RAMHM Chapter 155

The Greatest Star of the Empire

I noticed it—just for a second, his mouth had loosened.

His face carried no trace of a smile otherwise, which made the change more dramatic. It was nothing more than his usual smile, and still my heart itched with it.

Embarrassed somehow, I hid myself behind Bliea and Epero.

When Rhodness's almost-imperceptible smile broke through, the reaction from the young ladies nearby was something to behold.

The beautiful, unmarried Crown Prince was more than enough to set their hearts on fire.

Following the Emperor's words of welcome, the attendants stationed along the edges of the hall began carrying out champagne.

By the time everyone held a glass, the Emperor's voice—which had carried so little strength all evening—suddenly found it.

"I, Julius Ronteaux, now acknowledge and repent the errors of my past. I name my second son, Rhodness—the fruit of my love with Empress Letina, and a son I am proud to call mine—as the Greatest Star of the Empire!"

A vast silence pressed down on the hall.

The moment "acknowledge" and "repent" left the Emperor's mouth, the people who had drawn their breath began to stir.

Then.

Epero, standing in front of me, was the first to raise his champagne glass toward the ceiling.

"Glory to the gods!"

Epero's booming voice broke the spell, and the people who'd gathered their wits began shouting along with him.

The nobles who had fully turned to Rhodness's faction were especially riotous.

"Prosperity to Ronteaux!"

"Loyalty to the Emperor!"

The tension that had gripped Atilchard Hall gave way to applause for the empire's newly born Greatest Star.

A faint smile rose on Rhodness's face—a face that had gone somewhat rigid since the Emperor began speaking.

The musicians gathered at the bottom of the staircase landing began tuning their instruments, and the hall tipped fully into festival.

Soon the night's centerpiece, Rhodness, would lead the first dance, and everyone would spill onto the floor after him.

My chest swelled for no reason I could name, and I stood frozen for a long moment.

Now openly and unmistakably Crown Prince before everyone, Rhodness descended to the ground floor with the slow bearing the role demanded.

Then, without a single second's hesitation, he came straight toward our group.

I registered that every eye in the room had turned to us.

Curiosity. Wariness. Jealousy. Every emotion in the room arrived like a wave, breaking against Bliea and me at once.

People had expected him to go to Bliea. When he came to me instead, as if it were the only possible choice, a murmur went through the crowd.

Bliea and I were dressed so differently that even a stranger could have told us apart.

"You seem to be having trouble finding a partner."

It was obvious that his choosing me over Bliea—the one publicly known as his lover—was the evening's great curiosity.

"Do you need help?"

A teasing smile crossed his face—carved, it seemed, by some god's hand—and a chain of caught breaths sounded around us.

I hesitated for a moment, then stepped carefully out from behind Epero.

"...Yes. I do."

And without hesitation, I took the hand he held out to me.

Rhodness smiled.

It was a smile that suited the title of the empire's Greatest Star—bright enough to catch on.

The hand that closed around mine, as if it would never let go, was hot through the glove, as though it held a fire inside it.

"Adrienne."

I couldn't even remember how the dance had begun.

I felt as if cold sweat had broken out where his hand met my back, where it held mine.

In a place where so many eyes were on us.

I, as Adrienne. He, as Rhodness.

It was the first time we had ever danced—not borrowing someone else's body, not behind a mask.

"Do you remember the first time we danced?"

I said nothing and turned, once, in place.

After the turn I should have stepped back and bent my knee, but Rhodness pulled me straight back into his arms as if there were no next step at all. The music wasn't even fast, and still I ran out of breath.

"The moment you walked in here on your brother's arm. I thought my heart had stopped. A masquerade is a place where no one's supposed to know anyone—but I knew you instantly."

Naturally, I found myself back in that day.

Among the scattered masks of the Royal Academy, the moment he appeared, the rose tucked into his breast pocket. Novian. The day I'd been fooled like a fool.

"It came back to me too late—that you'd once said you wanted to share sweet champagne together once we came of age. I should have prepared the best in the world ahead of time. I only remembered because I was so anxious about how you'd react when you saw me, when I finally showed you my eyes."

"...Rhoan."

"I went searching for champagne in a panic. I tried so many, looking for the sweetest, that I ended up a little drunk myself. Funny enough, being a little drunk gave me courage. By the time I walked up to you—standing there as if you'd just come back from somewhere outside—and held the champagne out, my heart felt like it would burst."

It was my heart that felt like it would burst now.

I remembered that day with perfect clarity.

The moment Novian—who'd shown me his face and let me believe he was An—came back to me from the little forest.

Novian, a little awkward, had gone to fetch a drink, said he'd find champagne, and come back wearing the mask again.

"...That was you?"

Rhodness said nothing. He simply caught my waist in both hands, lifted me, and smiled faintly.

That was his answer.

Only then did the space we'd been speaking in—as if no one else existed—start to feel real, and at the same time, an eerie chill rose over me, as if I'd briefly stepped back into the past.

"The moment I handed you the champagne and you welcomed me back—'I'm glad you came back so soon, An'—I lost my mind. The fact that you recognized me instantly, without a shred of doubt, felt like pure joy. We danced, and danced, and danced again. I had never been that excited, that happy, dancing—not once in my life."

It hadn't been Novian I'd danced with.

It was a masquerade—someone had put the mask back on, come back with champagne, and I had welcomed him without a single doubt, all over again.

"I knew nothing. I never imagined my brother and the Grand Duke could have done something like that."

Oh. Foolish Adrienne.

"Your brother took you away. And I waited for the music to start again so I could dance with you..."

I couldn't bear to hear more. He didn't go on, either.

