Leone watched Hyderlin’s back go still, and smiled.
He knew exactly which words would make her turn around.
“You are not the King’s daughter, after all, are you?”
Hyderlin turned without thinking.
And found herself looking directly into Leone Collozzo’s smiling face.
Hyderlin’s mother had been a handmaid. Through the late King’s vigorous insistence, she had been elevated to queen, and five months after the wedding, she had given birth to Hyderlin.
A child conceived before marriage was difficult to acknowledge. There had been those who suspected the queen of infidelity, citing the fact that Hyderlin bore no resemblance to the King. But the King had ignored all of it and recognized Hyderlin as his daughter.
Now there’s a girl who takes after her father!
Yes—I am your daughter. I am not proof of anything shameful. I belong to you.
Hyderlin. You are going to make a splendid knight.
Yes. I have your gift for the sword, Father—it’s in my blood. I am the daughter of the Warrior King. And so I should be the one to inherit your place, to become the next—
When Chesa is crowned, be his knight. Protect your brother and protect this country.
Hyderlin had felt, somewhere deep inside, as though the words had simply stopped coming. The King had smiled at her with gentle affection.
I am glad to have acknowledged you as my daughter.
The King had never once thought of Hyderlin as a potential successor. The only path laid before her was to become Chesa’s knight. That was all he ever said.
Hyderlin had never asked why. Instead, she had constructed the reason herself.
My circumstances of birth are complicated in ways Chesa’s are not. That makes Chesa the appropriate one to inherit the throne. It’s better for the legitimacy of Lotsa’s royal line that way.
That must be all there was to it.
Whatever the truth of it, she was a princess. The King had recognized her as one.
“…I don’t know what you mean.”
Hyderlin said it, barely. But it was the wrong answer. She should have ignored Leone’s words and walked out. Instead, she had responded.
Leone’s smile spread like something slowly unfolding.
“Playing ignorant, are we? Or are you genuinely unaware? Doesn’t matter either way. I know that you are not the King’s daughter.”
“…Do you have proof?”
“Of course. Remarkably certain proof, at that. It’s rather a long story, so please—have a seat.”
Hyderlin stood motionless for a long moment. She pushed down what remained of her pride—or what had been her pride—and returned to her seat.
Leone Collozzo sat across from her with a smile that covered his entire face. An expression she found thoroughly objectionable.
“A few years back, I met a man. In the gambling den, as it happens. He had gambled himself into absolute ruin and had run up an enormous debt on top of it. I was wondering what use I might make of him, when I came across an interesting piece of information—he and the queen had once been quite close.”
“……”
“He said that if I gave him a bit of time, he’d go to the queen and beg her for money, and he’d bring it back. I thought, why not—and when I let him go, what does he return with but a piece of genuine royal treasure. So it turned out the truth about him and the queen was no exaggeration.”
Hyderlin felt, without warning, the distant pull of a particular memory.
How dare you come back here! Go! I told you never to show your face again!
Marcela.
Take your money and get out!
Once, long ago, Hyderlin had witnessed her mother in a heated argument with a stranger. She had held the memory of the man’s dark, haunted eyes.
That evening, her mother had wept for a long time—holding Hyderlin’s hands tightly, praying as though the two of them had committed some terrible sin.
One would have had to be a fool not to sense what was beneath the surface that day. Hyderlin had chosen to be a willing fool.
“After that, the two of us got on quite well. He played the shill in my gambling halls, I took the money in, and when there was time we’d share a drink. We drank together the night the late King and Queen passed away too, as it happened. And that night, I heard a very candid confession.”
Leone smiled pleasantly.
“It turned out, he had been the queen’s sweetheart in her youth. He told me that running away when he heard she was carrying his child had been the regret of his entire life. He said it was his dying wish to see his daughter just once—so I agreed to arrange it. Yes—that was, in fact, the whole purpose of this evening. A reunion between father and daughter.”
At that moment, there was a knock at the door.
“Perfect timing. That must be him. Come in!”
At Leone’s permission, the door swung open and a middle-aged man walked in. Hyderlin knew that face from somewhere.
Ah. The man from her memory.
He was middle-aged, tall, with long limbs that recalled a spider. His appearance was unkempt, but his features were sharp and regular. His eyes—deep-set, shadowed—were melancholy, and the cheeks beneath his prominent cheekbones were hollow and rough with several days of stubble.
