Chapter 7

“A Medal of Merit?”

The Medal of Merit was an honor awarded to those who had rendered distinguished service to the safety of the nation, comparable to the Medal of Military Merit bestowed for valor in war.

“What has our family done to receive a Medal of Merit?”

Adel merely assumed that Ethan must have done something for the Empire without her knowledge.

“Adel, it seems the waterway system you built has caused quite a stir even in the imperial palace.”

“Pardon?”

“Surprising, isn’t it? I am quite surprised myself right now.”

“But what does a waterway system have to do with service to the nation, that they would bestow such a medal?”

“As you know, many of the Empire’s people fall ill from lack of clean water. And the year before last, a great plague swept through because of it.”

Hearing Ethan’s explanation, she nodded.

“The imperial palace will be sending someone soon.”

“From the imperial palace?”

“Yes.”

“What an incomparable honor for our family.”

“His Highness the Crown Prince says he wishes to learn about the waterway system, so he will send someone suitable for the task. Most likely it will not be someone of low rank.”

Adel did not show it outwardly, but inwardly she was quite pleased. It felt as though someone had acknowledged her love for Herbron, and for the first time in her life she felt like a truly useful person.

“We must prepare the estate properly.”

She was thinking about how she might explain the matter to His Highness more easily. That was why she failed to notice Ethan, seated across from her, rubbing his brow.

For him to rub his brow meant he had encountered a very difficult situation.

“So, about that, Adel….”

At the sound of Ethan’s voice, Adel was pulled from her thoughts for a moment. And when she looked at him intently, he averted his gaze from her.

“I was thinking—what if we said Anna first conceived of the waterway system?”

* * *

The Hessenia imperial house had flourished with immense wealth built upon a natural environment blessed by heaven. Naturally, the scale of the imperial palace and the splendor of its exterior were beyond words. Enoch followed behind Jacques as he walked through that palace as if it were his own home. He seemed like a part of the palace. No—sacrilegiously enough, it felt as though he were the master of all of it.

“Welcome.”

The Crown Prince greeted Jacques today as well with a face utterly free of shadow. With radiant golden hair and the red eyes that were the symbol of the imperial house, he had been born in the same year as Jacques, as if by fate.

“I greet His Highness the Crown Prince. I see Her Highness the Crown Princess is present today as well.”

Jacques was seeing the Crown Princess for the first time.

She was the woman of the great Millium family who, two years ago, had dreamed of the Empire’s future through the manifestation of her power and then, sure enough, taken to her bed.

Whether the talk of illness was no lie, she was a woman who seemed not merely pale but almost transparent. Her name was Renelianne, was it?

Though illness was written all over her, she was very beautiful and every line of her was elegant. If there were a school that raised empresses, she looked like someone who would have ranked first in every course and arrived at this place.

The Crown Princess nodded without a word, then gave Jacques a bright smile.

“Yes, we meet for the first time.”

“Please speak comfortably.”

“For a private matter, you are the son of the late Emperor, so I cannot.”

Jacques raised his left eyebrow as if it were of no consequence and responded with a slight smile.

“I asked His Highness the Crown Prince for an audience because I wished to see you, Duke.”

“I am hardly a face worth seeing at the cost of straining yourself, but….”

“You are modest. Seeing you in person, you are indeed worthy of being the inspiration of every bard in the Empire.”

Rene could not finish speaking before she began to cough severely. And the Crown Prince looked at her with a pitiful gaze. When the coughing subsided, Rene immediately wore a calm face and smiled gently.

“I have a younger sister.”

At the sudden topic, Jacques kept his smile and tilted his head.

“Her name is Adel. Adelaide Millium.”

“I did not know House Millium still had an unmarried lady.”

“No. My sister is married to the head of the Herbron estate.”

The more they conversed, the harder Jacques found it to grasp the intent behind the Crown Princess’s words. There had to be some other purpose in calling a already-married sister by her maiden name. Just then, the Crown Prince spoke on with a familiar smile.

“We intend to send someone to the Herbron estate soon.”

“Directly from the imperial house?”

“Yes. Word has reached us that the household of the lord of Herbron has done a very fine thing for the Empire.”

“If His Highness the Crown Prince is praising their merit to this degree, they must have done something truly remarkable.”

At that moment, the Crown Princess cut into their conversation.

“I would like you to go to Herbron, Duke.”

It was not only Jacques who was surprised by her words. But the Crown Prince quickly changed his expression and feigned composure. Something was off, but Jacques asked without letting his smile fade.

