RAMHM Chapter 72

Ungrateful Bastard of the Century

"Brother!"

The Crown Prince's face turned completely bloodless. Rhodness, catching Bardenaldo just before he collapsed, held him in his arms and read the letter. His heart leaped at the word Pirreta. The messenger bird Adrienne had sent yesterday with that despairing face must have struck its mark properly.

Novian had become a card that could no longer be held. Knowing this was why Bardenaldo was reacting like this. Rhodness straightened his brother and helped him to a seat. The Crown Prince sank completely into the single sofa, covering his face with both hands.

"Brother."

"Rhoan, Rhoan, how can I with my own mouth, Uncle... Uncle..."

The decision was made. The Crown Prince simply couldn't bring himself to say he'd abandon his uncle.

"Brother, you don't need to say anything."

"...Rhoan?"

The Crown Prince looked up at Rhodness with a pale face, still standing. Rhodness, his hand solemnly placed on his sword sheath, gazed down at him with deeply sunken eyes.

"You already know the way to keep both East and West supporting you, don't you?"

"......"

"Send the 1st Imperial Knights Order and capture him yourself, Brother."

"Rhoan...!"

Bardenaldo jerked upright at the extreme content, then trembled with ashen lips before finally sinking back onto the sofa. Rhodness knelt on one knee before his brother. With the eye level lowered, he could see the Crown Prince's wavering eyes more clearly.

"Only then can Brother become emperor without getting hurt, perfectly intact. You know this, don't you?"

"Rhoan, Rhoan, I..."

"If Brother will just give the order, I'll personally lead the knights in your place. I'll explain everything to Father myself. Brother, you need only say one thing—that you'll abandon that bastard Novian Trovika."

The Crown Prince, his face contorted as if about to burst into tears, finally bowed his head at his younger brother's powerful request—the brother who'd never interfered in politics. He barely managed to nod as tears darkened his navy trousers below his face. Rhodness silently embraced the Crown Prince's head.

"You've done well, Your Highness."

If Your Highness hadn't decided, I would have killed Uncle with my own hands.

As his voice settled low, the Crown Prince's hands gripping his wet knees trembled along with his head. Rhodness squeezed his hands hard. The time had come to remove the filth called Novian from Bardenaldo's path to perfection.

Adrienne's final funeral was imminent. Unable to bear the flood of business in the Grand Ducal Estate with Adrienne's body beneath his feet, Novian had holed up in a gentlemen's social club.

It had been quite a while since he'd felt so acutely how hollow this position he held was. It was laughable how many coveted the seat beside a Grand Duke—unable to be elevated to a principality and become master of a true nation, yet unable to officially involve himself in government affairs either.

He stepped into the VIP room, avoiding those who glanced sideways waiting for their chance to approach. In the silent, empty space, the letters spread before him were viciously crumpled in his hands the moment he confirmed the sender's names.

That damn Castagna, and Raelon showing his face every other day. Even the Marquis of Winston, the late Empress Letina's family, who'd somehow heard rumors, demanded explanations. All troublesome bastards on the same boat, every one of them grating.

"...Explanation."

What explanation could possibly be needed? Though he'd brought Bliea into the Grand Ducal Estate using Castagna's demands as an excuse, he couldn't understand why he kept bearing this risk without even offering justification.

Moreover, there was that lunatic Rhodness, who'd been camping in a tent in front of the Grand Ducal Estate for days now. Novian thought Rhodness's outrageous behavior was both a challenge to himself and an appeal to Bliea. A discreet signal: come to me anytime.

Crash!

In his foul mood, he hurled the glass he'd been drinking from straight to the floor. The glass shards shattered easily across the marble. When had it started? She'd clearly been nothing but a substitute. No matter how identical the face, had he ever wanted her so badly he lost his reason?

'Try keeping the substitute by your side and finding at least some trivial happiness.'

'Live a new life with Bliea Acacia.'

'Briefly forget me, whom you couldn't have, and find your happiness with someone new.'

Taking drugs. Drinking. Seeing hallucinations. Hearing voices. Though he thought it madness, thinking he could touch even a fragment of Adrienne's soul through it—he couldn't not do it.

The liberation he'd felt nowhere else, he experienced in that half-crazed state. She would be his eventually anyway, but considering her track record, she seemed impossible to control unless he bound and caged her.

He could take her by force, but then what would be the point? When it might be the only thing he could possess completely. Perhaps from the drug's side effects, his hands trembled. Or maybe from the alcohol he kept drinking even now. He thought if he could just get through this crisis, as Adrienne said, perhaps he could have even that trivial happiness.

The Crown Prince couldn't abandon him anyway. Hadn't he gained the East's heart—which had been lost when the Crown Princess was brought in from the West—precisely because of himself? Balance. Embrace. Every element that made Crown Prince Bardenaldo a wise ruler came from himself. Considering most precedents where crown princes changed when empresses changed, Crown Prince Bardenaldo was exceptionally free in his succession competition with the Ninth Prince. Because Novian Trovika firmly supported him. The Crown Prince absolutely could not abandon him.

