“I’m Selina Vallenberg. You’re Miss Blair Mervish, aren’t you? Let’s get along well, shall we?”

The brown-haired woman smiled brightly.

Blair forced a smile and gave a small nod. She saw no reason to mention that she had been pushed through the palace gates like livestock being led to sl*ughter, all because of her parents.

After a tedious round of introductions and several more speeches, the audience hall proceedings wrapped up and the banquet began.

The banquet held in the lavishly decorated Great Hall was both a celebration of the frons’s arrival at the palace and the first official occasion marking the start of their fierce competition to become the next princess consort.

Though calling it fierce competition was a stretch, given that the crowd had clustered almost entirely around Anais Brienne. Considering the Duke of Brienne’s influence, it wasn’t surprising, but it still struck Blair as a strange sight.

If it was going to be like this, was there even a point in selecting frons at all. Anais was going to be princess consort regardless.

Blair stood in a corner of the hall, watching the absurd spectacle and sipping champagne. She and the other four frons were nothing but decorative additions to Anais’s entrance.

The Duke of Brienne could have bypassed the frons selection entirely and installed Anais as princess consort directly, but he wasn’t that foolish. Openly ignoring the frons tradition to seat his own daughter would only generate unnecessary noise.

There was no need for that. Everyone already knew Anais would be chosen.

Then again, there are plenty of people desperate to be even her bridesmaids.

Her own parents were no different.

First they would make her a frons, and once the selection was over, they would put her straight onto the marriage market, leveraging the prestige of having been a frons to handpick a family that suited their tastes.

My own wishes won’t factor into it at all.

Just thinking about it made her chest feel tight.

The frustration pressing down on her made Blair tip back the rest of her champagne in one go. It was already her fourth glass.

Feeling the warmth of the alcohol rising, Blair fanned herself with her hand and slipped quietly out toward the garden.

Unlike the noisy Great Hall, the garden was wrapped in still silence. The sudden absence of sound left her ears almost ringing.

Blair breathed in the cool scent of late autumn night and walked slowly deeper into the garden.

She had gone some distance when voices drifted through the sound of insects in the grass. On evenings when parties were held, there were always nobles sneaking off to enjoy secret rendezvous in this kind of maze-like garden, so Blair quietly moved to change direction.

But something was off. The voices coming from beyond the shrubbery didn’t belong to a man and a woman.

From what she could tell, both voices were male.

In a secluded place like this…… no, surely not. This is the royal palace, and they’re both men……

She told herself it couldn’t be what she was thinking, yet her feet refused to turn away. She drifted closer, toward the direction of the two men’s voices.

“……this isn’t right…… I’ve told you how many times……”

“It’s fine…… like this…… no one will know……”

Catching only fragments, Blair pressed a hand over her mouth and crept closer.

“No one will know? You dropped a button in my bedroom last time and Merianne found it!”

“That was just bad luck. Right now—”

“It’s always like this. No. I won’t be pushed around anymore.”

The man’s firm refusal seemed to leave the other momentarily speechless.

Blair held her breath and strained to listen. Eavesdropping was hardly proper behavior, but she was far too curious to stop herself.

Two men in a lovers’ quarrel. When would she ever hear something like this again?

“……What if I ordered you? Would you still refuse?”

“……”

The commanding tone silenced the man who had just said no.

He’s using his position to pressure someone into this? What kind of person does something so low?

Blair frowned and rose onto her toes, hoping to at least catch a glimpse of their faces.

The tall hedge blocked most of her view, and she could only make out the tops of their heads. One had black hair. The other had light reddish-brown hair.

Just a little more and I’d be able to see……

Her cautious movements had grown considerably bolder. She was stretching her neck and twisting her body this way and that when the reddish-brown-haired man spoke with a resigned sigh.

“Haah…… so it comes to threats in the end. Just give me a direct order from the start, Your Highness.”

Crack.

A branch snapped loudly, shattering the quiet of the shrubbery.

At the word Your Highness, Blair was so startled she lost her footing and stumbled. She barely managed to muffle the cry that rose in her throat, but there was nothing she could do about the sound of the breaking branch.

“Who’s there!”

A sharp shout rang out, followed by the swift sound of a sword being drawn. Blair scrambled to her feet in a panic and tried to flee, but the man was several times faster than her.

“……Miss Mervish?”

The brown-haired man slowly lowered the hand pointing the blade at her, his expression caught off guard. He was Ernst Werner, the captain of the Red Knights, the prince’s personal guard unit attached to the prince’s palace. A proper knight, he had remembered her face precisely from the brief glimpse he had caught of her in the audience hall earlier.

“H-hello. I was passing by and tripped, that’s all, Sir.”

Blair smiled as hard as she could, aiming for the most innocent expression she could manage.

“No, but…… right now that was……”

Ernst fumbled, too flustered to even sheathe his sword.

Blair seized the moment to slip away, but a cold voice from behind stopped her in her tracks.

“You only tripped and fell, so why are you running away?”

The low, threatening voice that had been throwing around words like orders and commands belonged to none other than Kalintz Einhart, prince of the Kingdom of Eiron.

He walked toward her slowly, a crooked smile on his face.

“Running away…… wasn’t quite what I was doing, though I can see how it might have looked that way.”

Blair thought herself rather shameless for saying it, but she had nothing better to offer.

If she admitted to having overheard their conversation, her head might very well roll. A royal guard and a prince in that kind of relationship would be a scandal of staggering proportions.

“Miss Blair Mervish, did you hear our conversation just now?”

Ernst asked, his face rigid.

Blair swallowed once, gave a small shake of her head, and said.

“No. The hedges here are so tall that it’s hard to hear much of anything. I absolutely did not hear a thing.”

“That sounds exactly like something someone who heard everything would say.”

Kalintz replied in the same contrary tone as ever. Blair felt her palms grow damp with nerves, but kept her voice steady.

“Not at all, Your Highness. Who would I dare lie to.”

He said nothing. She could feel his gaze fixed on her, so Blair kept her head slightly bowed and let her eyes wander.

Then something in his hand caught her attention. A dark object, shaped rather like a coif worn over the head, with black hair woven together and draped over it.

A wig……?

It was a trade item from the eastern continent that Blair had heard of once or twice. Some nobles used them to style their hair, or wore them at masquerade balls for a more complete disguise. They were expensive enough that you didn’t come across them often.

She was puzzling over why the prince had one in his hand when he spoke, unbothered.

“Well. If you didn’t hear anything, then you didn’t hear anything.”

Kalintz turned away with complete indifference and tossed the wig to Ernst.

“We don’t have time to stand around. Put it on already. I’m telling you, no one will recognize you.”

“That’s not going to work with just this, our faces are different!”

Ernst turned the wig over in his hands and grumbled.

“That’s why I’m telling you to lie face down on the bed with just your head sticking out, pretending to sleep. Who’s going to disturb a sleeping prince. As long as you don’t do something stupid like dropping a button again, you won’t get caught.”

Ernst started to protest at Kalintz’s words, then remembered Blair was still there and held his tongue.

“Haah…… let’s at least move somewhere else to talk.”

“She probably heard everything anyway.”

Still with his back to her, Kalintz muttered. Blair was at a loss for words. He had just said if you didn’t hear anything then you didn’t, and yet he clearly knew all along that she had been listening.

On top of that, he was now talking as though she weren’t even there.

“Yes, yes. Fine, let’s go.”

Ernst, looking a little embarrassed by the whole situation, gave Blair a brief nod of acknowledgment before disappearing with Kalintz to the other side of the garden.