Don’t tell me there’s poison in this...?
There was no exact record of where the poison had been slipped in. It had only been a fragment of a line, mentioned in passing. But it was the kind of detail that could be fatal to this body of mine, so I couldn’t exactly let it slide either.
What little appetite I’d had plummeted straight through the floor.
I couldn’t bring the food to my mouth, and I didn’t put the spoon down either. Caught in that awkward halfway state, hesitating, I heard Mother ask carefully,
“Is it hard to eat? Shall I have them make you something else?”
My shoulders twitched at that.
Given the choice I’d have said I didn’t want to eat at all, but with those eyes brimming with worry fixed on me, turning the food down was no easy thing.
And at the same time, every gaze in the room apart from Mother’s felt like a sharpened thorn aimed at my life.
What if the person who poisoned it is standing right here?
I swallowed dryly and set my mind spinning at full tilt.
Eating what I was holding felt far too risky, but refusing it outright might draw suspicion. Wasn’t there some decent way to dodge this?
“...I’d rather have fruit than soup right now.”
After a good deal of deliberating, I found my compromise. If I could neither eat it nor send it away, the answer was to replace it.
Simply asking for a different dish was no use, since they’d obviously poison that too, so whatever came next had to be something nobody could easily tamper with. Unprocessed fruit, for instance.
Cook it or slice it onto a plate and something could be smeared over the surface, but with the peel still on, it ought to be relatively safe.
Just in case it looked suspicious, I spread my arms as wide as I could and explained it exactly the way a child would.
“I want a basket with thiiis much piled up in it.”
At that, Mother smiled gently and stroked my hair.
Honestly, she’d have been well within her rights to scold me for being fussy about my food, but it seemed watching her sick son act a little spoiled pleased her more than any of that.
Mother asked the physician whether fruit was all right for me to eat, then said we should lie down for a while until the food arrived, and carefully settled me back onto the bed.
A pale, graceful hand patted the blanket, drawn right up to my chin, in a steady rhythm.
“My baby, Mama will stay right here beside you.”
Mother’s presence felt more steadying than anyone else’s and, at the very same time, like the most precarious touch in the world.
My kind, loving mother. A woman far too delicate to survive in this merciless palace.
Meeting that warm gaze made one corner of my chest ache.
Because Celine Fridrasil, sitting right there in front of me, was the first victim of the poisonings.
In the original novel, Michel had been an ambiguous sort of existence.
A sickly body he’d been saddled with from birth, a political background worth nothing at all, and a precarious footing within the imperial palace.
His mind was fairly brilliant, but that alone fell hopelessly short of putting him anywhere near the other princes.
The First Prince’s mother, Empress Isabella, came from a distinguished noble house that had held its legitimacy intact for generations, and the Second Prince’s mother, Consort Lavina, came from a merchant noble family that had amassed enormous capital and connections.
Both were women without a single shortcoming as mothers of a nation meant to lead the empire. Set against them, the Third Prince Michel’s mother, Celine, had nothing remarkable about her whatsoever. She was a common-born nobody with no title and no fortune to her name.
As for how a woman like Celine ever managed to become the third mother of the nation... that had to be approached from a thoroughly sentimental angle.
There was exactly one reason Celine, whose circumstances were far poorer than those of the other two, had been able to become an imperial consort. It was because she held the title of the only woman who had ever moved the Emperor’s heart.
The Emperor had always treated marriage as pure political arithmetic, and Celine was the first and last person he loved without doing the sums.
Then and now, the story of an Emperor with a heart of iron courting a commoner woman so desperately was famous enough to have spread to every corner of the empire.
It was a fairy tale: a mere commoner claiming the seat of an imperial consort through a love match. Women everywhere dreamed of romance because of it, and men wondered just how much favour she must be enjoying.
With one voice, everyone called Celine a fortunate woman.
The reality, however, was neither that dazzling nor that romantic.
The Emperor cherished and loved Celine in earnest. Whenever fine cloth or jewels were presented in tribute, they always went to her first, and once the burden of state affairs was done for the day, he always made his way to Celine’s side.
Michel was born a mere eight months after their wedding, so just how fiercely that love had burned hardly needs spelling out.
But the imperial palace was hardly a place where love alone kept you alive, was it?
No matter how firmly the Emperor’s heart was turned toward Celine, that didn’t make consideration from everyone else some self-evident conclusion.
The Emperor wasn’t the only one living in the palace. There were the Empress and the consorts, and the formidable houses standing behind them. Amid court intrigue tangled with countless interests and calculated schemes, Celine was always the easiest target.