And his hair blazed red.
The man stood and looked at Hyderlin in silence. His shadowed eyes were startlingly both foreign and familiar.
Dark irises.
The same ones she had seen in her mother. The same ones she looked at in the mirror every single day.
The man opened his mouth awkwardly.
“Your Highness. You’ve grown so much.”
“……”
“You may not remember me, but…we have met once before. I am the late Queen’s brother—that is to say, I am your maternal uncle.”
“……”
“I am…glad. To see you again like this.”
Uncle? He said father just a moment ago.
Hyderlin turned her stiffened neck with a grinding sensation to look at Leone.
“What is this. He’s my uncle. You lied.”
“I have not lied.”
Leone’s smile was a strange one. The moment Hyderlin saw it, the inside of her head went white.
Leone flicked a hand at the red-haired man—a gesture that said, that will do for now, I’ll call for you later.
The man hesitated, then gave a short nod. He went back out through the door.
Leone rested his chin on his interlaced fingers and looked at Hyderlin. His face was alive with the effort of suppressing laughter.
Hyderlin managed to speak as though through a collapsed throat.
“…Uncle, he said.”
“Heh.”
“My father is my uncle—no. My father is—no, my…this is a lie.”
“Ha.”
“It’s a lie.”
“Haha.”
“This is a lie.”
“Hahahahahaha!”
Leone could restrain himself no longer. He tipped his head back and laughed—a bright, ringing, completely inappropriate laugh that shot all the way up to the ceiling.
“What reason could I possibly have to lie?”
Leone dabbed at the corners of his laughing eyes with his sleeve. He pushed back from his chair and walked with a light step around to the other side of the table.
He came to stand behind Hyderlin. Her red curls—that hereditary mark which had been the first thing people used against her—brushed across the back of his hand. The straight line of her shoulders was trembling finely, like a birch tree in wind.
Leone placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t shake so much. You will remain the Princess of Lotsa.”
He slid his hand forward and drew her quietly into his arms—as though she were already his to hold. He rested his chin against her shoulder.
“If you will consent to marry me.”
This, then, was a threat.
If you do not wish your secret to be exposed—marry me.
Lotsa was a religious society. The Order did not recognize the existence of illegitimate children. Adultery was also subject to strict punishment. Every illegitimate child and every child of adultery was destined for damnation.
If the truth of her origins became known, the Order would brand her a sinner by birth, and the nobility would denounce her with full voice.
Not a single drop of royal blood in her veins, and she spent all this time playing the princess! The audacity! Your Majesty—have that wretch executed at once!
Hyderlin Biche would be destroyed—socially, politically, and in body.
Her head would be cut from her shoulders and her body left to rot unburied.
She would be tossed into the gutter for the crows and stray dogs to quarrel over.
Every person in Lotsa—noble to pauper—would laugh at her, point at her, curse her, spit at her, mock her.
It would not matter what kind of life she had lived, what kind of reputation she had built, what sacrifices she had made.
Her life would be judged entirely by the circumstances of her birth.
Hyderlin forced words past her locked throat.
“If I marry you—you’ll keep the secret?”
“Faithfully. More faithfully than anyone. I’d have to—otherwise, my own children would never be entered into the royal genealogy.”
Leone gave a small, delighted laugh and pressed his lips against the shell of her ear, as if he were already her husband.
Hyderlin’s chest was heaving. Her heart was slamming against her sternum hard enough to break it. Her whole body was still trembling.
She pressed her teeth together and dropped her gaze to the surface of the table.
There was no choice.
She had to endure.
“And if we’re lucky, someone carrying my blood might become king someday—not a drop of true royal blood in their veins. Isn’t that the most delicious part of all?”
Endure.
“You and I are alike, Your Highness. We cover our born vulgarity with infamy, drape ourselves in expensive things, force costly foods into our stomachs.”
Endure—
“But the blood running through your veins is worth considerably less than a hangman’s. Or a butcher’s.”
My blood is worth less?
Me?
I am a princess. I am the King’s sister. I am the King’s knight, the King’s Captain of the Royal Guard.
If not for you, that is exactly how I would have lived for the rest of my life. It is your fault—only yours—that I cannot!
She could endure no longer.
Hyderlin snatched up the silver knife.
“You’re right. Perhaps even filthier and more common than I am—gkh—”
Leone’s throat met the knife before he could finish the sentence.
