Count Fonta had served Heliones for a long time, since the days when Heliones was a child of a mistress and had been shut out of the imperial family, so it was inevitable that he would notice his lord’s mood had sunk to its lowest depths upon returning to the imperial palace.

His lord had grown skilled at concealing his emotions and feelings, having lived under the threat of assassination since childhood, but Count Fonta had long since mastered the art of reading Heliones’s state.

In the emperor’s study, Heliones sat sunken into a great chair built in the red and gold that symbolized the eternal prosperity of the Frianc Empire, and for a long while he stared at the documents on his desk with a vacant expression, saying nothing.

At any time, even when he had fought his own kin in a bloody struggle against close relatives who had plotted rebellion during the campaign to reclaim the throne, those gray eyes had always rested in a heavy stillness, watching events unfold like a detached observer with no stake in the matter. Now, at the sight of nothing more than a document envelope, they began to slowly rise to the surface.

As a longtime confidant, Count Fonta stood perfectly still and waited for his lord’s command, giving no sign that he had noticed anything, so as not to disturb his mood.

“The signature. You were the one who signed it.”

“Yes.”

It was not particularly surprising that Count Fonta, who had also served as Heliones’s legal representative at the time, had signed the divorce papers on his lord’s behalf while Heliones was at the front.

“When did I ever give you the order to sign divorce papers?”

“You did not.”

Was it a reproach? Or resentment? Neither. Heliones’s gray eyes held unmistakable grief.

The grief of acknowledging that trust had been broken by a longtime friend and retainer he had trusted more than his own mother.

Count Fonta dropped to his knees before his lord without hesitation.

“I was not careful enough.”

“Was it on my mother’s orders?”

“Yes.”

It had been only two months since Heliones had settled affairs both at home and abroad and ascended the throne as emperor.

Even in the midst of days so hectic that no number of bodies would have been enough, he had searched for his missing wife.

He had searched desperately for a wife who was wife in name only, one he had never once looked at with warmth or fulfilled even the basic duties of a husband toward.

Count Fonta had already confirmed Lucian’s whereabouts long before. No, confirmed was hardly the right word. He had never lost track of her to begin with.

Whether Lucian was buying a train ticket under a false name or purchasing a house, he had kept constant watch over his lord’s former wife, a woman who might yet become a complication.

Count Fonta had sensed it vaguely. He had told himself it was simply because the Rodencian royal restoration movement had grown troubling, or because supporters of the surviving Rodencian royal family kept turning up trying to flee abroad, and that finding the last remaining princess of Rodencia was nothing more than a matter of security. But perhaps, somewhere deep down, he had already known.

That Heliones simply wanted to see Lucian.

Anxiety had driven a retainer to betray his lord. The busy Heliones had also entrusted the search for Lucian to Count Fonta, his closest aide, and Count Fonta had steadily and quietly worked to obstruct his lord’s pursuit without drawing notice.

Two months ago, Heliones had finally crossed the river of blood and mistrust and made his formal entry into the imperial palace.

The first thing the newly crowned emperor did was search for Lucian, keeping his closest aides out of it. He had moved so discreetly through all that chaos that Count Fonta had not known why Heliones had chartered an entire train until he heard the order to escort Lucian to the capital from his lord’s own lips.

More thorough than he appeared, Heliones had already tracked down and secured the divorce papers, which had been difficult to locate after being transferred from place to place when the courthouse burned down during the war.

There was no room for excuses or lies now.

The order had come from the late Duchess Gertil, but the decision to sign the divorce papers without informing his lord had been Count Fonta’s own.

Was it not a surface-level relationship where nothing had truly existed between them? He had thought it a matter that would change little whether the divorce papers existed or not.

At least, that was what he had thought at the time.

“So, as my legal representative, you not only prioritized my mother’s wishes over mine and signed an important document on my behalf without my consent, but you have also been defying my orders all this time?”

Count Fonta did not answer Heliones’s question. What could he say?

