Chapter 109
“Would you be interested in joining the Imperial Knights?”
Richard’s sudden, outrageous offer made the air around them freeze in an instant.
Even the knights’ murmurs.
Even Aurora’s movement as she was about to speak to Leon.
All of it stopped for a beat.
Only Aslan nodded as if he had expected it.
“Sir Richard. What do you mean, asking him to join the Imperial Knights?”
It was Aurora who raised the question.
Anxiety colored her voice.
“Exactly as I said, Your Highness. If he’s with us, the strength of our Second Division will be that much greater.”
He was a man whose strength could overwhelm even the commander of the Imperial Knights.
If he joined the knights, he would be a tremendous asset to the empire and to the imperial family.
“What do you think?”
“Well. If it were before, I would’ve refused, but now that I’ve swung a sword again after a long time, this is kind of fun. I might be a little interested.”
“That’s good news.”
“But as you know, I’m a slave, so I can’t decide anything on my own without my master’s permission.”
In other words, all he needed was Aurora’s permission. It wasn’t a difficult matter.
Because this was for the empire.
Naturally, if it was Aurora, the imperial princess herself, she would grant it. Richard thought as much.
But Aurora couldn’t answer right away and just bit her lip.
“But Leon is a slave. I’ve never even heard of a slave becoming an imperial knight.”
At Aurora’s words, Richard fell silent for a moment.
She wasn’t wrong.
This was not some knight from a remote, weak noble house, but the Imperial Knights who protected the very heart of the empire.
The Emperor’s sword.
It was not an honor you could gain just by being good with a blade.
Status.
Background.
House.
Loyalty.
All of it was required.
Even when Leon became a knight of Edelhaide, how much of a stir had that caused?
This time, it would be even worse.
Saying there was no precedent would be an understatement.
It was only natural that Aurora couldn’t grant permission so easily.
Of course, that wasn’t the reason she hesitated.
“Your Highness’s concern is entirely justified. However, we can simply give him a different designation.”
“How?”
“A guest knight. Or a swordsmanship instructor attached to the Second Division. The title doesn’t matter. What matters is that he is connected to the Imperial Knights.”
“Even so…….”
Aurora said, hesitating.
“Leon has things he must do by my side.”
“Things he must do, such as……?”
“He’s my writing assistant.”
“He writes?”
“Yes.”
Richard was plainly flustered.
That had never even crossed his mind.
“However, Your Highness.”
“Enough. I don’t want to talk about this subject anymore. I only allowed today’s spar because Leon begged me to, and there’s absolutely no chance he’ll become a knight again.”
“…….”
Richard couldn’t continue. It wasn’t that he had nothing to say. On the contrary, he had too much.
The talent for the sword is innate.
There are realms no amount of blood-spewing training can reach, and doors no amount of years devoted to the blade can open.
But Leon.
He wasn’t merely standing before that door. He had already flung it wide open.
He was a strategic weapon capable of changing the course of the battlefield on his own.
And yet he was to be made to sit at a desk and use a pen?
‘What nonsense.’
He should be holding a sword.
He should be out on the battlefield.
He should be helping to preserve peace.
To use him as nothing more than a writing assistant. If there were a god of the sword, this would be an atrocity enough to make him weep tears of blood.
Richard wanted to say as much.
But the person before him was a princess. Even as the commander of the knights, she was not someone he could casually defy.
“……Understood.”
In the end, Richard had no choice but to take a step back.
“If Your Highness says so, I won’t press the matter any further here.”
“Here?”
Aurora narrowed her eyes.
“Wouldn’t it be neglect of duty as a knight commander to see such a capable warrior, make one offer, and then give up?”
“Sir Richard.”
“Still, I promise I will not drag him away by force, nor detain him under some made-up pretext. I give you my word.”
Richard bowed his head respectfully.
“Leon is Your Highness’s man. I will respect that.”
Aurora watched him for a while. There didn’t seem to be a lie in those words.
“……Then that’s fine.”
Only then did the atmosphere loosen a little. A small wave of relieved sighs spread among the knights.
Richard lifted his head and looked at Leon.
“What a shame.”
“I’m a little disappointed too.”
“Only a little?”
“If I said a lot, Your Highness would get sulky.”
“Leon.”
Aurora’s voice turned cold.
Leon shut his mouth at once.
Aurora wore an unhappy expression, but she didn’t press him further.
Richard spoke one last time.
“Let’s end today’s matter here. But remember this.”
“Remember what?”
“The door to the Second Division is always open. Formal enrollment isn’t necessary. It’s fine even if you just come for sparring or ask for advice, so come by.”
Richard paused for a moment, glanced at Aurora, then turned his eyes back to Leon.
“Of course, after receiving Your Highness’s permission.”
Leon gave a small laugh.
