MB 066

There’s no turning back now.

As Annecy left Edevin’s palace, he thought this to himself.

So much had changed in a single day. The boy had been abandoned by his brother, killed a person, and gone to threaten his brother after committing such sins. It had been a desperate, anxious, fearful, and painful day.

However, as the day came to an end, Annecy found that all the swirling emotions had seemingly vanished, leaving him with only the desire to rest.

He wanted to see Eliza. He wanted to be held in his mother’s arms. He wanted to feel the warmth and the touch of a hand stroking his hair.

If he could do that, even if Eliza said to become the emperor today, he could endure it.

The boy’s staggering steps gradually quickened until he was almost running. Hidden in the black night, he entered the modest palace and immediately headed for Eliza’s room.

Though it was a small palace with five maids in attendance, it was strange that he didn’t encounter anyone. Annecy soon dismissed his suspicions, thinking that something significant must have happened in the royal family, and all the maids were likely summoned.

Knock, knock. After a couple of hasty knocks, there was no response. It was only natural, as it was time for sleeping.

Knowing his actions were rude, Annecy twisted the doorknob and opened the door anyway. He expected a small reprimand, but he still wanted to see his mother’s face.

However, there was no sign of a woman in Eliza’s bedroom.

What happened?

A creeping sense of unease began to rise, but Annecy quickly changed the direction of his thoughts. Since she hadn’t returned until dawn, she must have been worried and waiting. Annecy immediately closed the bedroom door and dashed around the palace.

He checked Eliza’s room, his own room, then the library with hardly any books and the bathroom, but his mother was nowhere to be found. The last place he headed to, filled with growing anxiety, was the reception room.

A place rarely entered due to the absence of visitors, Annecy hesitated as he turned the doorknob.

And inside was the person the boy had been searching for.

However, she could no longer embrace him.

“Uh… Mother?”

The scent of mint filled the air. A cold, sharp scent penetrated his nose, sending a chill through his mind. He instantly understood what had happened. Yet, pretending not to notice, Annecy disregarded the pale face and stepped into the reception room.

The woman slumped over the table had disheveled hair. Below her lay broken teacups and a carpet stained with cold, spilled tea.

Crunch. The sound of the teacup shards crumbling beneath his feet echoed, but he ignored it. Annecy gently shook the woman’s shoulder.

“Mother, you’ll catch a cold if you sleep here. What have the maids been doing, letting you sleep in such a place?”

Eliza’s body trembled slightly. Her vibrant hair lay cold, drifting through the air.

“You must have fallen asleep waiting for me, right? I know. I’m here now. I’m sorry for coming late. Today was just too hard for me. It was so hard that I just… I just dozed off outside… so I couldn’t speak, and I’m late. I’m sorry.”

The shaking of his hand slowed.

“But I really… it was so hard. There were so many things I couldn’t have imagined… so I… I didn’t want to do it… I really hated it, but I had no choice. Mother, I have to protect you… you told me to protect you, remember? So I had to… I had no choice.”

His vision blurred strangely. It was because of the mint scent. It must be that his nose was stuffy.

What has Mother been eating while I was away to have such a smell? Or perhaps she had simply applied too much perfume.

“Please wake up. You have to wake up. You are to be the mother of the emperor… how could you sleep in a place like this without dignity? How could you… Mother?”

The maids sometimes teased his mother by bringing strange things, so this must be one of those instances.

Until now, it had been a prank he could overlook, but bringing a perfume with such an overwhelming, stinging scent was crossing a line. This time, it absolutely could not be tolerated.

He needed to get angry and set things right. That was what he should do… but.

Drip, drip. Tears fell onto the carpet. Annecy struggled to speak through a throat tight with emotion.

Holding the cold body of the woman, he pleaded softly, small and quiet.

“…Please hug me. Please, please.”

There was no response. Despite his heart being unable to accept it, reality relentlessly tore at him and crept into his chest.

His consciousness faded under the unbearable pain. As he fell into the dark void, Annecy wished he would never awaken again.