Novian chewed over this certainty that he couldn't lose this fight, yet occasionally ground his teeth recalling Bliea, who wouldn't act like she was his. The funeral was approaching. And he had no intention of backing down.

The Trovika family cemetery was unprecedentedly crowded with people.

It was precisely 100 days since young Grand Duchess Adrienne Trovika's funeral began. Not only people from the temple including the High Priest, but even the imperial court's key ministers had gathered.

In the space where only sad silence should flow besides hymns to the Lord, some inexplicable chill hung. Not because it was winter and cold.

People were only exchanging glances because of the group that appeared near the funeral's end. One could tell from their clothing alone they weren't from the capital. They were people from Pirreta in the East, Grand Duchess Adrienne's family home. The Eastern Pirreta people led by Prince Gregory didn't wear grief-stricken expressions but faces that looked ready to kill someone, huddled together throughout the funeral.

When the funeral's first part ended and most guests departed, only the people sent from the imperial court, temple people, and the direct family member Grand Duke Novian remained in the cemetery.

The moment the silent Prince and Princess approached Novian was just as Grand Duchess Adrienne's glass coffin, covered in black cloth, descended into the deep earth. It was when Novian, as chief mourner shoveling dirt to scatter once over that place, momentarily stopped, unable to overcome his agitation.

"Fucking ridiculous. Dog bastard."

A clear but slightly rough woman's voice echoed through the solemn funeral. The flustered High Priest signaled the accompanying priests to sing louder, but couldn't stop the woman's voice that burst forth.

"Filthy, shameless bastard. You dare—thief who stole Pirreta's daughter—secretly take another woman behind her back?"

The organ music flowing gently stopped abruptly. The people dispatched from the imperial court stared wide-eyed at Novian, frozen mid-motion. Novian, who'd been gazing at the coffin descending into the earth for a long time, turned his gaze.

Princess Bianca Pirreta, wearing a hat draped with black netting, strode forward and stood before him. Her reddened, bloodshot eyes conveyed fully what she wanted to say even without speaking another word of profanity.

"You dare betray Adrienne?"

"M-Madam, I don't know what this is about, but if you do this here...!"

"Ask your master why I'm doing this."

Jimskehr, who'd tried to stop her, glanced at Novian. Jimskehr had grasped the situation too. Besides Novian, no one here knew better than Jimskehr who Bianca Pirreta was and why she raged.

"You talk so well normally—why? Go on, speak."

"Impudent."

That single word was the end. Novian's cold gaze turned to Bianca, whose eyes widened in disbelief, and Gregory, who looked ready to bolt from his seat. Seeing Adrienne briefly in Gregory's face, Novian's eyebrow twitched for just an instant.

"Jimskehr. Tell the private soldiers to escort the Eastern mourners to the Grand Ducal Estate."

"Y-yes...! Madam, you mustn't do this."

Some commotion arose among the group from the East. Gregory's mouth, about to shout louder, was covered by someone, and Bianca—standing with a face like she'd been slapped—was also nearly dragged by Jimskehr and other knights and loaded into a carriage. That shameless—crazy bastard—ungrateful bastard of the century. Roughly such words, muffled through the covered mouth, drove into Novian's ears.

"Please continue, Your Eminence."

"Ah, yes."

The High Priest, whose anxious face watched like looking at a bomb about to explode, moved his hands again, and sacred music flowed once more from the outdoor organ.

But Novian filled the pit where Adrienne's coffin had entered, shoveling dirt like someone who heard no sound at all. Organ music. The priests' hymns. The High Priest's prayers. The perfunctory sobs of the few remaining imperial people. Meaningless sounds, all of them.

Throughout shoveling and scattering dirt into the pit, Novian felt as if he were scraping together and burying his last remaining humanity. The hellish funeral period was over.

Adrienne—if only he could bury like this the yearning toward you he could never have, the obsession toward you he could never have in the future.

Sprinkling the holy water the High Priest offered, Novian left the tears falling unbidden. Seeing Adrienne—whose last funeral day had seemed impossibly distant yet approached and was finally being buried in the cold earth—he couldn't bear the feeling that somewhere in his reason had snapped. Though he'd imagined this grief thousands of times in his head and prepared for it, seeing it with his own eyes and covering her with dirt with his own hands was worlds apart.

"In the Lord's name, I proclaim that Grand Duchess Adrienne Trovika rests eternal in Avadelia!"

With the High Priest's cry, Adrienne Trovika's name was finally formally engraved on the white tombstone bestowed by the Emperor.

《Adrienne Swan Trovika, mistress of Northern Trovika and daughter of Eastern Pirreta. Here she sleeps.》

What was being buried wasn't Adrienne but his own heart. Novian truly believed that.

'Filthy, shameless bastard. You dare—thief who stole Pirreta's daughter—secretly take another woman behind her back?'

'You dare betray Adrienne?'

Now, truly—there was no turning back.