What Do You Think, Sir?

Chapter 131

Clunk, clack-clack.

Inside the carriage bound for the Rosenberg Ducal Residence’s main mansion, after leaving Star Tree Forest behind.

Leaning back against the soft velvet seat, Elysia’s face was free of the deep gloom that had weighed down her features only hours earlier.

With the window cracked open just a little, the cool night breeze slipped in and pleasantly ruffled her silver hair.

Elysia quietly watched the lights of the manor flicker past outside the window and began calmly sorting through the tangled threads of thought in her mind, one by one.

'Probably, this won't end with just one meeting.'

Her violet eyes settled into a quiet calm.

The second daughter of the Rohanna Count family, Sophia von Rohanna.

Her after with Cassian would surely come about before long.

Not surprising in the least.

Because that was the sort of man Cassian was.

A man who, if he entered a place in goodwill, would see courtesy through to the very end no matter what.

Even if it was a place he had not wanted to be in the first place, once he started something, he would not flee with flimsy excuses; he was the steadfast sort who saw it through to the end.

'And the reason I was so unsettled today, too.'

A faint curve touched Elysia’s red lips.

'Maybe I was afraid of acknowledging and accepting that fact.'

But after pouring out every festering thought in her heart to the maid and resolving to love like a proper adult,

the knot that had been tightly constricting Elysia’s chest melted away like a lie.

"Little by little."

She murmured to the air and clasped her hands together on her lap.

"As long as it’s just little by little……."

There was no need to be impatient.

Perhaps this was the very time the whole universe had gladly granted her, telling her to prepare herself properly.

Because he wasn’t a little butterfly that would shake in a passing breeze and vanish.

He was like a massive mountain rooted there for centuries, a heavy, steadfast man who seemed as if he would always stay exactly where he was.

So if she could just endure and hold on through this much anxiety and jealousy.

'Yes. That’ll be enough.'

Elysia’s eyes, which had been looking out the window, flashed for an instant with Rosenberg’s bright vitality.

During this waiting period, she could focus entirely on perfectly cutting away and sorting out the unnecessary ties that had surrounded her for so long.

To stand beside Cassian, she first had to wash away the mud smeared on her name completely.

* * *

The Crown Prince’s office inside the imperial palace, deep in the night.

Louis, seated there, gave off a distinctly sharp-edged air.

His gaze was fixed not on the approval documents on the desk, but on the paper his closest aide had just set down.

"So this is it."

"Yes. It is the report you ordered, Your Highness."

Hector answered in a deep voice.

Louis slowly picked up the papers on the desk and began to read through them.

The title on the report, stamped with the Imperial Intelligence Bureau’s seal, was brazenly and unpleasantly direct.

[Analysis of the political variables that would arise if the engagement were broken, and of the damage it would inflict on the empire’s economy.]

[The contract the imperial armory has with the Rosenberg Ducal House’s exclusive mining rights to the iron mine has long benefited from a steep reduction, secured by the engagement.]

[If the engagement is broken, that contract will also be voided, and the Empire’s military armament maintenance costs are expected to soar by more than 40 percent annually.]

[In addition, if the noble faction holding the southern granary region colludes with Rosenberg, the risk of the imperial faction’s power base being fundamentally shaken cannot be ignored.]

"……."

Every single word was mercilessly clawing at the Crown Prince’s reason.

He kept his mouth shut for a long while, and only after reading the report in full did he murmur in a low voice.

"This is no trivial matter."

"……."

He tossed the report onto the desk with a flick.

Louis almost laughed bitterly.

Even with the grand title of Crown Prince, he was stunned by how he had failed to understand what was going on right beneath his own feet.

Why had he treated the engagement to the Rosenberg Ducal House, such a massive variable that could shake the fate of the empire, so lightly?

Was it just because of that petty little sense of superiority, the fact that Elysia blindly chased after him?

Or because her suffocating obsession was simply an absurdly tiresome annoyance?

'No. It isn’t that.'

Louis pressed hard between his brows.

Perhaps, deep in his unconscious, no matter how he treated her, no matter how cruelly he neglected and cold-shouldered her,

there had been arrogance buried in him that the engagement with Rosenberg, with Elysia, would remain unshaken forever.

Because whenever he looked back, she was always there, standing and gazing at him with resentment-laced affection.

Whether he had read Louis’s complicated inner thoughts, or it was simply the sensible judgment of his closest aide,

Hector offered his cautious advice.

"It is true that the Rosenberg young lady’s demeanor has been quite different lately. But if the part you’re worried about concerns the engagement, isn’t that just unnecessary concern?"

"No. You’re mistaken, Sir."

Louis cut Hector off without hesitation.

Hector also did not bother adding anything else.

Those words had been comfort he had to offer as a loyal retainer, not his true feelings.