But cruelly, for the living, there was tomorrow.

Annecy awoke in a carriage. In this unexpected place, the boy thought perhaps everything had been a dream, but hearing the clinking of chains on his wrist, he lost all hope.

Annecy was being sold.

No, in reality, he had already been sold to a slave trader, and now he was headed to a market full of perverse sexual deviants.

The one who had picked up the fallen Annecy and sold him was Count Eliom, a man the boy had never seen before.

When the merchant spoke Eliom’s name in mockery, the boy felt a moment of confusion, but soon brushed the question aside. It didn’t matter who had sold him.

Were there still important matters left in the world?

The restraints on his wrists looked as though they could be shattered with just a thought, but Annecy didn’t want to do that.

He had no will to live. Even if he ended up in the hands of a perverse sexual deviant and faced a miserable end, it seemed he would not suffer any more than he did now.

However, the one who bought him, not the perverse sexual deviant who offered thousands of gold coins, was the head of the Valverde trading company, who had bid one hundred twenty thousand gold.

It was incomprehensible to him why someone would spend such a fortune on a boy with only half of his face intact, but honestly, he didn’t care to know.

Under Chloe’s care, Annecy simply did as he was told. He learned the ways of the trading company, studied swordsmanship, and practiced magic. He learned to dance, etiquette, and how to deal with people.

He didn’t know why he was made to do such things, but without question, he followed Chloe’s orders.

As he did so, little by little, Annecy began to regain his vitality. Because of the busy routine, he had no time to reflect on the past, and not being trapped by memories allowed him to gain a little strength to move forward.

Then one day, while he was starting to question Chloe’s behavior, the head of the trading company came to find him.

“I know who you are.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Annecyke the Prince, that’s the name you were called, isn’t it?”

Annecy frowned slightly. Having learned the trade, he was already aware of the Valverde trading company’s level of information gathering.

It wasn’t surprising that Chloe knew of his birth, but what puzzled him was why she had taken him in despite knowing how dangerous his lineage was.

“I will give you Valverde.”

The woman crossed her legs and looked down at Annecy.

“Chloe.”

“If you don’t want it, you don’t have to take it. There are people in the world who would refuse to accept gold that could influence the fate of nations. 

But I know you don’t seem like one of those, Annecy. You seem unwilling to give up power, strength, or wealth, and it’s astonishing that you have the talent to acquire them all. The only thing you seem to lack desire for is love, isn’t that right?”

As Chloe bent down to look closely at him, Annecy remained silent.

“Greedy Annecy, take Valverde. And in return, bring down Rubiette. Then that child will gain her freedom. 

But if she makes a choice, let her be. If she chooses her own path, she must believe it will lead to her happiness. 

However, if it’s not that, then you must let her go. Let her be freer than anyone else.”

This is the promise I want to make to you.

Listening quietly to her, Annecy’s face contorted when she finished speaking. There was nothing he could understand.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why is Rubiette suddenly mentioned, and who is ‘that child’? Why did you buy me and raise me? All of it…”

“It’s all been planned.”

Cold fingertips lightly tapped Annecy’s head.

“Don’t be hasty, child. I’ll tell you everything.”

“I am not a child.”

“Of course.”

Smirking, Chloe picked up her cigarette. The hazy smoke was sucked into her mouth and then scattered into the air.

When she spoke unilaterally, she poured out her words freely, yet she fell silent for a moment.

Just as the silence began to feel tedious, the woman opened her mouth again.

“It’s something from a while ago. A girl named Azla Valverde was born into the collateral line of Valverde.”

Her languid voice continued without any rise or fall. An ordinary birth, a humble upbringing, a broken promise, and an unbelievable end.

By the time Chloe’s story ended, Annecy’s eyes, which had remained indifferent throughout, were filled with confusion and horror. Seeing the boy unable to hide his emotions, Chloe smiled smugly.

“You seem to have found it amusing by your expression.”

