Chapter 56

“By the way, the librarian said you’re absorbed in advanced books that only upperclassmen read?”

“That… yes, it’s true.”

“You probably can’t understand them yet.”

“They are difficult.”

Helio spoke in an uncertain tone. His eyes shifted anxiously from side to side, as if checking whether there were any other ears listening here.

There was no way Reyes would miss that kind of body language. Leaning his upper body toward Helio, he asked slyly,

“‘There’s another reason you’re reading that, isn’t there?’”

Handling this child in the palm of his hand was easy. When Helio looked like he’d been hit right in the sore spot, Reyes felt intensely satisfied, his paltry desire to dominate fulfilled. He urged Helio on, as if telling him to hurry up and say it.

Helio chose his words, then chose them again. He had to gauge how far he could go without triggering the Seal. If he went even a little closer to the core, the sentence he meant to say collapsed in his mind, crumbling down to the level of syllables.

“Can His Majesty the King’s spell be dispelled by you, Your Highness, the King’s Brother?”

As a result, the question came out quite roundabout. Reyes found the boy’s sudden remark a little bothersome for a moment, but he kept reminding himself how important it was to remain on friendly terms with this child, and he replied as kindly as he could.

“That’s not possible. Even identical twins with the same attribute have different shapes to their magic cores. In fact, if you look at my attribute test sheet and his, the waveforms may seem similar at a glance, but if you examine them closely, they’re different in many places.”

“If even identical twins can’t do it….”

Helio muttered.

“Then someone else, who isn’t even the same age, definitely can’t?”

“That’s right. Of course. But why, exactly, were you curious about that?”

“I heard there was a case like that.”

“Which professor is spouting that kind of nonsense?”

“It wasn’t a professor.”

“Then an upperclassman?”

Helio shook his head.

“I searched thoroughly, but it said there’s no possible case other than the caster dispelling it themselves, the caster’s death, or neutralization through an opposing attribute.”

“Then can’t you just conclude the person who told you that was mistaken?”

It wasn’t something that could be brushed aside so easily. Helio fell into a deep silence. Sensing how strange the reaction was, Reyes’s expression shifted slightly.

“Is there some circumstance that makes that impossible?”

Instead of answering, Helio nodded.

“Has someone been placed under a spell?”

Another nod.

“And you absolutely have to dispel it?”

And another nod.

“Who is the one under the spell?”

Silence.

Reyes felt a measure of frustration, but he persisted with his questions. The more he asked, the more he got the impression that Helio wanted him to understand this situation. That pulled the King’s brother deeper into the exchange. Their back-and-forth spun its wheels in an odd place for quite a while—until, at last, it reached the proper destination.

“The one under the spell is you, isn’t it?”

Helio’s gaze steadied in an instant. He moistened his parched lips and nodded.

Reyes’s heart began to pound. He was seized by a premonition that he had gained advantageous ground.

“And you’re trying to dispel it?”

Another nod.

Reyes leaned back, sinking into the plush chair as he organized his thoughts. Helio’s attribute, “Self,” had no opposing attribute—just like Sabina’s “Time,” or the royal siblings’ “Record.”

So it couldn’t be dispelled by someone else’s magic.

“Is the reason you haven’t been speaking at all since a moment ago related to that?”

Helio looked almost moved. He nodded emphatically. In Reyes’s mind, a chain of causality whipped forward at speed. The boy had clearly been mentally interfered with, rendered unable to speak certain information aloud.

And Reyes had already reached the conclusion that the one who had cast magic on the boy must be a mage with the same attribute as the boy.

But how could such a person exist?

Helio was the first.

A child to be recorded in the history books.

“The one who cast magic on you must be an illegal, unregistered attribute mage, right?”

Yet again, Helio nodded.

In that moment, Reyes couldn’t open his mouth, seized by a shocking tremor that raced from the top of his head to his fingertips and toes. A boy under a spell. The man the boy was hostile toward. An unregistered attribute mage. Like someone burrowing into the vacancy while waiting for Don Slafdi to die….

“Ashton Bryant?”

Helio, too, was excited, his breathing rough. Cheeks flushed, he barely managed to steady his breath. He nodded.

But Reyes’s next reaction was nothing like what Helio had expected.

The suddenly exhilarated royal prince sprang to his feet. His eyes were now gleaming with a strange brilliance.

“I have to return to the palace. I need to tell Kenneth. The existence of an unregistered mage is illegal. It’s a very serious crime. That bastard will meet a horrifically painful death.”

His voice was drenched in rapture. The sudden elation felt a little grotesque to Helio, and he drew in on himself. Reyes didn’t see Helio’s reaction at all.

His hands and feet were shaking uncontrollably.

That man was an obstacle. A major impediment to obtaining Sabina’s heart. Of course he welcomed the chance to eliminate that troublesome bastard at once.

He would put him on the guillotine now.

And on the day he took Sabina’s heart into his hands, he would fly back into the past and make him pay once more for the insult he had dealt Reyes.

Without so much as a word of thanks to Helio or a farewell, he swept out of the parlor, coat tails flaring.

Helio felt as though a huge centipede were crawling up his spine. He stared for a long time at the spot Reyes had vanished from, unable even to close the door properly.