Chapter 28

Chapter 28 - The Eve Festival (2)

 

After returning to the office, I sighed at the unexpected uninvited guest who had followed me all the way from the banquet hall.

“Albedo. What are you thinking, leaving the party as well?”

“Well, what does it matter? I am not the star of the party anyway.”

“Tsk.”

He spoke while suppressing the laughter that threatened to burst out.

“If anything, should you not be blamed right now, Brother, for leaving when you are the greatest contributor to the defense of the north?”

“That is needless interference.”

I said that, but in truth, I was inwardly glad to see him.

Before my regression, had he disappeared after Father’s death? Meeting him like this was the first time in over ten years for me.

To think I would encounter him in a place like this.

Before I could even savor the unusually sentimental thoughts rising within me, he opened his mouth.

“Do they not even serve guests here? It would be nice to have a cup of tea.”

“That is not what you came here for, is it?”

“It was just a figure of speech. By the way, was that man in the hall earlier your new attendant?”

“He is the man who will one day become my aide.”

At that, Albedo stroked the roughly grown stubble on his chin, seeming somewhat interested.

“You are keeping an unverified man as your aide? That is unlike you, Brother.”

“Something like that is necessary to deal with the rats who try to hinder my movements.”

“Oh?”

It was truly strange.

For a brief moment, the expression of a man who was careless about everything turned serious.

“What sort of fools tried to interfere with the 1st Prince’s movements?”

“There were such fools. Asus, who had been the head of the King’s faction, died by the 1st Prince’s hand, so there are idiots trying to use this opportunity to set their ambitions ablaze.”

It was only a somewhat abstract statement, but it was only natural that Albedo’s lips curled upward.

I perched on the office desk and said,

“How is your maternal grandfather, Duke William, doing?”

At last, Albedo’s curling lips bloomed into a bright smile.

No further detailed explanation was needed.

At least not for the two people in this room.

“May I ask how you knew?”

“There is no reason you cannot. But I do not particularly like explaining.”

“That means I cannot ask.”

After chuckling for quite a while, Albedo set down the teacup he had been sipping from at will and leaned back on the sofa, almost lying down.

“Brother. I have no interest in the throne. To begin with, I never even touched kingship studies…… But it seems my mother and the old man think differently.”

“Did they tell you to stop power from concentrating around me?”

“Correct. My role is to ruin the structure in which the 1st Prince becomes Crown Prince just like this. Once that happens, they said they will take care of the rest themselves.”

The words flowing from his mouth now were not something that could be taken lightly.

A duke coveting the throne by using the 2nd Prince as bait.

If things went wrong, this was a matter that could immediately turn into civil war.

I let out a small laugh at the hypothesis that had matched reality without any filtering.

Albedo, too, merely grinned, as if such things did not concern him.

“They said that even if things went wrong, they would give me the commoner’s life I wanted. For me, either way, it was a contract with no loss.”

“I see. You entered the fight for the throne in exchange for freedom.”

“Frankly, I could have simply run away from home…… But when a mother cries and says it is her first and last request, how could I, as her son, abandon her and leave?”

Albedo, the child of a concubine, had basically been this sort of person even before my regression.

With a personality like the wind, he loathed staying in one place and constantly sang about wanting to throw away his status as a prince and become a mercenary.

That was why he had, needless to say, cast aside a prince’s duties, and the time he spent in the Royal Palace had been almost nonexistent.

In contrast, however, the thoughts of his mother, Queen Sarah, and his maternal grandfather, Duke William, were different.

‘They were people with strong greed.’

Checking my path to the throne had been an everyday matter, and even after I took the throne, they had watched for every opportunity to attack me.

They must have thought that as long as they could take the throne, it did not matter whether the 2nd Prince had fled because he hated the weight of the crown.

How else could they have done something like this as soon as Asus, my guardian and the center of the nobles, disappeared?

The reason Albedo had suddenly vanished must have been that.

In any case……

“Did you come all this way merely to say that?”

“Merely? I came to pass information to you, Brother, since I thought you knew nothing. I also wanted to check on you while I was at it…….”

I simply did not expect that you already knew.

Swallowing those words, Albedo raised himself from the sofa.

“In any case, be careful. It is strange for me to say this as someone on their side, but it seems the old man fears nothing.”

“Why are you telling me that when I am your rival?”

“…….”

It was a more fundamental problem.

To begin with, even if he came here and spilled every detail of the information, there was not the slightest benefit for him.

Just as expected, the smile on his lips had only been forced up bitterly.

“Because…… would that not be more amusing?”

At that voice, which was entirely different from his true feelings, I did not ask anything more.

And so, he left.

Tick— tick—

Time passed, and before I knew it, the hands of the clock were moving toward midnight.

Baron Vidor approached me as I tilted a wine glass alone.

“Your Highness.”

“…….”

“Why are you here instead of in the banquet hall?”

There was a brief silence as he calmed his ragged breath.

I smiled faintly as I looked at the beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

“Were you searching for me?”

“Pardon? Yes. After assigning temporary lodgings to the Dwarves, I arrived at the banquet hall, but Your Highness was already gone, so I searched for you. Young George, whom I had entrusted with attending you, was nowhere to be seen either…….”

