The heavy door of the office closed, and I was cast alone before the absolute ruler of the continent.
The Emperor, seated askew against his throne, was looking down at me amid a suffocating silence.
His gaze poured down upon the crown of my bowed head as I knelt on the floor, so overwhelming it seemed to possess physical weight.
I expected the guards to rush in at any moment and strike off my head, but the first words that flowed from the Emperor’s mouth were unexpected.
“Stand. Look Us straight in the eye.”
At the command, spoken in a voice without rise or fall, I obeyed like a machine.
Forcing strength into my trembling knees, I slowly rose from my place and lifted my head to look directly into the Emperor’s eyes.
Purple eyes, calm like the eye of a storm yet like an abyss from which no emotion could be read, pierced through me.
“Wait a moment.”
Leaving behind only those words, the Emperor pressed his lips shut.
One minute, two minutes.
A silence like an eternity that dried the blood from my veins pressed down upon the office.
And not long after, the door to the office was flung open roughly, and people began pouring in.
“Aaaah! Let go, let me go!”
“Hk, hngh…… please spare me……!”
The first to be thrown to the floor like baggage were the true royals of Sterling, dragged in like dogs by Imperial soldiers gripping their hair.
Joseph Sterling and Amy Sterling.
Their once splendid silk clothes were a mess of dust and dirt, and both their faces were smeared with fear and tears.
Behind them, Count Hodeki entered with a vile bow, a triumphant, beaming smile spread across his entire face.
“I pay my respects to His Imperial Majesty. And… our Ian Sterling—no, Harper, too. Have you been well? Your face is pale! Haha, I knew this would—”
“You are before His Majesty. Refrain from frivolous conduct.”
Count Gray stopped Hodeki from running his mouth.
And then, I saw two people being dragged in while detained, both arms firmly seized by knights.
“Mother……! Brother…….”
Unlike Joseph and Amy, they did not seem to have been treated rudely, and their clothing was intact, but they were my true family, blue with terror and utterly frightened.
The moment Mother saw me, she tried to burst into sobs, but upon seeing the tip of the spear held by the knight standing beside her, she bit her lip and shed only silent tears.
Lastly, Crown Prince Maximilien and Count Gross entered as well, and the high-ranking officials of the Imperial family lined up in order along both sides of the office.
“……”
Maximilien, who had treated me with boundless kindness, saying I was fit to become the next chancellor of this Empire, now had confusion plainly written across his face as he faced the full truth of the deception unfolding before his eyes.
Even with his brilliant mind, it seemed difficult for him to accept that the clever Prince Ian had in fact been a fake, the second son of a mere baronial house.
The instant I confirmed all of it with my own eyes—the entire scene, the placement of the actors—I sensed that every card I held had burned to ash, and that this farce of deception had come completely to an end.
Quietly, I let out a very long, deep breath.
Because now, I did not have many breaths left to take.
“……”
I tried to calm myself as much as I could, but my heart was pounding madly.
As though, knowing I would soon die, it meant to beat as many times as it could before then.
For a long while, the Emperor sat upon the throne with an expressionless face, looking back and forth between me and the two true royals trembling facedown on the floor.
Before long, his lips curved in an arc, as if he found this interesting.
“Ian Harper.”
The Emperor propped up his chin and murmured in a low voice.
“Even in this hopeless situation, with your family taken hostage and your entire clan about to be exterminated for deceiving the great Empire…… you can still stand properly on your own two feet without letting your legs give out, and without avoiding Our eyes. You truly are an extraordinary one.”
At that praise that was not praise, I merely lowered my head deeply.
Just then, Joseph Sterling, who had been writhing on the floor in extreme terror, began howling like a beast and pleading the moment he heard the Emperor’s voice.
“Y-Your Majesty! Please spare me! Please, at least my life……! Please, if you only spare me, I’ll live as a slave for the rest of my life……!”
At the ugly sight of him wailing with even snot running down his face, having thrown away all pride and dignity, the Emperor frowned.
“Noisy.”
The Emperor flicked a finger in annoyance and muttered expressionlessly.
“It grates on the ears. Shut that vermin’s mouth.”
“By your command.”
One of the Imperial Guards standing motionless beside the Emperor approached like a ghost.
Then, with a merciless iron-shod boot, he kicked Joseph, who was sprawled on the floor, square in the abdomen.
“Guhk……!”
“Kyaaaak! Brother!”
Amy screamed in horror, and Joseph rolled across the floor, vomiting blood from a pain that seemed to have ruptured his organs.
But the Imperial Guard’s violence did not end there.