“I’ll come by after I get permission.”
***
Deep within the imperial palace’s inner court.
The small reception room the emperor used when spending private time.
The father of the empire, Emperor Kaizel Argenvalt, was sipping tea as he read through documents.
The empress seated opposite him was in the middle of reading a book.
The emperor slowly lifted his gaze from the papers he had been reading.
“What are you reading so intently?”
Normally, the empress would have taken a sip of tea or said a word or two to him, but today she was unusually quiet.
“A novel.”
The empress lifted the book and showed him the title on the cover.
<The Terminally Ill Young Lady Declares Divorce.>
“It’s been quite popular among noble ladies lately.”
“Terminally ill and divorce. The title is rather ominous.”
“That’s precisely why it catches the eye, isn’t it?”
The empress casually turned another page.
“This book was written by Aurora.”
“Aurora? You mean that novel everyone’s been talking about lately?”
“Yes.”
The emperor recalled a rumor he had heard in passing.
There was supposedly a very popular novel making the rounds these days, and its author was Princess Aurora.
He had half doubted it, but never did he imagine that the author of that bizarrely titled book would be his daughter.
But no matter how he thought about it, something was odd.
“Aurora’s novel…… is popular?”
The emperor glanced sideways.
A bookshelf took up one wall of the reception room. On it were all the novels Aurora had written in the past, neatly lined up.
Since they were his daughter’s novels, he had read them all at least once, but to be blunt, they weren’t particularly well written.
Still, it wasn’t as if she were committing a crime, and it was far better than falling into some strange hobby.
So he had let her do as she pleased.
And yet Aurora’s book had become a bestseller?
The emperor narrowed his eyes and stared at the empress.
“There’s a secret, isn’t there?”
The tip of the empress’s finger paused for the briefest moment as she turned the page.
It was only a fleeting instant.
But the emperor didn’t miss it.
“As expected.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You just stopped.”
“The page simply wouldn’t turn.”
“Empress.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“You have a habit of becoming excessively calm when you’re lying.”
Only then did the empress take her eyes off the book and meet the emperor’s gaze.
A faint smile rested on her lips.
“Your Majesty can sometimes be sharp about the most useless details.”
“Useless details?”
“This is Aurora’s secret.”
“A secret?”
The emperor’s expression darkened.
“Does that mean she’s been doing something she needs to hide from me?”
“It’s nothing that serious.”
The empress lightly brushed the book cover with her fingertips.
“She’s just, for the first time, co-writing a story with someone else.”
“Someone else.”
As the emperor tried to guess who that might be, one face came to mind.
The slave Aurora had recently been throwing a fit over, demanding that his ownership be transferred.
The traitor who defied the imperial command and let the witch escape.
“That slave?”
“You catch on quickly.”
“Hmm.”
The emperor let out a low groan.
So that was why she had been clamoring for that slave—she’d been secretly working on something like this.
He had already heard from Aither and Aslan that the man was capable as a knight, but did he also have a knack for novel writing?
“Please pretend not to know until Aurora tells you herself.”
“…Very well.”
Though he wasn’t pleased, Kaizel reluctantly let it go at the empress’s request.
-Knock, knock.
It was then.
A cautious knocking sound came from outside the reception room.
A servant’s voice followed.
“Your Majesty. Sir Richard, commander of the Imperial Knights’ Second Division, is requesting an audience.”
“Richard?”
The emperor’s eyebrows rose slightly.
It was extremely rare for Richard to come all the way to the inner palace reception room.
Could something urgent have happened?
“Show him in.”
The door opened.
Richard entered.
He bowed respectfully before the emperor and empress.
“I greet Your Majesty and Her Majesty the Empress.”
“What brings you here, sir? Has there been some problem?”
“It’s not a problem. I only have something to report.”
“A report?”
“Today, in the Second Division’s training grounds, I sparred with the slave knight.”
The emperor’s expression stiffened.
It was the very name he had just been discussing with the empress.
“And?”
Richard fell silent for a moment.
A very brief silence.
Yet even that was enough for the emperor to sense that this would not be an ordinary report.
“I lost.”
The air in the reception room froze.
The empress’s eyes widened slightly.
“What did you say?”
“I lost to the slave knight in a spar. Utterly, to the point where I couldn’t even lay a finger on him.”
The emperor did not answer for a while.
Richard was not the type to joke.
More importantly, he was even less likely to casually mention his own defeat before the emperor.
That made the statement all the more serious.
“So.”
The emperor’s voice grew more solemn.
“You didn’t come here to brag about losing to a slave, did you?”
Richard bowed his head respectfully again.
“I would like to place him among the knights under my command.”
Richard’s thinking was simple.
If Aurora refused, he would simply appeal to the emperor.
He was far too valuable a man to be reduced to nothing more than holding a pen.