Prevaka screamed desperately as she looked at the young prince she had practically raised. Her voice was already so cracked that it was difficult to understand, but she seemed to be saying that her family was being held hostage, and she was begging for her life to be spared.

The phlegm in her scream was palpable. Blood vessels stood out in her sunken eyes, and her hands, fixed to the wooden frame, were missing fingernails from t*rture, with only crimson marks remaining where they had been, black blood flowing steadily.

What thirteen-year-old Elios felt watching this scene was neither the desperation to save his nanny nor compassion for what she had become.

It was overwhelming fear.

The executioner raised his axe. The taut yellow rope would snap with just a simple hand movement from the executioner, and then her neck and wrists would break with a cracking sound, rolling on the ground like red balls. The woman’s loud screams became even more desperate.

Elios instinctively turned his head away. And he struggled frantically to break free from the knights holding him.

“Stop it! Stop it!”

As Elios shouted, he heard a voice that, at this moment, he resented more than anything else.

“Do not turn your head away.”

It was his father’s voice.

“Stop… please stop it…”

Elios said, almost sobbing. If he could only stop this terrible thing, he felt he could kneel before even the lowliest person if asked.

The emperor spoke.

“Hold the prince’s head in place so he cannot turn away.”

The well-trained knights hesitated for a moment. The emperor’s gaze was frighteningly cold. The knights obeyed the emperor’s command. Elios struggled as his gaze was forcibly fixed toward the scaffold.

“Elios, do not close your eyes.”

It was an imperial command.

Elios continued to struggle but did not close his eyes. Tears streamed down his face. His eyelids trembled. Sweat soaked his back. Please, please! Elios cried out as he saw the emperor raise his hand.

The emperor’s heavy hand came down quickly. The executioner’s axe flashed.

With a screech and a thud, the blade fell like lightning and hit the wooden floor. Birds sitting on the scaffold flew away with a flutter, startled by the sound.

The entire scene was more horrific than Elios had imagined. His black pupils filled with red. He had the illusion that the pungent smell of blood was wafting all the way to where he stood.

“One who is to become emperor must consider cutting off someone dear as easily as blowing his nose. Get used to enduring even more terrible things than this, Elios.”

The emperor left with his ministers, leaving behind Elios who had collapsed to the ground, retching with unfocused eyes as if he had lost his mind.

“What are you thinking about so deeply?”

“Ah, just a memory that came to mind.”

Eighteen-year-old Elios returned to reality at Crusis’s curious voice. He saw a pair of navy blue eyes staring at him. Bookshelves custom-made to Crusis’s taste filled the walls. This was his room. As usual, Elios had come to visit his brother and was watching him read.

Since Crusis wasn’t paying much attention to him, Elios had naturally drifted into his own thoughts. More specifically, he was trying to remember when his father had last embraced him.

It was the night Elios’s nanny was executed. The emperor had come to Elios, who was completely exhausted after hours of dry heaving and sobbing uncontrollably. That was the second time his father had embraced him since he first held a sword, and it was also the last time.

Looking at Elios lost in thought, Crusis asked anxiously:

“Brother, are you sure you’re not sick?”

Elios, who was about to seriously reassure him that he was fine, ended up bursting into laughter. It was because of his brother’s absurd misunderstanding.

The day before meeting Snow, Crusis had come to his room and pulled out various herbs from inside his sleeve, spreading them out. Elios had been dumbfounded.

“Brother, it’s okay. I don’t know about azoospermia, but erectile dysfunction can be treated with enough effort.”

Faced with his brother casually saying such outrageous things, Elios had looked uncharacteristically blank. He had momentarily lost his composure before quickly regaining it and explaining that wasn’t the case.

But Crusis wouldn’t give up.

“Is now the time to hide such things? This isn’t about embarrassment! You need to continue the bloodline!” he had whispered, careful not to be heard outside. Elios was only able to reassure Crusis after swearing by the goddess Amir that he was perfectly healthy.

Crusis seemed so insensitive to everything except his own studies that one might wonder if something was wrong with the emotional part of his brain. But Elios knew that wasn’t actually true. Not only was Crusis not at all cute, but it was vexing that he tried to act indifferent even to his own brother.

In that sense, Elios had been relieved, for different reasons than Crusis, when he saw his brother’s intense emotional change that day. The thought that even that kid could appear so clueless at times made him laugh.

