A Proposition for the Young Duke
It was when they were merely five years old that Princess Titania and Young Duke Raymon first met as betrothed.
"Never show weakness."
Those were the parting words Duke Castrein had offered as he escorted his eldest son—a rare occurrence for a man who seldom set foot in the Imperial Palace.
"Children can change in any number of ways, but..."
Instead of finishing his thought, Duke Castrein had simply looked down at his heir, a boy whose presence and mettle already eclipsed that of most grown men.
"Our adversary is the imperial family, and this marriage was forced upon us to bind our hands. Humour her just enough until you reach adulthood. It may well be better than giving half-baked jackals an excuse to circle you."
Raymon had merely nodded at the counsel from his father, the lord of their house. The imperial family was the mortal enemy of the Castrein Duchy; he was hardly ignorant of that truth.
When he first encountered five-year-old Titania in the palace, she had been beautiful. With her long platinum-blonde hair flowing loose and brilliant green eyes blinking up at him, the young girl looked quite literally like a doll. The sight of her had made him stop dead in his tracks the very moment their eyes met.
A child of that age laden with cumbersome trinkets draping from neck, wrists, and hair might easily have resembled a grotesque mannequin. Yet Titania, casting bashful glances in his direction with flushed pink cheeks, had seemed more like an angel crowned in a halo of splendor. Her gaze had trailed after Raymon alone with a blind reverence akin to worship—a sensation utterly foreign to him.
Had she remained as she was during that first meeting, Raymon might have kept a reasonably favorable impression of his fiancée.
Instead, Princess Titania grew obsessed with him.
The direct bloodline of Duke Castrein rarely lingered in the capital. They spent more than two-thirds of the year in their northern territory, traveling south only for the New Year's banquet at the palace and the summer social season. Moreover, as the future duke, Raymon shouldered an immense burden of duties and responsibilities—not to mention the dark secret bound to their bloodline, which could never be revealed to outsiders.
He was a fiancé she would see only a handful of times a year; she could have simply treated him as such.
Yet Titania constantly clung to him. The less he reacted, the more relentless she became. Still, Raymon could never give her the response she craved.
She was always asking him for the one thing he could never provide.
"...Why don't you like me the most, Raymon?"
"..."
"Why, Raymon...?"
When I... like you... the most in the whole world...
Just once, Princess Titania had broken down into messy, inconsolable tears before him. It had happened after he granted the year's first dance to the daughter of Count Orland, a loyal vassal of the Castrein Duchy, at her birthday banquet.
She was a girl who had always sat impeccably dressed as if out of sheer stubbornness, beaming like a pristine porcelain doll. Yet that evening, after a fit of fury, she had sobbed without a care for her running makeup, choking on her own breath like an abandoned child as those words tore out of her.
Raymon had been accustomed to her anger. He was used to her gnashing her teeth, threatening to kill that wretched woman, or throwing tantrums demanding that he act like a proper fiancé. But seeing her weep so bitterly, as though she had lost everything in the world, was utterly unfamiliar.
He had remained silent, unable even to reach out a hand.
The reason was simple: Raymon was the next lord of House Castrein. Although the Duke remained stalwart, he was already past his prime and in gradual decline, while Raymon's younger siblings were still far too immature.
The only reason Raymon tolerated his fiancée's outbursts was that this engagement was a political contract between the imperial family and his ducal house. Sentiment between the two of them had never mattered.
Raymon could never love Titania "the most." He carried the weight of his family's fortress, the safety of his people, and the grim reality of the northern front entirely on his shoulders.
Thus, he could neither comfort the weeping princess nor offer her soothing lies. The girl who had once smiled as brightly as an armful of fresh blossoms gradually saw her eyes poisoned by venom. Eventually, she resorted to blatant insolence and spiteful hysterics, desperate for even a flicker of embarrassment or rage across his face.
Raymon had grown used to it all. In truth, he found it preferable.
"It's bound to be a lie anyway."
Raymon walked on, ignoring the grumbling of his adjutant, Cassian.
"Do royals have bodies made of sugar confectionary or something? How on earth does falling from a mere second-floor balcony put someone into a coma?"
"If an ordinary civilian landed headfirst, it would be more than enough."
"This is the Imperial Palace we're talking about, the Imperial Palace! She's obviously making a fuss just to drag you here, Young Duke. It's not as if this is the first or second time she's pulled such nonsense."