Marriages among the powerful are built on aligned interests.

There must be a thorough calculation of gains and losses; concessions are made where they must be, and what one wants must be secured without fail.

Strictly speaking, the parties to this contract were not Crown Prince Louis and the Rosenberg young lady, but His Majesty Emperor Leopold and the Duke of Rosenberg.

Unless the Duke of Rosenberg had already gone senile, there was no way he would blow up a contract with the imperial family over nothing more than his daughter’s whim or a childish spat.

It should have been that way, clearly.

"What do you think, Sir?"

"What do you mean?"

"Elysia. Was she a woman who judged things based on rational logic?"

"……."

Hector fell silent, unable to answer the pointed question.

That statement would have been true, as long as it wasn’t a situation involving just one person: Crown Prince Louis.

She was a woman who seemed wise, capable, and possessed of an unapproachable elegance.

Not a woman who was hard to deal with just because she was Rosenberg, but one who made people think, So this is why she’s Rosenberg.

But before Louis, she was different.

She always put emotion first, craved love, and would throw away reason and pride for a single glance from the Crown Prince.

And because Hector had witnessed that past version of her countless times as well, he could not answer.

Louis went on with a cold, lowered gaze.

"Her irrational, illogical, blind feelings toward me—or perhaps feelings that may have twisted in some other direction—are the biggest variable."

Elysia was not a woman who saw the world like a calculator.

She was a stubborn woman who would even burn away the dignity of being a ducal heir for the sake of a single feeling she had fixated on.

If her feelings hardened into hatred or abandonment toward him.

No matter how much the Duke of Rosenberg tried to stop her, she would surely end up bringing about the breakup she wanted.

That was something he had to stop, no matter what.

"Sir Hector. Pass this on to the Intelligence Bureau."

"Give the order."

"There are two messages to deliver. First, to prevent the breakup between the Imperial House of Leopold and the Rosenberg Ducal House—yes, let’s call it a defensive strategy."

Louis’s red eyes sliced through the air.

"And second, if the breakup somehow comes to pass, what should be done with Rosenberg for turning his back on His Majesty the Emperor’s grace."

"……!"

Startled.

It was very slight, but Louis did not miss Hector’s shoulders stiffening for an instant.

That was understandable.

To be ordered to crush the family of the woman he secretly loved—and to have to draft that order himself, no less.

But Hector did not voice a single private feeling.

"……I shall obey."

Hector bowed deeply, then silently turned and left the office.

Creak, thud.

* * *

After Hector left.

Louis remained alone and calmly read through the reports piled on the desk about trends in the southern provinces.

[Outlook for reduced tax revenue due to poor harvests in the southern granary region, and trends in the noble faction’s demands for tax cuts……]

"Haa."

Louis couldn’t take his eyes off the report and massaged his brow hard, but in the end he stopped reviewing it.

His eyes throbbed, and the text refused to settle properly in his head.

He let out a weary breath and leaned back against the chair.

Turning his head to look outside, he saw the quiet view of the imperial palace garden, where faint mana stone lamps lit up here and there.

Louis stroked his chin and murmured softly.

"So the Court Count’s son, huh."

The report that arrived today.

The damage from a broken engagement, the movement in the south, even signs of internal division within the Church.

All of it was reaching the Crown Prince’s hands through the Intelligence Bureau.

So the order he had just given through Hector was, in effect, a wordless pressure sent to Count Corinth, the Court Count and head of the Intelligence Bureau.

Make sure you keep your family’s troublemaker in line.

If things became even more serious from here and his patience reached its limit,

then he might draw a blade to Cassian del Farne’s throat using the authority of the imperial family.

"It's irritating."

Louis irritably tousled his blond hair.

No matter how hard he tried to keep his thoughts steady while staring into the darkness outside, the horrible scene from that night kept gnawing away at his reason.

The narrow corridor on the sixth floor of the Faculty of Magic building.

The moment he had reached out there.

'Because I think Lord Cassian is my guardian!'

The moment Lily, who had always been too frightened to do anything but shrink away when she saw him, finally blocked Cassian’s path.

It had slammed into Louis’s chest like a blue-black nail and refused to come out.

Betrayal?

Or was it the sting of being rejected by the saintess he had believed was his only refuge?

But as a little more time passed, Louis, left alone in the empty office, was approaching a question he had not yet fully grasped.

'Elysia.'

That night.

Her expression as she came all the way to the place where the chaos around the saintess was unfolding, only to coldly snap at him.

'Surely it isn’t right to waste time on such a personal, worthless conversation in a situation this urgent, Your Highness, when all the interested parties are pooling their wisdom?'

Those violet eyes were like ice.

Louis narrowed his eyes.

Just why.

Why had she come to the academy.

And why had she gone so far as to seek out Cassian del Farne’s private laboratory?