“Ah—ahhh—!”
Doran collapsed to the floor and gathered the blood-soaked head into both arms. The future he had imagined—his son, who had always looked down on him, kneeling before him at last and admitting that his judgment had been foolish—crumbled before his eyes.
He had believed he would finally be able to take revenge on all those who had pointed fingers at him and called him greedy and stupid.
Instead, all his striving had come to this lump of flesh in his arms.
This couldn’t be happening.
It couldn’t.
Peltion looked down coldly at Doran’s scream of despair and declared,
“Crown Prince Beorantz Ditrode Daidalontz is hereby summarily executed for the crimes of assassinating the Emperor and attempting to murder a member of the imperial family. The Empress, as his accomplice, is stripped of her title and confined to the Empress’s Palace. She will stand trial. And…”
His reddish-brown eyes, which had always seemed so gently warm, swept over the people around him like sharpened blades.
“Everyone present here is under strong suspicion of involvement in His Majesty the Emperor’s assassination. All are to be detained and interrogated.”
“We—we are innocent!”
Voices crying out their innocence rose from every direction, but the knights in gray armor began seizing them and forcing them to their knees as though corralling weak, frightened animals.
In the middle of all that chaos, Nox watched the scene with an oddly unreal expression. So many people were trying to flee toward the terrace that no one reached for the man merely standing still.
As he calmly scanned the hall, Nox’s eyes suddenly met Peltion’s.
A faint disgust lingered in the Second Prince’s gaze.
At once, Nox felt it with chilling clarity—
something had gone very wrong.
“And there is one among you for whom we possess direct evidence of aiding in the murder of His Majesty the Emperor.”
Two knights came up behind Nox and seized him by the arms. The black formal coat draped over his body wrinkled instantly under their grip.
He was dragged forward and forced to his knees directly before Peltion. Beside him was his father, still clutching the Crown Prince’s severed head.
Rather than beg for mercy, Nox lifted his chin and stared straight into those reddish-brown eyes.
“You cannot do this to me.”
He ground his teeth together.
The Emperor had wanted to pass the throne not to the Crown Prince, but to the Second Prince.
Nox had known that for a long time.
But beginning with his father, the head of the house, and continuing through all the foolish old men of the family, every one of them had fixed their eyes only on what stood before them and thrown their support behind the Crown Prince.
The Emperor had been physically frail, yes, but he had never been a fool.
That was why Nox had believed he would find a way to overturn things in the end. To begin with, the Second Prince far surpassed the Crown Prince in sheer ability.
And so Nox had quietly passed information to the family spy the Second Prince had planted within House Rainerio.
I knew nothing of the Emperor’s assassination… but I was the one who passed along word that they were planning to attack the Second Prince…
He had thought the house itself might not survive, but that at least his own life could be spared.
But now that things had taken this turn, Nox could no longer read Peltion’s intentions at all.
He recalled the last letter Peltion had sent him.
Soon, a new sun will rise. Endure just a little longer. A false sun may rise first, but it will be struck down by the bow and fall. I received well what was delivered by the bird. You have my thanks.
And in the space between that memory and the present, Peltion’s voice came down like a blade.
“The crime of causing the empire’s sun to set is grave. He will be summarily executed here and now.”
The line between Nox’s brows crumpled sharply.
So that was it.
Had he intended to use him and throw him away all along?
He had believed only his father was the fool here.
And yet, even so, no plea for life rose to his lips.
There was only the hollow thought—
So this is how it ends.
Peltion raised a hand, his face unmoved even under the dark green gaze fixed on him like a blade.
The knights standing on either side of Doran and Nox raised their swords without hesitation. The steel touched lightly, then pulled back, as if testing where it would fall. The sensation was cold.
And then—
“Your Highness, I have a request.”
An unfamiliar voice cut in.
Nox lifted his gaze toward the man standing beside the Second Prince.
It was the gray-armored knight who had brought in the Crown Prince’s head. He stood there, looking down at Nox.
Hearing that strange voice, Nox felt something deeply unsettling.
He had never once heard it before in his life.
And yet somehow, it was familiar.
“Speak.”
The knight who had personally cut off the Crown Prince’s head at the Second Prince’s command appeared to be highly favored; though he had interrupted imperial speech, he was not even rebuked.
The blue eyes visible through the narrow slit of his helmet kept stirring Nox’s unease.
Even when a blade had been pressed to his neck, his heart had remained quiet.
