Chapter 126
Crunch.
“Argh!”
As the Third Prince’s arm was sharply twisted backward, a low, muffled voice that seemed to crawl up from the depths of a cavern echoed.
“Are you all right?”
Einar, his face frozen as if covered with thin ice, asked as he twisted Smith’s arm a bit more, pushing it toward his shoulder blade.
“Aaaaargh! Aagh!”
“Yes. You protected me, after all.”
Riina answered calmly, with Smith’s squawking screams serving as background music.
She didn’t forget to gently stroke Sierre’s small hand, which she had grabbed the moment Smith had raised his hand.
As Einar was about to speak again, a broad back suddenly appeared before him.
“Are you all right?”
The bright red hair of the man who asked the exact same question as Einar shot upward like blazing flames.
Encountering an unexpected person in a most unforeseen place, Riina could only blink without answering, and the Duke of Bolshevik scrutinized her thoroughly from head to toe.
And Riina wasn’t the only one who hadn’t anticipated his arrival.
Smith, who had been screaming, fell silent with his mouth agape, and even Einar loosened his grip on Smith’s twisted arm a bit.
In the sudden silence, Sierre’s eyes grew round as he peeked his head out from behind Riina, toward her right side.
It was none other than the Duke of Bolshevik, whom he had only seen from a distance during major imperial events.
Though he knew the Duke’s face from portraits, this was the first time he had seen him up close.
Blinking rapidly, Sierre looked at Riina and the Duke in turn before opening his mouth.
“They look alike.”
Those caught in confusion and embarrassment by the Duke of Bolshevik’s sudden appearance didn’t notice the tips of the Duke’s ears twitching at Sierre’s inadvertent murmur.
Of course, only Sierre, who was staring intently at the Duke with wide eyes, saw how the corners of his mouth shot upward momentarily before coming back down in an instant.
Sierre was fascinated by this display from the Duke, who was rumored to have “ice in his veins” and who “wouldn’t bat an eye even if someone died right beside him.” Just as he was about to speak again—
The Duke of Bolshevik, having regained his typically cold composure, turned around to face the dazed Smith.
“Your Highness, the Third Prince.”
The Duke of Bolshevik merely nodded slightly, not bothering to bow to Smith.
Smith knew all too well that he couldn’t even protest, let alone get angry about this.
While everyone present—even Sierre—understood this fact, Smith felt deeply humiliated, but he still didn’t explode.
No, rather than turning red as if about to burst, his face was turning deathly pale.
“I.”
This was because Einar, who had somehow moved in close behind Smith and pulled his twisted hand up near his shoulder blade, was now gripping Smith’s thumb and slowly bending it as he whispered:
“Didn’t I tell you not even to feel the breeze passing by?”
And in an even lower—no, several times lower—voice, he growled:
“How dare you.”
A windstorm raged in Einar’s ash-gray eyes as he spat out the exact same words Smith had shouted while raising his hand toward Riina.
Although he wasn’t looking directly into those eyes, Smith began to tremble, feeling as if that dust storm was boring into his nostrils and solidifying his lungs with its eeriness. He couldn’t even gather his scattered wits or sense of humiliation.
Smith tried to say something, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and wouldn’t budge.
Wasn’t this situation utterly unfair to him?
He hadn’t come with the intention of meeting Riina, nor had he even thought of pretending to encounter her by chance!
He had merely visited the Youngest Prince’s palace to see what Einar had done, having heard that he had taken care of something there.
He had even arrived first, and Riina had come later.
Moreover, far from having a pleasant conversation with her, he had been nearly ignored…
“Aaargh!”
As Smith’s eyes began to glint again while looking at Riina, Einar—who somehow noticed despite being behind him—grabbed Smith’s index and middle fingers together and twisted them.
Smith, instinctively struggling to free himself from Einar, realized that no matter how hard he tried, he was no match for this cursed genius, and cried out almost in a scream:
“I, I came first! Because I heard something happened at Sierre’s palace! I was worried, as his brother, and came to check on him! I never even thought about her or anything like that!”
