“Exactly two weeks.”
Just before leaving the grand audience hall, Victoria turned her head, her black cloak billowing behind her.
“Exactly two weeks from now. The imperial army will arrive at the northern fortress of yours that I just trampled and receive the hostage.”
Beyond her helm, violet eyes flashed, and her fierce gaze curved cruelly.
“If, at that time and place, there is no hostage to be offered to the Empire… it will be regarded as a declaration of war on the spot, and the main force of the imperial army will cross the border and trample the Kingdom of Sterling. The Kingdom of Sterling will become a name that exists only in history books.”
With that chilling warning, the black reaper vanished completely.
The moment the sound of her footsteps stamping across the marble floor beyond the door had fully faded, every noise that had been held back erupted at once.
“Aaaaah…! Hic, hngh…!”
The queen, who had fainted, burst into tears as soon as she awakened, and the ministers who had been standing there in a daze finally began arguing fiercely, as if their lungs had opened again.
“Y-Your Majesty! You must decide at once whom to send as the hostage! The Empire is absolutely not the sort to jest!”
“Who are you saying we should send?! We cannot send Prince Joseph, the next heir to the throne!”
“Then are you saying we should send the princess to her death? Did you not hear the imperial princess’s warning just now? She openly threatened that if we sent a daughter with deceptive intent, she would inflict terrible suffering!”
“Even so, we cannot offer the crown prince, who will inherit the kingdom’s lineage, to the lair of an enemy nation!”
The grand audience hall descended into chaos in an instant.
Slumped on the throne, the king buried his face in his hands and could offer no answer, only groaning in agony.
If he sent his son, the kingdom’s future would be cut off. If he sent his daughter, the future in which his child became the plaything of beasts and was torn to shreds was far too obvious.
Whether as a parent or as a monarch, it was a hellish choice between two options that no one could easily voice.
Then it happened.
“E-Excuse me…”
An old minister, who had been hovering near the royal family and furtively watching me, carefully opened his mouth.
“What if… we sent Young Master Ian Harper over there instead?”
Silence fell.
I doubted my ears. What the hell is this bastard saying?
“Have you lost your mind?! Are you suggesting we dare deceive the Empire?!”
“Do you take the Empire for fools? The moment they find out he is not His Majesty’s biological child, the entire kingdom will be trampled just as the imperial princess said!”
The other ministers, pale with shock, denounced him vehemently, but the old minister retorted with veins standing out on his neck.
“Then what do you propose we do?! We cannot send the prince, nor can we send the princess when it is obvious she will suffer! Young Master Ian has lived in the royal castle since he was very young, and did he not grow up like a sibling to the prince and princess? Even the nobles say Young Master Ian is no different from a prince. Would the Empire know perfectly? Even the imperial princess just now mistook Young Master Ian for one of the royal family and spoke as such!”
Naturally, it was sophistry that didn’t even deserve to be called an argument.
But to people driven to the edge of a cliff, that sophistry seemed to begin sounding like a sweet lifeline.
The eyes of several ministers changed subtly as they turned toward me.
“You lunatics!!!”
At that moment, my mother, Baroness Michelle Harper, who had been standing beside me, screamed with her eyes nearly rolled back.
It was a beastlike roar that had thrown away every trace of her usual elegance.
“How dare you try to drive my son to his death?! If your children are precious, then mine is precious too! Shut those rotten mouths of yours this instant!”
“She is right! What madness is this?!”
The queen, too, her face deathly pale, wrapped her arms around my mother and shouted at the ministers.
“Michelle is my dearest friend, no different from a sister who shares my blood! To use her son as a shield for the royal family—never, not before dirt fills my eyes!”
My mother hid me behind her and trembled violently.
But the atmosphere was already flowing in an irreversible direction.
Even the other ministers who had been silent began kneeling one by one.
“Your Majesty! You must take this gamble!”
“This is the only way to save the kingdom, Your Majesty!”
“…Everyone, be silent.”
The king, who had been clutching his face for a long while, muttered in a hoarse voice.
