Crusis spoke with a somewhat rigid voice, as if throwing the words. Elios started to make excuses but stopped. Despite all the flowery language and brilliant packaging he had used, Crusis was right at the core. It was essentially no different from secretly running away with Snow.

All this time, Crusis had resented the sleeping Saint. He thought the Saint had made his brother strange. He believed the Saint had taken away his brother’s smile and his future.

Now he could neither resent her nor thank her. As soon as she awoke, his brother returned to his original self. What Crusis, his own brother, had tried so hard to accomplish but couldn’t, the Saint had achieved in an instant.

Moreover, Elios, who had already given up many privileges as former Emperor and moved to this rural outpost, was now declaring that he would relinquish even the few small benefits he had left for the sake of the Saint.

Yet Crusis couldn’t even think of stopping his brother. That small woman was the entire world to his brother. To Elios, Saint Bernadette was a goddess, his world, and something more precious than himself. Having painfully felt this for four years, Crusis couldn’t stop what his brother wanted to do.

“Where… are you thinking of going?” Crusis bluntly asked, looking at the distant mountains through the window.

“Somewhere where no one will recognize my identity. And preferably, a place where stories about the ‘Saint’ aren’t widely circulated.”

“You’ll need to find a place much more isolated than here, at least.”

“If you take a ship from the southwest coast, there are plenty of good islands to live on. I’m thinking about one of them.”

Elios was referring to the archipelago stretching along the empire’s southwestern sea. After the empire conquered these islands, each of which had been its own small kingdom, they were incorporated into imperial territory. However, due to their island nature, they still maintained almost complete autonomy. They were a prime example of places beyond the empire’s reach.

“D*mn it!”

Crusis shouted angrily. The Emperor’s aides waiting outside burst through the door at the sound. Crusis told them to get out. He wasn’t usually like this, but his emotions had become unbearably intense.

“That place is so remote that not only visiting but even sending letters is difficult!”

A place where even letters from the imperial palace were hard to send. A place beyond reach. He knew Elios had chosen it precisely for that reason, but he was still angry. And worried. He was afraid his brother might suddenly vanish like a mirage one day.

“Listen. I know I can’t stop you. I know how important the Saint is to you. She must be so precious that ‘important’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. But you must promise me one thing.”

Just as Crusis was precious to Elios, Elios was precious to Crusis. It wasn’t that Elios considered Crusis less important than Snow, or that he was leaving because he didn’t mind losing contact with him.

He wanted to live his own life now, not one bound to the imperial family. The very fact that he wanted to live for someone other than the imperial succession—for Snow—was the path he had chosen for himself. That’s what made it meaningful.

So Elios carefully listened to every word Crusis poured out with a frowning expression.

“Don’t ever disappear suddenly. I’ll do whatever it takes to maintain contact, so at least once every two or three months, I’ll send a letter or something, and you must reply through my messenger. No, you don’t have to write back. But if you’re planning to leave for somewhere far away, you must let me know. I won’t forgive you if I lose contact with you.”

Though his words were sharp, Elios knew better than anyone that there was no malice in the heart behind them. Elios nodded with a faint smile.

“Yes. I promise I will.”

With that answer, Crusis’s expression softened a bit.

“Don’t forget. I’m not saying you can go because I don’t need you. I’m saying you can go because you’re precious to me, and I want you to stop being unhappy and finally be happy.”

Crusis took Elios’s hands in his.

“So now, please be happy. Understand?”

Elios gripped Crusis’s hands firmly. And he answered:

“Yes. I will be happy.”

In the end, Crusis also smiled weakly, like an empty husk following his brother’s lead.

He remembered the words he had once casually thrown at his brother when they were both princes, his face buried in a book.

‘Brother, you’re handsome.’

His brother with a smiling face was truly handsome. He had looked awful for the past few years, but today he had finally returned to being that handsome brother.

“Brother, you’re handsome.”

He voiced those old words aloud for no particular reason. At those words, not only Elios but even Snow standing nearby became bewildered.

“A handsome person like you should be able to be happy for life.”

“It’s not that happy people smile, but that smiling people become happy.”

‘So be happy for the rest of your life.’

With those final words, he rose from his seat, shaking everything off. He left behind any lingering attachment, resentment, or regret on the chair where he had been sitting. Crusis felt both sad and relieved.