“Is that even possible? It’s neither divine power nor magic, so how…”

“It is possible, which is why I’m telling you this. Or do you think I’m crazy, Annecy?”

“…No, you don’t lie.”

“That’s right; I don’t lie. So you should know my promise is not an empty one.”

“Will you make a promise with me, Annecy?”

As always, her tone was calm. Chloe didn’t seem to care at all as she asked the question, not even looking at the boy.

Her downcast eyes, with a hazy gaze that scattered like cigarette smoke into the air, made it unclear if her words were even meant for him.

However, the weight of words isn’t something that can be discerned by appearances. Annecy, who had been hesitant in confusion, soon changed his expression to a serious one and nodded.

Chloe smiled only when he finally agreed, albeit very slowly.

*    *    *

After sealing their promise, Chloe left the room. Left alone, Annecy stood still, rewinding the earlier conversation in his mind.

Beginning with curiosity about the bizarre events, his thoughts regressed to the promise, then further into the past.

He felt no desire for revenge. Neither anger nor hatred remained. He had already killed those he should resent, leaving him with no emotions to direct.

Yet, listening to Chloe’s words reminded Annecy that he still had things he could do. He hadn’t killed Count Eliom, who had tried to sell him, nor had he dealt with Duke Rubiette, the one truly behind the events.

Though the one who had killed Eliza was the deceased former Empress, there must have been someone else who had executed the deed. Annecy had no intention of considering that it had been something done out of necessity under the Empress’s orders.

Let’s repay it all. After repaying everything, he would gather enough power to ensure there was nothing left to lose, so he wouldn’t have to live in fear.

Filling the emptiness in his chest, which had been unbearably hollow since Eliza’s death, he would acquire everything he had lost and even things he had never had.

What came into his hands would not be lost again. He would strengthen himself so that he would never be consumed by emptiness, anger, or pain again.

To do this, he needed Valverde. To obtain Valverde, he had to keep his promise.

Annecy opened his mouth. He spoke with a language imbued with magical energy. He swore an oath.

He vowed that he would not break the promise made with Chloe, that he would not fall as low as the one who had once defeated him as a brother, and that he would be just toward the one person who had reached out to him until the very end.

[I swear upon my soul that Goyo Rubiette will not meet with tragedy.]

Even if it meant rising to the pinnacle of power through unjust means.

*    *    *

Time flowed swiftly in the life with a goal.

Annecy adopted the name Bethelgius.

Bethelgius was the name of the alpha star in the constellation Orion, the brightest star in the Dofeche.

Annecy Bethelgius learned all the trade and received Valverde.

While seeking a suitable opportunity to cross into Solaris, conflict arose between Solaris and Ubel, and he took that chance to go to war.

After making remarkable achievements as a commoner sword mage, he was finally summoned to the capital when the war concluded, having made immense contributions.

However, even with his achievements, he was still of lowly blood as a commoner and wouldn’t meet the Emperor. But once in the capital, Annecy headed toward the imperial palace without hesitation.

Just as he had done as the young Annecyke the Prince, he used invisibility magic to conceal himself and infiltrated the imperial palace, entering the Emperor’s bedroom.

Unlike long ago, the Emperor was present in the bedroom. Seeing the familiar face, Annecy felt a wave of nauseating perfume.

Swallowing back the overlapping past, he released the invisibility magic.

“It seems a lot of time has passed. Your face was never particularly remarkable, but now it’s grown haggard and wrinkled.”

The shocked Emperor shouted for someone to come, but no sound came out of his mouth.

In the bedroom, where no one but Annecy could speak, the Emperor drew his sword. Yet the sword never got the chance to swing; it broke with a light sound.

As he gazed upon the Emperor, Malatoi III, whose face had gone pale, Annecy stepped down from the window and walked leisurely toward him.

The dark figure hidden in the pitch-black night became clearer as it drew closer to the light of the lamp.

Seeing the Emperor’s face filled with horror, Annecy Bethelgius smiled with delight.

“Do you remember me, Edevin?”

It was a reunion after nine long years.