmm?"
My father lifted his head at the Second Prince, who had cut in midway through the detailed negotiations.
"Speak, then."
"I cannot marry Princess Aria."
"N-no……! Your Highness!"
Past pale, her face twisted toward tears, Princess Luvia released the sleeve she'd been gripping.
"I wish this matter had never been raised at all. My heart has already nested itself with another woman, and to undo that and marry Princess Aria instead…… frankly, I would have no choice but to resent her. If both our lives are only to be made miserable, it seems far better never to begin at all."
"What on earth are you saying at this late hour……!"
"I was……! I was not born to live as some kind of tool!"
At the Second Prince Ellen's words, my father slammed his palm down on the desk.
"Then you are saying the Empire treats my daughter as a tool as well!"
"Your Highness! Have you forgotten the privileges of being born a prince? This is nothing but childish self-indulgence!"
"You were treated well so that you could be stamped onto matters this weighty, weren't you? Nothing more than ink for a signature."
"Do you think others have never endured what you are enduring now?"
Yes—self-indulgence. In this era, Ellen's words were nothing more than a child's tantrum. Houses were bound together through marriage, and through that binding power grew; everyone followed that way of things.
"Do you have any idea how flimsy the logic you've just spouted truly is?"
My father's brow creased as he spoke, carrying a chilling fury.
"Trust between two parties is not something to be won cheaply."
"……"
"I might understand, were there a law that bound you to death for breaking a contract or a sworn word. But the world does not oblige you so conveniently. Flip the lens, though—if you had married Princess Luvia, would you have harbored these complaints at all?"
"……That's—!"
"Had you not been born a prince, would you ever have met her in the first place?"
To my father's words, Ellen could make no reply.
"Flinging complaints about because things don't flow the way you want them to…… how childish! Had you been the First Prince, you surely would have crumbled beneath the weight of the crown."
"You may very well be right."
Ellen clenched his fists, and at last his eyes fixed clearly on my father, carrying the light of a decision made.
"But I did not expect Your Majesty to react so negatively to my proposal."
"What are you trying to say?"
"You of all people know better than anyone what tragedy befalls when one who holds love in their heart is wed to another they never wanted. Think of the treason that occurred within the Empire—then surely, Your Majesty, my position——!"
Jolt!
Not just me—everyone in that room went white. Because that was the Empire's festering shame, and my father's absolute reverse scale.
In truth, hadn't my father's vassals, armed with nothing but a preposterous logic improvised on the spot, never once withdrawn their proposals to marry me? All by exploiting the simple fact that any counterargument necessarily had to grasp hold of that very reverse scale.
'I see……'
However much the outcome had been engineered by the Succubus's power, perhaps the Second Prince Ellen had loved Princess Luvia far more deeply than I'd imagined. No—or perhaps he didn't need to have been the man I'd made him that night. If someone had simply given his back the smallest push…… wouldn't he have reproduced this exact scene all on his own?
Otherwise, he never would have dared let those words pass his lips.
In any case, I shelved my musing there. Reading the atmosphere of the summit—now steeped in a thick, suffocating bloodlust—I summoned the Fangtian Huaji to my fingertips and thrust it out.
Clang!
In the same instant, my father's outstretched sword halted mere handspans from Ellen. A grinding ache climbing up my right arm was no small thing. Shrouded by the bond of blood, I had briefly forgotten—my father was, unmistakably, one who had reached the Pinnacle Realm.
"Hah, hahh!"
Prince Ellen, too, collapsed where he stood, his legs gone out from under him.
"Father."
One word. Nothing more. I had poured the power of Lingual Magic into that utterance, but I didn't regret a single use of it. Because my father, after several long, deep breaths and gathering back his fury, rose from his seat and turned his back.
"This session is adjourned. The matter of the Permanent Magic Stones will require both sides to take further time for consideration. Today's events shall go unpunished—but see to it that never again do we meet each other's faces across so disagreeable a table."