Now it began to pound.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
“Give that one to me.”
With words Nox could not understand in the slightest, the man removed his helmet.
And in that instant, Nox felt as though his heart, which had been crashing against his ribs, had dropped straight to the ground beneath him.
Peltion answered with what was less permission than a statement of inevitability.
“Yes. I thought you might ask.”
Nox could not take his eyes off the man’s gray-touched blond hair and those coldly honed blue eyes. He barely even registered the fact that he had just been handed over like an object.
Peltion’s raised hand slashed sharply downward.
Without so much as a scream, blood sprayed from beside him, enough to spatter across his cheek.
Thud.
What fell was his father’s head, while still cradling the Crown Prince’s in his arms.
“Wh-why… you…”
Cutting off Nox’s words, Peltion said,
“There is nothing I would withhold from the knight who risked the greatest danger for my sake. Well then—are you pleased with your spoils, Khalid?”
Khalid Via, the knight of the man who would soon become emperor, looked down at Nox kneeling at his feet.
Those hard-set eyes shone vividly, but the emotion in them could not be read at all. Countless feelings swirled there, impossible to name, like paints dissolved together in water.
His gaze was sharper than the swords the knights held at Nox’s throat, and for a moment Nox forgot how to breathe.
At last, reality—something he had not clearly felt even in that feast of vile hangers-on, even amid the tide of gray armor hunting them down—began slowly to seep through his body.
Khalid…
He could not bring himself—
did not dare—
to speak the name aloud after more than ten years. Only his lips formed it in silence.
Only when he saw the slight, displeased furrow in Khalid’s brow did feeling begin to return to Nox’s hands and feet.
Now he understood why Peltion had pretended not to know that Nox had worked as his informant.
From the beginning, Nox had been intended as a gift.
Spoils of war.
“It pleases me very much.”
The child Nox had abandoned long ago had returned as a sword—
and cut him down.
*****
The weather had been beautiful.
The sky was high and blue, and the fresh green leaves, newly unfurled, swayed with warm spring wind caught between them.
At the time, Nox had been fifteen.
And Khalid—Khalid, whom Nox had cast aside—had been only twelve.
Yes.
It was Nox who drove that child away.
More precisely, he had driven him out by a cowardly method.
Nox had regretted it ever since.
Back when he had been young and foolish enough to believe there had been only one thing he could do.
The worst thing he had ever done for the sake of protecting him.
“Young Master.”
Back then, Khalid had been Nox’s personal attendant.
He was far too pretty to be called ordinary, and his bright blue eyes were wide and clear. Nox, who looked nothing like him, had adored Khalid dearly.
How could he not?
How could he not cherish the child you were then—so lovely it hurt?
“You’re going to the knights’ training grounds again today, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I want to go too.”
Khalid came from hard circumstances and was far smaller than other boys his age. Nox always found it difficult to make use of him. To outside eyes, it may have looked as though he worked the boy mercilessly, but Khalid knew better.
The young master never gave him truly difficult tasks.
“Come along again today and stand in the shade. Just come when I call you.”
“Yes, sir!”
Yes.
Just like now.
Khalid would secretly steal glances at his young master, who looked so completely different from him—tall, with eyes cut sharp and fine.
Someone born from an entirely different world than his own.
That ease with which he walked, back held straight, never looking to the side or behind him, facing only forward.
Black hair that glimmered faintly green under the light. Dark green eyes that looked nearly black in shadow.
But Khalid knew how beautiful those dark green eyes became when the sunlight touched them.
Nox and Khalid were on their way to the training grounds for morning drills.
As they walked down a long red corridor, Nox could hear the light patter of footsteps following behind him.
Sometimes he matched his own pace to them.
In case the child might lose him.
But from time to time, someone would intrude upon that peaceful little scene.
“And where are you headed so early in the morning?”
Doran Rainerio.
His loathsome father.
He was a weak man who had never once been able to hold his head high in this house, all because Nox’s mother had been born of the imperial bloodline.
His mother despised him.
And Nox did too.
Because…
“That child grows prettier every time I see him.”
Without realizing it, Khalid shrank back behind Nox.
And just as naturally, Nox stepped between his father and Khalid, making himself a shield.
“We were on our way to morning training.”
“And yet you aren’t leaving that useless servant behind.”
“He is necessary.”
“Is he?”
“Yes. Mother instructed me to keep him with me during training.”
“…Is that so.”