“……”
Axid gently pressed a kiss to the back of Lumiere’s hand.
His manner was so perfectly courteous that it almost made the rude remark from earlier seem insignificant.
The already frozen atmosphere grew even colder.
The Grand Duke had completely ignored the Emperor as though he were nonexistent, yet had shown the Princess impeccable courtesy.
Soon, the Grand Duke straightened his massive frame and turned his gaze toward the speaker.
His eyes were frighteningly calm.
“D-did I say something wrong? Shouldn’t you first kneel before His Majesty the Emperor and show your respect? How dare you, merely the ruler of a Grand Duchy, come here and—!”
When the frightened nobleman shouted with a flushed face, the Emperor smiled deliberately and said,
“If you know proper etiquette and decorum, then you should be called a civilized man. Otherwise, why would anyone call you a barbarian?”
“…How strange. I have never entered into a lord-vassal relationship with the Emperor, so what etiquette and decorum are you talking about?”
Axid’s dry yet heavy voice rang throughout the hall, and displeasure appeared around the Emperor’s eyes.
“How dare you speak so insolently in front of Me? It seems you have forgotten your place after being buried away in the frontier for so long.”
At the Emperor’s words, the killing intent radiating from the Grand Duchy’s knights surged to a terrifying level.
How could the Imperial Guards, who were little more than ceremonial guards, possibly withstand the killing intent of men who crossed the line between life and death every single day?
Amid the taut tension—
The moment the Imperial knights turned pale and placed their hands on their sword hilts—
“…Your Majesty, I’m hurt. Did you really want to get rid of me from this palace that quickly?”
A clear voice slipped into the razor-sharp atmosphere.
“What?”
“You skipped the state guest protocol.”
The Imperial Guards, who should have been there to welcome the visiting envoy, were gathered in the grand hall fully armed.
That meant they had not even prepared a proper welcome ceremony for the state guest, let alone an escort.
In other words—
They were telling them to conduct their business and leave.
Even though the ruler of an allied nation had personally visited for a royal marriage, the Emperor had insulted him as though he were an envoy from an enemy country.
And yet they had the nerve to lecture others about etiquette and decorum.
How could that not be ridiculous?
“Hahaha! Are you already trying to act like a Grand Duchess? As the Princess’s only elder brother, I suppose I should be proud of you, but…”
The Emperor laughed heartily while slapping his knee, but his expression soon hardened.
“How dare you suggest that I treat some petty king of a small frontier nation as a state guest?”
A faint, bluish killing intent appeared in Lumiere’s eyes.
He was a man who had walked a difficult path carrying out a duty.
He was not someone who deserved to be treated with such contempt.
How dare these people insult him when they enjoyed peace precisely because of the Grand Duchy?
“The North is the front line of humanity. Without the Grand Duchy, the Empire would have been engulfed in war. He deserves to be treated as a state guest.”
Moreover, this was an official visit for a royal marriage.
“Tsk. No matter how grandly you dress it up, isn’t he merely protecting his own land? Anyone listening would think I was the one who ordered him to do it.”
“It seems Your Majesty is confident that you could defend the front line even if Winterheim’s army were to withdraw.”
Winterheim was a military power recognized throughout the entire continent.
The reason the monsters could not cross the northern barrier was because the Grand Duchy stood firm against them.
Surely even the Emperor knew that.
“Are you saying that My army is inferior to the Grand Duchy’s?”
At the Emperor’s icy question, Lumiere spoke with a mocking smile.
“Of course not. I am merely offering Your Majesty my final piece of advice as the Princess of the Wiezer Empire.”
“You cannot even take care of yourself, yet you dare lecture Me? You truly have gone completely mad.”
The Emperor’s veins stood out as he gripped the armrest of the throne.
The entire hall fell deathly silent.
Yet Lumiere’s purple eyes did not waver in the slightest.
“You may dismiss it as nothing more than the ramblings of a mad Princess. But…”
She paused for a moment and quietly looked at her half-brother, the man who had trampled and tormented her throughout her entire life.
In a few years, that fool would fall to a rebellion led by those who could no longer endure his tyranny and atrocities.
He was doomed to fall anyway, so he was hardly worth worrying about.
But everyone standing here needed to understand one thing.
The peace they enjoyed had not been given to them for free.
“Your Majesty, even at this very moment, countless people on the northern front are shedding blood as they fight against the monsters. So please, do not forget the long years of sacrifice made by our allied nation.”
When she finished speaking, she looked up at Axid, who had been standing beside her as though guarding her.
A faint trace of doubt appeared in his black eyes.
Of course.