It seemed that after that incident, Crusis had almost given up pretending to be indifferent in front of his brother. Elios liked this change in his brother.

“Crusis. Do you remember my nanny, Prevaka?”

Crusis frowned.

“Why, did she appear in your dreams?”

Though Elios had been only thirteen and Crusis eleven at the time, they remembered it vividly. As Elios’s nanny, Prevaka had been quite close to Crusis as well. It had been a huge shock that she had tried to kill his brother.

But more unforgettable than that was the hollow look in his brother’s eyes, which had lost their light for a while after being forced by their father to watch the execution. That was also the first incident that made Crusis feel antipathy toward their father.

“No, it’s not that. It just came to mind suddenly.”

“Does it still bother you?”

After staring indifferently at the transparent navy blue eyes that were looking at him with concern, Elios suddenly patted the back of his brother’s neck.

“It doesn’t bother me at all anymore. Really, it just came to mind suddenly. Look at you, are you worried about me?”

“…Not really.”

Crusis vaguely avoided answering and threw a few books from the top of the pile stacked beside him to Elios.

“Read these instead. Stop disturbing me while I’m trying to read.”

“Well, I’m already reading more than enough books, almost forcibly.”

The reading list assigned by Grand Duke Grant was terrifyingly vast, so Elios had read an enormous number of books, though not as many as Crusis. All the books Crusis handed over were ones Elios had already read. Twisting his short blond hair with his fingers, Elios blurted out:

“Prevaka’s family… they must all be dead, right? Since they were supposedly held hostage.”

“Brother.”

“Yes, I know what you’re going to say. I’m not bothered at all. I’m telling you, it just came to mind suddenly.”

“Liar,” Crusis muttered.

“Whatever Prevaka meant to you, whatever she did to you, and however she died, it’s all ancient history now. Just forget about it. She wasn’t even worth remembering.”

“I know.”

“Brother, I told you before. A monarch must be more ruthless than anyone else. Not only must they embrace and protect everyone, but they must also be merciless enough to cut off their own right arm without hesitation when necessary. For the greater good, the sacrifice of one or two is unavoid—”

“Enough.”

Elios cut off Crusis’s words. Crusis, who had been reciting the contents of political theory like flowing water, stopped speaking.

“One who is to become emperor must consider cutting off someone dear as easily as blowing his nose. Get used to enduring even more terrible things than this, Elios.”

“…Crusis, you’re saying exactly the same thing as Father.”

Crusis’s expression froze instantly. He didn’t like being compared to their father.

“I don’t mean it in a bad way. You’re not saying anything wrong. Yes, when one becomes emperor, one can’t trust anyone. Even Father had to send his own brother away from the palace, almost like banishment, because he couldn’t trust him. I will become emperor too.”

Silence fell. Elios spoke with suppressed pain.

“But I don’t want to make you, Papel, or Galimede end up like Uncle Grant.”

Crusis couldn’t say anything. At some point, as if by agreement, they were both mechanically turning the pages of the books in front of them. But neither was properly focusing on the content.

♣ ♣ ♣

Elios’s third visit to Snow was on the evening two days after Snow had attended a worship service for the first time.

Snow had a lot to chatter about to El regarding the ceremony. The people who filled both halls of Dianasha, a temple as large as Estrea, and even spilled into the courtyard in front of the temple like a ripe autumn field, praying. The atmosphere that became overwhelmingly quiet for a moment when Snow appeared. The unfiltered glances of glory that reached her.

Snow had overwhelmed the believers just by her presence, but in reality, it seemed that Snow herself was overwhelmed by the solemn atmosphere.

But just as she had during her coming-of-age ceremony, Snow overcame it once more. Each of those people was someone Snow needed to embrace, not a source of pressure. With that thought, her trembling subsided.

Snow felt proud of herself for having the courage. She wanted to tell El all about what she had felt and how she had overcome it.

But Snow found herself unable to bring up what she had wanted to talk about. This was because there was a shadow over El’s smile that day. Though his actions were clearly no different from usual, strangely, she felt that he had some unspoken worry.

“Is something wrong?”

Snow asked carefully and distinctly as they walked through the streets, bundled up in clothes, following Elios’s lead.

“No. Why?”