“Me, Your Highness?”

“Yes. If one of the only two dukes in the Hessenia Empire goes to Herbron in person, would the meaning of the Medal of Merit not shine all the brighter?”

They said House Millium was the last remaining proof of the Empire’s myth, but she was truly a strange woman—one who might well hold ten legends and it would not be surprising.

Jacques looked at the Crown Prince. But nothing could be read from his face.

“May I ask what this remarkable deed is, that it merits a Medal of Merit?”

Jacques asked the Crown Princess, but the answer came from Crown Prince Jeno.

“They say waterway facilities for the estate’s people have been installed throughout the land. It would be best if you went and inspected the waterway system yourself, Duke, and learned how it was constructed.”

Until now, Jacques had been deliberately and completely excluded from the affairs of the imperial house. Moreover, the Crown Prince looked as though he was hearing for the first time, in this very room, the Crown Princess’s request for Jacques to go to the estate. And yet he changed his words as if it had all been planned beforehand, which was hardly reassuring. But an order from the imperial house could not be refused.

“When would it be best for me to leave?”

Jacques asked the Crown Prince, but this time the answer came from the Crown Princess.

“As soon as possible. It would be best if you left within three days.”

“Three days….”

A duke had his own estate. For him to tour another’s estate required many procedures. Three days was a tight schedule to handle all of it.

“The imperial house will handle all necessary matters, so you need only treat it as an outing, Duke.”

At the words “treat it as an outing,” Jacques had to contort his face to keep from laughing aloud.

What could be so urgent, Your Highness the Crown Princess? But he did not let it show and nodded.

“I will depart within three days.”

At his words, the Crown Princess smiled very brightly. That sight looked exactly like a pure young lady who knew nothing of politics, and Jacques had to narrow his eyes.

The three of them went on to exchange a few more trivial topics, such as the weather.

“Your Highness, then I will take my leave now.”

“Do so. I have taken up too much of your time, Duke.”

“Not at all. Meeting Your Highness is my pleasure. On my way out, I will look in on my younger sibling.”

After Jacques left, the Crown Prince personally supported his wife and headed for her bedchamber.

“Seeing the Duke seems to have given you confidence. You ordered him to Herbron immediately.”

At the Crown Prince’s words, Rene smiled faintly.

“So now you have set your sights on him instead of me?”

“Did you not say yourself that this man could be trusted?”

“I did. But that does not mean I know every corner of his intentions. Does Your Highness not know well enough how the Duke has lived?”

Rene did not answer. It was something she knew well, but she did not have many options.

Rene had first met the Crown Prince at sixteen. As a woman of House Millium, she had long been treated as good as crown princess already.

It was perhaps only natural that the Crown Prince himself had escorted her at her debutante ball.

She had been wary, yet she could not help but fall in love with this man.

Unlike her, he was a person without a single spot of darkness. If Rene was a moon lonely in the dark, he was a sun blazing at midday. He was always gentle, warm, without a single sharp edge.

As a wounded puppy seeks a companion to press its flesh against, as a body in cold water seeks the hot sunlight, she was helplessly drawn to this man, her partner.

And yet she knew. That the moon and the sun can never coexist.

“If Your Highness would promise even now to take my sister as your wife, I would not need to know his intentions.”

“That again?”

It was something that could not happen in the Hessenia Empire. No one could say who had started it, but once an old rule becomes custom, and once it becomes custom, it cannot easily be changed.

The Empire was a nation bound by the order of its nobility. The custom of taking a wife’s sister as one’s wife after the wife’s death had long since vanished as barbaric. Hundreds of years had passed since the law created to prevent power from passing in the wrong direction had been codified. Which meant that two Milliums could not become the wives of a single emperor.

“That cannot be….”

“Yes, I know that all too well. So now I intend to keep a close watch on the Duke.”

Before she became crown princess and manifested her power, Rene had raised this matter every time she met the Crown Prince. But not once had he yielded on the matter of taking her sister as crown princess after her death. Yet Rene was desperate as well. After she died, her father would surely do whatever it took to arrange a marriage with the imperial family.

Of course, divorce was not easy for the nobles of the Empire. A union between nobles was not a matter for the parties themselves to decide. Except in cases where a spouse had committed a crime absolutely intolerable, divorce almost never came to pass.

What was worse was that a husband could demand a divorce from his wife, but the reverse was impossible. Even if a couple lived their whole lives without seeing each other because their relations were so bad, it was virtually impossible for a woman who had once put her name to a family to leave that family.