A little over a month had passed since the Restoration Festival.
The place in the queen’s bed had passed from Marvin to Shurs.
But ever since that day, neither Marvin nor Shurs had been able to so much as touch a hair on the queen’s body, though they could sleep beside her.
“You should have known when to stop! Because of your rotten scheming, I only helped for nothing and ended up suffering for it!”
Marvin Derbeck could not say a word in the face of Shurs Hylan’s furious protest.
He had not expected the queen to come out so unyielding.
“You should have pressed them only so far! Earei and Her Majesty both! Sharing Her Majesty’s bed was already as good as something we stole from those two, and then you went and humiliated the general on top of that!”
Shurs slammed his hand down on Marvin’s desk as he shouted at him.
“Thanks to you, forget making a child—we have to watch ourselves even lying beside her!”
“What do you want me to do about something that’s already happened?”
“You are the one who made it happen!!!!”
At that absurd retort, Shurs clutched his forehead and swept back his bangs.
He could not understand why the victim always had to swallow his anger while the perpetrator said whatever he pleased.
“You agreed too that there was no helping it, with how desperately Her Majesty kept looking for Earei.”
“You had already sent that damned letter, and Her Majesty said she would go to the general that night. That is why I cooperated.”
“Whatever the reason, we had to stop Earei and Her Majesty from making contact.”
“If you had left it alone, I would have handled the situation smoothly and with proper restraint.”
“With such soft methods, it would have been useless the moment Her Majesty got stubborn.”
“We should at least concede enough to let them meet and talk! Ah, damn it, Derbeck! What in the world did you eat to make you act like this?”
“What did I do? I’m only letting this slide because we’re in the same boat. Otherwise, do you think I would share my woman with another man?”
“To be precise, she is General Earei’s woman, Derbeck.”
When one heard this much bullshit, all that came out was a hollow laugh.
His rage, which had risen to the very top of his head, flipped over entirely, forcing Shurs to regain his composure. He lowered his voice.
“Our role is to mix the blood of the great houses into the royal bloodline, and to serve as a proper check on Her Majesty the Queen and General Earei. Do you understand? A proper check.”
“What ‘proper’ is there in keeping someone in check? If we get rid of Earei, that’s even better for us. Doesn’t that mean one less rival?”
“Good heavens, Derbeck. No, Marvin!”
Only now did Shurs understand why Marvin had done something so stupid.
It was simply because Marvin Derbeck himself was stupid.
“General Earei may belong to Her Majesty, but he is also the greatest sword of our Kingdom of Levantort.”
“The greatest sword of the Kingdom of Levantort is my father.”
“That is a fair point, but the Margrave has the duty of defending the kingdom from the barbarians of Epallencia, so he cannot move recklessly. General Earei is different. He can move north or south according to the queen’s will. That is precisely why Margrave Derbeck and my father, Antony Hylan, sent you and me—to prevent harmony between those two and interfere in the line of succession.”
“So if we take this chance to cut down that Earei, our worries will disappear….”
“You bastard! If the general disappears, Epallencia in the north and the Hagonin League in the south will set their sights on our kingdom!”
Out of frustration, Shurs licked his dry lips once, then shouted again.
“They will openly come after us!”
“Do you think Derbeck will lose? Do you think the Kingdom of Levantort will lose?”
“Losing isn’t the problem. If the damage is great even after victory, then it isn’t a victory! If you win with only your head barely attached and all four limbs cut off, you won’t survive a single day!”
“Hah, as if our kingdom would be reduced to that state by mere barbarians and league scum….”
“It has happened before. Go back only four kings.”
No one knew how many kings had been killed by the barbarians and the League, nor how many princes and princesses had been captured.
And it had not even been a hundred years since they had been humiliated by those people showing the children born through them and saying they were no different from family.
“It is because General Earei repelled Hagonin and slaughtered Epallencia that Derbeck and Hylan attached themselves to Her Majesty now. And it was also General Earei who turned around the war situation when we were being pushed back by the tyrant’s army!”
“Earei this, Earei that! In the end, you’re no different from my father and younger sister!”
“No matter how much of a fit you throw because you hate him, foreign enemies fear him! I’m certain even Margrave Derbeck only told you to keep him properly in check, so why were you in such a hurry to ruin everything?”
“I am a Derbeck. Half measures are worse than doing nothing at all.”
At Marvin’s attitude, refusing to admit his mistake to the bitter end, Shurs exhaled fiercely.
The anger that had sunk upside down threatened to rise again.
“If I were to relay those words of yours to the Margrave exactly as you said them, you would have nothing to feel guilty about?”
“Of course not. Father would be proud of me instead.”
“What kind of….”
Shurs was about to rebuke Marvin and tell him not to spout nonsense, but stopped himself.
Suddenly, he recalled how Gyuren Derbeck, the Margrave, had once tried to marry Earei to his own daughter, Ortega.
Seorin, who had been a princess at the time, had been horrified and had taken Earei away safely, but the rumor that even that Margrave of all people had smacked his lips in regret until the very end was famous.
I see. The Margrave still hasn’t given up on Earei as a son-in-law.
That is why he is trying to force Earei to preserve his chastity and drive a wedge between the two.
If the sword called Earei fell into the Margrave’s hands, the very name of the kingdom might change.
Goosebumps rose over Shurs’s skin.
The Margrave’s audacity made the fine hairs on his body stand on end.
And Marvin’s stupidity made veins bulge.
The moment the Margrave achieved what he wanted, he would surely bury his troublesome son together with the queen by his own hand.