Raymon remained silent at Cassian's complaints, though inwardly he agreed.
The Princess had virtually no allies within the palace. Though she was well of age to debut in high society, she had been thoroughly neglected and never made her formal entrance into the social world. Consequently, while her fiancé, Raymon, moved freely through high society attending other nobles' parties, the Princess could do little more than summon him to her palace and vent her fury.
This time would be no different. The injury was surely an excuse; she would appear fully dressed to the nines, sitting before an ornate tea set to pour out her wrath and petty grievances. And to keep Raymon by her side for even a few minutes longer, she would—
"Welcome, Young Duke Raymon."
...He had fully expected her to pull every trick in the book, but this?
Raymon froze in his tracks. He had no choice. Just behind him, Cassian let out a strangled gasp of sheer disbelief.
Princess Titania greeted him with a bright, luminous smile. That in itself wasn't the issue.
The issue was...
Her appearance.
As if the reports of her comatose state had been no exaggeration, thick bandages and splints were clearly visible around her head, neck, slender wrists, and legs. There was even a patch of gauze taped to her cheek. Her hair, which had once shone with the brilliance of sunlight, was dull, brittle, and left carelessly loose. And the clothes she wore...
Good heavens. She was wrapped in a shapeless white dress one wouldn't even wear before one's own family, bundled inside a coarse shawl that looked like an old burlap sack.
The gaunt cheeks and pale skin still bore unmistakable traces of severe illness, lending credence to the claim that she had truly hovered on the brink of death.
What truly astonished him, however, was that she was showing herself to Raymon in such a state.
Titania had always possessed immense pride in her beauty. In truth, she might have believed her looks were the only weapon she had in this world. The title of the Empire's foremost beauty was her supreme vanity; she had never once received Raymon unless she was adorned in utter perfection. Even Raymon himself conceded the sheer brilliance of her features.
"...I heard you were gravely indisposed. Please forgive me for coming so late."
"It is a shameful sight to present before you, Young Duke Raymon."
Instead of reproaching him with demands of why he had only arrived now, or asking whether she had to die for him to visit, or whining about how terribly she had suffered, Titania offered a neat, unruffled reply and gestured for him to take a seat.
Cassian, who had witnessed Titania's antics up close for years as Raymon's aide, stared at her with an expression that practically screamed, Did brushing against death drive the princess completely mad?
Raymon, however, felt a strange, chilling dissonance.
"Young Duke Raymon. I have something of great urgency to discuss. Would you mind dismissing your adjutant?"
...Since when did Titania speak in such a manner?
Compelling Cassian to wait outside the door—despite his adjutant's wide eyes pleading that she had truly lost her mind and there was no telling what she might do—Raymon sat opposite Titania alone at the table.
Despite her disheveled state, the Princess raised her teacup with matchless poise, moistened her lips, and set it down. Then, with a sharp, perceptive glint in her green eyes, she spoke:
"I would like to propose a transaction to you, Young Duke."
"...What kind of transaction do you mean?"
The more they spoke, the deeper the sense of incongruity grew.
Titania was never someone who could maintain such composure in front of Raymon. She should have been clamoring for him to acknowledge her pain, lamenting that he had caught her in such an embarrassing state, and wheedling that a fiancé naturally owed his bride-to-be at least this much. She should have flown into a rage that he hadn't even uttered a single word about missing her after all this time apart.
Above all else, her gaze upon him had always dripped with desperate, agonizing yearning.
"In the territory of Count Bradley... there is an abandoned iron mine on Mount Haelon, in the northwest of the Wheaton region. It was bestowed as a reward when my mother was offered to His Majesty the Emperor, but it was shuttered once the iron ore was depleted. It is far from their main domain and holds no profitability, making it all but deserted. In fact, ominous rumors of ghosts haunt the place, so sensible folk steer well clear of it."
Yet the Titania of today merely caressed the rim of her teacup, smiling gently like a seasoned merchant. She was wrapped in bandages and gauze from unhealed wounds, yet she acted as if her state were of no consequence whatsoever.
Her clear green eyes appeared, if anything, completely detached.
"Beneath the deepest shaft of that iron mine sleeps Gloriana's Insignia."
"...!"
It was information he had never imagined hearing in a place like this. Raymon's expression turned to stone.