The eyes of the two brothers, peering into the cargo carriages, went glassy.

Anne snapped back to her senses, dabbed at the corner of her mouth, and clapped her hands together.

“My goodness, Your Highness! This is more than enough! Truly, a few biscuits would have done perfectly, and now you’ve brought all of this, it seems too heavy to ask you to take it back, I really don’t know what to do……”

At Anne’s words, Cassius pressed one hand gently to his chest with a wry smile, looking as though he had just been spared.

“Please do accept them. If you were to send them back, I would feel as though I myself had been rejected, and that would pain me greatly.”

“Oh my! How could I cause pain to such a noble prince? If you truly insist, I will accept them just this once, but the next time you visit, please do bring biscuits, Your Highness?”

Anne rubbed her hands together like a fly before a meal and led the prince into the castle.

“Welcome to our castle, Your Highness!”

“It is the honor of our family to receive you, Your Highness!”

Anton and Piar bowed so deeply it was hard to imagine they would bend that low even for princes of their own country.

“Miss Rosemaria.”

At the foot of the steps leading up to the main building, Prince Cassius shyly extended his arm toward Rose.

“The portrait I received of you was a poor imitation that captured not even a single thread of silk’s worth of your beauty. Would you grant me the honor of capturing on my canvas a radiance that surpasses the blazing summer sunset of Franzel and the dew that settles on Hailion’s most boundless meadows?”

Rose moved like a tangled marionette and placed her hand on his arm.

“Oh, of course. I shall look forward to being painted more beautifully than I appear in person, Your Highness.”

She had to steel herself. If she just met two hundred suitors one by one like this, surely she would find at least one worth keeping……

She was already desperately longing for the waters of Hilude to wash away her exhaustion.

❀❀❀

Robert’s feet were heavy leaving the audience chamber, as though they had sunk into mud. He was wrapped in a deeper dread than the one that had gripped his chest when he walked in to see the Emperor.

Escalus VII was a man who smiled like a saint and rarely showed what lay beneath.

Robert had not expected a satisfying answer. He knew that much.

“Your Majesty! House Ordo has served the imperial family with greater devotion than anyone, from the time of the first Emperor Escalus to this very day. When Escalus II founded Grafa Bank, while the other vassals scattered and fell to infighting, we alone remained in the capital to support him. Your Majesty knows that no family has held the duties of a vassal more sacred than House Ordo.”

Robert had made his case at length, laying out in painstaking detail the enormous contribution his family had made to the founding of Grafa Bank.

More than five hundred years had passed, but it was a history both the Emperor and House Ordo remembered.

“How could I forget.”

The Emperor looked at Robert with gentle eyes.

“The imperial family will never forget. When Escalus II founded Grafa Bank against the Senate’s opposition, only two families supported the imperial house from beginning to end. They were…… Ordo and Camelot.”

The wrinkled corners of the Emperor’s eyes softened.

“My affection for House Ordo is no less than your own, Sir Robert. And yet……”

It grated on him, being lumped together with Camelot for praise, but Robert did not doubt the Emperor’s sincerity and bowed his head deeply.

“The one who oversees Grafa Bank must be a person who cares for all the people of Hailion with equal and impartial love. That principle, passed down from Escalus II, is one I intend to uphold.”

Robert nearly answered without thinking that he too loved the people equally, but he stopped and turned the Emperor’s words over carefully.

Equal and impartial love for all the people……

“Can you understand?”

The Emperor asked gently, running a hand along the edge of the throne.

“……Yes, Your Majesty. I am ashamed that I have not governed my household well.”

Robert bit his lip, lowered his head, and withdrew.

A complete defeat. He could not love all people equally.

“Camelot……”

Robert did not love Camelot equally. He was neither shameless nor foolish enough to delude himself into thinking his family treated Camelot fairly.

He knew, and it ached to know, that the two families who had once served the imperial house as its left and right arms, bound by friendship, had become bitter enemies and a source of grief for the Emperor.

“Haah……”

Was the Emperor telling him to resolve the conflict with Camelot?