Even so, seeing Marvin puff himself up because it was a task his father had given him, Shurs despaired that it would be better to chat with Earei instead.
“In any case, if this continues, we will not be able to have an heir with Her Majesty. On the contrary, her hostility toward us is only increasing, and this must be resolved. Surely you aren’t going to be stubborn even here?”
“…No, I am not.”
Marvin thought that everyone would be more comfortable if Earei simply gave up on the queen.
It was a thought possible only because his mind was so simple.
Even if Earei gave up on the queen, the queen would not give up on him.
The queen, too, was being swayed by the two great houses because she could not devise any sharp solution on her own, but no matter how much she ignored and belittled him, she still cherished her first husband, the man who had followed her to the end, risking his life, and made her king.
Even so, she could not escape the fatal mistake that her method had been terribly wrong, and that she had accepted what she should never have accepted.
“Even if not completely, we must not extinguish the spark of hope between those two. We may be rivals competing over Her Majesty, but if you set that aside, Earei is an extremely useful card for the kingdom. Do you understand? Please, just admit it. This time, you went too far! Have you forgotten that the Margrave himself asked why the general was not at the Restoration Festival?”
“Fine, fine. I’ll restrain myself.”
Shurs, who had been telling himself to stay calm, flared up again as he spoke and ended up raising his voice.
Marvin, too, recalled how the usually cool-headed Shurs had repeatedly failed to contain his anger, as well as how displeased the Margrave had been at the Restoration Festival, and, feeling a prick of unease, slightly bent his stubbornness.
“So do you have a plan in mind?”
“We must restore their relationship. No more and no less than exactly how it was before the Restoration Festival.”
“That would be the most appropriate.”
“But you must make me one promise as well. Do not do anything that extreme again.”
“Then should I have simply watched Her Majesty and Earei meet?”
“After you acted recklessly, the two of us ended up in a position no different from that General Earei’s, didn’t we? If only you had consulted me beforehand, we could have taken more appropriate measures….”
“And what you did was merely turn off the lights in the mansion and make Her Majesty withdraw….”
“That was because you started the fire and told me to clean it up!!!!”
In the end, Marvin made Shurs’s fury explode for the third time.
“Since all you do is cling to your damned stubbornness, I’ll stop speaking nicely! If you cause harm to us Hylans one more time, I will cut off all supplies we have been supporting Derbeck with. Do you understand?”
“…….”
“I don’t care whether you understand or not. You already owe me a debt. If Hylan wishes it, I will collect that debt anytime, anywhere.”
Their already poor relationship had plunged to its worst.
Nevertheless, Marvin felt Shurs was speaking too harshly, and he was deeply displeased with the situation.
Shurs was the sort of person who, whenever possible, explained the overall state of the board and made his opponent understand.
But realizing that Marvin would only infuriate him further with stupid remarks the more he did so, he decided to speak only of what had to be done immediately.
“We need to deliver Earei’s letter of apology to Her Majesty. But we will have him apologize and nothing more, while guiding him to fill the rest with words of resentment. Then Her Majesty will only try to coax him into sending gifts as before, and we will return to how things were.”
“Is there any need to make him write it himself? We can imitate his handwriting and write one.”
“The handwriting is not the problem. General Earei has a uniquely timid yet delicate sentence structure. It cannot be imitated. You know what I mean, don’t you?”
“He does have a womanly side.”
“I will have a servant at the mansion tell him this: Her Majesty wants an apology, and at the same time, she hopes he will honestly tell her of the things that hurt him.”
“What will you do if he mentions what happened at the evening party on the Restoration Festival?”
“The general is not a fool, so he will not mention it. A king making an heir with her husband is not something to be condemned for.”
“That is true….”
In truth, if Earei poured out his pent-up resentment, the one who would have to bear the queen’s anger was Marvin, not himself.
Shurs smoothly concealed the truth and led him along.
“If you have no objections, I will have someone….”
Knock, knock, knock.
“Who is it?”
“The stable keeper from the mansion.”
The reason he gave not his name or affiliation, but only his position, was because he was a servant spy Shurs had planted in Earei’s mansion.
With Shurs’s permission, he cautiously entered, then saw Marvin and closed his mouth.
“It is fine, so do not be on guard. Ah, I happened to need you just now. We must deliver the general’s letter to Her Majesty. Guide him into writing a new one….”
“Your Highness, the Royal Consort, that is….”
“Did you just dare interrupt me?”
The servant hurriedly fell to his knees.
“I have committed a mortal sin! But there is a problem.”
His eyes wandered back and forth, and his body trembled.
At the sudden sense of unease that rose within him, Shurs quickly asked the servant.
“What has happened?”
“Y-Your Highness….”
The servant swallowed and confessed truthfully.
“The general has disappeared. For more than ten days, there was too little sign of anyone living there, so I looked into his room every day, but the blanket was always disturbed in the same way, and the desk always messy in the same manner. The servants and maids have been searching the surroundings for a week now, but not even his nose has shown….”
“What?!”
The first to react was Marvin.
Shurs was also greatly shocked, but then frustration surged up in him and he shouted.
“Why are you telling me that only now!!”
Not to be outdone, Marvin shouted as well.
“Find him at once! At once! Have you forgotten that no matter how pathetic he is, he is still the sword that makes foreign enemies tremble?”
Shurs was genuinely fed up with Marvin, who had quoted his own words exactly in order to make himself look impressive.
Even worse, the contents of what he had just said did not match from beginning to end.