Chapter 5
The most magnificent garden in the deepest part of the imperial palace, Roseville.
It was a place where the rose-loving empress had gathered all kinds of roses collected from across the continent.
The welcome banquet for Blanc was being held there, a place that was never opened to the public except on extraordinary occasions.
The nobles made up all sorts of stories about it.
No one within the palace was unaware of the relationship between Empress Berfin and Consort Rahellin.
Like water and oil.
Like cats and dogs.
A lawful wife and a mistress.
They were all phrases referring to the empress and the consort.
That was why, when word spread that Prince Roen, the consort's son, would be welcomed in the garden of the empress who had lost her only son, Crown Prince Gavin,
people were aghast.
Vieta sat on the roof of a building near Roseville and looked down over the banquet hall.
She didn't know why the empress had opened her garden, but laughter kept erupting throughout the banquet hall.
Blooming roses worthy of the nickname ‘Queen of May,’ along with noblewomen and young ladies dressed in splendid finery.
And nobles who walked among them with their chins held high, as though flaunting their power.
The whole scene looked like a ticking time bomb that could explode at any moment.
“Fulcare Lash de Drape, the Grand Archmage, is entering.”
When the gatekeeper guarding the entrance called out, the bustling banquet hall fell silent in an instant.
Some nobles tilted their heads, wondering if they had heard wrong.
And with good reason—the decision for Fulcare to attend this banquet had only been made yesterday,
so his name clearly hadn't been on the original guest list.
At Fulcare's unexpected appearance, the expressions of some nobles stiffened, while all the noblewomen opened their fans to hide their faces and looked him over.
“Chief Fulcare is attending today's banquet too?”
“I had no idea either. I never expected to meet him here.”
“If I'd known, I would have brought my daughter even if I'd had to force her to come.”
Fulcare ignored the whispers around him and took up a position in one corner of the banquet hall.
As people gradually gathered around him, Fulcare held a champagne glass and entertained them with a relaxed smile.
Blink, blink.
Vieta blinked at the sudden sense of unfamiliarity.
It had been several years since she had last seen Fulcare attend a banquet.
Vieta hated politics and power struggles,
and Fulcare, who knew that better than anyone, never brought up such matters with her.
‘No, why is that woman here again?’
Vieta narrowed her eyes when she saw a waddling noblewoman with a face like a bulldog approach Fulcare.
At the sight of her standing like a hen with all its feathers puffed up, everyone else beside Fulcare lowered their heads and avoided her.
“Hello, Chief.”
And as though the reactions around her were only natural, the noblewoman spoke to Fulcare without a moment's hesitation.
Women were forbidden from speaking first at banquets, but that sort of thing wasn't important to this lady.
Delie Catherine de Verte.
The nobles weren't foolish enough to rebel against the Third Prince's close associate and the unofficial matchmaker of political and financial circles.
“Ah, if it isn't Countess Verte.”
Fulcare received Countess Verte without a care.
“I trust you've been well. Thanks to your dedication, Chief, the Empire seems to be flourishing, which is reassuring.”
“You flatter me. This is all thanks to His Majesty the Emperor's grace, not mine.”
After the formal greetings ended, Countess Verte opened her fan.
“Hee hee hee. I've heard an interesting rumor about you. They say you've started seeing someone. Is that true?”
“As if I could.”
“Isn't it? There's been a rumor going around that you were getting rather intimate with a woman in public in the eastern district.”
“Well, if I ever acquire someone dear to me, I shall make sure you're the first person I tell, Countess.”
Fulcare's brow moved ever so slightly as he spoke with a polite, good-natured smile and studied nonchalance.
That slight twitch of his brow was a habit of Fulcare's whenever he was flustered.
Yet Vieta was no less flustered than Fulcare.
She had expected to be found out someday, but she hadn't expected to attract attention so soon.
Apparently, her pink hair was the problem.
She hadn't been particularly drawn to any color, so she had tried pink once, but it had clearly been a reckless attempt.
Vieta was naturally blonde.
Her hair was so pale that it looked white in the sunlight.
That was why, no matter what color she dyed it, it always came out far too vivid.
Vieta absolutely could not let anyone discover her identity.
Whether the rumors about her were good or bad, they were already spreading, so she had to dye her hair another color and erase her presence as quickly as possible.
“I would appreciate that.”
After the formal conversation ended, Countess Verte continued holding Fulcare captive for quite some time.
The countess's truly unusual behavior stirred not only Vieta but the other nobles around them as well.
She spoke to anyone and everyone, but she never held on to one person for that long.
A minute or two at most? Countess Verte was a woman who simply exchanged greetings and left.
