“What on earth was that!”
Back in his office, the Emperor exploded. His furious voice rang through the wide room. Rishar, who had followed him inside, asked with composure,
“What do you mean, what was that?”
“The marriage talk!”
The Emperor glared at Rishar, huffing. He was a man who usually looked kindly on whatever Rishar did, but today he could not let it pass.
“I should be the one to ask. With what thought were you trying to tie me to House Matias?”
Even with the Emperor raging before him, Rishar neither flinched nor cowered. He pressed the Emperor instead.
Rishar was angry all the same. He was irritated at the Emperor, who had pushed ahead with a marriage without even asking his will.
“Do you not understand the power of Marquess Matias on the border? He will be of great help to you in time!”
“Help? What help do you mean? Are you by any chance intending to tell me yet again to become Emperor?”
“Rishar!”
“I told you clearly three years ago. I have no desire to ascend the throne.”
“This is all for your sake!”
The Emperor raised his voice as if exasperated. He yanked loose the cravat choking his neck and flung it to the floor.
“If you do not become Emperor, you will die! If the Prince is invested as crown prince, do you think the Empress will leave you alone?”
Face flushed scarlet, the Emperor shouted himself hoarse. He kept huffing, glaring at Rishar.
“Since we are on the topic, let me ask you something. Why do you dislike His Highness the Prince so much?”
“What?”
“Is the Prince not Your Majesty’s only child? Why do you reject him?”
“That child is the Empress’s puppet. He does as the Empress tells him—a marionette.”
“You should have taken measures before it came to that.”
Rishar’s tone was cold. The Emperor’s eyes wavered at Rishar’s rebuke.
“You… you—how dare you speak to me like this….”
The Emperor stammered, a blank look on his face. He seemed to feel betrayed by Rishar. Rishar did not care whether he did or not. This was something he had wanted to say to him for a long time.
“There have been plenty of chances up to now to separate Her Majesty the Empress and His Highness the Prince. But you did not. You left His Highness unattended and turned your face away.”
“……”
“I know the Empress wields His Highness the Prince. As you said, His Highness is bound by the Empress. But can you truly say you bear no responsibility for that?”
With a cutting voice, Rishar drove the Emperor into a corner. The Emperor could not answer at all. His lips fluttered as if to say something, then he collapsed weakly into his seat.
“You don’t know—what that child means to me—you know nothing….”
With a pained face, the Emperor scrubbed his dry face with his hands. After sweeping his face several times, he muttered in a gloomy voice.
“What is it you claim I don’t know?”
Rishar pressed. Edwin closed his eyes in torment instead of answering. It had been more than twenty years, yet everything from that day was still vivid as if it had happened yesterday.
“‘Empress? Why are you here….’”
“‘I’ve come to see Your Majesty. Why, have I come to a place I may not come?’”
“‘I have never granted you entry to my bedchamber. Retire at once.’”
“‘Then grant it now.’”
At Edwin’s order to leave, Leona lifted her chin stiffly and demanded. She had come without sending word, and yet her manner was nothing if not brazen.
Truly, a woman who inspires no affection.
Edwin clenched his molars as he looked at Leona, who scorned him. There was no respect for him in her behavior. It had been the same when they first met.
Leona had ignored Edwin when he went to House Herace to refuse the match. His earnest plea, his desperate request—none of it availed. She even went so far as to say, right before the late Emperor, that she wished to marry Edwin.
“‘I will not permit you to enter my bedchamber. Get out at once!’”
Recalling the past, Edwin shouted at Leona. He had not dared go against the late Emperor and had tied the knot, but no affection for her had arisen. Rather, the more time passed, the more she sickened him.
“‘I will not leave. Your Majesty must spend the night with me today.’”
“‘What?’”
“‘You will have to share a bed with me.’”
Instead of going out, Leona approached Edwin. With every step she took, a bewitching fragrance unfurled like blossoms opening. It was the pheromones of a dominant Omega.
“‘What is this… what are you trying to do right now?’”
The instinct-stirring scent made Edwin retreat without realizing it. Danger, a bell clanged in his head.
“‘Who knows. What does it look like I’m doing?’”
Leona came on with a seductive smile. The closer she drew, the thicker the scent became. Edwin hurriedly clamped his hand over his nose and mouth.
But it was no use. In an instant, the vast bedchamber became Leona’s domain.
“‘Y-you.’”
“‘Why that expression? Anyone would think I mean to violate Your Majesty. I am only doing what I ought to do as the Empress.’”
