Strangers in Name Only
“So, what I’m saying is… we had a shared goal, which led to setting exciting fires in the Imperial Palace and smashing the Rose Palace to pieces. And I suppose that’s brought us close enough to talk casually like this.”
I glanced around.
Though we were inside the Imperial Palace, the people remaining to clean up this area appeared to belong mostly to House Castrein.
It was only natural. The Royal Guard had followed the Emperor, and Consort Cleo’s retinue had cleared out to look after Prince Brian and the consort herself. As for the palace guards, notorious for slacking off on the job, they had been frightened out of their wits by the demonic beasts and were all too relieved to turn tail and run the moment they heard the Castrein family was handling the cleanup.
In other words, there was nobody left to butt into whatever we were doing.
A man who seemed to be a comrade of Lisianthus was shaking his head nearby, but he showed no signs of approaching us.
I sighed, grabbed the hem of my skirt, and ripped off a long strip. Despite everything we had just gone through, it wasn’t nearly as dirty as I’d expected.
Tugging Lisianthus’s hand toward me, I wound the cloth tightly around his palm. Healing? This was the Castrein Duchy—a family capable of summoning the High Priest at a moment’s notice. All I needed to do was stem the bleeding.
“Even so, that doesn’t mean you have the right to interrogate me, does it, Lord Lisianthus?”
“……”
Lisianthus stiffened the moment he noticed my gaze drifting toward the sword at his hip. The hand I was holding froze right along with the rest of him.
It felt like gripping a block of wood. Yet, every time I pulled the white strip tight, his fingertips gave a little twitch.
“…Hey, you, uh…”
I clicked my tongue as he hesitated, the words clearly stuck in his throat.
“I already know. Count Orland and Duke Castrein cooked up a story between them so you could have that sword.”
“…You knew Brother danced with another woman just to make an excuse to get that sword for me? Then why back then did you…?”
“I didn’t know back then.”
My brief answer left Lisianthus utterly speechless. Our eyes met.
Reflected in his flustered red eyes—looking as lost as someone confronting an insolvable riddle—were my own calm green ones. It was a bizarre sight, like autumn leaves and spring sprouts placed side by side.
“……Brother only did that because of me.”
“I know.”
“There’s nothing going on between him and that woman.”
“I don’t care.”
“What?”
Lisianthus jumped as if he’d been tossed into boiling water.
“Hey! I saw with my own eyes what a massive scene you caused back then! You don’t care? How could you not?!”
“I’m sick of hearing that question, but if you really want an answer, go ask the tallest yew tree in the garden near the second-floor balcony of the Rose Palace… Or, well, I would say that, except the Rose Palace, the gardens, and the trees are all kind of pulverized right now. The real answer? Bang your head really hard!”
“Your jokes aren’t funny… More importantly, does Brother know you’re like this?”
“Of course he does. I even told him not to feel burdened because I plan to break off the engagement later.”
“What?! Break off the engagement?!”
“If word of this leaks to the Imperial family, both I and the duchy are ruined, so keep your mouth shut.”
“Wait, no, you…”
A swirl of emotions washed over Lisianthus’s face in a flash. The shift vanished so quickly, however, that it was hard to tell what he was feeling.
“…Seriously? You really don’t like my brother anymore?”
I hesitated for a moment.
It wasn’t that I felt completely indifferent when looking at Raymon; I simply gritted my teeth and did my best not to let it show. It helped that, upon awakening to the memories of my past life, my identity as an adult woman living in modern twenty-first-century Korea had overtaken that of a neglected, affection-starved child.
Even so, when I had offered him a deal at our very first tea time and intuitively felt the cold, blue blade poised at my throat…
Just as I thought, I had told myself.
Clenching my molars, I answered, “Human to human, from an objective standpoint, I think he is an extraordinary person.”
It would have been wonderful if he had been satisfied with that, but Lisianthus snapped back as if he couldn’t believe his ears.
“I know exactly how many years you spent clinging to him, completely head over heels, and now you’re giving me this ‘human to human’ garbage? Just last year, you folded a hundred paper flowers soaked in a love potion you bought from some sketchy fortune-teller, crammed them into a glass jar, and gave them to Brother—”
“You’re the one who said I didn’t suit your brother! You told me to know my place and get lost! I’m trying to be cool about this, so stop raining on my parade and shut up and listen!”
Aaargh!
When I lost my temper, Lisianthus shrank his shoulders like a turtle retracting into its shell.