The guard seized Joseph by the collar as he writhed in pain, hauled him up onto his knees, and with a fist clad in a steel gauntlet, delivered a horrific blow straight toward Joseph’s jaw.
Crack!
“Ggghh!”
Red blood and fragments of crushed teeth scattered across the marble floor.
The sound of Joseph’s jawbone being completely shattered echoed chillingly throughout the entire office.
“Gghhh……! Aaaaagh!”
Joseph screamed, his jaw twisted at a grotesque angle.
The Imperial Guard grabbed Joseph by the hair and ground him into the floor, warning him in an emotionless voice.
“You are before His Majesty. Make noise one more time, and next I will cut off your breath.”
“Hngh…… ghhp…….”
Even in the midst of extreme pain, Joseph, feeling the terror of death, clutched his broken jaw and sniffled bloody tears, yet forced himself to swallow his screams.
Beside him, Amy was already trembling, on the verge of fainting.
The tips of my fingers trembled faintly as I watched that cruel sight, but the Emperor, with a peaceful face as though nothing had happened, jerked his chin toward me.
“Now. The nuisance has quieted down, so speak with your own mouth. What in the world happened?”
Everything was over.
Clumsy excuses would not work.
There had never been any opening for survival in the first place.
I closed my eyes and opened them again, then began to confess the truth without mixing in even a shred of falsehood.
“…As everyone has now learned, I am not the prince of Sterling. My true name is Ian Harper, the younger brother of Baron Harper over there, and the second son of Michelle Harper, the late Baroness Harper.”
The air in the room froze cold.
“My mother was an old friend of Her Majesty the Queen of Sterling. Thanks to that, from a very young age I went in and out of the royal castle, and I grew up together with those two over there. Then, on the day the Kingdom of Sterling fell helplessly to the Imperial Army…… by unfortunate chance, I was staying in the royal castle, and the invading Vic… no, the Imperial commander mistook me for a prince.”
“Oh? I see. It seems Victoria mistook you for a prince.”
“Yes. The Imperial commander ordered that one of those with royal blood be offered as a hostage. Under normal circumstances, one of those two should have been taken to the Empire.”
I glanced sideways at the bloodied Joseph and the blank-eyed Amy, and continued bitterly.
“As you can see…… those two are people who could never survive in the Empire. It was obvious they would not last even a few days before dying miserable deaths.”
“……”
“No matter how lacking and immature they may be, to me they were no different from my own brother and sister, whom I had grown up with all my life. And so I stepped forward to the king. Since the Imperial Army already mistook me for a prince anyway, I volunteered myself, saying I would instead pretend to be the prince and go to the Empire.”
At my words, the eyes of Count Gray and Maximilien wavered.
A strange emotion passed across Maximilien’s face, which had been filled with confusion.
“Everything was my sole decision, a deception I devised on my own. The weak king of Sterling merely condoned and approved the proposal I made with my life on the line. The one who conspired to deceive Your Imperial Majesty and arranged this entire scheme was me, Ian Harper. All guilt lies wholly with me.”
The entire Kingdom of Sterling was in danger of being slaughtered.
I had struggled desperately to somehow block that enormous blaze with my single life.
The moment my explanation ended, I knelt on both knees upon the cold marble floor without hesitation and prostrated myself.
Then, with a bang, I struck my forehead against the floor hard enough for the sound to ring out.
“I know well that the crime of deceiving the Empire can be paid for only with death. Please take my life. Even if you destroy the royals and high nobles of Sterling who participated in this deception, I will say nothing.”
Blood flowing from my forehead stained the marble floor red. Still lying prostrate, I pleaded until my throat nearly burst.
“But Your Majesty! Please, at least spare the innocent people of Sterling, who knew nothing and merely lived according to the orders from above. They have committed no sin. Please stop the slaughter of them.”
“……”
“And…… though it is truly a shameless request from one who deserves death.”
I clenched my teeth, thinking of the foolish true royals crawling on the floor and my true family bound behind my back.
“Please, spare the lives of my mother and brother, who were brought here without any guilt of their own. Everything was of my making.”
Pain as though my chest were being torn apart surged over me.
I rubbed my head against the floor and screamed.
“You may throw me into a boiling cauldron and boil me to death, or tear my limbs apart while I am still alive! I will willingly accept the most atrocious and painful punishment I can receive! So please, please, I beg you. Spare only the lives of the innocent!”
Only my desperate sobs circled miserably through the silent Emperor’s office.
The Emperor’s mouth, as he looked down at me from the highest place, remained heavily shut, offering no answer at all.