“Do the queen mother and the king know about your power, too?” Sara asked, fully prepared to be brushed off or told to shut up. But Richard just nodded, surprisingly docile.
“Of course… The first time I transformed, I was two years old. You seem to be desensitized to abilities, but even in Ferrier, a kingdom where so many of us have all sorts of abilities, a power like mine—a power that transforms one’s own body—has been abhorred for many, many years. Long ago, it was common for parents to kill their own children if they developed an ability like this,” Richard explained, his tone completely detached.
Sara briefly exhaled. One of the books she had borrowed had mentioned that. The power to transform one’s body was an incredibly rare ability, but there were many historical precedents of these mutants going berserk and destroying entire towns or causing national emergencies.
That was why if parents had a child with an ability like this, most of them killed the children while they were still young or else locked them away for their entire lives. Many aristocrats, needing an heir to inherit the title, would mercilessly kill their children for this, even if they were the offspring of their lawful wives.
“My mother… She was never very strong-minded, but when she found out about my ability, she went from bad to worse. She believed that if I became the next king, she would supersede the queen and become the queen mother.”
“What did the former king think?”
“My father? He didn’t seem to find my powers too heretical, but my mother worried herself in circles and shut herself away with me in a villa… And so, she raised me there, one day shouting at me that I was cursed and that I should die, the next day lavishing praise on me and saying that I would become king, that I was such a wonderful son…”
Sara’s parents had always been gentle and even-keeled. She couldn’t begin to imagine growing up like that.
The royal concubine had hated her son for his abominable power. But she had also loved him for the royal blood in his veins.
At any given moment, she had wanted to both kill him and shower him with affection. At that time, the royal concubine’s mind had probably snapped beyond repair.
Sara had been listening to Richard’s story quietly, but she suddenly gasped. When Richard was young, his mother could have truly believed that he would one day become king, even with his cursed power.
But what about a few years later, when the queen gave birth to a son?
Richard was the son of a concubine, and he had a heretical ability. Sara didn’t know if the current king had one, but at the very least he didn’t have Richard’s cursed power—and he was the long-awaited second child of the king and queen, to boot.
“When Edouard was born, my mother finally went off the deep end. And then…”
He told Sara about how his mother tried to kill Edouard to ensure Richard would be king.
One night, at nine years old, Richard noticed something was off when his mother ran out of the room in the middle of the night, so he followed her.
Then he saw his mother break into his little brother’s bedroom, brandishing a knife. The next moment, Richard had transformed into a beast and slit his mother’s throat with his claws just as she had been about to stab Edouard.
“There was no time to think. It was either save my mother, who had lost her mind, or save my little brother, who I had always played with in secret. I was forced to choose one, so I chose my brother. Even after I killed my mother, I looked at Edouard sleeping soundly, and I thought…Thank goodness.”
“So that’s why the queen adopted you?”
Richard nodded.
“I suppose so. She is a commendable person—she was never scared of me. She was kind to me even after she learned about what I’d done. I told Edouard the truth about what happened when he was ten years old, and he just cried and hugged me. Even my father, the late king, never excluded me from anything… That was enough for me.
“My father treated me like he was touching a boil, but he did accept me. The queen gave me this villa to live in to thank me for saving her son’s life. Edouard continued to love me, even after he discovered the truth. I had servants like Daniel and Claire to wait upon me… So that was enough for me.”
Richard chuckled. But it wasn’t like his laugh before, when he sounded like he had lost control—it almost sounded like a sorrowful sigh.
“Even if others would call me a monster, I had people who could see me for me. I wanted to help with Edouard’s government affairs while also getting rid of criminals that would threaten his reign… I never needed a wife or children. I would have died quietly, ridiculed by the world as a reclusive crank. That’s all I wanted.”
“So I really did get in your way, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did. You threw a wrench into my life’s plan, which was incredibly troublesome. But…maybe Edouard thought that your coming here might make me more attached to this world.”
Richard looked at Sara.
Just then he seemed to realize that she had been lying down the entire time. He gently took both of her arms and helped her sit up. His touch was as polite and gentle as it usually was, utterly different from when he had pushed her down.
“When I heard the princess was coming from a kingdom totally unfamiliar with abilities, I was annoyed, but now I think that might have been for the best… When I get angry, I turn into a beast. If I turn into a beast… I try so hard, but it’s difficult to control myself in that form… There’s a chance I might kill you.”
“If you were truly a cruel person, you wouldn’t try to have any self-control at all. And your mask… You use it to keep from turning into a beast, don’t you?”
Sara reached out to his mask. Richard twitched his head back slightly, but he didn’t reject her touch.
The white surface felt chilly against her fingertips.
This mask… It’s been protecting Richard this whole time.
It blocked out the disgusted stares from unsympathetic strangers and made it difficult for him to show his emotions. By wearing a mask, Richard protected not only himself, but also the people around him.
It would have probably been easier for him to transform and brandish his claws as much as he wanted. With his claws and his fangs, he could slash and silence anyone who abused him in an instant. No one would dare pick a fight with him again.
But the prince didn’t choose that path. Instead, he goes to war for the king and leaves the castle in the dead of night to kill violent criminals…
Sara lowered her arm and lightly touched the back of Richard’s hand. He trembled for just a moment, but he didn’t resist, and he let her gently trace the veins on the back of his hand and brush against his fingernails, which had shrunk back to their normal size.
They were the same hands he used to flip through documents and hold their teatime snacks. They were gentle hands, and very dear to Sara.
“Don’t you smell blood?”
“It’s all right today. As long as it’s not your blood from an injury, it’s fine.”
“I’m a murderer. I’ve killed your countrymen, and my own mother. I haven’t just killed criminals… I’ve spilled the blood of innocent bystanders that got involved, too.”
“But that wasn’t you acting on your desires. Your ability isn’t some power you craved because you wanted to kill people.”
“…I’ve been so rude to you. How do you not despise me?”
“I was a little shocked at being treated like that, but now that I’ve heard your story, I know it was rather inevitable. Besides, I was the interloper here in the first place.”
Richard didn’t respond. He just hung his head silently.
Sara didn’t break the silence either. She just looked at the swirl of hair on the crown of his head.
Eventually, she plucked up her courage and asked, “Can I take your mask off?”
“…What for?”
“I just want to look at your face.”
Richard fell back into silence. Unsure if this was tacit agreement, she softly touched his mask, but he didn’t do anything in response.
She reached behind his ears and could feel a thin string. Following it with her fingers, she found that it was tied in the back, hidden by Richard’s wavy hair.
She reached around and untied the knot. The strings fell and the white mask concealing the top half of Richard’s face slipped off.
Accentuated by the darkness of the night around them, Richard’s bright green eyes looked at Sara sadly. But despite his sorrow, the prince was breathtakingly beautiful.
For some reason, the shape of his eyes reminded Sara of the king’s eyes, back when she had spoken to him at the castle.
She set his mask down on the bed and Richard turned his face away from her. She could tell he was embarrassed by the red tint of his ears.