IYTTEPAAK Chapter 2

Restored honorifics settled it. Cleanly. Like that. It felt like a wave of gold had crashed over my stretch of sand and then simply vanished.

He'd swept me up completely. And yet he himself stood there, at ease, as if nothing had happened.

A pity.

One more touch—some strange part of me wanted it.

"Princess."

His voice cut through my straying thoughts.

"Cross this plain, and you're in imperial territory."

"I see. Thank you."

I lifted the hem of my skirt and bowed, light on my feet. If nothing else, I wanted to be remembered, this last time, looking like a proper princess.

"Are you going back?"

"...... Why ask that now?"

He'd brought me all the way out here for the express purpose of sending me back, hadn't he?

I asked the real question with my eyes, and he said it like something was being wrenched up out of his throat.

"For you, isn't even the imperial palace dangerous?"

I know. Returning to the palace is no different from walking back into a battlefield where my own life is the stake.

My father is the single most powerful ruler in recorded history, a conqueror on the verge of unifying the continent. And yet the world sends him contempt instead of respect. It's so bad, people call him by a slur—half madman, half tyrant, mashed into one name.

The Mad Emperor Axelion.

A man who handles the world as if he himself has become a god. Who treats people as nothing but playthings.

His children are no exception. I could die at any moment, at the whim of my father's mood.

And still I don't hesitate to walk back into the palace of my own free will. The reason is......

"I have a vow I must keep."

I spoke it having pressed down every ounce of playfulness inside me. Before this vow, I have no choice but to be entirely serious, with my whole body and soul.

I made the promise again, to myself.

My father—

I will gouge him out. And take his throne.

"......"

"......"

By the time my eyes had gone raw from glaring into empty space, I came back to myself.

I met a gaze that seemed to have been watching me for quite some time already. His face looked like a man under some kind of spell.

"Sir knight?"

"......"

No answer. Had the bloodline's power slipped out of me without my noticing? Startled, I looked away.

Only then did he respond.

"Ah. Forgive me."

Thankfully, he was unaffected.

"There's nothing to forgive."

Come to think of it, I'd worried over nothing. Who would fall prey to the mind-compulsion of a princess who wasn't even an adult yet?

Especially not one who happened to be the most powerful boy hero born since the age of myth.

And yet he confused me all over again.

"For some reason......"

"Yes?"

"I don't think I'll be able to forget Her Imperial Highness."

"......"

In the darkness, he wore a smile that looked as if it might scatter into nothing.

What about me had left such an impression on him? I don't know.

With our parting drawing near, neither of us spoke. A princess and a prince of warring nations. Even an ordinary farewell was difficult, given what we were to each other.

The clouds had drawn far back, and starlight poured down from the open sky. Standing alone with him beneath that radiant field, I couldn't help the single thought that settled over my mind.

Will he and I survive?

Each of us, in our own fierce battlefield.

"Stay strong, Your Highness."

"Stay strong, sir knight."

I turned and walked away. Each of us moving in the direction that took us farther from the other.

1. I Never Wanted a Reunion Like This

The velvet dress was black from collar to hem, and still couldn't hide the excess of ornamentation and lace sewn onto it.

The mesh veil covering my face was meant to look modest and reverent, but instead lent me the seductive air of a costume-ball accessory.

Even mourning wear flaunted extravagance in the imperial palace. It was the taste of a mad emperor who let nothing survive except what was beautiful.

Today was the funeral of my eighteenth-ranked brother.

Funerals were a monthly occurrence in the imperial family, and siblings treated each other with all the warmth of strangers. This latest dead brother, too—I knew nothing beyond his name and face. We'd never so much as exchanged a word.

And yet, for once, For once, I felt real grief—genuine mourning.

"They say he tried to poison His Majesty?"

"They say he drank the poisoned cup first, to avoid suspicion."

"Shh—the story they're putting out is that it was suicide."

I pay my respects to his noble resolve.

My eighteenth-ranked brother had also been the last surviving prince.

Our mad father, the one they called the Mad Emperor, valued his children's lives the way one values insects—and he was crueler to sons than to daughters especially. The cause traced back to an oracle handed down long ago from the Grand Monastery.

The Mad Emperor's son

shall slay his father and seize the throne.

The Mad Emperor was thorough in his malice. Rather than purge the threat all at once, he drove his sons toward death one by one, each time under some deceptively righteous pretext.

