IRTP 6

Chapter 6

“…Haa.”

A small sigh escaped someone’s lips.

‘What was that just now? Did he just sigh?’

Blair looked at Kalintz with an incredulous expression. His face was still expressionless, but his eyes were filled with a look of utter boredom. And there was even a faint hint of contempt flickering through.

‘How annoying.’

As she mentally cursed at his condescending attitude, a woman who had been admiring Kalintz’s appearance from beside her spoke up.

“I’m Selina Valentberg. You’re Blair Merbis, correct? Let’s get along from now on, shall we?”

The brown-haired woman said with a bright smile.

Blair forced a smile and gave a slight nod. She didn’t bother mentioning that she had only entered the royal castle because her parents had pushed her into it, like being dragged to a slaughterhouse.

After more tedious greetings and several more speeches, the schedule in the audience chamber concluded and the banquet began.

The banquet prepared in the lavishly decorated Great Hall was both a celebration of the Prons’ entry into the royal castle and the first official event where the fierce competition among those who would become the new crown princess would begin.

Yet, to call it fierce competition, people were swarming only around Anais Brien. Considering the power of Duke Brien, it wasn’t particularly strange, but she couldn’t help thinking what an odd sight it was.

‘If it’s going to be like this, was there even a reason to select Prons? The crown princess is going to be Anais anyway.’

Blair watched that ridiculous spectacle from a corner of the hall, sipping her champagne. The other four Prons, including herself, were merely Anais’s entourage.

Of course, if he wanted, Duke Brien could have made Anais crown princess without selecting Prons at all, but Duke Brien wasn’t that foolish.

Openly ignoring the tradition of Prons and installing his daughter as crown princess would only create unnecessary controversy.

Even without doing so, it was obvious that Anais would become crown princess anyway.

‘Well, there are plenty of people desperate just to be that entourage, even.’

Her own parents were no different.

First, they would make her a Pron, and once the crown princess selection was over, they would immediately put her on the marriage market, using the halo of being “from the Prons” to marry her off to a family that suited their tastes.

‘They probably don’t care about my wishes at all.’

Just thinking about it made her chest tighten.

Feeling suffocated, Blair downed the remaining champagne in one gulp. By then, she had already tossed back four glasses.

Feeling her body grow slightly warm as the alcohol took effect, Blair fanned herself with her hand and quietly slipped out to the rear garden.

Unlike the bustling Great Hall, a quiet stillness hung over the rear garden. The sudden absence of noise made her ears feel oddly muffled.

Blair took a deep breath of the late autumn night’s fragrance and slowly walked deeper into the garden.

She had walked for a while when she heard murmuring voices mixed with the sounds of insects.

On party days, there were always nobles enjoying secret rendezvous in maze-like gardens like this, so Blair was about to quietly turn around.

But something was odd. The voices coming from beyond the bushes didn’t belong to a man and a woman.

Even at a casual listen, they were the voices of two men.

‘In a secret place like this… No, surely not. Even so, this is the royal castle, and between men, no less…’

Even as she thought it couldn’t be, Blair couldn’t turn back and found herself slowly walking toward where the two men’s conversation was coming from.

“…We shouldn’t be doing this… How many times have I…”

“It’s fine… Like this… No one will know…”

At the fragments of conversation drifting over, Blair involuntarily covered her mouth with her hand and carefully drew closer.

“Why wouldn’t I know! Last time too, you dropped your button in the bedroom and Maryanne found it!”

“No, that time was just bad luck. Now,”

“It’s like this every time. I don’t want to. I won’t be pushed around anymore.”

At the man’s firmness, the other seemed at a loss for words for a moment.

Blair held her breath and strained to listen to their conversation. Eavesdropping on others was never polite, but she simply couldn’t contain her curiosity.

Good heavens, a lovers’ quarrel between men. When else would she ever hear something like this?

“…If I command you? Would you still refuse?”

“……”

At the intimidating man’s tone, the man who had been refusing fell silent.

‘Is he really using his position to coerce him like that? No, what kind of family’s person is this despicable?’

Blair frowned and rose on her tiptoes to try to see who it was.

Because of the tall hedge wall, she couldn’t see their faces clearly—only the tops of their heads were faintly visible. One had black hair, and the other had light reddish-brown hair.

‘Just a little more and I think I could see…’

Her careful movements had somehow grown quite bold. Just as she was craning her neck and twisting her body this way and that, the reddish-brown-haired man spoke as if in resignation.

“Haa… You were going to threaten me like this all along anyway. Just give the order from the start, Your Highness.”

Crash.

The sound of a branch breaking rang out loudly through the quiet bushes.

Startled by the word “Your Highness,” Blair lost her footing and fell. She barely managed to cover her mouth and swallow a scream, but the sound of the branch breaking was beyond her control.

“Who’s there!”

Along with the man’s sharp cry came the rapid sound of a sword being drawn. Blair, alarmed, quickly tried to get up from the ground and flee, but the man was several times faster than her.