Isabella and Lavina each had maternal factions to hold the other in check. Celine had no foundation of any kind.
And it was simple law that a child inherited whatever its mother possessed. Michel naturally became the weak one.
If he’d simply been a useless prince, he might have lived a more peaceful life than you’d expect. Sickly, without backing, and lower in the line of succession than both of the other princes, he was in no position to be anyone’s rival.
Unfortunately, though, Michel’s mind was sharp, and Celine had the Emperor’s favour.
Those two reasons alone turned Michel from a useless prince into a possibility that needed eliminating.
The cold imperial palace never became a nest for the young Michel. The title he was given was Prince, but the treatment he received was no different from that of a powerless bastard.
There was no telling whether what hid behind an attendant’s beaming smile was goodwill or murderous intent. One word out of place and rumours piled up like snow. That was simply how the palace worked.
In circumstances like that, the only person Michel could lean on with any peace of mind was his mother.
“Mother was my one and only world.”
At twenty, Michel laid his own history out like a grumble for the princess who had been dragged here as a hostage.
“She had such a soft, gentle heart that she could never really adjust to the palace, and she was hurt again and again. On the days I saw her cry, I’d promise myself I would grow up quickly and make sure nobody could ever torment her again.”
“Not that a son lying in a sickbed could be any help at all.”
It wasn’t a cheerful story, yet Michel was smiling faintly as he turned the memory over. Not the mechanical smile he wore as a matter of course, but an expression with real human warmth in it.
“There were times... when I thought my very existence was a burden, and that it would honestly be better if Mother abandoned me and ran far, far away on her own. I thought it wouldn’t be so bad for her to have a new, healthy son who could actually win the succession fight, and be happy.”
The words were self-mocking, but his voice couldn’t have been calmer. If the listener hadn’t been paying close attention, they might easily have mistaken it for ordinary small talk.
“But Mother chose the hard road instead: protecting her young, sick son. She was always promising me she’d grow firm for my sake, like ground that hardens after the rain.”
“When I was held in my mother’s arms, there was nothing in the world I feared. It really... felt like I could overcome anything at all.”
Every last one of Michel’s sentences ended in the past tense.
As though he had once held a fistful of glittering sand, and was now spreading his palm open to show that nothing was left in it.
He knew better than anyone that remembering those moments didn’t mean he could ever return to them. There was no way to get back sand that a fierce tide had dragged out to sea.
“...And then my brothers brought my small world down in a single moment. Poisoning is the sort of thing that happens when you’re at your most unguarded, so seeing it with my own eyes came as quite a shock.”
The mother he was recalling no longer existed in this world. In place of her warmth, what Michel remembered was a corpse gone cold after swallowing poison.
In those hollowed-out, sunset-coloured eyes, he held the heroine — Iris.
“Can you guess why I brought up my mother so suddenly?”
“...I’m not sure. Because you feel close enough to me now to share something that deep?”
“Mm, I can’t say that’s completely wrong. But let’s call it half right. What I wanted to say is that you resemble my mother a great deal, noona.”
One could argue it was the single worst thing a man could say to a woman, but neither of them pointed that out.
Iris mulled it over with some difficulty, then answered in earnest.
“Forgive me if this is rude, but I don’t think I’m soft and gentle the way your mother was, Your Highness.”
That drew a small burst of laughter out of Michel.
“Naturally I don’t mean your temperaments are alike. Not that there’s nothing similar about them at all, but...”
Then Michel tidied away what little laughter was left in him and went on in a voice gone lower and far more serious.
“You’re a precarious creature who can’t blend into this place, always drifting on the outside... and the only person here who isn’t my enemy.”
He looked quietly at Iris, who had gone stiff as though lost for words. Then, slowly, he lifted her hand as if to escort her, folding his own beneath it so the back of hers lay on top.
The princess’s hand was fine and smooth, without a single callus from rough work, but the edges of her nails were ragged, as though her nerves had been badly worn down all this time.
Michel steadied his breathing for a moment, then slowly set out what he truly felt.
“...I don’t want you, as you are, to be broken in their hands.”
He had been consistent all his life in his attitude that it made no difference to him how the world turned, and yet this once he was showing a stubborn conviction of his own.
Michel rested his forehead against the back of her hand like a knight swearing an oath. There was a faint sorrow about the reverent bow of his head.
“I won’t lose anything so pointlessly again. I can’t stand being left with the regret of not having saved someone.”
A man who has tasted regret doesn’t hesitate.
The prince who had held his breath just to live through today declared that he would draw his sword for your tomorrow.
