Ventorino Kingdom - Downfall or Capture (1)
Ventorino Kingdom - Downfall or Capture
"Vald, you know we only have a week left, right?"
"You mean until we head back? Of course I know. But why?"
"No, I mean... shouldn't we be wrapping things up soon...?"
At Mercede's cautious question, Valdes gave a small nod. It was a perfectly reasonable question from her point of view. After all, she didn't really know how far things had already gone.
There were only seven days left until they left Ventorino Kingdom, or rather the capital. Even so, they had already stretched their stay long enough: investigating the demon attack, discussing who was responsible, and tending the wounded had all taken time. Still, it wasn't as if the delay had been excessive. To Mercede, who only heard bits and pieces of what Valdes told her, it was only natural to feel anxious.
But when she saw the confident look on his face, Mercede couldn't help smiling as well.
"I guess I didn't need to worry after all."
"We're almost at the finish line."
Only a week remained, and while Princess Clara was one thing, Queen Katarina still had not been taken. Even so, Valdes was more than confident.
He wasn't the only one whose heart was growing impatient as the end drew near. As he expected, Katarina herself was already sinking deep into her own thoughts, so much so that she had barely slept the night before.
"Still, thanks for worrying about me, sister."
"...Hmph."
The corner of Mercede's mouth twitched at the word sister and the thanks that came with it.
Valdes burst out laughing when he saw her expression.
"You hear that all the time. Why are you this happy?"
"No, it's just... the longer time passes, the stranger it feels."
"Strange how?"
"Hmm... the fact that you call me sister, and that you speak so politely to me?"
"Mersi. Want me to drop the formalities, then?"
"Eep."
Her face went red at the moment he used her nickname and flashed that handsome, easy smile. How could she not be thrown off by a face like that, especially when he was speaking so casually? And since the times he spoke to her like that were usually during sex, her body reacted before her mind did.
"I-It's not that...!"
"Then why is it?"
"It's just... it feels more and more real."
"...Ah. You mean the fact that I’m the Demon Prince and that I used to be Hero Pedro?"
"...Mm."
Mercede's face grew even redder.
She looked embarrassed even as she admitted it herself. Still, Valdes understood perfectly. Even if she had accepted his confession of identity, it wasn't something one could truly feel in the bones so easily. She had simply believed that none of it mattered because she loved him so fiercely.
And yet, as Valdes revealed more and more of what he had been doing and told her little pieces of the truth, his real identity had begun to feel tangible. It was different from the way his mother, Beatris, called him her husband and showered him with affection. This was something else entirely.
"Hahaha. Why are you suddenly acting like this? Don't you remember what you said back then?"
"......"
She fell silent.
Of course she remembered.
It had been said together with Mari, but there had not been a single lie in it.
If he truly loved them, then it didn't matter who he was. It didn't matter what he wanted, either. As a princess of a nation, as a future heir, it was a flawed way of thinking, but by now, that was what Valdes had become to Mercede.
Someone she loved so deeply that she would give him everything.
Unless his existence became a threat to the kingdom and its people, there was even a faint possibility that having him here might turn out to be for the better. Perhaps it was selfish. Perhaps it was nothing more than self-soothing. But Mercede trusted him.
"I-I remember... yeah, I remember."
Watching the blonde princess-knight fidget with both hands as she muttered those words, Valdes smiled faintly and stepped closer.
"You're adorable."
"Ugh... hee-hee."
Their lips met naturally after that. It wasn't a deep kiss, but it was full of affection for one another.
When their lips parted, Mercede looked down at the boy holding her with eyes filled with regret, clearly wanting more. But Valdes only shook his head.
It wasn't for any grand reason.
He had sensed Mari bursting through the door the instant she opened it.
"Big bro~!"
"Hee-hee-hee!"
Mari charged straight at him and threw her arms around Valdes. Then, sensing the odd atmosphere filling the room, she lifted her head from his back and looked between the two of them.
"Aah!!"
"W-What was that for? Why are you screaming?"
"D-Did I interrupt something?"
"Huh?"
"No, it's just... it looked like you were about to do something."
"......"
Mercede couldn't answer her sister.
If she were being honest, she wanted to say yes. If Mari hadn't come in, she probably would have kept hugging Valdes, started groping him, and gone straight to the bed. But she wasn't the sort of person who would blurt that out to her younger sister.
"N-Not really."
"Hmm... well, okay."
Even as she said she understood, Mari didn't really take her sister's words at face value. Mercede had always had the habit of getting unnecessarily shy at times. And with those days that only women suffered from, well... Mari didn't push the matter any further.
Instead, she brought up the reason she had come here in the first place.
"More importantly, big bro, I need your help!"
"Huh? Out of the blue?"
He looked at her, wondering what she was on about, and while he released the arm he had around Mercede, he could feel her staring at him. He ignored it anyway.
"What's this about?"
"It's Prince Alfonso."
"Ah..."
She spat out the name with a sour expression, but that alone made the situation easy enough to guess. After all, he had already heard the gossip floating around the castle. Even without that, there was only one thing Alfonso could have done to Mari.
"He's pestering you again."
"Yep!"
Prince Alfonso had fallen for Mari at first sight.
From the very first day the envoy had arrived until the day of the summit between the two kingdoms, he had kept sticking to her like glue. Of course, from Mari's perspective it was nothing short of pestering. Alfonso, however, genuinely believed they were destined to marry someday, and he was merely trying out the things he'd learned by watching the model couple around him.
What Clara and Lloyd normally did was far too much for a child to imitate outright, but Alfonso, though still young, was the next king and had received a high-class royal education in etiquette.