Because, much later, the masked Novian had come back with the champagne, and I had danced with him again.

Never knowing the person beneath the mask had changed. The flutter of young, foolish love had swept away even the faint sense that something felt slightly wrong.

The dance picked up speed.

I had no idea how my own feet were moving, and yet Rhodness led me with astonishing perfection.

I gave my body fully over to his hands and listened a little more closely.

"I was jealous, but I had to leave for the front right away. I should have left the day before, really. It's not your fault, Adrienne. I was the one who kept putting off showing you my eyes, again and again. I sent the proposal first, thinking I'd ride to the east with news of victory and show you my eyes then. I wanted to become someone who could say, plainly, not to dance with anyone but me."

And on the battlefield, he must have heard the news of Novian's and my marriage.

We danced as if we'd exchanged a thousand words, though neither of us said anything more.

It was a familiar piece of music.

The one we'd danced to at twenty, our first dance together. The one I'd danced to with him as Bliea. And the one we were dancing to now.

The same song, all three times.

It repeated three times over.

As if Rhodness had arranged it that way on purpose.

We drank.

We danced.

We drank again.

And we danced.

By the time the sky seemed to spin even standing still—by the time the party had ripened past its peak, and one or two drunken guests had begun toppling into the golden fountain at the center of the hall—

We slipped out of Atilchard Hall and climbed into a carriage.

We'd left like children playing hide-and-seek, and by the time I sat down I was already breathless.

But Rhodness pulled me onto his lap without mercy, as if claiming payment for some old childhood grievance.

Then, without a word, he drew my head toward him and took my mouth.

I pushed at his shoulder, gasping for air, before the heat he gave me swallowed me whole and I finally surrendered.

Rhodness hadn't drunk at all—he'd barely touched a glass.

But it was as if my own drunkenness had passed straight into him; his marble-still face, eyes closed, lost entirely in me, had gone red.

By the time I managed to pull my lips back, the carriage had already stopped.

"If I'd had more courage, that day."

"...Rhoan?"

The old story, returning so suddenly, put me on edge. Rhodness rubbed my wet lips with his thumb, watching them intently.

His face had gone calm, but his eyes, catching the moonlight, still held a heat that hadn't cooled.

"If I'd been able to take off the mask and tell you, then..."

He kept his eyes on me and opened the carriage door.

"There was something I wanted to say to you."

As if under a spell, I followed him out of the carriage.

"This is..."

Starlight Hill.

The beautiful, sad hill I had always begged him about in our letters—that I wanted to see it if I ever came to the capital—and where I'd finally come, in Bliea's body, with him.

Maybe it was the drink.

The stars seemed sparser than the last time I'd come, scattered more thinly across the sky, and yet they seemed to pour down over me all the same, and I turned, once, in place.

Rhodness, his face a little tight, held my shoulder and steadied me.

"There were intruders last time, but thinking it over, I decided showing you here would be better."

His voice, low and quiet, settled against my ear like a night fog.

That was when, from beyond the hill, thousands—no, tens of thousands of stars poured toward me.

"Rho... an?"

I rubbed at my eyes once and stared, dazed, at the sight before me.

They weren't stars rising slowly like a dawn sun. No—they were clusters of light, scattering in every direction, filling my vision whether I looked left or right.

As if the stars themselves had spilled and were hanging, suspended, in the air.

I slipped a little from Rhodness's arms and climbed the low hill.

The lights drifting through the sky followed me, then scattered upward into the black night, flickering into something that looked exactly like real stars.

I could only stand there, mouth open, staring at the sight—thousands upon thousands of falling stars, as if they were preparing to pour down on me at any moment.

I stared at it like a fool for a long while, and when I finally turned and saw Rhodness climbing the hill after me, tears welled up in my eyes for no reason at all.

In this dazzling lake of stars.

Rhodness—the most beautiful light shining there, the Greatest Star of the Empire itself—was so sadly beautiful it tightened around my heart.

"...How is it?"

"How is what?"

I pressed down the senseless tears rising in me and asked.

"The fireflies."

The man who looked like the brightest star whispered quietly.

Oh. Fireflies.

Only then did I realize the clusters of light were the fireflies he'd shown me once before, briefly.

Thinking of Rotsy, who used fireflies like torches, I remembered Rhodness used to visit her often, around that time.

Had he summoned all these fireflies with mana?

"Do you know something, Adrienne?"

Rhodness stepped closer.

"Those fireflies are dancing like that, lighting themselves up, all to be chosen by a single female firefly."

I didn't understand what he meant, so I only gripped his hand, the one holding mine, more tightly.

"I'm courting you. Right now."

Rhodness said it with a face that held no trace of a smile.

"Be my Crown Princess."

His eyes, still holding heat that hadn't cooled, shone with something close to desperation.

"I'll cover every sad memory with good ones instead. I'll take you to the most dazzling, beautiful place in the world. I'll become the strong, gentle, beautiful knight you wanted ever since you were a child, and protect you for the rest of my life."

Among the stars flying through the air.

I looked quietly up into the eyes of the man who looked like the brightest star of them all.

The yellow and green light of the fireflies scattered there like someone had sprinkled stardust across them.

"Stand beside me—as Crown Princess of Ronteaux."

Rhodness—dressed more magnificently than I had ever seen him—sank to both knees without hesitation, gathered my hands in his, and pressed his lips to my fingertips.

"I'll rise to a position where no one will ever dare to harm you. And you'll stand beside me there, too."

His lowered eyes cast long shadows beneath his lashes.

His hands, trembling with how much he wanted this, tickled mercilessly at my palm and my heart both.

When his hot, trembling lips finally lifted away, I pressed down my tears and answered.

"No. I don't want this."