| 9. Deception or Opportunity

Romeo approached Daphne slightly and whispered in a playful voice. The dimple on only one side of his cheek was even more unpleasant to see.

“I said I missed you.”

She hated that statement even more!

The goosebumps that rose on her forearm spread to below her ears. Daphne let out a short scream while desperately rubbing her forearms, crossing her arms.

“Your dimple is disgusting.”

Romeo shrugged his shoulders.

“It was for our secret meeting.”

“Don’t use such words!”

Daphne raised her voice, hitting her chest with her fist a couple of times.

“I almost fought with Stella because of you…!”

No matter how much the king favored Daphne, regicide was a serious crime. So from childhood, even though she wanted to punch Romeo’s smug face, she had to endure it over and over.

Daphne searched her mind for a suitable sport. She felt she needed to beat him somehow to feel better!

“Your Highness, shall we remove our ranks and compete? I’ll choose the event.”

While Daphne was seriously considering whether to kill, beat, or crush him, Romeo sighed heavily and brushed up his bangs, annoyed.

“Daphne.”

Once again, goosebumps rose on her forearm.

“Don’t call my name like that. Wow, I just got chills all over.”

Due to the lights starting to turn on one by one in the garden, shadows formed on Romeo’s face.

‘Has his fever gone down?’

She remembered Celestian from ‘that time’, half his face hidden due to his high nose bridge. And his green eyes flickering in the lamplight.

“Daphne, Daphne, Daphne.”

This cousin of hers never gives a moment for sentiment.

“What’s wrong with you, it’s scary.”

The cool breeze blowing from the forest behind the Count’s mansion swept between the siblings and shook the purple curtains covering the window.

“I’ve only been at the palace for two days, you know.”

“You should never come. I can take care of Psyche.”

Romeo, who had taken on the regency thanks to his immature father, was working harder than anyone to maintain friendly relations with neighboring countries.

Daphne had also diligently aided in certain areas. Not particularly for the kingdom and its people, but for herself who had as much to lose as she had much to gain.

“To me, who’s like this, the first thing my wife did when she ran to me wasn’t a kiss, nor saying she missed me…”

“If you’re going to rub salt in the wound, do it after depositing money in my account.”

“I was talking about you.”

“Huh?”

Daphne blinked her eyes.

“Were you gossiping?”

“If that were the case, I would have been glad.”

Romeo sighed and continued.

“Romeo, there’s no contact from Daphne. I think Daphne hates me, actually I hate Daphne too, but actually I don’t. I want to reconcile with Daphne. Romeo, what if Daphne never sees me again?”

Thanks to her cousin imitating Psyche in a low voice, trying to make a delicate voice, Daphne burst into laughter.

While Daphne was laughing loudly, tilting her head back, Romeo continued to express his complaints.

“Damn it, last night I almost cut off your head and threw it on the bed.”

“Why, did my name come up while you were sleeping?”

It was meant as a joke, but there was no answer.

“Haha, okay.”

Daphne realized that the reason the annoying Crown Prince had personally come to talk, after tucking her away in a corner of the second floor, wasn’t because of a mere traitor.

‘Right. He wouldn’t be wary of an idiot like Celestian.’

Romeo was truly a man who couldn’t resist Psyche. Daphne often forgot that the place she was reborn into was inside a novel, and everything revolved around Psyche, the female protagonist.

‘…But who does he think he is? She’s much prettier.’

She wanted to mock her suddenly gloomy cousin thoroughly, but held back.

She carefully approached him and extended her left middle finger, which she had been preciously holding with her right hand.

“I’m really sorry. I’ll go kneel down right away. Eat this and cheer up, okay?”

Romeo silently nodded and, as if in response, raised his middle finger and thrust it in front of Daphne’s face.

“Won’t you move?”

“No. I won’t move.”

Because of Romeo’s hand that was as big as a shield, Daphne felt like she had eaten a big insult instead.

* * *

Instead of velvet wallpaper, the ceiling and walls were painted with pink and light yellow oil paintings of the sky, and overall, the furniture was low and small with warm colors.

It was a cute bedroom that didn’t suit that red-haired woman at all. Rather than a bedroom, it felt more like a greatly enlarged dollhouse.

The woman’s annex, which he was visiting for the first time, had a clear concept for each bedroom. Celestian recalled the bedroom he had been lying in until yesterday, which had been burning like a nightmare.

