Since their setting for the fraud was a summoned soul residing within her, all she had to do to end it was say the soul had left. And as long as Linus and Charles backed her up, there would be no problems. Once she lost her status as a saint, Fiona would return to being the pontiff’s aide, and with that, any talks of an engagement with Linus would also vanish. It was all very logical and expected, yet an inexplicable pain stabbed her in the chest.
“No need.”
“But I can’t stay an impostor forever.”
He paused for a long moment before speaking again.
“Fiona. You’re a saint.”
“Now, now, Your Highness, you know the ploy was a temporary one.”
She had proposed the tactic as a means to protect the country against the king’s unreasonable demand to summon a saint from another world. She knew she was a mere priestess. Nothing more, nothing less.
“No, you don’t understand. Fiona, you’re a real saint.”
Linus’ smile was strained, and his eyes were dead serious. It didn’t look like he was joking.
“…What do you mean?”
“You know about the saint summoning a decade ago, right?”
“The Saint of Sea Bounty, was it? But it failed, which was why the king wanted to try again.”
Once she learned how enormous the budget had been and how many people had been necessary from the decade-old documents recounting the summoning, Fiona came up with the idea to pretend to be a fake saint.
“It didn’t actually fail.”
“What?”
If it didn’t fail, then that meant the summoning had succeeded. But Linus had no reason to lie to her, and no such Saint of Sea Bounty existed, so the only conclusion she could draw was that it had failed.
“During the summoning ritual in the palace, only the king—my older brother because he was the crown prince then—and the pontiff were present. Since I was just a prince, I didn’t even know a saint summoning was taking place.”
According to the records, a number of magic knights and priests were involved in addition to the three Linus mentioned. But since those individuals represented a rotating source of energy, it was likely that only a few were present for the summoning itself. Frankly, the king and the crown prince wouldn’t have been useful, so Fiona thought it was the right judgment call to have only the bare minimum number of people on hand.
“That day, I just happened to visit the courtyard when suddenly a huge flood of light appeared in front of me. Then, the next moment, a little girl with black hair stood there.”
His eyes happily narrowed as he remembered what happened.
“I thought the girl was an angel. She was so adorable, and the light was so beautiful that I couldn’t move for a while. But that girl had lost her memories and looked so scared…which made me want to protect her.”
Linus clenched his fists and sighed softly.
“I would have loved nothing more than for the two of us to stay together like that forever. Unfortunately, her black hair meant she was very likely a saint. And in our country, a saint would become the future queen. Obviously, Father would never have taken her for a bride, considering the huge age difference, so I knew she would wind up as the crown prince’s consort. So…we hid her.”
“Why?”
Fiona had heard about Gene’s custom of making the saint a queen. Keeping her existence a secret then might be considered an act of disloyalty toward the king, depending on the circumstances.
“My older brother was the crown prince then. If you asked me to describe him in one word, I’d choose ‘scum.’ He was already in his mid-twenties at the time. He had so many scandals with women and did not show a hint of compassion for others. Even if the saint became his consort, he would never care for her.”
Oh, right, Linus had only recently become the crown prince. Until his official accession, his elder brother had been the heir to the throne. Fiona didn’t know much about the line of succession, so she hadn’t paid much attention. Perhaps Linus’ brother had been deemed unfit for the position, which explained why Linus took over the rank instead.
“Having said that, a powerless second prince couldn’t hide a saint on his own. Though my father isn’t a bad man, he’s always been a dreamer, so I couldn’t tell him. And too often, others were fooled by my brother’s appearance and charm, so I couldn’t think of anyone else I could trust. Then, it just so happened that my good friend Charles was in the palace that day, and I asked him to help.”
At the time, Charles wouldn’t have been the pontiff, but he definitely would have been a high priest, which meant his presence at the palace was related to the summoning.
“‘Work for the sake of this country.’ ‘Become the consort of a man over fifteen years older, a vile, womanizing scum of a man.’ Can you imagine how cruel it would have been to say something like that to a ten-year-old child who lost her memories? The country was stable and at peace, so there was no need to rope a saint in and rely on her. Charles agreed with me.”
While she couldn’t deny he was right about the horror of asking such things of a young girl, she also understood that back then, Linus, who’d only been a boy and the second prince, and Charles, a mere priest, had staked their lives to keep her a secret. As always, she was moved by the two men’s kindness, but she found herself a bit curious about his older brother, considering the disgust in his voice when he spoke of him.
“Charles had his terms, though. One day, when she was old enough, we would tell her the truth and give her the choice over her own future. As well, to avoid anyone abusing her, she would be placed in the Temple’s protection. We went a step further by having him adopt her. As a high priest, no one would say anything about her hair, at least not to his face or hers.”
Charles’ black-haired adopted daughter who’d lost her memories. Until then, Fiona had simply listened to his story. Now, she gasped and looked up at him.