Curious about what they were discussing,
Vieta strained her ears as hard as she could, but the countess and Fulcare were standing so close together and speaking so quietly that she couldn't make out what they were saying.
The two of them exchanged words in secret.
“As I mentioned, there are many young ladies who would love to speak with you even once, Chief, so I'll be waiting for good news.”
Countess Verte snapped her fan shut.
Apparently conscious of the eyes around her, she ended the conversation in a much louder voice than before, mentioning her specialty—matchmaking.
No sooner had Countess Verte moved away from Fulcare than the gatekeeper's booming voice rang out,
“His Highness Prince Roen, the Empire's Little Sun, and Lady Iseria, daughter of the chief of the blue-eared elves, are entering!”
Iseria, looking truly dazzling, appeared in the banquet hall with her arm linked through the prince's.
*
The reactions of those who saw Iseria were divided.
"Oh, Lady Iseria."
"Prince Roen must be a man of great virtue."
"She is truly beautiful and overflowing with grace."
There were those who praised Iseria,
"An elf is still an elf, no matter what. They can never mingle with humans."
"They certainly are beautiful, but all elves look rather alike."
and those who spoke ill of her.
Vieta's mouth turned bitter when Iseria was insulted because of Vieta.
“…Will she really be all right?”
Not only that, but Iseria's hesitant manner when Vieta had gone to ask her to be her banquet partner weighed heavily on Vieta's mind.
Despite Fulcare's insistence that nothing was wrong, Vieta had spent all of yesterday searching for elves in the capital. There had to be circumstances concerning the elves that humans didn't know about.
But she had found nothing.
After dozens of rounds of sickle work and sweeping, all she had heard was that their chief had changed.
‘Still, it's fortunate I got even this.’
Vieta looked at the small leaf attached to the hilt of her dagger.
This leaf, distinctive for its three-way split, was a pass that allowed entry into the elves' World Tree.
She had obtained the leaf at the last house she visited.
She had to clear four days' worth of manure piled up in the shed right away, but the elf who lived there was pregnant.
Her husband was a traveling peddler who wouldn't return home for another two days.
Vieta wanted to divert a river like some demigod and clean out the shed, but unfortunately, there was no river.
Poor households sometimes used animal feces and urine as fertilizer, so it seemed a waste to simply let it run off.
In fact, that elf wasn't exactly well dressed.
With no other option, Vieta had to push all that manure out with a shovel, and the smell nearly killed her.
After going through all that misery, the elf had given her this leaf in gratitude.
Saying that she would never return to the World Tree in her lifetime,
“Still, I was able to find a life of my own here.”
Standing with the red sunset behind her as she waited for her husband, she had looked incredibly happy.
‘Iseria would be so beautiful if she smiled like that.’
Vieta let out a deep sigh.
*
Elves were beautiful.
Moreover, Iseria was the one who had defeated the Demon King alongside the hero.
That fact alone overwhelmed everyone in the banquet hall.
Their attitudes shifted from contempt and disdain to mere indifference, or even respect.
Blanc could feel the gazes directed at him subtly changing.
Blanc walked along the path that stretched straight from the entrance.
At the end of the white path stood a table more lavish than the others.
The table was decorated in red and white to suit the empress's taste, with seven chairs around it.
Two of them belonged to Blanc and Iseria.
“….”
Blanc's stride gradually slowed as he walked along the path.
The closer he came to the table, and the more the gazes around him clung to him,
the more the garden itself felt like a prison made of rose thorns.
“If you keep looking so frightened, you'll be eaten alive in no time.”
Elves had beautiful voices, too.
Blanc slowly turned his head and looked at Iseria.
An elegant curve ran from her forehead to her nose, from her nose past her lips, and down to the tip of her chin.
Her softly gleaming golden hair and eyes that brought a forest to mind.
The longer one looked at her, the more her appearance inspired admiration.
“…What do you mean by that?”
The elf's posture, steadfastly staring straight ahead without yielding to the blatant gazes around her, was remarkably composed even compared with that of royalty.
“Did you really return, Your Highness, without giving any thought to the matter?”
Yet the elf's words were direct.
“That isn't the case.”
The news that Crown Prince Gavin had died had been a great shock to Blanc as well.
Gavin had been kind, thoughtful, intelligent, and brave since childhood.
Blanc had been unable to accept that his idolized older brother had died so pointlessly.
Before he had even managed to master his emotions, word came that the emperor was summoning him, leaving Blanc with an even worse headache.
It had been obvious that his return to the Empire would cause far more upheaval than he had expected.
“Then don't let yourself grow weak.”
The elf's eyes looked strangely resolute.