Yes. I was thoroughly sick of hearing about it, and just as sick of dredging up my humiliating past. It was better to drive the final nail into the coffin right here and now.
“I! Do! Not! Like! Raymon Oberon El Castrein! Anymore! Got it? Do you understand?! You told me to know my place, so I learned my place! You told me to grow up, so I grew up! You told me to remember this was purely a contractual engagement, so that’s exactly what I did! Got it?!”
“Y-Yeah?”
Lisianthus answered in a dazed, reluctant voice. The moment he met my eyes, which were blazing with exasperation and fury, he flinched and looked away—only to suddenly stare at the empty air behind me and let out a sharp, deflating wheeze.
“Princess Titania and Young Duke Raymon are complete strangers bound solely by a political engagement! Strangers, outsiders, total strangers! Just another party’s side! That’s it! Engagement or not, even if everyone else on earth died and we were the last man and woman on a deserted island! He would never be my husband!”
Phew.
I finished my heated tirade, panting. But perhaps it was just my imagination—why had everything gone so dead silent?
About three paces away, a man with a horrified expression was gaping at me like a fish.
His face looked oddly familiar…
Ah, right. Cassian, was it? The adjutant who trailed after Raymon everywhere like a goldfish’s tail. I wondered what he was doing here—
“Is that so.”
…Eep.
A chill shot straight down my spine.
Step. Step.
The sound of footsteps rang out with dreadful clarity. Raymon came to a halt right between the frozen Lisianthus and me.
Lisianthus, looking as though he had just seen a ghost, glanced back and forth between Raymon and me. Raymon wore his usual impassive face.
Which only made it terrifying.
Raymon’s gaze dropped to my hand and Lisianthus’s. My fingers were still clasped around Lisian’s hand from wrapping and applying pressure to the cloth, while Lisian had been too stunned to even think about pulling away.
The instant Raymon’s eyes landed there, my grip tightened reflexively.
Lisianthus groaned.
“Ow.”
“Uh—ah! Does it hurt? S-Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine…”
Perhaps it was just my imagination, but as Raymon watched me stammer out an apology and Lisianthus tell me it was all right, his eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
What was that look? Did he think I had hurt him? While I was worrying, Raymon reached out and slowly took my hand in his gloved one.
The touch of the cold leather made my fingertips curl in reflex.
As if coaxing my stiff fingers, Raymon gently peeled them away, one by one, from Lisian’s hand, before speaking in a low voice.
“Lisianthus.”
“…Yeah, Brother.”
“You are injured. There shouldn’t have been any extraordinary demonic beasts among those you faced.”
“I… made a bit of a mistake…”
Uncharacteristically, Lisianthus mumbled his words, averting his eyes from Raymon.
Even though Lisian’s hand looked a complete mess, wrapped crudely in a roughly torn piece of skirt rather than proper bandages, Raymon probed no further.
“Go inside and regroup with Sir Alphonse. Do not forget to have that treated.”
“Yeah…”
Even as he answered meekly, Lisianthus kept casting worried glances my way.
“Your Highness.”
“…Yes, Young Duke Raymon.”
I eyed him cautiously, feeling like a child caught red-handed.
Sure, I had already told him that we would break off our engagement and go our separate ways eventually. But making him overhear something like that in public was still a bit tactless, wasn’t it?
Did I hurt his pride?
“There is blood on you.”
His face drew close in a sudden breath.
His golden eyes gleamed with an inorganic sheen, unreadable as ever.
I felt a firm, faint warmth rubbing firmly against my cheek, and his thumb brushed lightly past the corner of my lower lip as if by accident.
It felt as though someone had tossed popping candy straight into my chest. Only in the next second did I realize he had taken off his glove and wiped my cheek with his bare hand.
Then, as if nothing of consequence had happened, he pulled back.
Was it Lisianthus’s blood that splattered when the Emoticon Sword was snatched away earlier…?
I stood frozen in a daze, watching the man lick the blood from his own palm with the tip of his tongue.
His impassive face remained entirely unchanged as he slipped his glove back on, as casual as could be.
…I mean, sure, when I accidentally bite my own lip and bleed, I lick it away too, but this felt distinctly weird.
This wasn’t like that at all, was it?
What… what was that just now?
Instinctively darting my eyes around, I caught sight of Raymon’s adjutant, whose eyes were bulging in sheer horror.
I knew it! That wasn't just my imagination!