“I see.”

I gently swirled the wine glass and rested my chin on my hand.

“I had a brief conversation with Albedo.”

“By Albedo, do you mean…… His Highness Albedo, the 2nd Prince?”

“Yes.”

“B-but that person was the one whose family ordered Your Highness’s assassination……!”

Is he not Duke William’s grandson?

……Baron Vidor barely swallowed those words.

I did not nod, but as if affirming it, I emptied the wine glass in one breath.

However, I could not shake off even the anguish that tangled my mind.

“Can someone who holds no hostility be called an enemy?”

Through the northern expedition, I had now obtained a position where I no longer needed to concern myself with their petty attempts at restraint.

In fact, it had reached the point where opposing me would damage the legitimacy of the forces slandering me.

The more they stirred public opinion, the more they tightened the noose around their own necks.

In that situation, the signs of corruption that would emerge from them would become the driving force that made my position even more solid.

That was why he had come to see me, knowing everything.

“……Because he does not want to become King, he personally stepped into the struggle for the throne.”

“Pardon?”

“He must have thought that a guaranteed throne was a suitable price in exchange for saving the life of his mother, who dared to covet the throne.”

Today’s party was no longer a gathering to praise the historic success of the Expeditionary Force.

It was an eve festival for the struggle over the throne that would soon arrive.

For once, I found myself worrying over and over again.

That, too, was an amusing story.

***

SLAP!

With a sharp sound, the 2nd Prince’s head snapped to the side.

Since it stung slightly, it seemed he had been scratched by a fingernail.

Ah, there was blood.

“Your Highness……!”

“It is all right, so you may leave.”

He heard the startled voice of his attendant, but the 2nd Prince forced a smile and sent him away.

Even so, the anger directed at the 2nd Prince had not yet ended.

“2nd Prince. Who gave you permission to move as you pleased?”

“Haha…… Even so, I am a 2nd Prince. Please spare my face.”

“Do not try to gloss over it that way again. Do you know what the situation in the Royal Palace is right now?”

Ha, this is troublesome!

If she becomes angry like this, it will surely take quite some time for it to pass……

At Queen Sarah’s venomous expression, Albedo shrugged.

“I do think I was wrong.”

SWISH—

“Oops.”

His mother’s hand swung once more.

It was so sincere that one would never imagine she was swinging it at her own son.

This time, however, Albedo managed to catch it in midair and spoke glibly.

“I told you, did I not? From now on, I will have to stand in official settings. It would be troublesome if I had an injury.”

“……I will tell Father everything about this matter.”

“Please also tell him not to throw a broken wineglass at me.”

“Hmph.”

And so, Queen Sarah left the room with a distorted gaze.

For an instant, a lonely emotion flashed across Albedo’s face.

But that lasted only a moment. At the sight of his attendant entering soon afterward, he put on his usual loose, smiling mask.

“A-are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere……?”

“Ah, enough. This happens all the time.”

“But…….”

It was something familiar, but that did not stop it from wearing away at the heart.

The one who knew that fact better than anyone was the attendant who had stayed beside him for more than ten years.

Of course, he also knew that, as always, the man standing before him would brush it off with a smile.

“More importantly, I want to be alone right now. Would you leave?”

“……Understood. Please be sure to call me if you need anything.”

“Thank you.”

The 2nd Prince’s room fell into silence, as if no commotion had ever occurred.

The only sound that could be heard was the rustle of the 2nd Prince’s clothes as he tidied the scattered objects.

It was an action close to resignation.

“……This cannot be used anymore.”

He pushed aside the bedside lamp that lay lonely with its neck broken.

Next came the feathers from the pillow, scattered miserably like entrails.

Then his room, now fairly neat, revealed itself once again.

“…….”

Lastly, as Albedo picked up the pillowcase that had been struck by his toe, his eyes turned toward the small framed picture hanging above the bed.

In it were his mother in her younger days, smiling happily, and his own face as he ran and played without a single worry.

At the sight that contrasted so sharply with his circumstances, a lonely smile spread over his lips.

“So I had no worries at all.”

Before he knew it, Albedo was holding an old pendant engraved with the royal crest in his hand.

As if it were a habit, as he had always done, he placed the hand holding the pendant against his chest and whispered quietly.

“Activate.”

……

Nothing happened.

Even though the magical energy he could feel from within it pierced his eyes with perfect clarity.

Albedo set the pendant down with a self-mocking smile.

“As expected.”

There was no way to explain how he had discovered this Artifact except by saying that luck had favored him.

After all, it was an object he had found by chance in “Father’s” study, after secretly sneaking inside.

As clever as Albedo was, he could make a fair guess as to what the object was.

An old treasure of the kingdom, now forgotten.

Judging by the type of Magic Circuit, there was surely a spell formula drawn into it that summoned something.

And the activation condition was clearly a person who had inherited the blood of the royal family.

……All of this was, in the end, nothing more than his conjecture.

He had never once managed to activate the Artifact.

“There is no way I can become King.”

Albedo had been more intelligent than anyone in his childhood.

Intelligent enough to immediately understand exactly what situation he had been placed in.