Shaking, Edwin glared at Leona. To keep from losing his senses, he bit down hard on his lower lip. His body, reacting to the pheromones, was heating up.
Dangerous.
Collapsed to the floor, Edwin panted, feeling the crisis close in. His head burned; his vision blurred.
“‘It is Your Majesty who has failed in duty. Did you think I wouldn’t know you take suppressants to avoid sharing a bed with me?’”
“‘E-Em…press…!’”
“‘Do you think, by doing this, that person will recognize your efforts?’”
Standing before him, Leona seized his chin. Edwin trembled like prey before a beast. Anger and fear toward Leona rose together.
“‘And you think—you’ll, ugh—go unscathed after this?’”
“‘Why should I not? I only fulfill my duty as Empress.’”
Leona’s lips curved in a voluptuous smile. In a gentle voice as if soothing a child, she whispered to Edwin.
“‘Give up and accept it. In any case, Your Majesty cannot refuse me. A recessive cannot defeat a dominant.’”
“‘…!’”
“‘Do you know this? Your Majesty is a mass of contradiction. If you truly did not wish to be Emperor, you could have declared you would not marry me, renounced every right as an imperial, and left. But you did not wish to do that, did you?’”
At Leona’s words, Edwin sucked in a ragged breath. She looked down at him with eyes wide, a sneer on her lips.
“‘Do not say you had no choice because the late Emperor forced you. That too is an excuse. You knew it yourself. Had you not become Emperor, as a bastard you would have been killed by the half brother who took the throne.’”
“‘E-en—ough! Hah—enough!’”
“‘Do you know this? Your Majesty is always only words. You say you dislike something, but you make no effort to change the situation. Ah, you took suppressants for rut? That is not effort but evasion. So do not shift the blame for this situation onto me. Your marrying me, your becoming Emperor—these are all the results of Your Majesty’s indecision.’”
Finished speaking, Leona fully opened her pheromones. For a moment, Edwin felt as though he were in a flower garden. Like rain of blossoms falling from the sky, a heavy floral scent drenched him. In that instant, he let go of his senses.
“…As a dominant Alpha, you can’t understand.”
Edwin murmured in a low, sunken voice. He clasped his two trembling hands together. Just recalling that day made his body shake.
“Huu.”
Edwin drew a deep breath. The night that remained as a dreadful nightmare had gouged deep wounds in his mind. It tormented him at every moment like a scar that would not fade.
That day, Edwin realized why dominants were called dominants. The overwhelming pheromones of a dominant Omega were not something he, a recessive Alpha, could resist.
Contrary to his will to reject Leona, his body responded dutifully, and his reason was devoured by instinct. When he came to his senses, several days had already passed. And Leona had achieved her purpose. She was with child.
After that, Edwin suffered from misery and loathing toward himself for yielding to instinct, and from fear and helplessness toward Leona. That night was a nightmare he wished to forget.
So when he learned the child was a Beta, Edwin was able to smile for the first time in a long while. He could not help but laugh, imagining Leona—who of course would have thought she would bear an Alpha—being flustered at a Beta child. At the same time, he feared having to spend such a night again.
Fortunately, it did not come to pass. Leona received the diagnosis that, due to the aftereffects of a difficult labor, she would never conceive again.
“‘The Empress will no longer be able to carry a child?’”
“‘Yes, Your Majesty.’”
“‘Serves her right.’”
Hearing the chamberlain’s report, Edwin felt relief. Leona’s infertility was misfortune for her but fortune for Edwin.
It was a little strange that she had become infertile without having borne a dominant Alpha or dominant Omega, but the question soon slipped from his mind.
As for the child, he felt nothing in particular. Perhaps because it was a child he had never wanted, no paternal affection arose—he did not even feel curiosity.
“‘A prince… then Etienne will do.’”
Hearing from the chamberlain that it was a son, Edwin sent the name he had prepared in advance to the grand-ducal residence of House Herace. That was the end of it.
On the pretext of nursing recovery, Leona remained a long time at the Herace grand-ducal residence with the child. For Edwin, it was welcome. He enjoyed a peaceful time for the first time in ages.
Half a year later, Leona returned to the Imperial Palace with the child. Unable to withstand the pressure of those around him, Edwin went out to greet her. And that day, he saw the child for the first time.
Etienne de Frederick.
The child’s coloring was a touch pale, but like him, he had the blond hair and blue eyes that symbolized the imperial House of Frederick. Yet his features were astonishingly like Leona’s.