Even if he had done it at the time out of his own consideration, to clear the way for Heliones to move quickly into a political marriage once he became emperor, concealing Lucian’s whereabouts for over two years afterward was nothing more or less than a betrayal of his lord.

“I know well enough why you did it. My mother says the same thing every time I see her, so I could hardly not know.”

Heliones, who had been sitting sunken deep in his chair as though it were a grave, slowly rose and walked toward Count Fonta, who remained kneeling.

“It is not a matter of sentiment. A princess of an already fallen kingdom does nothing for your standing. She is four years your senior, and may even be barren. A woman like that cannot be brought into the imperial family. That was the reasoning, I imagine.”

Heliones spoke on in a flat tone, then crouched down before Count Fonta and gripped his shoulders.

Those gray eyes, which had remained miraculously calm through every storm, now showed a pain that could not be hidden, and Count Fonta felt a sudden urge to throw himself out the study window then and there.

It was only the third floor, so dying outright would be difficult, but he might at least earn an injury severe enough to leave a mark, something to remind him of his sin for the rest of his life.

But Heliones had hold of his shoulders, so Count Fonta could not throw himself out the window, and with no way to escape his lord’s anguished gaze, he had no choice but to receive it in full.

“Do I not appear to you as a person?”

“What do you mean by…”

“Do I look to you like a puppet, or a stud horse, kept for the eternal continuation of the imperial line?”

What was this? The Frianc Empire, though it had briefly fallen, was the undisputed ruler of the continent with a history spanning over four hundred years.

Was his lord, who carried the blood of the great founding king, the Wolf Emperor himself, comparing himself to a puppet, to a horse?

How could such a profane thing be said? Even from one’s own lips, it was a thing that must never be spoken.

Count Fonta fixed Heliones with a look of rare indignation in his steady brown eyes.

“Please do not say such things! My lord is, my lord is…”

Count Fonta had been about to say that his lord was the sole bearer of the great Frianc imperial bloodline, but he could not bring himself to finish. The moment the words formed, he understood the source of Heliones’s anguish.

His mother, the late Duchess Gertil, now the Empress Dowager, had been a mistress.

The former empress had been neither a cruel woman nor one out of touch with reality, so she had not openly mistreated or abused the two of them. She had simply ignored them, treating them as though they did not exist.

She had asked the emperor for only one promise upon their marriage.

She would not object to him keeping a mistress, but the mistress and her child were never to appear before her eyes.

The late emperor had thought this a reasonable enough condition, the one and only demand from an empress of immense wealth, and had readily signed the prenuptial agreement. But reality proved otherwise.

Mistress she may have been called, but the late Duchess Gertil was a woman of noble birth. The third daughter of a duke, she had been betrothed since childhood to the son of a distinguished family, but her life was thrown off course when she met the late emperor.

She bore the emperor’s child but could not set foot across the threshold of the imperial palace, and could not even show her face at major state events.

Unlike the mistresses of earlier generations, who had at least been able to enter the palace and wield political influence even while enduring direct insults and contempt from the empress, she had to live from the very beginning as though she did not exist.

The woman who had once been as fair and clear as a rose blooming fresh with morning dew wilted quickly, like a flower past its season.

In a position where she could not even earn the empress’s contempt, a mistress with no presence naturally became easy prey for the noblewomen of the court, and she sank deeper and deeper into despair.

Heliones had been a perceptive child. He rarely showed his feelings outwardly, but having grown up watching his mother’s moods, he had become unusually skilled at reading the emotions of others.

In time, the empress died of illness, and the long-scorned mistress finally became the empress she had so longed to be. But the hatred and despair that had built up in layers over the years were not a burden that could be easily swept away by a change in title.

Because of this, even after Heliones was formally recognized as an imperial prince, he had always lived with one eye on his half-brothers and another on his mother’s moods.

Making sure never to offend anyone, in order to survive, became both his weakness and his strength, and people naturally gathered around him, drawn by that quiet, perceptive consideration.

Count Fonta had been one such young man.