The emperor used to speak kindly to the weeping Titania.
‘Titania, my little bird. Who does not know that the second son of that family, had such a bad temper? Would you, a virtuous lady, put up with it?’
What virtuous lady? He meant more, ‘bear with it, you foolish Titania’.
Anyway, to summarize, it meant that Titania, as a child, was rarely victorious and often stomped her feet in frustration.
After all, if the Duke was going to fool everyone into thinking that <Flamberge’s Wrath> was a special magic sword that really came from Count Orland, it would have been much better to have Count Orland’s eldest daughter, June, and his second son, Lysianthus, dance together. Because Raymon had a fiancée, no matter how nominal it was, and Lysianthus didn’t.
But why did Raymon have to dance?
That was…
Because Lycianthus had a really, really terrible reputation.
‘They say he burned down a whole table!’
‘Oh, my God, he brought a sword into the banquet hall.’
‘I guess even a duke couldn’t be successful in raising all of his children.’
‘You’ll pardon me for saying so, but the late Duchess did come from…’
‘Even so, Duke Raymon is so wonderful…’
Even Titania, the imperial bully, could hear such gossip about Lysianthus at the imperial New Year’s banquet! If you asked him to dance with a young lady who was just making her debut in the social scene, you’d just ruin the poor young lady’s reputation! He was not worthy enough to be chosen as a partner, let alone in exchange for a priceless sword!
Titania was no different, with a reputation for being a brat with no character or skill. But at least in front of someone of a higher rank than her, Titania could behave herself. Not that she was ever called to anything important in the first place.
But Lysianthus was just as ruthless in front of the strong as he was in front of the weak. In a sense, I suppose you could say he was consistent.
“I thought you said you died and came back to life?”
Yes! He chose ‘I heard you came back to life’ as his first words to someone who was rumored to have almost died! He had picked up a yew branch from below the second-floor balcony and waved it in front of me, as if he’d heard what I’d said to Raymon and wanted me to look at it. I had to fight not to let go of the teacup in my hand.
“Wow, this stuff catches fire well,” Lysianthus muttered in surprise as he used his powers to ignite the branch in his hand. “Cassian’s frothing at the mouth made me think they had been secretly growing a world tree in the imperial palace, but it’s just an ordinary tree! Ugh, boring.”
No, XX.
I mean, at the very least, he could kill the next guy who comes for my head in the middle of the night. I was hoping for a competent escort that could protect me if I sneaked out of the palace somewhere. In the first place, you could see the point of asking for a maid and an escort, right? Why didn’t I get a 24/7 escort knight and errand boy?
You sent me a madman playing with fire in the palace, Duke Castraine.
So far, I’ve done a good job of telling the truth to your golden son. The terms of the deal have been met, so now I have to deal with it on my own, is that it?
“…”
I took a slow, deep breath as I stared at the flames flickering in front of my nose. It was okay, it was okay, it was okay, it was okay. Remember his mental age. Let’s call it my karma from the past. I could take it…
“What, you don’t like it? If you don’t want me to play with fire indoors, can I take it outdoors?”
…I couldn’t possibly take it!
I kicked off my chair, stood up, and dumped the contents of the teacup I’d been holding as a patience exercise into the flaming branch.
Poof!
The flame on the branch disappeared after a bath of fragrant tea water. The Castraine family’s mad dog, who didn’t care if tea water splashed on his clothes or not, said with a puzzled face.
“…What? Why did it go out?”
“…I threw water on the fire, shouldn’t it go out?”
“No, it’s…”
“That’s very basic common sense, Lord Lysianthus! If a stranger saw you, they’d think you don’t even know basic common sense in House Castraine!”
Hohohoho, my hollow laughter at my prospective ‘brother-in-law’ echoed in the air. Lysianthus looked back and forth between me and the unlit branches as if something was very wrong. Then my eyes narrowed as I realized something while he watched me refill my empty teacup with fresh tea.