He turned brother against brother, cunning enough that they did each other in. He threw them at hopeless wars, at monster hunts, until not even a corpse came back. He invented some flimsy pretext, called it treason, and had their heads cut off.

And even those who stubbornly clung to life were subjected to further humiliation. Under the guise of a tournament to test succession worthiness, the princes were thrown into a coliseum to butcher each other in open melee. They were treated exactly like slave gladiators, provided for the entertainment of the empire's subjects.

By the time things had reached this point, more than a few of the princes had gone mad, or taken their own lives.

Sixty-seven princes died that way. Now none remained.

"Rest in peace."

I laid a white flower atop the coffin, in prayer for the dead man's repose.

I lifted my head. Beyond the mesh, like the bars of a cell, I could see a slate-gray sky. As if the heavens too meant to weep cold tears, white snow began drifting down, slow and quiet.

"Go inside if you're going to cry. It's pathetic."

"......"

The voice that cut across my sentiment was sharp and cold enough to sting like a slap.

I turned to look at the one standing on my right. Short lavender hair, chin lifted, eyes sliding sideways to look down on whoever stood before her.

This cold, arrogant woman was the nineteenth princess, alive after all this time—my sister Orlette.

I could feel the nearby nobles tense. Since Orlette and I usually traded barbs instead of pleasantries, they no doubt assumed she was picking a fight with me now, too.

I had no intention of correcting their misunderstanding. I whispered back, low enough for only the two of us to hear.

"You're the one who should talk. Your eyes are red—try holding them a little firmer and see if that helps."

"I'll say I burst a blood vessel glaring at you."

"So you had a plan. Happy to let myself be used, then."

We kept up the appearance of glaring at each other, letting the people around us go on believing whatever they wanted to believe.

"Heh-hic, hic."

While I traded looks with the sister on my right, the one on my left grew noisy.

A lovely woman with hair the deep gold of honey had pressed in close on my left, weeping pitifully and mournfully.

"Sisters, this is too cruel!"

She dropped to the ground the moment my gaze landed on her, looking as pathetic as a flower shedding its petals in a downpour.

No matter how many times I saw it, her performance never failed to impress me—my fortieth-ranked sister, Nanaën.

Beautiful and lovable enough to hold our father's favor as his beloved pet.

The nobles tensed again. Nanaën had a peculiar gift for saying things that grated on me the moment she stood in front of me.

"How can you not shed a single tear at our brother's funeral? What are your hearts made of? Ice? Steel? No, this won't do. I'll cry enough for both of you—oh, Brother!"

I couldn't say whether the tears I was supposed to shed had somehow transferred over to Nanaën, but it certainly had the effect of drying my own eyes further.

Still, there was one thing I decided to press.

"Do you even know the name of the brother who died today?"

"...... H-hk, hic!"

I thought as much.

I opened my mouth, then closed it again, sighing without a sound. Nanaën and I exchanged a small whisper of our own.

"Do you have to do this even at a funeral?"

"I helped keep the tears from coming, didn't I?"

"Yes, thank you for that."

"Don't mention it."

Neither of us meant it as an empty pleasantry.

The Mad Emperor hadn't attended the funeral, but his eyes and ears were everywhere.

If his daughters wept at the funeral of the son who had tried to poison him, how displeased would he be?

The only one who could escape that anger was the daughter kept and adored like a pet—Nanaën, more or less.

My sister Orlette, myself, and Nanaën stood side by side in silence.

This was the one good thing about funerals. Even sunk in gloom, brooding over my own circumstances, it would be read as a moment of silent prayer for the dead.

My sister Orlette spoke.

"Every prince is dead."

The Mad Emperor had removed the threat the oracle named. But I didn't believe that would be the end of it.

"And yet Father won't feel any safer for it."

Nanaën's words drew silent agreement from both of us.

The Mad Emperor's son

shall slay his father and seize the throne.

A rumor had been circulating that the oracle's actual wording had been altered. The whisper going quietly around was that the true oracle spoke not of "sons" but of "children" killing the Mad Emperor.

The sons were all dead now. It would be the daughters' turn next.

"All of you—brace yourselves. No excuses."

Just then, the middle-aged chamberlain appeared.

"All Her Highnesses the Imperial Princesses, take heed. His Majesty the Emperor summons you."