“Miss Lucian is staying in the capital at my request. I have been doing my best to see to her comfort, so this will not do. Unwanted attention directed at a lady.”

Had Heliones always been this good with words? Had he come having rehearsed what to say?

Whatever the case, it was clear he had helped me enormously. Feeling a little sorry for having resented his appearance moments ago, I let my eyes soften and glanced at Heliones with a faint smile.

Whether he caught my smile or not, Heliones gave the faintest twitch of his right eyebrow, barely perceptible, and lifted his chin.

“Since the flowers have bloomed so beautifully, I will have them all transplanted to the imperial palace gardens. I trust that Young Lord Roned has also come to understand through this matter that making a lady feel burdened, however well-intentioned, is a form of discourtesy.”

For a moment I forgot my circumstances and the situation entirely and nearly let out a cheer of encouragement at Heliones.

There was a reason he became Emperor, after all. He had always been so careful with his words around me that I hadn’t realized it, but an Emperor was an Emperor. To dispatch Roned so decisively like that!

Delmir’s unreadable smile still nagged at me a little, but I decided that at least in this moment, I would savor the small and unexpected victory Heliones had handed me.

His purpose accomplished, Heliones got back into the carriage he had arrived in and returned to the imperial palace without a backward glance. I had no reason to linger either, so I said my farewell to Roned, whose face had gone cold.

“I’ve seen enough of the flowers, so I’ll take my leave.”

Roned bowed with perfect gentlemanly composure and pressed his lips to my hand with great courtesy. But just before his lips left the back of my hand, he raised his eyes to look at me, and the red of his irises held a depth of madness with no discernible bottom, and I found myself stepping back half a pace without thinking.

“Miss Lucian does not yet know her own worth.”

Could he not manage a simple farewell? I laughed at him inwardly for putting on airs despite having been thoroughly humiliated, while outwardly I offered the kind of wistful smile befitting a lady.

“I know my own place better than anyone. I am a woman not worth the interest of the Young Lord of House Iledn.”

I withdrew my hand with enough force that he would feel it, though it showed nothing on the outside, then sent Elren and Hanna a look that said it was time to go.

Elren had the carriage ready at once, and I turned and left the Iledn family villa.

* * *

Heliones was in poor spirits for the entire ride back to the imperial palace. Not even the lush summer scenery spreading beyond the carriage window could lift his mood in the slightest.

Has it always been this difficult to keep up a composed front? He had spent his whole life burying humiliation deep and performing composure, yet back there he had genuinely thought his fist was going to fly on its own.

“At that rate, will you wear a hole through your palm? You’ll need to squeeze harder.”

Count Fonta looked at Heliones’s hand, which had gone red from how tightly he had been clenching his fist, and offered a reproach laced with dry humor.

“That lunatic. I should have beaten him until he lost consciousness.”

“Assaulting the heir of House Iledn on their own country estate would not end as a mere gossip item, I’m afraid.”

“Right. That’s the only reason I held back. Hah, a bookworm who does nothing but sit at a desk and read, I could handle him with my eyes closed…”

“That’s enough. It ended well, didn’t it? You handled it with admirable flexibility, following the script that Sir Elren and I prepared.”

The day Heliones returned to the imperial palace after hearing about Roned from Lucian, he had been beside himself, raging that he would kill Roned on the spot. When news arrived a few days later that the private estate had been blanketed in Lucian columbines, he had actually reached for the decorative sword hanging in his office and made to head straight to the Iledn family townhouse.

Elren and Count Fonta, who came running the moment they heard, barely managed to talk him down, and the two of them spent the next several days devising a way to defeat Roned in a manner befitting a gentleman.

Heliones kept interrupting with talk of duels and pistols, which complicated matters considerably, but in the end, the two loyal retainers managed to complete a script that would let their lord achieve his aim without compromising his dignity.

The actual field of Lucian columbines, seen in person, had been far more intense and striking than anything they had imagined.

The moment Heliones laid eyes on that red field, he had begun grinding his teeth, and Count Fonta had been quite anxious that his lord might leap from the still-moving carriage.

Fortunately, however, Heliones was simultaneously a man blinded by jealousy and the Emperor of the great Frianc Empire. However many times he may have beaten Roned senseless in his mind, outwardly he had delivered a lesson in gentlemanly conduct with perfect composure.

Of course, the moment he returned, he reverted to the jealousy-consumed man he had been before. Watching Heliones fume to himself, his temper still unspent, Count Fonta reminded him of one fact.

“Did she not say it felt like too much? No matter how aggressively Roned pursues her, it means nothing if Miss Lucian does not receive it.”

“That’s true, isn’t it?”

At Count Fonta’s words, Heliones wiped the anger from his face and asked back with a brightened expression.

