Chapter 4
“Get some forest air. Clear your head.”
Unable to hold it in any longer, Reni burst out laughing as she said that and flung the carriage window wide open.
The moment it opened, the cool, clear air unique to the forest rushed inside. I had been slumped over weakly, but I blinked and took a deep breath.
Even without Reni saying anything, I could tell exactly where the carriage was just by the freshness of the air.
“The Great Imperial Forest… it’s been a while.”
The Great Imperial Forest was a dense coniferous woodland surrounding the Imperial Palace, over a hundred years old. It was always green and strangely comforting. Whenever I was hurt at the palace, I would wander here.
And…
It was the place where I first met Rubellus.
I still remember that moment from twelve years ago when I first saw His Highness.
It must have been around this season too, when summer was turning into autumn.
Father adored me back then. Perhaps he wanted to show off his daughter, who had just begun to speak, because he personally took me to the palace that day.
And I instantly won the affection of the imperial family. The Empress in particular took a strong liking to me.
She had only one son, so she must have found a little girl charming. She declared that she would personally spend time with me.
Held in the Empress’s arms, I wandered through parts of the imperial residence that even nobles could not enter.
And somehow…
I got lost.
It was in the middle of this Great Imperial Forest that he found me.
“Did you lose your way?”
Prince Rubellus, holding a sword, spoke gently as he comforted me. I was four. He was eight. We walked through the forest hand in hand.
“It’s alright. You can’t help but get lost here. This forest has a will of its own. It doesn’t open its paths easily to strangers.”
And then…
By chance, I saw his secret.
Was it because I was so young? The Crown Prince seemed to have no guard up around me. I still remember him stepping closer to my blinking, confused self and saying,
“What you saw today must not be told to anyone. Normally, those who know this truth promise their silence with their lives. But I’ll spare you.”
“…”
I just stared at him. In truth, I didn’t even understand what he meant.
He looked into my eyes and continued.
“Since it’s come to this…”
“This will be a secret only you know. So you must become my bride.”
He smiled as he lightly pinched my nose.
Ah. From that moment on, I had already considered myself Rubellus’s fiancée. I endured twelve years in that palace, hoping those warm eyes would look at me again.
“…Wait a second.”
Lost in that heartwarming memory, I suddenly sat upright.
Come to think of it, he was the one who said we would marry first. And yet he treated me like that?
“…What? Why?”
Reni asked, startled by my sudden movement. I shook my head and lay back down.
No. That’s not it.
I knew the truth too. Who would seriously remember a promise made at eight years old?
The promise itself probably hadn’t been real. He must have been joking with a little child.
Chasing him for twelve years over those words… honestly, that was far creepier. Even I can admit that was excessive.
After I decided to give up on him at sixteen, I spent a full year reviewing my past as objectively as possible.
I needed to understand how much I had ruined my present by being lost in dreams and fantasies.
Through that process, I realized something painfully clear.
He had never liked me. Not even once.
My diary—no, my “Rubellus observation journal”—was pitiful beyond words.
At banquets, he would smile brightly and warmly at girls he only saw occasionally. But to me, whom he saw every day, he would only offer a cold greeting.
When I brought him things, he would accept them politely in front of me, only to discard them carelessly afterward.
The hunting hat was the clearest example.
I had injured all ten fingers embroidering that hat for days and nights. It was to commemorate his first fox hunt as Crown Prince.
I had prepared it with all my heart.
But he did not wear it that day.
And the diary page where I recorded seeing his attire at the hunting competition was soaked with tears.
Even as fourteen-year-old Aira Wildenbiston cried her eyes out, she ended the entry like this:
I could not bring myself to look at him.
Why didn’t His Highness wear the hat? But come to think of it, he wore a green vest today. The hat I gave him was purple.
Yes. If he had worn my hat too, people might have said his fashion sense was poor.
He must have treasured my hat dearly. When purple comes into fashion someday, I’m sure he’ll wear it at least once….
What impressive self-delusion.
