Chapter 5

“Raul——!”

The color drained from Andrea’s face. He shook Raul with trembling hands, but blood only spread wider and wider across the fabric.

“……Open your eyes!”

He gave the order in a voice that shook just as badly, but it was no use.

Andrea scooped Raul up and ran toward his tethered warhorse.

He called out to the guards rushing in at the sound of the shot.

“Have Rufus waiting at my tent immediately!”

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Rufus had been assigned to the event as a precaution and had spent the day resting in the field medical tent.

He heard the sudden summons and the commotion outside, immediately sensed it was the kind of firearm accident that sometimes happened at the Hunt, and ran out. But learning that he was needed at Andrea’s tent made him tense sharply.

‘Could His Highness be injured?’

“What happened?”

Rushing in breathlessly, Rufus was followed by a cluster of nursing maids at his heels.

He looked around the tent and first spotted Andrea standing unharmed, and let out a breath of relief.

“Good heavens, you gave me a fright. His Highness isn’t hurt.”

But then Andrea’s rough hand seized Rufus by the sleeve and dragged him to the bedside.

……!

Someone soaked in blood was lying on the camp bed, and Rufus was equally startled.

“Who is this…… R, Raul?”

Rufus was shaken too. He pressed his fingers beneath Raul’s nose to check for breathing, then checked the pulse, and felt his second wave of relief when he saw the wound had already been properly staunched before he arrived.

“The initial treatment was done very well.”

“Hurry.”

Andrea’s face had gone ashen, and at his urging Rufus quickened his hands.

He cut away the uniform jacket with scissors and began pulling back the blood-soaked shirt beneath.

“The gunshot wound is in one place, the shoulder.”

But examining the wound more closely, it was not a through-and-through. The flesh of the shoulder had been torn, but the bone and muscle were undamaged.

“It appears to be a faint from the shock, but fortunately there should be no serious complications.”

Whether from blood loss or the shock itself, the unconscious Raul’s face was pallid. Rufus lifted the eyelids to check for vital response a second time, then let his gaze drift slightly lower.

Through the open shirt, a glimpse of bandaging wrapped tightly around the chest was visible, and he tilted his head.

“Did Your Highness attend to this as well? Was there another gunshot wound?”

Andrea looked in that direction for the first time and frowned slightly, then shook his head.

“No, there was only one wound. I didn’t touch anything other than the injury……”

But something struck him as odd, and his voice trailed off as he looked more carefully at the bandaging.

Setting aside the question of why it was wound so tightly, the upper chest above the bandage was distinctly rounded.

On a thin, slight frame, only the upper chest was full. It looked almost like…… exactly like a woman.

A cold and strangely certain premonition traveled down the back of Andrea’s neck.

He instinctively stopped Rufus from cutting away the bandaging to examine further.

“That’s enough. The wound’s been treated, so I’ll take him straight back to the palace.”

“Ah, but this kind of binding should be loosened to avoid putting pressure on——”

Andrea did not let Rufus finish. He straightened Raul’s shirt collar back into place and dismissed him.

“Out. And if His Majesty asks, tell him my tent was empty tonight because I left a day early.”

“Pardon? Must I be the one to tell him?”

“Yes. You must.”

A short while later, word came that the carriage was ready, and Andrea lifted Raul, wrapped in a blanket, and carried him out. The weight was unbelievably slight, and it confirmed the suspicion he had already formed.

He felt his heart begin to beat with an ominous rhythm, and his expression twisted with something complicated.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Inside the palace infirmary.

“She woke briefly, but the sedative put her back to sleep. She should wake again in three or four hours.”

Andrea’s visible relief at the female physician’s words gave way to open bewilderment at what followed.

“Since she is a woman, I have treated the wound to minimize scarring as much as possible. The antibiotic herbs must be administered on schedule, so she will likely need to remain admitted in the ward for about a month.”

He had already been certain, but hearing the physician confirm it after examining Raul left Andrea nodding blankly.

He rubbed his face roughly to collect himself, then asked again.

“So…… she is a woman, is that it?”

The female physician seemed slightly flustered herself, but answered calmly.

“Yes…… she is a woman. Did you not know, Your Highness? …… It does appear she went to considerable lengths to conceal it……”

Andrea glanced away from the steady gaze of the senior palace physician, who had served the royal family since the Queen Dowager’s time, and shook his head.

The perceptive physician asked nothing further and wrapped up.

“The chest bandaging has been loosened to relieve any pressure. A nursing maid will come shortly, and I will return in three hours.”

Andrea addressed the top of the physician’s bowed head in a low voice.

“Please ensure this does not become a matter of gossip. See to it that those around you are discreet.”

“Please do not worry, Your Highness.”

After years in the palace keeping countless secrets, this was not something she would make a fuss over. With the crown prince’s direct order on top of it, what she had seen was as good as unseen.

“I will instruct the nursing maid to rebind the bandaging.”

After the physician left, Andrea stood alone and went back into the room, looking down at Raul’s pale face in silence.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

In the weeks that followed, a great deal happened.

The weather had begun to turn hot, but inside the palace a precarious tension hung in the air, swept through by something like a silent blizzard.

On the final day of the Hunt, the king and Lady Talbot had crossed the forbidden line, exactly as Andrea had intended.

Learning that Andrea’s tent was empty, the king had spent a passionate night there with Esena Talbot. And just as he had planned, they were discovered, and Queen Fabienne had raked her nails across the faces of both the king and Lady Talbot.

But the king was not a toothless tiger who would tolerate such conduct, and he valued himself above all else, so he had the queen confined to a secondary palace for overstepping.

The Blanc Ducal House, Fabienne’s family, pushed back and laid the blame on the king, and the confrontation between the parliamentary faction and the royalist faction reached a dangerous pitch.

Andrea could have detonated the incident of the Queen Dowager’s murder and the poisoned incense burner found in the king’s chamber at any time, but he intended to hold those in reserve for the right moment.

Either way, he was prepared for the possibility of armed suppression and had taken thorough precautions, and a tense, dangerous atmosphere pervaded the palace.

Every high-ranking official, sensing the fall of the queen and the Blanc Ducal House, was engaged in a silent war to align themselves clearly with Andrea.

But what unsettled Andrea more than any of this external storm was something internal.

Of course, he could only afford to worry about it because Raul’s wound was not deep and posed no threat to her life, but the question that remained was simply: how was he to treat Riley from now on.

Riley, unaware that her identity had been discovered, was growing restless and trying to move around.

“Hah……”

She had no idea what was going on inside him.

The agonizing he had done over himself, the torment of it all.

And then how painful it had been to finally accept his own feelings as they were.

Andrea rubbed his forehead roughly, as though sweeping the tangled thoughts away.

Either way, while he sorted through his thoughts, he decided it was better for Riley to stay in the special ward of the palace infirmary for the time being, rather than wandering in front of his eyes again.

Not that Andrea saw any less of Riley as a result.

He visited the room during breaks throughout the day and again at the end of each day’s work.

That day too, he went straight to the infirmary after finishing his meetings.

“You’ll wear a groove in the threshold.”

Rufus’s needling went ignored. Andrea stepped into the corridor leading to Riley’s room. But that day, unusually, a lively noise was spilling out from inside, where it was normally quiet.