Still, instead of going out of my way to point out how suspicious it all was and letting the doubts grow, I kept quiet.
The fact that the other side had dressed everything up as coincidental accidents meant they had no intention of being caught.
If I kicked the hornets’ nest, they’d simply slip out through some plausible hole they’d prepared in advance.
They could push the story that I was just being oversensitive and imagining things, or else shove the responsibility onto somebody else entirely.
And in the course of that, the one most likely to be cut away first would be someone close to me.
The charge would be something like ‘failing to attend His Highness properly,’ I suppose? Handled wrong, this was a move that could cost me an ally while I was trying to remove an enemy.
It wouldn’t matter how unjust it was, or that it wasn’t even true. That’s what it means to be a prince without power.
The fact that they only come at me when I go out must mean the message is: don’t be noticed, live quietly.
Leave the bedroom and you’re exposed to danger. Drill that proposition into an ordinary child over and over and he’ll naturally grow frightened and start dreading going outside.
What they wanted was for me to go on burying myself in my bedroom and smothering my own presence, exactly as I had all through my years in a sickbed.
What have I even done? All I did was take one walk...
Live as though dead, or stay exposed to constant danger? Hand an average person that choice and most of them would take the former, the one that keeps them breathing.
Ivan had chosen the former too, no doubt, which was why he’d been steering me away from going out. As things stood, his judgment was the most sensible and the wisest.
“It’s all right, Ivan.”
But I already knew exactly what kind of ending waited at the far side of holding your breath and enduring.
I knew a man who mistook the territory his enemies permitted him for a safe zone, who had his limbs severed off one at a time until there was nothing left to lean on. I knew how a man ends when the only thing he’s barely managed to keep attached is his own life.
Smiling, I answered Ivan, whose face was creased with worry.
“I want to look through the books and pick them out myself. Let’s go to the library today.”
“Your Highness...”
Ivan’s lips moved as though he wanted to talk me out of it, then he seemed to change his mind and nodded, resolved.
“You’re right. Shutting yourself in your room out of fear of what might happen would only harm your health. I’ll see you safely there. So that Your Highness can go about with an easy mind.”
“Thank you. I don’t think I’ll be frightened, not with you here, Ivan.”
I said it with a smile, but honestly, the part about not being frightened was a lie. Which was exactly why I had to hurry, pushing myself as hard as the unease inside me ran deep.
I wanted to keep this method on hold till the very last if I could, but it’s come to this, so it’s do or die.
My run-in with Ignis had taught me a great many lessons.
That if you can win a strong person over and coax him along just right, nothing gives you more strength, but if you can’t properly control him, you end up at risk of being devoured yourself.
Having already tasted one bone-deep failure, I’d meant to avoid repeating the same thing wherever possible. But life, it seemed, simply refuses to roll along the way you intend.
There’s nothing for it but to try working on the other one.
If my death was fixed from the very start anyway, then I had to try something, anything. With nowhere left to retreat, I had nothing left to lose either. I slowly lifted my gaze and called to mind the goal I’d newly settled on.
Let’s go and see the First Prince.
To go and meet the other double-edged sword I’d left untouched.
The imperial library occupied a space broad enough to live up to its name.
Shelves high enough to look as though they touched the ceiling stood in neat, regular rows, and the books packed tight along them gave off the faint, distinctive scent of old paper.
The scale of it looked like more than anyone could possibly maintain, and yet the inside of the library was kept so clean that not a single speck of dust showed. In a hush where even footsteps seemed ready to ring out loud, my steps turned cautious all on their own.
There was a very small library in the Third Prince’s palace as well, but the one in the main palace was on a whole different level.
Even if I did nothing but read from now until the day I die, I don’t think I’d finish them all...
A library this size, kept as the exclusive preserve of the imperial family alone. Barely swallowing the sigh that tried to escape me, I walked on.
Coming all the way out to the far-off main palace, as I had today, was an extremely unusual event. To put it crudely, mine was a body that collapsed if it walked more than two thousand steps in a day.
The Third Prince, who until now had stayed meekly shut away, had turned up at the main palace. To whoever wanted me living quietly, the way I was moving around now would be quite the eyesore.
Once this news reached their ears, the storm that came afterward would be considerable, wouldn’t it?
Maybe this is the time I actually do get poisoned...
Gooseflesh rose of its own accord and my body gave a fine shiver. But I had no thought of backing down. I’d come here with my mind firmly made up.
According to what the original story told me, the First Prince loved books. Enough that, with only a touch of exaggeration, the place he happened to run into the heroine was always a library.
So today I intended to engineer a meeting that merely wore the face of coincidence.