“…Miss Merbis?”

The brown-haired man slowly lowered his sword, his face flustered. He was Ernst Werner, the captain of the Red Knights directly under the royal prince’s household and the prince’s guard knight.

True to his role as a guard knight, he had accurately remembered her from the brief glimpse in the audience chamber earlier.

“H-hello. I was just passing by and tripped, Sir Knight.”

Blair smiled as hard as she could, trying to look as innocent as possible.

“Ah, no… That’s not what I… ”

Ernst fumbled, unable to even sheath his sword properly in his confusion.

Seizing the moment to slip away, Blair found herself frozen in place by a cold voice coming from behind her.

“You tripped while passing by, and yet you’re running away?”

The man who had been talking about orders in that threatening voice—the despicable, petty man—was none other than Kalintz Ainheart, Prince of the Kingdom of Aeron.

He walked over slowly with a crooked smile.

“I wasn’t… running, though it may have looked that way.”

Even as she said it, Blair thought she sounded incredibly shameless. But she had nothing else to say.

If she confessed to having heard their conversation, her neck might very well be on the line. The fact that a guard knight and a prince were involved in such a relationship would be a scandal of enormous magnitude.

“Miss Blair Merbis, did you perhaps hear our conversation just now?”

Ernst asked with a face stiffened rigidly. Blair swallowed once and shook her head slightly.

“No, the hedge walls here are so tall that I couldn’t hear well. I definitely didn’t hear anything.”

“That sounds exactly like someone who heard something.”

Kalintz said in that same sardonic tone. She could feel her hands growing damp with tension, but Blair tried to appear calm.

“No, Your Highness. Would I lie in front of anyone?”

He gave no answer. Feeling his gaze fixed on her, Blair kept her head slightly bowed, her eyes darting around.

Then something caught her attention—a dark object in his hand. It looked like a coif worn on the head, with black hair woven together and draped over it.

‘A wig…?’

It was a trade good said to be imported from the eastern continent, something Blair had heard of at least once.

Some nobles used them to style their hair or for perfect disguises at masquerade balls, but they were very expensive items, not commonly seen.

As she wondered why such a thing was in the prince’s hand, he spoke as if it were nothing of consequence.

“Well, if you didn’t hear it, then I suppose you didn’t.”

Kalintz turned around as if it didn’t matter and tossed the wig carelessly to Ernst.

“We don’t have time to be standing around like this. Hurry up and put that on. I’m telling you, no one will recognize you.”

“No, how is this one thing supposed to work when our faces are different!”

Ernst grumbled, turning the wig he’d caught this way and that.

“That’s why I’m telling you to lie face down on the bed and pretend to be asleep with only your head showing. Who’s going to touch a sleeping prince? As long as you don’t do something stupid like dropping a button again, you won’t get caught.”

At Kalintz’s words, Ernst was about to protest again, then remembered Blair was there and held his tongue.

“Haa… Let’s at least move somewhere else to talk.”

“We probably already heard everything earlier anyway.”

Hearing Kalintz mutter with his back still turned to her, Blair was dumbfounded. He’d said “if you didn’t hear it, then you didn’t,” but in the end, he clearly knew she had eavesdropped.

And now he was talking about it as if she weren’t even there.

“Yes, yes. I understand, so let’s just go.”

Ernst, perhaps also feeling awkward about the situation, gave Blair a slight bow before disappearing to the other side of the garden with Kalintz.

Even after they vanished, Blair stood there blankly for a long while.

“So… it was about a wig?”

Embarrassment and a sense of futility washed over her simultaneously. Why on earth would they come all the way to this maze-like garden to discuss something like that?

Of course, she was more at fault for misunderstanding on her own and eavesdropping on someone else’s conversation, but the prince’s obnoxious attitude left her feeling rather unpleasant.

‘But why make Sir Werner wear a wig and pretend to be him?’

Tilting her head in puzzlement for a moment, Blair soon shook her head. She’d heard the prince occasionally did eccentric things—this must be one of them, so it wasn’t really that strange.

‘More importantly, it has nothing to do with me.’

Blair dismissed it at that and returned to the Great Hall.

That had been over half a year ago now.

Since that incident, Blair had never once spoken with Kalintz. Even when they happened to meet at official events, they never made eye contact, nor did they particularly acknowledge each other.

Moreover, since then, Blair’s only goal had been to “quietly keep her head down, survive six months, and go to the west annex,” so there was even less reason to get entangled with him.

‘But why is he acting like this all of a sudden? Surely he’s not doing this over something that happened half a year ago?’

But if he was going to pick a fight, he should have done it then—saying nothing all this time and then suddenly acting like this made no sense.

“Haa. There’s no answer to this.”

Blair let out a sigh filled with anxiety and frustration. And she hoped all of this was just the prince’s simple whim and eccentricity.

Unfortunately, however, Kalintz’s strange behavior did not end that day.