Watching the dumbstruck faces of the Allied Kingdoms' delegation, I felt a faint stir of pity. Still, the situation had collapsed through the fault of the Allied Kingdoms, not the Empire's—the matter of building trust through marriage would not be brought up again.
"……Father. That last move of yours was excessive."
"I know."
Walking out of the summit together, I spoke with my father as we went.
"Honestly, until I heard his final words, I thought it was all an act. Handled well, you might have avoided sending Aria away at all."
"Aria's marriage to the Allied Kingdoms…… wasn't that something you and the vassals had already accepted?"
"It was. I thought that perhaps it would be better for Aria—a girl forced to live beneath the biting stares of being a traitor's daughter—to go to the Allied Kingdoms instead. But when I spoke with her in private, there wasn't the slightest sign of welcome. Perhaps, wearing the mask of a father, I had been thinking of that child with an emperor's heart."
"……"
"But the vassals' consent had already been secured, and with the Demonic World Tree's resurrection looming, I lacked the confidence to ruin everything by shattering cooperation between nations."
"I see. I can't say I don't understand."
"I feel as though I've incurred a debt to that prince of Asbarok. The moment Cestia was mentioned, I shed the act and lost my grip on myself…… perhaps because every failing of mine, as a man and as a father, had been laid bare all at once. Though thanks to that, the Allied Kingdoms' side seems to have been driven politically onto the back foot."
Perhaps because there was no one immediately nearby to hear. To catch my father's unguarded honesty so unexpectedly—I found myself in a rather good mood because of it.
"Ellen, was it…… he may not be the stuff a king is made of. But he seemed like he'd make a fine husband—wanting for nothing."
Wearing a smile tinged with self-mockery, my father looked up at the night sky.
"If I had made that same choice once…… might the massacre of that day never have happened?"
"It is already in the past."
"I know it is. But laying down a past already spent is never such an easy thing, Rohen. Do not build for yourself a past you'll regret the way I did. Because the past can never be changed, people are sometimes more fixated on it than on the future—that is simply our nature."
His words carried many meanings, and so I only nodded quietly.
"……Rohen."
"Yes."
"When you see Aria, tell her her worthless father is sorry."
Meeting my father's eyes, which were clouded with guilt, I smiled in deliberate contradiction of them.
"I think it would be better if you told her yourself."
"Is that so…… of course it is."
"Yes. Then I'll take my leave. Don't wear Mother out trying to wring comfort out of her for nothing, all right?"
"You——!"
Leaving my father thoroughly flustered behind me, I bowed my head in farewell and made for Aria's chambers.
Knock, knock.
I knocked and stepped inside to find Aria perched on the windowsill.
"I never knew a prince that foolish existed in this world."
「 Tell me about it. 」
"A man like that…… I suppose I could have married him after all, and it wouldn't have been the worst fate."
Her chin resting on her knees, she turned her head and smiled slyly—a look that, these days, no longer struck me as even remotely annoying.
「 I have nothing to say to that. 」
True, I had been the one to give his back a push—but at the very least, the Second Prince Ellen looked far better than me, still hesitating, still deferring my answer.
Unwilling to lose a single thing. Unwilling to wound a single person, a coward floundering in place…… compared to that, he really did have something better in him.
"I said that to make you laugh, and here you are, wilting."
"……"
"Besides. I already know today's little play was one you wrote yourself."
Descending from the windowsill, Aria stood up straight and faced me.
"You did well, so…… I suppose I really ought to give you your reward?"
Moonlight that had been veiled behind the clouds spilled down through the window and wrapped around her, making that platinum hair of hers gleam as though it had swallowed gemstones whole.
Then, slowly, her slender hand slid downward, caught the hem of her skirt, and lifted it.
"Do whatever you like with me."
"……"
My breath stopped dead in that instant—so completely that even my throat forgot how to move.