The grand audience hall fell as quiet as death.
The king slowly staggered up from the throne.
Then he descended the steps and came right before me.
“Your Majesty…?”
My mother backed away in bewilderment.
But at that moment, the monarch who had ruled this country for decades dropped to his knees on the marble floor with a heavy thud.
“Y-Your Majesty!!”
“Ian…”
With both trembling hands, the king seized the hem of my trousers.
In the king’s eyes, there was no dignity of a ruler, nor any face to be saved as an adult.
There was only the miserable, selfish despair of a father who wanted to save his children.
“Please… please, forgive this foolish king. Save our kingdom… save my children just this once. I beg you, Ian. You, you must go to the Empire in my place…!”
“Your Majesty! Have you gone mad?! How can you do this?!”
My mother wailed as if coughing up blood, but the king, like a man who had already lost his reason, clung to me as tears fell onto the tops of my feet.
“…Your Majesty.”
My mind went cold.
I had to refuse no matter what, my reason was screaming at me.
No matter how close we had been, it made no sense to throw away my own life to save others.
But…
“…”
My gaze went past the king’s shoulders.
There stood the princess, pale as a corpse and trembling, and Prince Joseph, who looked so dazed he seemed ready to flee.
What if I refused here?
In the end, the king would send the princess with tears in his eyes.
And the princess, just as in the original story, would become the protagonist of that terrible, cruel, ruined reverse-harem and live a hellish life until she broke.
That kind child who, since we were young, had followed me around with a smile as if I were her own older brother.
“…And I can’t send Joseph either.”
Before even considering the issue of whether or not to send the heir to the throne, Joseph was a guy who had spent his entire life like a flower in a greenhouse.
He was so delicate that he teared up if he merely cut his finger during sword practice. There was no way someone like him could endure being dropped into the heart of an Empire swarming with predators.
Within a month, he would either take his own life in terror or be executed for a slip of the tongue.
Honestly, I didn’t want to go at all.
But… I didn’t have the confidence to shove those two into hell and then live comfortably in my homeland on my own.
Whether in my previous life or this one, at my core, I had been born with the exhausting sort of personality that couldn’t bear to watch others become miserable right in front of me.
“Haa…”
A long, heavy sigh flowed from my mouth.
“Ian! No! Absolutely not!”
As if she had guessed my decision, my mother clutched at my trouser leg and sobbed, but I had already made up my mind.
“…I will go.”
At that one sentence, silence spread through the grand audience hall.
“Aah… Aaaaah!”
My mother collapsed on the spot and began to weep uncontrollably, and the queen also sank down, covering her mouth.
Joseph and the princess, filled with shock and guilt, could not bring themselves to look at my face and lowered their heads.
“Thank you…! Thank you, truly, Ian! I, I will never forget this grace as long as I live! I will repay it, even after death…!”
The king sobbed as he struck his forehead again and again against the tops of my feet.
A monarch of a nation, wailing as he bowed his head to a collateral noble’s second son. Really.
Looking down at the prostrate king, I spoke calmly, but firmly.
“In return, you must prepare thoroughly. If I am taken away merely as the second son of a baron’s household, my head will fly at once for the crime of deceiving the Empire. You will have to make perfect preparations so that they cannot find even the slightest pretext.”
“Y-Yes! Of course! If you wish, I will adopt you as my own child at once! No, I will make the documents match no matter what it takes!”
“And.”
I glanced at my mother, who had collapsed on the floor, weeping as though she had lost her mind.
My chest grew tight.
“While I am in the Empire… take full responsibility for House Harper and my mother. If, even after I risk my life and leave, the kingdom treats my family and my mother poorly, then I will do whatever it takes from within the Empire to bring down the Kingdom of Sterling first.”
At my warning, the king nodded frantically with a face drenched in tears.
“I swear it. I swear it on my crown, on my honor! House Harper will forever be under the protection of the royal family!”
I gave a small nod.
“…I just wanted to live peacefully.”
No one heard my murmur.