“…I thought the crazy princess was trying to pull a new trick on my brother again.”
I interrupted Lysianthus before he could add anything else.
“Aah, young~Lord~. Titania hasn’t recovered yet, and it’s too much trouble for her to entertain guests for long~!”
Phew. I let out an exaggerated sigh, wiping my sweaty forehead.
I blinked my eyelids and buried myself in the back of my chair with an ‘Aw, I’m feeling dizzy~’ gesture.
Disbelief flashed across Lysianthus’s smug face.
Yes, Titania had honestly gritted her teeth, stamped her feet, and thrown temper tantrums in front of him all the time. But this was new and I didn’t have to look at his red eyes, which flickered with panic, I knew what was on his mind. ‘What the hell, what’s that crazy woman doing this time?’
I’d like to return the sentiment, you crazy bastard.
“Besides, playing with fire in the drawing room. Oh, my God, I’m so scared~. If any embers leap out and burn down the garden, I’ll be so afraid~. Fire in the historical Imperial Palace!”
My words were prophetic.
But since Titania lacked the power to see the future, it was a minor one. He really did set the palace on fire later on when he would be fighting against the imperial people.
Basically, Lysianthus hid the fact that he could perceive the power of the gods and use the power of fire.
‘It’s all the power of a competent magic sword,’ he would say.
Then, in the end, when the lunatics touched his precious sister, his brother, and his father, he declared that he would ‘no longer have to put up with it,’ and he went on a rampage in the palace.
Something about different colors of flame for different awakenings. Different levels, maybe?
Red flame for the weakest, white flame for the middle, and blue flame for the strongest. And especially the blue flame, which he’d intentionally created with a lot of power, couldn’t be extinguished through natural means. Someone with a similar level of ‘power’ has to come and manually offset it and turn it off.
As a result, half the palace burned to the ground.
Adrian had to be crowned on the ashes of the burned-out palace.
Well, that was in the novel’s future.
“Is it true that Duke Castraine sent you here, Lysianthus, to ‘find out whether or not Princess Titania really is a madwoman’?” Waiting for an answer, I leaned back against the chair’s backrest, figuring that there was no need to be so polite when I wasn’t even in front of Raymon.
Then I stretched out my arm and picked up the scone with my bare hand. Lysianthus looked at me in disbelief as I nibbled on the hard scone with my incisors like a squirrel before asking a question.
“…What? What are you doing? You’re not talking to me like you’re some kind of asshole…”
That’s right…
Oh, how I wish I was in a novel like <I woke up and realized I’m the world’s biggest asshole with a silver spoon in her mouth and ranked SSS?!> rather than <The Villainous Duke Family’s Little Treasure>.
You can’t be an asshole without a backbone. Even if I was just a minor character like Titania…
I spat out the raisins in my scone and muttered.
“Or are you trying to experiment with smooth ignition within the palace, as a future arsonist?”
“Why would I set fire to the Imperial Palace?”
When I mentioned that he had just treated the indoors of the Rose Palace like it was outdoors, Lysianthus exclaimed in frustration. But I guess his strangely red face meant that the thought of burning down the palace itself wasn’t that far from his mind.
Lysianthus grimaced at the sight of me chewing on a scone with the ease of a sloth. He tossed the unlit twig aside and pulled something from his pocket.
It was a thin paper packet.
“…From my father.”
I stuck out my hand, still covered in scone crumbs, wiped it on the tablecloth, and grabbed the envelope. Lysianthus’s eyes grew even bigger when he saw me act like that. I spilled the contents of the paper packet onto the table, regardless of whether Lysianthus wanted me to or not, and froze.
“…”
A black card, elaborately engraved with three snakes and a laurel wreath in gilded foil.
A small bronze badge with two interlocking swords on a shield.
A thick silver ring, unremarkable in design, but full of tiny scratches from years of use.
If a stranger saw them, they would think they were unrelated. But….
I stared down at them, speechless for a moment.