Had he ever seen an Imperial of the Empire speak of the Grand Duchy’s sacrifices before?
He quietly studied her as though trying to see through her true intentions before asking in a low voice,
“Have you finished saying your farewells?”
“Yes. Let’s go now.”
Lumiere took hold of the Grand Duke’s arm and turned around.
She was not leaving like someone being thrown out.
Instead, she carried herself with such dignity that it seemed as though she were choosing to leave of her own accord.
The Imperial knights instinctively stepped forward to block their path.
At that moment, an invisible force pressed down upon the grand hall.
A presence far too heavy and savage to be human.
Under that overwhelming and ominous aura, the Imperial knights froze as though they had come face-to-face with their natural predator.
“Move.”
At the Grand Duke’s low command, the knights instinctively faltered.
Soon, the two of them left the grand hall without anyone daring to interfere.
‘…Useless fools.’
The Emperor gripped the armrest tightly with a faintly trembling hand.
They could not even deal with a single barbarian.
He wanted to have their heads struck off immediately, but he forced himself to swallow the impulse.
If he punished the knights now, it would only confirm that the Imperial Family had been defeated by barbarians.
The Emperor’s face twisted with rising rage before he let out a cold scoff.
The Princess would die after being used as nothing more than a tool to produce an heir.
The Grand Duke would meet an untimely death in the land of monsters.
In the end, those two would die together anyway.
He wiped the smile from his face and issued a cold command.
“Have all the maids of the Princess’s Palace beheaded.”
The Princess, who should have remained sickly and miserable enough to be mocked, had regained her healthy appearance thanks to their assistance.
Then they deserved to bear the consequences for ruining the scene he had wanted to see.
…Far away.
In the palace that had been left empty after its mistress departed, a sharp scream suddenly rang out.
Silence settled inside the carriage.
Axid was looking out the window, but his attention was entirely focused on the woman sitting across from him.
White hair that flowed softly like sand.
A delicate, slender figure that seemed as though it could fit within a single handful.
The Princess was so beautiful that he could hardly understand how she had come to be surrounded by such rumors.
But what was even stranger was—
‘Why isn’t she afraid of me?’
He had believed that the moment she saw him, she would despair.
Instead, she had smiled brightly at him.
She had taken his hand without hesitation and had even become angry on his behalf over the Imperial Family’s rudeness.
‘…Could it be that she hasn’t heard anything about me?’
Or was she simply pretending not to know?
He tried to gauge what was going on inside the Princess’s mind, but her softly smiling face revealed nothing.
“I…”
Flinch.
Had he been staring at her too intently?
When the Princess quietly opened her mouth, he awkwardly turned his gaze away.
“You must have been very upset.”
“It’s fine.”
He had never expected much from the Empire’s hospitality in the first place.
If anything, leaving immediately without all the bothersome and cumbersome formalities was preferable.
“I’ll apologize on their behalf. My brother has always been like that.”
She gave a bitter smile.
It was a smile filled with years of resignation.
“By the way, you speak differently now than you did earlier.”
“…Since the grand hall was an official setting, I used formal speech according to protocol. But I have no intention of using an awkward, half-formal manner of speech with you.”
“You don’t have to go that far…”
“It is the proper courtesy to show you.”
Axid glanced at her.
Only after speaking so bluntly, the way he normally spoke to his subordinates, did he belatedly realize that perhaps he should have phrased it more gently.
He could have spoken a little more softly.
But she simply smiled as though she did not mind at all.
“I see. I look forward to getting along with you, Your Highness the Grand Duke.”
That smile again.
The same bright, cheerful smile she had shown him when they first met.
The words that had been circling endlessly in his mind suddenly slipped from his lips before he could stop them.
“Aren’t you afraid?”
“Of what?”
“…This marriage.”
Her light footsteps, as though she were setting off on a journey, and the way she somehow seemed genuinely happy—
None of this was what he had expected.
Every woman he had encountered until now had been terrified of being chosen as the Grand Duchess and had avoided him by making all sorts of excuses.
After seeing nothing but women like that, he had thought he could hardly blame them if they fainted the moment they saw him.
Yet this woman had welcomed him instead.
Naturally, he could not help but be puzzled.
She remained silent for a moment before whispering in a voice tinged with a smile,
“…If anything, I’ve been waiting for it.”
He looked at her as though asking what she meant, but she merely turned her head toward the window with a faint smile.
He had originally intended to propose a contract marriage at this very moment.
But how was he supposed to bring up a contract marriage with someone who claimed she had been waiting for this marriage?
“……”
For the first time in his life, Axid found himself completely at a loss for words.