“What?”
In response to Smith’s desperate confession, it was Sierre’s voice, not Einar’s, that followed.
And he didn’t hide his utterly puzzled and bewildered tone.
“Third Brother, you came because you heard something happened at my palace?”
Sierre asked again, as if he genuinely couldn’t believe it, and before Smith could respond, he shook his head.
“That can’t be. That’s absolutely impossible. Ah! You must have heard that Second Brother took care of something.”
With this bright exclamation, Sierre finally nodded his head vigorously, as if understanding.
“Then it makes sense that Third Brother would come here.”
Thus, Sierre bluntly stated, without any packaging, ‘You didn’t come because you were worried about me, but to check up on Second Brother, right?’
At Sierre’s blatant words, Smith’s face finally turned crimson.
Still in the undignified position of having his arm twisted by Einar, he shouted at the top of his lungs:
“You! After how much I cared for you! Wasn’t I the one who looked after you at the princes’ gatherings—Aaaagh!”
Smith tried to vent his frustration at Sierre but closed his mouth with a scream as another sharp pain shot through his captured fingers.
He turned his head, which moved stiffly, toward Einar and said—
No, it was closer to pleading:
“Won’t you let me go now? I said it was a misunderstanding. As I said, I simply came to check on the youngest.”
Smith forced a smile, but it only made his face grotesquely distorted with instinctive fear and the aching pain in his joints.
Once again, it was Sierre, not Einar, who responded to his words.
The child tilted his head sideways and blinked his innocent eyes.
“Brother, my body may be unwell, but my mind is not. I have eyes and ears that can properly assess a situation. You didn’t care for me; you merely displayed the appearance of caring to others.”
At Sierre’s even more merciless candid statement, Smith tightly closed his mouth.
He could have uttered dozens, no, hundreds of rebuttals, but they would only work on third parties, not the person directly involved.
If the person himself denied it, what good would it do to open his mouth and babble excuses?
And having realized this too late, he had already been humiliated.
Moreover, Sierre’s words didn’t end there.
The child bowed his head toward Smith, who had shut his mouth, and said:
“What happened at the palace was nothing significant. Just a servant who left, that’s all. At the next gathering, if you’d pat me on the shoulder once, that would be the end of it.”
Faced with the child who smiled brightly as if knowing nothing, Smith couldn’t bring himself to curse, spit, or explode in anger. His face was a mix of what might have been a smile or a grimace, and watching this, Einar caught Riina’s eye.
As he silently mouthed something, Riina’s left eyebrow quirked upward after reading his lips, but she didn’t bother to deny it.
And there was one more person who saw those lip movements.
The Duke of Bolshevik, who stood like a massive wall protecting Riina.
Thinking, “Indeed, he’s fully qualified to be Crown Prince…”
The blue eyes of Bolshevik—identical to Riina’s, no, slightly deeper—flashed sharply.
As it happened, the topic of the Crown Prince position had just come up in the meeting earlier.
‘There’s no one suitable.’
No one offered even empty compliments to the sighing Emperor, saying that wasn’t true, that all his sons were excellent.
Looking at his closest confidants, who were too honest and upright to offer even a bit of flattery when desired, the Emperor sighed long and deep once more.
‘Yes, so you all think the same. I set a test this time, you know.’
‘The trade agreement?’
‘Given the timing, there wasn’t anything else. And as you all said, it’s about time for the accumulated discontent to erupt.’
No one was newly surprised by the Emperor’s words, indicating he had already anticipated the unsettling events occurring in foreign countries.
‘It is time for some commotion at the borders.’
The general known as the Empire’s Wall, responsible for the entire defense of the nation, was answered by the minister who oversaw all financial matters, known as the Empire’s power player.
‘The budget allocation is difficult.’
‘No, where on earth is that budget being spent? Hm? Who doesn’t know that the empire is safe only when its borders are secure!’
The hot-tempered general raised his voice in immediate excitement, but the finance minister calmly repeated:
‘Still, there is no budget.’
‘Come now, don’t be like that. If you give me just a little more time and budget—’