The grown First Prince was, in every sense, the textbook image of a crown prince out of a romance fantasy novel.
Evenly brilliant at both scholarship and swordsmanship, charisma enough to crush another man’s opinion with a single word, and a cold temperament that matched his sharp features beautifully.
Right. If I put it all together and summed it up in a single phrase...
He’s the cold-blooded sort of male lead, without blood or tears in him.
There’s no need to explain at length. Just recall that scene from the latter half I thought back on once before, the standoff with Iris, and you’ll get the gist.
A man who mercilessly captured the woman he’d felt something for and threw her into a cell, and who, watching her heart crumble, offered not one word of comfort and settled the matter strictly by the law.
At first I’d still assumed that once his anger cooled he’d let her out right away.
Honestly, even without going as far as someone you love, wouldn’t you feel at least a flicker of pity for a person you’d actually known?
But when I got to the part where he didn’t give her a single mouthful of water for three straight days, until Iris finally collapsed from exhaustion, I started wondering if he was genuinely insane.
And right now I was on my way to meet that very cold-blooded creature. In the end, that fact had me thoroughly gloomy.
He might turn out to be an even harder opponent than Ignis...
For now all I could do was pray that his character wasn’t something he’d been born with.
Anyway, I must have passed about thirty of those endless bookcases before it happened. After a long, patient search, I finally spotted someone in that vast space.
At first I thought it was just another untidy stretch of shelving. The floor there was piled so thick with books that there wasn’t a bare patch to step on.
But the black shape snagged at the edge of my vision kept pulling at me, strangely insistent. It took me a moment to realize it was a person.
The boy sat with his back to the light, posture flawless, reading. Beyond the windows the long sunset spilled bright across the library, yet that one spot alone looked as though a dark shadow had been laid over it.
Flip.
His black hair was so black it seemed to drink the light, and with the glare behind him I couldn’t make out his face either.
But through that darkness, a pair of golden eyes shone vividly. The proof of thick blood that only the imperial family could be born with.
I held my breath without meaning to. There was no need to check who the boy was. First Prince Kailan. The exact person I’d been looking for.
On the surface, Kailan looked like nothing more than a bookish boy buried in a heap of volumes. And yet simply setting foot near him raised a chill so sharp it prickled across my skin.
A pressure that crushed the air flat. That sensation of instinct screaming at me not to come closer was something I’d already experienced once before.
Guess they really are brothers, if they’ve got that much in common?
I was about to glance back and check whether Ivan was holding up all right when I belatedly registered something off.
Come to think of it, why is he alone?
It was rare for a member of the imperial family to be by himself and this defenseless. Even the Third Prince, lowest in the pecking order, always had one attendant in tow, so someone of the First Prince’s standing ought to have three or so trailing after him.
And yet here he was in this enormous library, utterly alone.
It does make him easier to approach, so it works out in my favor...
Still, a table laid out too perfectly always leaves you with a faint bad taste. Suspicion was what came to me first, if anything.
Even so, I’m hardly in a position to be picky right now.
I forced the doubts to the back of my mind, ignored the sweat beading in my palms, and clenched my fists tight.
Naturally. As casually as possible. I’ve done this once already. So I can do it this time too.
Measuring the distance as it closed, I counted down in my head. Three, two, one...
Having somehow made it inside his personal space, I put on a bright, bouncy voice and opened my mouth.
“Wow... did you read all of these piled up here by yourself?”
I made my eyes sparkle at the stack of books I assumed Kailan had gotten through.
On the Governance of the Empire. Casebook of Noble Law. The Relationship Between Penal Systems and Rule...
Every title I skimmed was bloodcurdling in its own way. Reading that sort of thing while he was still this wet behind the ears made him frightening in a different way from Ignis. Outwardly, though, I let none of it show and smiled brightly.
“You must really love reading. So do I.”
Up close, the face that had been hidden in shadow came clearly into view.
Setting aside that indifferent, frigid air, he had the kind of looks that drew an admiring breath out of you, exactly as a male lead should. The sort of face that made it click, actually — with that to work with, a garbage personality was apparently fine.
“It’s so nice to meet you. My name is Michel. You’re Kailan hyungnim, aren’t you?”
Having gotten the conversation started, I went straight into a greeting. From time immemorial, leaving a good first impression had always been the best way to build a relationship.
Maybe because the place was so quiet, my voice carried clearly even without being raised. Clearly enough that the sound of me swallowing came through just as well.
All right, whatever reaction you throw at me, I’ll return it faithfully. Bring it on! I looked at him with firm resolve in my eyes.
What came back, however, was...
“...”
“...”
...no reaction at all, to the point of being awkward.