Perhaps His Majesty had announced a new candidate to give House Ordo a chance to improve.

But it was impossible. Robert could not even begin to imagine Ordo and Camelot reconciling and joining hands out of shared interest.

“Always getting in the way, Came—”

Even knowing his own blame was irrational, Robert could only fall back on the habit of taking it out on Camelot. He felt ashamed of the ugliness he recognized in himself, yet he could not shake it loose.

And then.

“Ca…… Camelot!”

The target of his imagined glare came walking toward him from the other end of the corridor, and Robert straightened his neck.

“Hm? Who is this. If it isn’t the lord of Melos.”

Jean Camelot, lord of Camelot, approached with a faint look of displeasure on his blunt, bronzed face. The knights escorting him furrowed their shaggy brows and fixed their eyes on Robert.

Robert had only brought one guard with him, and he felt a flash of regret, but he did not shrink. He squared his chest and stood his ground.

“What brings the lord of Camelot to the imperial palace? I heard you were busy keeping track of a son who ran off and barely found his way home.”

Robert, the taller of the two, tilted his chin up as high as it would go and looked down at Jean with a smile.

Truly…… an appalling face.

That was always Robert’s first thought when he came face to face with the men of Camelot.

A family that had gathered every ugly face in the world under one roof. Anyone who thought the nickname of Physis gorillas had been earned by their superior build alone was sorely mistaken, and Robert would have liked to tell them so.

The savage manner of men who seemed to have stopped evolving halfway into civilization. The grating voices. The menacing eyes. The heavy dark circles. The small, blunt noses. The jaws that jutted out in graceless prominence. The arms so long they could scratch their knees while standing upright……

They looked like gorillas because they were gorillas, plain and simple. Humans who had never quite finished becoming human.

“And what brings the lord of Melos here? I assumed you were lying low together with those rut-crazed colts of yours after they ruined the princess’s birthday celebration. You must have grown thick-skinned in your old age.”

Jean fired back with a barbed remark.

Robert laughed it off breezily and stepped in close enough to jab his chin at the bridge of Jean’s nose.

“Ha ha! Young men will quarrel now and then. Is the lord of Camelot still nursing a grudge over that like some old man, when you’re still so young?”

“Nursing a grudge! The aggressor mocking the victim for being thin-skinned is the height of shamelessness!”

“Who are you calling the aggressor? Your attendants were lucky enough that day not to take a single blow from my nephews. It’s always been our side that suffered the real harm. Shouldn’t you reflect on the fact that it’s always Camelot that strikes first with that reckless mouth of yours, causing harm with words?”

Sparks flew between the two lords as they glared at each other with the look of men who wanted to tear each other apart. Their guards bared their teeth at one another and growled.

Grind, Jean gnashed his teeth, then flashed a smile he thought was devastating.

“……You ought to know how it looks, a father swaggering through the imperial palace like it’s his own home just because his daughter has a pretty face and caught Prince Julius’s eye. Does a vulgar family like Ordo actually dream of becoming kin to the imperial family?”

He’s bringing my daughter into this?

Robert wanted to grab Jean by the collar and demand he fight fair, but he showed no sign of being wounded and bared his teeth in a thin smile.

“Camelot is one to talk, lobbying every publication in sight to deify a son who wandered around foreign countries stirring up trouble and scraping together coin. A low-grade primate’s genes, no matter how you dress them up! Your son is notorious for his wretched character. Which poor young woman’s life are you trying to ruin by pestering matchmakers with that?”

“You, you dare say that about someone else’s precious eldest son—”

Jean’s face flushed scarlet. It must have been a sore spot after all. He trembled from head to toe, his clenched fist cracking as though the bones inside might shatter.

Weak. Camelot’s fighting power was well below Ordo’s after all.

“You were the first to open your mouth, lord of Camelot.”

Robert reminded him with a victor’s smile.

Honestly, even Camelot’s supposedly outstanding eldest son struck Robert as thoroughly ordinary. With so many fine-looking people in Ordo, who could possibly measure up?