Of course, he never wore that hat. Not once.
Yes… I truly tried back then. I wanted to become a capable and elegant woman worthy of standing by the Crown Prince’s side.
But putting everything else aside…
From the very beginning, I could never have been with him.
If I keep lying here, I’ll spiral again. I should sit up.
“By the way.”
Reni spoke again. I lifted my head. Her gray eyes blinked at me.
“When the Crown Prince becomes Emperor, what happens to your father?”
I inhaled softly.
The timing was almost frightening. Reni truly was scary. If you looked at her back, she probably had eyes there too.
Her question was the exact reason I could never have ended up with the Crown Prince in the first place.
My father.
“He’ll probably retire. Father and Crown Prince Rubellus never got along.”
I answered casually and pushed myself upright against the backrest.
Father and Crown Prince Rubellus—soon to be Emperor—were political rivals. No, more than rivals. Almost enemies.
Because Father had once considered supporting someone else as the next emperor instead of Rubellus.
Looking back, it was a grave miscalculation.
When Rubellus began actively participating in politics, he showed clear signs of reform, aiming to push out the officials from Emperor Johann Jahard’s era, including my father.
To free himself from the influence of the Emperor and his ministers, Rubellus allied with young nobles who had inherited titles but desired reform, as well as newly ennobled financial aristocrats with capital power.
Feeling threatened, my father, Duke Wildenbiston, and several other nobles made a disastrous decision.
Instead of backing Rubellus, the rightful Crown Prince, they chose another royal.
The candidate they supported was the emperor’s half-brother—Rubellus’s uncle. Tail Jahard.
And of course, it failed.
Not because I loved Rubellus, but objectively speaking, Tail Jahard was no match.
Rubellus was meticulous. One by one, the nobles who openly supported Tail were eliminated.
Since Rubellus was not yet emperor, they avoided charges of treason, but their houses were ruined.
Tail Jahard was exiled to the north.
Father survived, somehow. Through remarkable political skill, he even remained prime minister. Some gossips whispered it was only because of the late Emperor’s protection.
But over the past three years, as power gradually shifted toward Crown Prince Rubellus, the policies Father had been pushing began to stall one by one.
And today, Rubellus becomes Emperor.
No capital noble would misunderstand what that meant.
Politics is a battlefield without the clash of weapons. Only cold logic and a firmly gripped pen serve as weapons.
Rubellus’s ascension was, effectively, Father’s political defeat.
Father’s era ended with Emperor Johann Jahard XIII.
…If I had realized that sooner, I might have given up more easily, telling myself he was a man I could never have.
Instead, unaware of all this, I had gone around declaring that I would become Crown Princess and make everyone get along.
…Even now, it was pathetic.
As I sighed, lost in memory, Reni tilted her head.
“So… are you moving?”
By “moving,” she meant it literally.
The very first house on the boulevard in front of the Imperial Palace belonged to the most powerful figure in the Jahard Empire. It had a name: The House of the Black Serpent.
Since William the Black Serpent, the first Prime Minister of the Empire, had lived and died there, it became an unspoken rule that the most powerful noble resided in that house.
Everyone assumed it would pass to the most powerful man of each era. When someone else became Prime Minister, the previous family vacated it.
Our family had lived there since before I was born, but we were no exception.
“Probably. It’s symbolic. Father’s the type to leave cleanly. It’s not like we don’t have an estate or other houses in the capital. And more importantly… the new prime minister will likely be eager to push us out.”
I answered slowly after thinking it over.
“We’ll be lucky if there isn’t a bloody purge,” I almost said, but swallowed it.
The man expected to succeed Father as prime minister was Count Walden.
Father disliked him, saying his ambition exceeded his capacity. But Count Walden was Crown Prince Rubellus’s closest political ally.
He greatly coveted the symbolic first house on the boulevard. He would surely hurry us out.
Reni clicked her tongue in disapproval.
“Power struggles.”
“They’re complicated.”
I agreed quietly, my thoughts drifting back to the past once more.