Even if his attempts were awkward, he had a certain natural flair to him, and with the sweetness and cool confidence of a young noble, he managed to make himself rather charming. In short, he was doing enough to win a girl's favor.
That was, of course, if the girl in question were ordinary. Mari already had a man named Valdes, who had given her not only his heart, but his body and her maidenhood as well. There was no way some little boy would catch her eye.
"He'd been quiet for a while, too..."
"He's probably gotten impatient now that the day of our departure is so close."
"Ugh, that's true."
Because of the massive incident with the demon attack, the marriage alliance—more precisely, the engagement—had been pushed into ambiguity. With the whole country and capital in upheaval, Alfonso had been forced to keep a low profile for a while, too.
Everyone was drowning in grief and anger, so it wasn't as if the prince could go fluttering around after the princess from the neighboring kingdom. Not even if there had once been talk of marriage.
But now there was only a week left. No one knew when they might meet again. For a boy in love, that was reason enough to move. And the other three members of the royal family who should have been keeping Alfonso in check were, for various reasons, unable to pay him much attention.
"Hmm, Prince Alfonso..."
After listening to Mari's complaints for a while, Valdes fell into thought.
Alfonso Ventorino.
The first son of Marc and Katarina. Clara's younger brother.
He was deeply involved with the three women Valdes had already set his sights on and was working his way into, but Valdes himself had never given this prince the slightest thought. There were too many ambiguous points to make him worth touching.
Alfonso might have been Marc's son, but that made him harder, not easier, to handle. First and foremost, Valdes didn't want to drag a child into his revenge. One could call that leaving behind a loose end, but he had the confidence to ignore even that loose end if necessary.
On top of that, if he went after Alfonso, it might actually interfere with the fall of Katarina and Clara. Even if he completely shattered them from the bottom up, they were still his mother and sister. He couldn't kill the boy, and turning him into a broken shell of a man through psychological ruin would be troublesome, too.
In other words, Alfonso was someone who would inevitably be affected in the process of revenge against Marc anyway, so there didn't seem to be any need to bother with him directly. The mere fact that his mother and sister were being taken by completely different men ought to be shocking enough.
But in this case, things were a little different.
"Well, I wasn't really planning on it, but... if that's how it is, I don't have a choice."
"Ah...! You'll help, right?"
"Of course. Even if I was the one who left him room to breathe, and even if he doesn't know the truth..."
He trailed off, suddenly embarrassed by the words rising to his lips. Mari, however, seemed to know exactly what he had been about to say, and a sly smile spread across her face in a way that looked completely out of place on a girl her age.
"Hee-hee-hee..."
"...What?"
"Nothing, just~. I'm happy, that's all~."
Watching her younger sister beam like that, Mercede muttered under her breath.
"...Maybe I should try a jealousy tactic too..."
Valdes turned toward her in disbelief, and Mercede immediately panicked and began fumbling for an excuse.
"N-No... that's not what I meant..."
"......"
"I-I mean... it's just... um, s-sorry..."
"I didn't even say anything..."
"I-I don't know, you idiot."
Today, the princess was showing a side of herself that was unusually different. Her face bright red, she ducked her head and slipped behind Valdes to wrap her arms around him. Mari followed her sister's lead and nestled into his embrace from the front in the exact same way.
A moderately soft chest pressed in from behind, and a far more voluptuous one from the front. As those two sensations closed in on him at once, blood immediately rushed downward in response to a man's instincts. Mari, who was leaning snugly against him, was the first to notice, and a wicked smile slowly spread across her face.
"Big bro... Mari doesn't have anything planned later today... ♡"
"Neither do I."
"...Even so, this is still your sister's room. Is that okay?"
"Th-That's... probably fine, right?"
"Hmm... well, I guess it should be fine. If not, we could always call Ethylene and have her stand guard for a little while."
Of course, that didn't mean posting her directly at the door. She could loiter in the hallway, and if someone seemed to have business there, she could warn them off or take the message instead. If she stood right in front of the door, that would only make things more suspicious.
"Oh, speaking of Ethylene, I just remembered something. What are we going to do about that woman?"
"That woman? ...Ah, the demonkin?"
"Yes."
Just as Valdes was about to answer Mari's question, Mercede frowned as if hearing about it for the first time.
"Huh? Demonkin? What are you talking about?"
"Oh, right, so..."
After hearing his explanation in detail, Mercede's expression grew steadily darker. It wasn't anger so much as a look of wounded disappointment.
Seeing that, Valdes felt a little guilty himself. He had originally intended to tell her and ask for her help.
"Ugh... you two did something that fun all by yourselves?"
"Technically, it was three..."
"Anyway!"
"Then... I'll change the plan a little and include you, too, sis."
"Heh. Now that sounds worth looking forward to~."
It was, in the end, just another act of thoroughly humiliating a demonkin female knight, but Mercede didn't care much either. In the past that might have bothered her, but now Valdes came first. Once upon a time she had been a knight who knew honor and leaned toward justice and good, but that was all long behind her now.
"That's a little surprising."
"Hmm? What's surprising?"
"I thought you'd hesitate at least a little."
"Well, maybe if it were the old me... but right now, we're the priority."
"We're..."
"Yeah. We're."
Rolling the word around in his head, Valdes let out a quiet laugh. It was a word he particularly liked.
We.
He didn't know how many more people would eventually be added to that circle, but even so, he thought he should do his best to make sure as many of those women as possible never regretted loving and following him.
And then he kissed Mercede.
After that, with Mari pressing in to join them, he kissed her too.
Within the room where the three of them stood together, a small gust of heat swept through the air.