Perhaps because of that. On seeing the child, Edwin felt a fierce repulsion. Just looking at the child made cold sweat break out and his heart pound.
It is the Empress who did wrong. The child born has done no wrong. Edwin tried to steady himself. But every time he saw the child, he felt unwell. He thought it might get better with time, but it did not. The older the child grew, the more he resembled Leona. In equal measure, Edwin’s aversion deepened.
“‘Father.’”
The child was gentle. He smiled brightly at the man called father, whom he might see only once or twice a month.
But Edwin could not smile back. Each time he saw the face of the one he hated most in the world, an indescribable feeling surged up.
So he avoided him. Time passed; seasons turned; years went by; no affection for the child arose, and he rejected the small warmth that came to him.
He knew the Empress grew more hysterical toward the child the more he did so, but he could not help it. Seeing the child kept dragging him back to that night, and it was agony.
In the end, Edwin turned his face away from the child. He gave up being a father. All he could do was send gifts through the chamberlain on Etienne’s birthday and set aside ample privy funds so he would lack for nothing as a Prince.
“I know I was worthless. I know my conduct was not that of a grown man…. But….”
Edwin could not finish. He covered his twisted face with both hands. It would be a lie to say he felt no regret for his actions. And yet he felt that, even if he went back, he would probably act the same. That was how much of a coward he was.
“I do not fail to understand Your Majesty’s pain and wounds. However.”
Rishar, who had been quietly looking at Edwin, spoke slowly. After a beat, he continued.
“That cannot become a pardon for Your Majesty’s having wielded me at whim and for having neglected your son as a father.”
Rishar spoke in a firm voice. Fixing his gaze on Edwin, he gave voice at last to what he had long wanted to say but had not.
“Above all, I have no intention of becoming a tool for Your Majesty’s revenge. I have no intention of becoming the object of Your Majesty’s lingering affection and obsession, either.”
“What?”
“Did you think I would not know? Your Majesty’s desire to make me crown prince is born of your fixation on my mother and of revenge against the Empress.”
“Hah….”
A sigh escaped Edwin. He looked at Rishar, flustered. His unmoored eyes shook violently.
There were few who knew that Edwin had harbored feelings for the Grand Duchess of Eckhart, Rishar’s mother.
It had been a one-sided love from the start. He had not even confessed to the Grand Duchess. He had never shown his heart outwardly, so there was no way people could know.
Perhaps a few had guessed, but as far as Edwin remembered, there had been no rumors. Lest he bring trouble to the Grand Duchess, he had been all the more careful before her.
Thanks to that, the number of those who knew Edwin had cherished the Grand Duchess in his heart was extremely small—including the late Emperor and the current chamberlain. Most of those were now deceased.
After he became Rishar’s guardian, for a brief time there had been an odd rumor about how Edwin treated him more affectionately than one would one’s own child; but that was all, and since there had never been anything particular with the Grand Duchess, the story soon died down.
So Edwin had never imagined that Rishar would know his heart. That his object of unrequited love was the Grand Duchess was something not even the Empress had ferreted out. He had hidden it that thoroughly.
Yet Rishar knew—knew it from childhood.
Edwin clenched his fist for a moment. Hearing Rishar’s words made him suspect that perhaps others already knew as well.
Could others truly have failed to notice a feeling a child could sense? Perhaps the Empress too…. Reaching that point, cold sweat trickled down.
“Do not worry overmuch. No one but me will have recognized Your Majesty’s heart. And my mother has been gone a long time.”
Rishar spoke calmly to Edwin, who seemed at a loss.
“You—you, how did you….”
“I came to know by chance. The way Your Majesty looked at my mother was the same as the way my father looked at her.”
Rishar answered as if it were nothing. With his senses remarkably keen, from childhood he had often seen what others could not see and heard what others could not hear.
Naturally, he became adept at reading expressions, eyes, and atmospheres others failed to perceive.
It was for that reason, too, that he had come to know the Emperor’s heart—something not noticed even by the person in question, his mother, or by her husband, his father.
“The same goes for how I came to know that Your Majesty bears a warped affection toward me. Your Majesty looks at me with the very eyes you turned on my mother. At such times, I sometimes feel as though I have become her substitute….”
“No—that, a substitute, you say! It isn’t so. It isn’t so!”
Startled, Edwin denied Rishar’s words. He looked as though a hidden shame, long concealed, had been exposed.