Having steadied the moment of weakness in his chest, Shuian lifted his clear-eyed gaze to Axel and opened his mouth with quiet resolve.
“…Your Highness, the Lady Melberine I have observed is far more meticulous and calculated than I had first believed. Can Your Highness be truly certain when you say it could not be an act? And even now, Your Highness continues to defend her and deny what I am saying. It is possible you have already fallen into the very trap she has laid. Your Highness.”
“…But Shuian — you have no evidence either, do you? How can you speak with such certainty?”
“There is no definitive proof. Not yet — we are still in the early stages of her plan, after all. But Your Highness is surely aware that tomorrow, the Crown Prince returns to the capital from his leave.”
The momentary loosening in Axel’s expression that came with Shuian’s admission of no concrete evidence dissolved instantly, his face setting back into cold stone.
The Crown Prince…
“By tomorrow, everything will be made clear, Your Highness.”
“…You are certain of that?”
“Absolutely certain.”
The words came without a single moment of hesitation. That unwavering gaze settled on Axel.
A trembling in his eyes — faint, barely perceptible — that could not mask his unease. An expression that kept slipping past his control. A face drained to white.
…What does Your Highness intend to do now?
Shuian had told him everything. Perhaps Axel would give the order to prepare to dissolve the contract with Lady Melberine. Or perhaps, conversely, he would command them to devise a plan to punish the woman who had made a fool of him.
Please, just give the order, Your Highness…!
Shuian was prepared to carry out whatever command came. But what emerged from Axel’s lips was nothing like anything he had anticipated.
“…I understand. You may go now.”
Shuian’s face went blank.
Not a different order — simply go? What was this?
There was no command at all, and not even so much as a word that he intended to avoid Lady Melberine. Even the gaze Axel turned away as he spoke was fixed somewhere distant, somewhere else entirely.
That unsettled Shuian deeply. It felt as though His Highness still had not let her go.
Despite the dismissal, Shuian blurted out words in urgent desperation. His voice came fast, laced with barely contained anxiety.
“You must judge this with a clear head, Your Highness. The very person who once looked at you with eyes full of contempt and cold disdain — who treated you as though you did not exist — was none other than Lady Judith Melberine. She ignored you. She looked through you as though you were nothing. And yet she appears before you and reverses her attitude completely in an instant — does that make any sense to you?”
Under ordinary circumstances, Shuian would not have pressed past the line. But in this moment, he was, unusually, rattled.
“If things continue this way, you will absolutely come to regret it. You must close your heart to this, even now. Your Highness. We cannot allow you to be taken in by Lady Melberine’s dark scheming!”
“I thought I told you to stop. Shuian.”
The voice was cold, edged with chill. Yet rather than falling silent, Shuian narrowed his eyes as though he could not comprehend Axel’s stance.
And then — his fist clenched at his side — he could hold it back no longer. The final words tore out of him.
“…Does Your Highness not already know that Lady Melberine could never sincerely care for you?!”
Even as the words left him, he felt a sharp flash of no — but it was already too late. They were already out.
In an instant, the atmosphere of the office plummeted into something dark and suffocating — and simultaneously, Shuian felt the air around him becoming increasingly impossible to breathe.
“How much longer am I expected to listen to words utterly beneath you? It seems my own words mean nothing to you.”
This was killing intent. Sharp, crushing, unbearable — the kind of killing intent that could steal your senses and put you on the floor if you weren’t careful.
The pressure constricting his lungs, the overwhelming force that bore down on him like a physical weight — Shuian felt primal fear seize him at the very marrow of his bones.
This was the Axel he knew.
“…I — I spoke out of turn, Your Highness. I sincerely apologize.”
Axel, who had been looking down at Shuian with cold, narrow eyes, finally withdrew the killing intent. He clicked his tongue sharply, then spoke with frigid dismissal.
“Get out.”
Shuian bowed his head low, delivered a brief farewell, and left the office.
Alone at last, Axel crushed his hand into a fist with frightening force. The documents he had been holding crumpled beyond recognition.
Was it truly the case that every single thing she had done — all of it — was nothing more than a performance to lure the Crown Prince?
To cast me aside in ruin…
The last words Shuian had thrown at him rang and rang without leaving.
…Does Your Highness not already know that Lady Melberine could never sincerely care for you?!
Axel had known that, at the beginning. It was precisely why he had kept her close — to watch her, to understand what she was.
But as time had passed, that awareness had grown hazy. Lately, it had all but vanished from his mind entirely, to the point where he had stopped thinking about it altogether.
Axel finally acknowledged something about his own feelings.
He had found her remarkable. Different from before — entirely, inexplicably different.
Her behavior was impossible to predict, impossible to contain. It was, perhaps, only natural that his eyes had followed her, that she had occupied his thoughts.
To him, Judith Melberine was something like a wayward puppy — the kind you tried not to pay attention to, but who kept bounding back, making it impossible not to care.
But this, he reasoned, would have been the same with anyone who behaved as unpredictably as she did.
So it was curiosity. Fascination.
Nothing more and nothing less — an emotion with nothing particularly special about it.
And so, even upon hearing that Lady Melberine had been using him as a tool to serve her own ends — even if that were true — he should feel nothing. That was clearly how it ought to be.
And yet.
…Why does this feel so unbearable.
A dull, aching pain had taken hold somewhere in his chest, the kind that came from being betrayed by someone you had trusted. His mood right now was something beyond the reach of words — the worst he had known in a long time.
His nerves were so raw that he wanted to sweep aside anyone who so much as brushed against them.
He searched for the reason, and after a moment, it came to him.
…Is it because Lady Melberine tried to deceive me?
Perhaps that was why he felt this way.
Whatever interest he had developed for her was separate from the fact that her actions were, by any moral measure, unforgivable.
He was in the middle of reasoning through his own feelings, arriving at something like acceptance, when his gaze landed once again on the photograph of Judith.
Looking at her there — smiling, bright and clear — and thinking that it had all been a performance, he felt a sudden, sharp contempt rise in him.
Smiling like that while lying so easily…
His expression set into something bitter and ugly as he reached down, picked up the photo card, and moved to drop it in the wastepaper basket. He had successfully lifted it, raised it into the air —
But it never reached the bin. His hand stopped abruptly mid-air.
“No…”
All of this was nothing more than Shuian’s speculation. Whether Judith had truly approached him with such intentions — that was still unknown.
There was still no concrete evidence.
His own rash conclusions and hasty actions could well constitute a discourtesy to her — an injustice she did not deserve.
Besides, Shuian had never liked Lady Melberine. The situation could be nothing more than a misunderstanding born of his biased perspective.
And for his own part, he had only been briefly thrown into confusion by Shuian’s words. His conviction that it could not be an act — that had not changed.
Axel trusted Judith.
…Right. There is no way any of that was a performance.
The way color had bloomed across her pale cheeks when she smiled at him like sunlight — the way she had said the most embarrassing things with a perfectly straight face and pressed herself close to him — none of it could be false.
Once he had reached that conclusion, Axel felt the heaviness in his chest ease considerably. He set the photo card back in its place.
