🔊 TTS Settings
Chapter – 14
I glanced at Nina without thinking, but she was only shining with delight, as if she had just received a request to dance.
I really couldn’t survive like this.
“Your Highness, you haven’t finished your drink yet.”
I hesitated slightly before this newly gained friendship under a false identity, but Calisian, as expected, was a step ahead.
“I don’t really mind.”
Even after taking my hand, he didn’t set down the glass in his left hand, and amid the heated gazes of others, we moved toward the center.
“Do you like waltzes?”
“……Not really.”
I shook my head, but the melody was sweet, and the Morning Star’s face, seen up close, was as perfect as ever.
His elegant steps played effortlessly atop the rhythm, displaying impeccable balance.
As if entranced, I looked up at him, and another question followed.
“Did you know that my mother had golden eyes like yours?”
I nearly missed a beat, startled by the unexpectedly direct question.
“Ah… no, I didn’t know.”
It was a lie.
Ratbell had often cited the fact that the late empress—who died young—had the same golden eyes as me as one of my advantages.
But I had never believed Ratbell’s words. What did eye color even matter?
Still, I could immediately tell what was pooling in those amethyst-colored eyes fixed on me.
Longing. The same kind of feeling I held toward parents whose faces I didn’t even know.
“I—I’m sorry.”
I regretted adding that the moment the words left my mouth, but even the music couldn’t cover my slip.
Puzzlement immediately surfaced in Calisian’s eyes.
“Sorry? Are you apologizing for not knowing my mother’s eye color?”
“No, that’s not it…”
Of course, I had come to the imperial palace ready to risk my life to save Millegent.
But even so, wanting to dig into this man’s pain would clearly make me an idiot.
And yet…
“Seeing something similar just makes you miss them more, you know.”
Calisian curved his lips upward and pulled my waist a little closer.
“No, April. I like looking at your eyes.”
It was something no one other than Millegent had ever said to me.
In truth, my eye color had never once helped me in my life.
Golden eyes—something lucky nobles were occasionally born with. In an orphanage, they never fit in. All they did was make the headmaster start scheming early on about selling me off.
If I had been just a little more obedient, if I hadn’t gone around every day with scraped elbows and bruises on my forehead, the headmaster would surely have sold me long ago.
“All traces of my mother have been thoroughly erased from this palace. It’s hard to find anything at all. They say such things only make those left behind even sadder.”
As we spun slowly to the music, Calisian continued quietly.
“So do you know how much comfort your existence brings me?”
I needed every weapon I had just to save Millegent.
Yet knowing that Calisian found comfort in me because my eyes reminded him of his mother felt like needles pricking into my heart.
Because I could already picture the sense of betrayal he would have to bear after I disappeared.
I couldn’t bring myself to answer anything, but Calisian seemed to take my silence as a result of my lacking waltz skills.
Which wasn’t entirely wrong.
Lightly changing the subject, he asked,
“Then when would you like to come see the stars you like?”
The stars you like.
He was clearly talking about the stars in the sky, but those amethyst-like eyes made it a little confusing. He seemed like the kind of man who could easily be referring to himself with those words.
“If you invite me, anytime.”
I managed to answer.
As we circled the ballroom, admiring the chandelier light reflected in the Morning Star’s eyes, I silently thanked the orphanage’s year-end play.
If not for the grueling practice orchestrated by that vicious headmaster in hopes of squeezing donations from nobles, I never could have managed—after only three days of practice—to play the role of a crown prince’s partner while he held a glass in one hand.
When the long, long piece finally ended, Calisian, after exchanging bows with me, at last drained the champagne that had still been about half full.
Even as my heart was sprinting at full speed, he hadn’t spilled a single drop from his glass.
“You’re an excellent dancer.”
For someone who had supposedly been sickly his whole life, his athletic ability was truly impressive.
“You too, April. In that case, would another song be all right?”
At that moment, my mind snapped to attention, and I recalled Ratbell’s crash-course lessons from before coming to the imperial palace.
“Even though it’s a ball to choose the crown princess, there’s an unspoken rule in imperial high society: you don’t dance twice with the same partner at one ball.”
It had sounded terribly old-fashioned to me.
“Huh? Even if you really like the person, you still have to follow the rule?”
“Well, if you like them that much, you might dance all day. That does happen sometimes. But usually, you’d at least have to be engaged. Otherwise, it becomes a huge issue.”
So… was our Morning Star trying to create that huge issue with me right now? Why?
The time the crown prince had spent with me was only a few days at most, and I’d assumed it was merely out of formality—entertaining a foreign princess.
Was that not the case?
Could it be… that he actually liked me?
Why? Because I was rich?
Or really just because of my golden eyes?
My head was full of questions, but an even stronger sense of resistance lodged in my throat.
The gazes pouring in from all around made the pressure unbearable—the thought that dancing with him once more here would make the remaining twenty-six days far more difficult.
And yet…
In the end, I smiled even more brightly than I had when playing the princess in a stage play.
“It would be Bristol’s honor, Your Highness.”
All while deliberately ignoring Lady Hillaise’s gaze, sharp enough to bore through my cheeks.
“Did you really have to do that?”
The moment the doors of the Crown Prince’s palace closed, Marin asked, but his lord’s reply was utterly calm.
“Do what?”
With a sigh, Marin took his robe.
“Unlike you, she’s inexperienced. In just four days, she’s become everyone’s enemy in the middle of the imperial palace, without even knowing who’s who.”
“……And whose subordinate are you, Marin?”
Marin pressed his lips together, then opened them again.
“The Crown Prince’s direct aide. My apologies.”
Calisian loosened his shirt and sat down on the sofa, perhaps feeling warm from the alcohol.
“She can’t be just an innocent princess. If she were, she wouldn’t dare stand before me with such a carefree face.”
“But there’s still no proof that she’s a mage—”
“She is a mage. I’m sure of it.”
The suspicion from two days ago had turned into certainty after the carriage accident he had deliberately caused the day before.
Protecting one’s head when falling is a human instinct.
Yet that instinct hadn’t appeared in April—especially not in someone as fragile as her.
Even at the moment of impact, when she could have been hurt, she only twitched her fingers slightly, then fell into his arms like a powerless child.
So Calisian surmised that April was likely a protective-type mage capable of forming barriers.
Which meant that inside the imperial palace—where such abilities were suppressed—she was no different from a defenseless child.
But that didn’t mean her mind had regressed as well.
Calisian wanted to see for himself.
Whether April, who had lived hiding her magic behind the excuse of illness, could survive in this jungle-like imperial palace even without that power.
If she could, he intended to make her his partner.
Of course, before that, he would need a confession of conscience.
Marin asked again, worried,
“So you’re putting her in danger to test her ability to respond to a crisis? If she gets frightened and withdraws, not only will the marriage fall through, it could even cause a diplomatic incident.”
“That’s true. But I don’t think she’ll back down that easily.”
“…Are we really talking about the same person right now?”
Calisian snorted softly and looked up at Marin.
“Don’t act like a naïve young master. It’s time you learned to see things properly too, Marin Chetwind.”
