Chapter 74
Chapter 74
Elysia brought the teacup in her hand to her lips.
Right after the grand banquet between the imperial family and the ducal house had ended.
The two of them had just moved to Crown Prince Louis's lavish private palace.
Clink.
The banquet held today to celebrate Princess Iveline's return from her legion tour—the one hosted by the Leopold Imperial House and House Rosenberg—had a completely different atmosphere from the outset.
It had been arranged, after all, to seriously push forward and finalize the long-standing engagement between the two houses.
Elysia set the teacup down with an elegant gesture and spoke.
"I'm getting to enjoy all kinds of things today."
"……."
For Elysia, this kind of intimate tryst in the Crown Prince's private palace was not something she should have wished for.
Louis had never once willingly made such a private space for her.
To her calm remark, Louis gave his usual indifferent smile and replied.
"From the sound of it, I must have been quite the object of your resentment."
After hearing that arrogant line.
Elysia was swept up by a strange feeling rising from deep inside her chest.
'It's really strange.'
If it had been her former self, that one line alone would have made her heart drop.
Did I show my resentment too clearly? Had I offended Your Highness?
She would have been thrown into all kinds of anxiety and self-reproach, frantically searching for an excuse.
'Was emotion always this fickle?'
The heavy heart she had spent her whole life thinking was nothing more than blind devotion to a single person.
Maybe it had all just been an illusion built from shallow stubbornness and defiance.
She was so calm now that such doubts could arise.
"If you're speaking in the past tense, I won't deny it."
As Elysia answered with a fresh smile on her lips, Louis tilted his head slightly.
"What do you mean?"
"I'm fine now."
Elysia rested her chin on the table and continued in a very relaxed voice.
"Calling it resentment toward Your Highness would be too impudent, so let's call it private hurt or wounds instead. I had plenty of both, and plenty of things I wanted, too."
"……."
"Now I'm truly fine, so I only hope my past and I won't be a burden to Your Highness anymore."
Louis, hearing that, toyed with his teacup without saying a word.
His elegant eyebrows twitched ever so slightly.
A barely perceptible tremor of muscle that no one else would ever have noticed.
'Ah.'
Elysia had once regarded that tiny tremor as a special sign of emotion from the Crown Prince, something only she could recognize.
A tiny stir from a man who was always expressionless.
To her, such trivial things were an oasis in a harsh desert, a straw she clung to like a rotten lifeline.
'But now…….'
Elysia gave a light snort inwardly.
So what if it was something only I could recognize? What difference did that make?
Once she stopped assigning meaning to it, the man couldn't look more trivial or ordinary.
"Lately, it seems your state of mind has become rather complicated."
Louis asked in a low, gentle tone.
Behind those eyes that pretended to be calm lurked curiosity, if not bewilderment.
"I won't deny that. But wouldn't this change have been unsurprising, no matter when it came?"
"What do you mean?"
"I've been in pain every day. I've been hurt every day. For a very long time."
Savoring the warmth of the teacup with her fingertips, Elysia calmly recalled the past as if it belonged to someone else.
"Of course, thanks to Your Highness making it perfectly clear, in your own way, that you had no feelings, I know there thankfully weren't any heartbreaking or painful memories between us. However."
"……."
"That still doesn't make the weight of all the days I spent crying and hurting alone in my room any lighter. It was far too long a time."
Louis remained silent for a moment before opening his mouth in a voice tinged with bitterness.
"…So because you'd been hurt for so long, it wouldn't have been strange for your feelings to change at any time."
"That's right."
Elysia answered immediately with a pure, clear smile.
'It wasn't just that the hurt piled up and I came to realize it on my own, though.'
It was because a man who had suddenly appeared before her one day, his tie askew and his manner rough, caught her eye.
His detached kindness, accepting her hysteria without a single trace of irritation.
The words of comfort he tossed out so coolly, as if the crown prince meant nothing to him.
'He was the catalyst for me.'
Thanks to that, Elysia fully realized how pointless the shell she had been obsessing over really was.
Louis's gaze relentlessly bored into Elysia's calm face.
"Even if your heart has gone cold, do you still intend to proceed with the betrothal between Leopold and Rosenberg?"
Elysia knew exactly what answer Louis wanted to hear, and exactly why he was asking.
He was still under the illusion that he held the upper hand in this relationship.
The arrogance of believing that, so long as he didn't cast her aside, Elysia von Rosenberg—the young lady who used to trail after the crown prince—would never leave this place of her own accord.
Elysia opened her mouth.
"I told you before that a relationship without love or feelings is miserable and strange."
"……You remember."
"It was something I said. To be honest, I still think that belief holds true."
"Then?"
A faint edge entered Louis's voice.
Elysia straightened her back and gave the most beautiful, dignified smile befitting the young lady of House Rosenberg.
"If Your Highness will take full responsibility for this broken engagement, then I would gladly break it off."
"……."
Louis's brow furrowed sharply.
It was as if the perfectly controlled mask of the crown prince had cracked with a loud snap.
"…Even if I were to shoulder all that responsibility, you surely know how much damage the label of a broken engagement would do to you."
It was a very realistic point.
Because in this social circle, the stigma of a broken engagement always came down harder on women.