“As you can see, I’m a busy man.”

He deliberately exaggerated, waving his hands. Then, looking once toward Snow, he also greeted her.

Now, at last, Crusis sincerely blessed the future of the two.

‘May my handsome brother and the beautiful Saint be happy together for the rest of your lives.’

♣ ♣ ♣

When he was placed in the seat where his father Ikanel had sat, there was a thought he had dozens of times a day.

This is a splendid and cozy prison.

It was a position where he wore the most expensive clothes in the world, where everyone bowed down to him, where he could erase a small country from the map with the flick of a finger, or save tens or hundreds of thousands of people, but it was still a prison.

His father had told him that he had the power to attract people. That’s why he was more suited to the title of monarch than Crusis, he had said from his sickbed.

Crusis closely resembled his father in political aspects. Perhaps that’s why his father had rejected Crusis.

But what use was the power to attract and embrace people? The heart to nurture and understand? What was the use of all that?

Elios sat on the Emperor’s throne. The bold nobles who had challenged imperial authority had mostly been dealt with during his father’s time. Since that wasn’t Elios’s specialty, it was rather fortunate. Elios freely did what he could do. He embraced and restored the sick and festering country. He cleanly eliminated enemies invading from outside.

Because of Emperor Elios Riman Akelan, people became happy. Everyone except Elios himself became happy.

Elios knew that as long as he sat in that position, the day would never come when he could go to bed with peace of mind. It was a seat stained with Freia’s blood, and even before her blood was spilled, countless people had been hanged, sent to the guillotine, or died sudden deaths with no one to witness for that seat. It was unspeakably terrible.

His father had been wrong. He was not cut out to be Emperor. The one who suited the Emperor’s seat was undoubtedly Crusis.

Elios didn’t particularly have anything he wanted to achieve by ascending to the throne. He merely sorted out the major issues that had arisen. But Crusis was different. While receiving his successor training, he had devised various new policies, planned them, and even implemented some of them.

If there was someone truly suited for the throne, it would be someone who could be happy themselves while sitting on it. That person was not Elios Riman Akelan but Crusis Riman Akelan.

And Elios, who had stepped down as former Emperor and was now planning to run away with the lovely Snow, was finally experiencing the happiest time of his life.

♣ ♣ ♣

They were incredibly busy.

They needed to leave this mansion quietly. It was something they couldn’t get help with from the soon-to-be-dismissed aides. Above all, they needed to leave swiftly before nobles from other regions began to grow suspicious.

Once the servants left the mansion, there would surely be people who would question the former Emperor’s actions. If they started looking into something specific, they might be caught. Everything had to be finished before then.

He had coordinated with Crusis about the aftermath.

It was uncommon for an Emperor to abdicate while still alive. In Akelan, where the Emperor needed absolute power, the existence of a former Emperor was, in some ways, a nuisance. There were even rumors that the current Emperor’s close association with the former Emperor was actually because he was wary of him.

Officially, Elios had prepared a document stating that he wished to disappear and live quietly to avoid causing confusion due to his existence as former Emperor, and he had already stamped it with his seal. Once Elios disappeared, Crusis would hold onto it and announce it to the world.

There would still be some unavoidable confusion, but it was far better than vanishing without a word and causing a large-scale search. Moreover, if Elios went missing, this small, peaceful estate would be the first to be turned upside down.

Only those with merchant qualifications recognized by the Continental Union could freely travel between estates and countries, so he had already prepared that as well. He had separated and packed only the easily portable jewels from the expensive luxuries in the mansion. With these alone, they would never struggle with a shortage of wealth for the rest of their lives.

Elios wanted Snow to rest without doing any work. Above all, her body had not yet fully recovered. However, Snow also diligently helped with what she could. She couldn’t leave everything to Elios for the rest of her life.

Most importantly, she was no longer the ignorant “Saint Bernadette” who had only lived within Santarium. She had seen and indirectly experienced many things through the pond. Now there were even fields where she had more knowledge than Elios. She had no intention of just being a hindrance.

After about a week, most of the preparations were complete. All the servants had been formally dismissed and returned to their homes, leaving only Snow and Elios in the mansion. They planned to leave the next evening, blending in with merchants heading toward the archipelago.