Except for the seriously beautiful view beyond the window, that place was full of flaws. When the sun rose, it was hot enough to burn a person, and at night, it was so cold that he shivered, cursing involuntarily.

Celestian briefly recalled the face that had walked proudly towards him, next to the corpses covered in blankets under the gallows.

―Hello, Prince.

Due to the muscles in his face that were sore from ruthless torture and the scorching sun, he couldn’t properly see who had come to save him. It was a time when even uttering a word was difficult.

However, because that red hair, brilliant like the aurora’s radiance, was unique in the kingdom, Celestian had been momentarily tense.

The villainess of the rumors, who was ‘crazy about money, mean-spirited, bullied Psyche when she came to the capital, and tried to seduce her cousin the Crown Prince to become Empress’, no longer had a vicious face.

Rather…

‘It’s unfamiliar.’

When he was gritting his teeth, burning with fever, the woman tried to relax his stiff jaw by rubbing his cheek with her cool hand.

She fed him medicine that tasted strangely like strawberries and blew steadily to cool his sweat, and leaned on her arm on the bed, looking at his face for a long time.

‘Something is different.’

When he opened his eyes, the woman, who had brought a chair next to the bed, was flipping through documents in a light purple evening dress.

The sound of papers being turned at a steady pace filled the quiet room.

―Prince, are you awake? Does it hurt a lot?

When their eyes met, a cold palm immediately approached and touched his forehead, and the back of her hand touched his cheek.

Celestian, grateful for that coolness, unconsciously rubbed his cheek against Daphne’s hand. Judging by her words and actions alone, it seemed like she was worried, but somehow she looked pleased.

―The Prince absolutely must not die.

When before she had said even if he died, his corpse would be hers.

Since bringing him here, she treated him as if he were her subordinate, and would hit him if things didn’t go her way, yet when she felt like it, she would speak so respectfully.

Sometimes she would even speak of love. Always adding the words ‘really really’.

Celestian, who had been fooled a few times at first, wondering if she might be sincere, now knew well that this was her way of mocking him. So he closed his eyes without answering.

When he opened his eyes after dozing off for a moment, the bedroom was empty. It felt seriously lonely. Celestian, who had been lying curled on a bed that seemed a bit small for his body, got up from his place.

The sofa where the woman had been sitting until just now had been moved under the window. Celestian, who plopped down there, stroked the velvet armrest several times.

Night had fallen, but he looked down at the surface of the Angel River, which was tinged orange due to the streetlights on the bridge, and mulled over several names.

Rodriguez, Green. Endawin, Windfall, Galahad, Baldwin, Chadwick, Elta, Julius.

“Beaucater.”

The families of Secradion that had ruined Teriosa. These were names he had once said must be uprooted and killed someday. But now they were also targets of revenge whose fundamental reasons had all faded.

Now it was all just bothersome.

“What could she be thinking?”

When he blinked, he recalled the woman who had sparkling golden eyes like burning stars and opened her arms.

―I got a hug from Psyche today.

“Always saying things I can’t understand at all…”

―Ah, I think I can still feel Psyche’s warmth in my arms. Cele, want to be hugged?

Puhah, he couldn’t hold back his laughter. Celestian covered his mouth with his hand and laughed pleasantly for a moment.

“Should I pretend to love Denver?”

Celestian hummed softly and took out the light pink silk glove he had put in his pocket, placing it on his hand.

The glove was two joints smaller than his hand and so thin it seemed it might crumble.

He had never carelessly grabbed that hand that must have gone in and out of this glove many times, afraid it might wear out.

Until just a few weeks ago, he couldn’t even touch the ends of Daphne’s hair. The letters he had written many times seemed to have never reached her.

If asked whether he had hoped for a closer relationship than that, the answer was ‘no’. He was happy enough just watching from afar.

In other words, he had lived drawing his own lines, moderately.

“Daphne.”

While ruminating on the times that had passed by, he suddenly felt his vision wavering. Celestian muttered while rubbing his temples.

“I don’t know if this is an opportunity or a deception…”

In his memory, Daphne clearly hates him. Yet strangely, his feelings didn’t subside.

“Yes, Daphne.”

A name that never feels enough no matter how many times he calls it.

“If that’s what you want, then that’s what I’ll do.”

As long as he’s alive, misunderstandings can be cleared up. He was also confident in protecting. Now was the time to be satisfied with this much.

Celestian kissed the space between the ring and pinky fingers of the soft glove. The cool night breeze, mixed with the smell of river water and grass, caressed his golden hair-like locks as it passed by.