Chapter 1

1. Two Winters

The bitter dawn of winter.

At the far end of the most secluded alley in Garen Sobre’s slums, a signboard hanging from a rotting fence creaked.

「 Labri Relief Home 」

Sonya Leblanc struck a match with numb hands and stuffed scavenged trash and dead leaves into the stove beneath an old cast-iron pot.

“Cough, cough.”

At the acrid stench of animal hides and rotten food burning together, Sonya hurriedly covered her nose and mouth with a worn handkerchief.

With no firewood, it had already been three months of surviving the cold by burning trash instead of logs.

Soon, tears welled up in Sonya’s ashen gray eyes as she watched the flames burn on amid the stinging smoke.

This very morning.

She had been told the outrageous news that the supplies she had waited so long for had been delayed yet again.

‘No supplies? You definitely said they’d be provided by the end of this month.’

‘What am I supposed to do about a correction order from above?’

‘The children haven’t eaten in over three days! They were only getting one meal a day, and now they’ve gone three days without even that!’

‘Have you lost your mind? How dare you talk back to me?’

Sonya’s cheek, struck hard by the relief agency’s manager, who insisted that no supplies could ever go to Osterians, still burned.

Last month.

A shocking incident had occurred: Prince Frederick, the legitimate crown prince of Osana, had been shot by rioters during an inspection tour.

And because of the police’s absurd conjecture that the rioters had been “Osterians,” public sentiment toward Osterians, already harsh, had turned even colder.

Twenty-seven years ago.

Garen Sobre had originally been the territory of Alteria, the allied nation that had long been in conflict with Osana.

But when Osana’s current king, Philip I, won after a long war, Garen Sobre, once the border between Osana and Alteria, fell into Osana’s hands in an instant.

Unfortunately, the Alterians among Garen Sobre’s residents who hadn’t managed to cross over to their homeland all fell overnight into Osana’s lower class.

Most of the Alterian men were forced into labor as miners, and countless numbers lost their lives to gas explosions and tunnel collapses.

The problem was the Alterian women left behind.

Wholly unprepared to support themselves, most of them sold their bodies to survive, whether they wished to or not.

The children born to Osanan fathers and Alterian mothers among them were the “Osterians.”

Objects of contempt, objects of shame.

Products of impure, filthy humiliation.

And Sonya Leblanc, pitifully, was one of those Osterians.

Her frizzy wheat-colored hair, strongly inherited from her mother’s side, fluttered limply in the cold wind.

Moisture kept welling up in her gloomy, pale gray eyes.

Whether it was the sharp, bitter smoke or something else, Sonya wiped away the ever-rising tears as if it were nothing, her face hollow.

‘It was definitely an Osterian rioter who aimed at the crown prince’s heart this time, wasn’t it?’

‘How dreadful. Those mongrels ought to be shot, every last one of them.’

The cold gulf of feeling toward Osterians, who had naturally been branded a social evil, had grown even deeper with this shooting of the crown prince.

So in such circumstances, perhaps it was laughable in itself to expect supplies to reach Labri.

After all, Labri, where Sonya lived, was the only relief home where Osterian orphans could stay.

…What do I do?

Sonya’s mind, which had been filled with water alone for days so that the children could have a little more thin soup, grew steadily hazier.

…What on earth do I do now?

Forcing down the small coughs that kept scraping up her throat, Sonya prepared the children’s last meal from a few potatoes and a single clove of garlic.

When the soup was finally done, Sonya raked together some charcoal, dipped the ends of her coarse wheat-colored hair into water mixed with charcoal powder, and pulled them out.

Then, as she gathered up her blotchy hair and tied it back, wrapped a headscarf around it, and tried to button up an old coat too ragged to even call clothing, a hoarse voice reached her from behind.

“…Sonya, are you leaving already?”

“I’ve made the children’s lunch. I told Isaac to serve it.”

Matilda, the last nanny who had worked so hard to care for the home, and who was practically Labri’s mother, had collapsed nearly half a year ago.

Sonya draped a blanket little better than rags over the sickly middle-aged woman’s thin shoulders and added gently,

“I’ll be late. Don’t wait up, just go to sleep.”

“Child, Sonya…!”

Before she could hear Matilda’s plea not to go out because it was dangerous, Sonya hurried off down the road.

To reach the match factory in the capital, Manon, it took at least two hours on foot.

Walking briskly along the dry, desolate road of Garen Sobre before the sun had even risen, Sonya suddenly stopped to catch her breath.

Far off, below the hill, the ornate spire of the cathedral shone brilliantly in the newly rising morning light, as it always did.

Just the day before yesterday.

A tiny baby at the relief home, who had ended his short life without making it through the year, had died, and Sonya, mourning him, pulled her collar tighter with a bitter expression.

It was an ordinary day.

Always the same, always repeating, a day on which no miracle seemed at all likely to happen.

***

The black car soon began to pick up speed along the long, well-kept road on the outskirts.

Between the bare oak trees lining both sides, the splendid scenery of the city flashed past.

But in contrast to that splendor, the sight of Osana, where sleet scattered day after day, was dismal.

“It’s been ten years, hasn’t it, since you returned to your homeland?”

It was Vincent, the prince’s confidant, who finally broke the heavy silence.

Homeland.

Only then, as he turned over the meaning of that fickle “homeland” that had once treated him as a stranger and been so busy shunning him, did a crooked smile settle at the corner of Oscar’s mouth.

The lowborn, beautiful bastard of the Kingdom of Osana.

The royal family’s shame, whom no one had dared to take responsibility for.

Oscar’s expression remained indifferent as he mulled over the nicknames, by now rather familiar, that were still attached to him like a full name.

[ Crown Prince Frederick, Life in Danger After Ambush by Rioters ]

He had heard the grim news about Frederick, the legitimate crown prince and his half-brother, just this morning.

And on top of that, the royal family had summoned him back to his “homeland” after a full ten years.

As the next crown prince, no less.

“We’ve arranged to receive the royal family’s spokesman at the townhouse you recently purchased in Manon.”

Oscar gave a slight nod of his chin to show he understood, and Vincent asked cautiously, his face full of worry,

“Do you truly intend to accept the royal family’s offer?”

At Vincent’s question, Oscar parted his crimson lips, which curved at a slant, and put a cigar between them.

Soon the tip of the Brume cigar, with its excellent citrus aroma and bittersweet earthiness, burned down with Oscar’s low breath.

“…Well. What shall I do?”

In truth, the king had never once sought Oscar out all this time.

Ten years ago.

With the exception of that day, when the investiture of the legitimate prince, Frederick, as crown prince took place.

And yet that same king had remembered the son he had abandoned only after the life of his sole heir, Frederick, had become critical.

Oscar, his firstborn, created from his own beautiful youth, debauchery, and lust.

“Oh, and about ‘that woman’ you mentioned before.”

Only then did the prince’s cold, chilling gaze turn toward his confidant.

“That is, Miss Sonya Leblanc.”

As if he had heard an amusing story, the prince’s hazel eyes, an intriguing blend of green and dark brown, curved with delight.

“That Osterian woman?”

Vincent still frowned and asked again, evidently suspicious of the prince’s interest and reaction regarding “that Osterian woman.”

“I hear she works at a match factory.”

The prince, who had been gazing idly at the sleet, scattering loosely until moments ago, as it suddenly turned into thick snowflakes, finally spoke.

“Make her quit today. Right now.”

Then the prince added his instructions about “that woman” lightly, as though it were a matter even weightier than the security of the crown prince’s seat before him.

“And tell her before she starves to death.”