Has Heliones always been this easy to manage? A man who had maintained a poker face even on battlefields where blood and flesh flew was now changing his expression at every single word someone said.

“The flowers will be planted in the inner palace garden within a few days. Before it gets any hotter, invite her to dinner once more. Use the flowers as your reason.”

“Will she come?”

“Are they not flowers from her homeland? Keep your personal feelings out of it and simply appeal to her nostalgia.”

“Oh, that could work!”

Heliones leaned forward and lightly struck his palm with his fist.

“Keep your personal feelings out of it. And don’t make her feel burdened!”

“Yes, yes. I understand, I understand.”

What exactly he understood was unclear. Count Fonta, finding his lord entirely untrustworthy of late with his moods swinging up and down like a boy in the throes of adolescence, gave an appropriately agreeable response and made a mental note to contact Elren that evening.

* * *

The reason behind Delmir’s enigmatic smile became clear the very next morning.

Uneasy as I was, the moment I heard the newsboys calling out in the street, I sent Hanna and Lucinda to buy every gossip sheet currently on sale. The rumors had spread far too quickly. This hadn’t even happened in the middle of the capital like the last time, so how had it been reported in such detail.

Most of the gossip sheets ran articles about the bloodless duel between Heliones and Roned, and most concluded by praising His Imperial Majesty for delivering a lesson in gentlemanly conduct with dignified composure.

However, the gossip sheet published by the press run by the collateral branch of House Balthar had its focus not on Heliones and Roned, but on Lucian.

‘Should the princess of an enemy nation be allowed to carry on freely in Frianc’s social circles?’

‘When will the divorce papers be settled? Is the former wife, unable to let go, scheming to become the Emperor’s mistress?’

Neither headline had anything to do with Lucian’s actual intentions, but they were opinion pieces after all. They were not reporting verified facts but expressing views, which made them difficult to refute.

Ah, she truly is something else. Delmir had chosen a clever method of turning public opinion without distorting the facts.

Days before my visit to the Iledn estate, she had planted articles about Roned and me in the gossip sheets, steering public opinion to make me look like a seductress bent on ensnaring some young lord, and provoking the imperial household.

Heliones had no choice but to step in to quell the scandal, and Delmir used that situation in turn to now paint me as a seductress desperate to become the Emperor’s mistress.

‘I have no desire to interfere in His Imperial Majesty’s private life, whatever mistress he may choose. However, if he wishes to take the princess of an enemy nation as his mistress, would it not be proper to first select an Empress of Frianc lineage and secure an heir?’

A war of public opinion. Unlike Frianc, where the press enjoyed comparatively greater freedom, I came from Rodencia, where the divine beast’s authority had upheld a monarchy from one king to the next, and this was a concept I found unfamiliar.

I had known that Delmir was a clever young lady who enjoyed provocations that danced right up to the line without crossing it, but I had not known she possessed this level of calculated precision.

I had done nothing wrong, yet I felt like a criminal. How much damage would this do to the imperial household?

Of course, I had no intention of becoming Heliones’s mistress, and neither did he, so it was nothing but an empty rumor, but rumors by their very nature take hold of “perhaps” and spread like wildfire, don’t they?

Ah, I’m angry. For the most part, I learned resignation before I learned anything else. No matter how much I cried or pleaded, the terrible t*rture never ended, and so in situations I could barely endure, I had no choice but to naturally learn to set my feelings aside and bear things in silence.

But right now, I am angry. I should have left a scratch mark on that fairy-like face when I had the chance. I would certainly face a fine or jail time, but what did I have left in my life anyway. I should have just left a deep scar on her face and gone to prison.

Of course, violence for any reason is a terrible thing, and I have no desire to act on it.

But the image of a red line drawn across that clear, smooth face keeps coming to mind.

Ugh! I’m not normally like this. I’m someone who shudders at the very thought of violence.

But can you blame me? When covered up, I might pass for a decent enough person, but peel back one layer and I am nothing but a mass of scars bearing the marks of violence.

So it should have ended with me. It should have ended with me, who had no further room to be broken.

How dare she touch Heliones.

He is a man who has finally broken free from a flawed wife and found his freedom. He is someone who must now find not a broken, defective thing like me, but a perfect woman who suits his perfection perfectly, and build a perfect life with her.

I had once included Delmir among the candidates for that perfect match, but she was now removed from consideration entirely. Which meant it no longer mattered to me whether she acquired flaws or scars of her own.

Tsk, tsk. People who have much always make the same mistake. They think it is so easy to defeat someone who has nothing.

But they overlook one important truth. A person who has nothing also has nothing to lose.

Which makes them reckless. And desperate.

Yes. I’ve learned your clever method well. From now on, I’ll deal with you in a manner that is thoroughly petty, yet equally clever.