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Chapter 8
However, the option of refusing him had long since been cut away.
“You know I’m sick and confined to bed all the time. Don’t you feel sorry for your older brother? You can’t even yield something this trivial?”
“Are you saying some mere object is more precious than I am? Then how can you possibly still call me your brother?”
“Leo?”
“Yes, Brother.”
Pulling his gaze away from the wooden box he had been staring at, Lionel lowered his eyes to the floor and answered obediently.
“Please take it.”
“Good. I’ll make good use of it.”
After Kaien left, the only things remaining were the two teacups filled with tea that had long gone cold.
Lionel drained the cold tea in one gulp, rose from his seat, and called for a servant.
“Clean this up.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Sitting back down at his desk, Lionel picked up the fountain pen he originally used and resumed his work.
From the start, he had known things would end up this way, so he had never even tried holding the gifted pen in his hand. There was no lingering attachment.
But still—
“You mustn’t lose it or give it to someone else. Think of it as a symbol of my affection and treasure it carefully.”
Like a thorn lodged in his finger, Cecilia Roheim’s voice kept echoing in his ears, endlessly bothering him.
“Cecil, how was your day today?”
At the dinner table where the family had gathered together.
Everyone in the family except Cecilia was busy, but they still tried their best to eat dinner at home whenever possible.
Of course, there were days when unavoidable circumstances prevented them from returning home in time, and today happened to be one of the rare occasions when Cecilia ate dinner alone with her older brother.
“It was fine. They mostly tested me on things I’d already learned before, and the teachers were all very kind to me.”
“Who in this world wouldn’t adore you?”
As if that were the most obvious thing imaginable, her brother nodded and cut up her steak for her.
“If anything’s difficult, tell me. Your big brother will help you.”
“Mmm… For now it seems like it’ll mostly just be memorization, so I don’t think I’ll need help.”
“Memorization? What are you memorizing?”
“The noble almanac and the imperial genealogy? It sounds like I have to memorize the imperial family line all the way back to the founder.”
“What? You should only need to memorize collateral branches up to five generations back! Don’t tell me they expect you to memorize that entire thick genealogy book?”
Her brother looked furious enough to storm straight into the imperial palace and demand an explanation.
‘So it really was harassment after all.’
To think someone as important as the Empress would stoop to something so childish.
Cecilia felt both dumbfounded and exasperated, but her brother genuinely looked ready to charge into the palace, so she quickly waved her hands and assured him it was fine.
“I’ll just pretend to memorize it and cheat my way through somehow. You know what my abilities are like.”
“Your abilities? …Ah.”
Her brother nodded as though he finally understood. Still, he continued looking at her with a worried expression.
“If anyone in the palace ever bullies you, tell your brother immediately. No, actually, running to your sister would probably be faster. Either way, never keep it bottled up alone. Understood?”
“Of course! Do you really think I’d quietly let someone bully me no matter who they are?”
Moments like this made her especially grateful to have such reliable family members who loved her. If someone bullied her, she could immediately run over and tattle about it!
“Oh right. Come to think of it, there’s something I’m curious about.”
“Hm? You’re curious about something? What is it?”
Her brother, who had been spreading jam onto her bread, immediately brightened.
Why did intellectuals love it so much whenever someone asked them questions?
Thinking it was an emotion she would never understand for the rest of her life, Cecilia opened her mouth.
“Right now, the Second Prince is the crown prince candidate because the First Prince is sickly, right? Is there really no way for the First Prince to suddenly become healthy?”
This was an extremely important issue.
In truth, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that simply preventing the First Prince from recovering would automatically stop Lionel’s descent into darkness.
“Mmm… Cecil, you shouldn’t ask that kind of question to just anyone. Especially not in the imperial palace.”
“That’s why I’m asking you instead.”
“Right, good thinking. Here, eat some salad too.”
While Cecilia poked at the salad covered in refreshing apple dressing with her fork, her brother organized his thoughts before answering.
“You know the story about how Her Majesty the Empress was poisoned while pregnant with the First Prince, right?”
“Yeah.”
That was correct. The reason the First Prince had been born frail was because the Empress had consumed poison during pregnancy and gone into premature labor.
If it had merely been a premature birth, she probably wouldn’t have carried such crushing guilt. But the poison had left severe aftereffects not on the Empress, but on the unborn First Prince.
As though the fetal First Prince had absorbed every trace of poison himself in order to protect his mother.
“But the problem was that the poison had been created by an alchemist.”
“And? Is poison made by alchemists difficult to cure?”
“It is. Alchemists use toxins that aren’t generally known.”
Furthermore, even for another alchemist, it was said to be nearly impossible to neutralize poison created by someone else, since they wouldn’t know the ingredients used to make it.
“So basically, if records of the alchemist’s recipe still existed, the First Prince could be cured?”
“That’s right. But since no one’s found it even after all this time, it probably burned away long ago.”
No. Cecilia had a feeling.
It hadn’t disappeared.
Most likely, somewhere within the Empire, that record still existed, and someone would discover it at some point in the future and cure the First Prince.
‘Then what if I find it first and destroy it?’
Then the First Prince would never recover, Lionel would never lose the position of crown prince, and he would never descend into darkness.
Wouldn’t that mean a happy ending for everyone?
‘…What a nice fantasy.’
Cecilia swallowed a long sigh internally.
How was she supposed to find it without even knowing where it was? She had no way of locating an object that could be discovered by anyone, anywhere, at any time.
And on top of that, it was the recipe for the poison that had left devastating aftereffects on the First Prince’s body after the Empress consumed it.
If she got caught searching for something like that, she’d have no defense against charges of treason.
“Then one more question. Let’s say the First Prince miraculously received treatment and became healthy. Would he immediately be appointed Crown Prince?”
“That wouldn’t happen. The First Prince has been too sickly to receive any of the education necessary to rule the Empire, including imperial studies.”
Even if he recovered now, her brother said firmly, it was already too late.
“Maybe things would be different if he were the only heir to the throne… but there’s already the Second Prince, who’s called the crown prince candidate. So that would never happen.”
“So basically, as things stand now, the chances of the First Prince ascending the throne are extremely low?”
“That’s right.”
“Then why hasn’t the Second Prince officially been named Crown Prince yet?”
“Ah, well, the circumstances are a bit complicated.”
Her brother crossed his arms and thought for a moment, clearly trying to explain it as simply as possible.
“First of all… the First Prince received that kind of divine prophecy of fate, remember?”
“Mm, right.”
Now then, before explaining “that kind” of prophecy, what exactly was a prophecy of fate?
For generations, the direct descendants of the imperial House of Altehyde received divine prophecies from the gods at the moment of birth.
Not once had these prophecies ever failed to come true.
If the gods declared that someone would become Emperor, then that person became Emperor. If they declared that someone would die abandoned on the roadside, then that person truly died abandoned on the roadside.
Because of this, the contents of these prophecies had enormous influence over imperial succession.
To put it bluntly, if among ten princes and princesses, the eleventh child received a prophecy declaring they would become Emperor, that alone would be enough for an immediate crown prince appointment ceremony.
And so, in this world where divine prophecies were of utmost importance, what kind of prophecy had been given when the First Prince was born…?