Even if the imperial family publicly declared that the man alone bore full responsibility for the broken engagement.
'A woman could never be free from filthy rumors and the stigma of being damaged goods.'
The risk of being treated like a tragic heroine and torn apart as the laughingstock of society, with people snickering that the Rosenberg lady must have been so vicious the Crown Prince finally couldn't stand it and dumped her.
But Elysia couldn't even snort at that kind of gossip.
"I don't care."
"You don't care?"
"Yes. That was absolutely never the reason I worried or was afraid and couldn't leave Your Highness until now."
It was a simple reason.
Looking down at the teacup engraved with the imperial crest, Elysia whispered with an arrogant smile.
"Of course, in front of Your Highness—Leopold, the sole sky of this nation—its light and color would naturally look faded."
"……."
"But the history of Rosenberg, deeply carved into my name, is by no means so light that it can be crushed by idle gossips."
Ordinarily, she would never have been able to think such thoughts.
But that man had told her.
That there was no life as blessed as hers.
How could you not know that?
'That's right.'
She didn't know why it took that man saying it for her to understand.
Strangely enough, it felt as though she could accept anything if that man said it.
After a slightly pointed exchange, the atmosphere turned awkward.
The silence in the room was broken by a knock from outside.
Knock, knock.
"Come in."
Bang!
The heavy reception room door swung open.
Hector, who hurriedly stepped inside, said respectfully at once.
"An urgent report has come in from the Intelligence Bureau. Since it's a pressing matter that will also be shared with House Rosenberg, I beg your pardon for reporting it here."
"……."
Louis's already stiff brow furrowed even deeper.
Without a word, he took the letter sealed with red wax from Hector's hand.
'What could it be?'
Elysia watched the scene leisurely, her fingertips gliding over the teacup handle.
Louis's expression, which had been rapidly skimming the letter, turned icy at once.
A cold, sharp aura, like the North in midwinter, filled the room.
"What happened?"
"…It seems a rather large incident has occurred between the temple and the academy."
Louis roughly folded the letter and let out a low growl.
"I think we'll have to end our conversation here. The matter is so urgent that I need to convene an emergency meeting of the senior leadership at once."
"It's fine. I had no intention of taking up any more of Your Highness's precious time."
Elysia tried to rise with a bright smile.
At that calm demeanor, Louis's eyes trembled ever so slightly once more, and he abruptly stood and extended his hand.
"I'll escort you to the carriage."
The crown prince's spontaneous offer to escort her—something she'd only ever imagined up to now.
If it had been the Elysia of the past, she would have delighted as if she had the whole world and taken that hand.
"It's fine. Being escorted by Sir Hector is enough."
"……."
Elysia lightly glanced at Hector and turned him down.
Louis's hand hesitated in midair, left with nowhere to go.
'When I was hurt and asked you first for an escort, you coldly brushed me off, saying you were busy. And now you're pretending to be kind? How ridiculous.'
Elysia wasn't even thinking that, and even if she had been, she no longer wanted to show it much.
Because she didn't feel the need to dig up the petty grudges of the past and fight over them now.
Maybe she had forgotten how to communicate bluntly with Crown Prince Louis without causing any more misunderstandings.
"…Very well, then. Please return safely."
Louis forcibly fixed his expression and turned away, leaving the reception room.
Until his back disappeared completely, Elysia never once gave him a lingering look.
Only the peaceful thought that the evening air was so clear and refreshing circled through her mind.
* * *
"Please rise, my lady."
After Louis left, Hector bowed politely to Elysia and said.
Elysia smiled faintly and stepped lightly to his side.
Thud, thud.
As they walked side by side down the palace's long, long corridor.
Elysia asked Hector, who was walking beside her, in a voice full of curiosity.
"What's going on? You said it's something that will be shared with my house as well, so I imagine it's fine for me to hear it right now."
"…The saintess has been kidnapped."
"Oh my."
A small gasp escaped Elysia's lips.
"That's more serious than I expected. Kidnapping the saintess, who's practically the symbol of the church? It must be a large organization."
Elysia's voice was thick with a strange excitement and interest.
Hector blinked in surprise at her oddly carefree reaction.
"You're not surprised."
"It's not as if I'm particularly close to the saintess."
Elysia unfolded her fan to lightly cover her mouth and giggled.
Her steps were still as light as a feather, but Hector's lips pressed into a heavy line.
Deep hesitation showed in his rigid jawline.
Should he tell her or not.
He had long harbored feelings for Elysia, and he sincerely wanted her to be peaceful and happy.
He didn't want to cast the shadow of confusion over her face again now that she'd just broken free of the heavy shackle that was the crown prince and looked so much lighter.
But.
'If she's going to learn the full story of this situation anyway, it'd be better if I were the one to say it.'
"…And Cassian del Farne is involved in that matter."
She came to a dead stop.
Elysia's steps stopped right there.
The beautiful purple eyes visible over her fan widened in an instant.
"Tell me more—no, tell me everything in detail."
"…Pardon?"
"Cassian del Farne is involved in the saintess kidnapping? That man? How on earth could he have pulled that off?"
Elysia snapped her fan shut and began firing off questions one after another.
And Hector, seeing the 'alive' side of Elysia—something she'd never once shown in front of the Crown Prince today—somehow felt sad.