After the vote, we moved on to the next order of business. Ultimately, the consensus was that houses could freely send wards to stay at the palace if they so desired, but it wasn’t obligatory and the king wouldn’t designate who was sent. The noble families would have full freedom of choice. The members of the first prince’s faction began preparations to send their daughters to the palace, while the others breathed a sigh of relief knowing that they didn’t need to send their daughters away as hostages.
“Here’s the report, Your Majesty. Please review it at your leisure.”
The king seemed dissatisfied as he took the document, but his eyes showed a glint of joy.
“Say, would you listen to a request of mine, Duke Sevensworth?”
“If it so pleases you.”
“Our neighboring country of Thorsdale is preparing to invade us. I’d like House Sevensworth to stop them.”
A restless hush fell over the meeting room. Usually, the king would simply ask for some kind of food or trinket, but our new king had made a huge ask. If I refused, he’d use that as an excuse to nullify the vote we’d just taken and enact his hostage law. If that happened, a civil war was practically inevitable, so every house, regardless of faction, would try to convince the Sevensworths to reconsider our answer. And if we maintained our refusal, they’d eventually turn against us. A territory couldn’t survive without the cooperation of other territories, so if we were cut off, we’d be put in a difficult situation.
However, if I said yes to this request, it would mean going to outright war with a neighboring country. The Sevensworths would be the only ones exhausting their resources and power in the conflict. From this king’s perspective, whichever choice I made probably worked in his favor since either would result in the Sevensworths losing power, which was his aim.
Most likely, he predicted that I’d say no. Thinking about it logically, it would be the worst possible decision to have our family fight a war all on our own, since there was an extremely high possibility of being destroyed in the process. I imagined he was fully prepared for me to decline and already had a plan to put pressure on me so I would offer up Ana in exchange.
Hugo had told me that my fixation on Ana was too strong and that I should cast her aside when the time was right in order to save myself. Most likely, in this situation, he would’ve said the correct choice was for me to not have accepted the role of vote coordinator in the first place, but if I hadn’t, the hostage law would have almost certainly passed and the king would have used it to make Ana his queen. Sure, the Sevensworths would profit greatly from that, and I’d be compensated handsomely for my wife being taken from me. Based on gains alone, it was undoubtedly the best choice. But...there was absolutely no way that I would ever, ever let that happen. Did he really think I would let him get away with making a law to put Ana through a horrible experience and rip the two of us apart?! I’m not letting you touch a single hair on her head!
“I accept,” I said, suppressing my anger. The other nobles began to buzz with surprise. “However, I have a condition. I’ll do this as long as we’re allowed to annex the territory of Thorsdale. Would that be acceptable?”
The king’s eyes widened. I couldn’t blame him for his surprise; I was essentially saying that we’d occupy the foreign country and take it for ourselves. I wasn’t just going to stop at repelling their forces. I was declaring that I would be invading them instead. Thinking about the difference in our forces, this seemed like a suicide mission.
“Yes...that’s acceptable,” he said after considering for a moment. Most likely, he was thinking there wasn’t a single chance I could pull this off.
“I’d also like to confirm one more thing. Though the Sevensworths plan to execute this mission by ourselves, I understand that there are many who deeply care for this country. If they offer to send their forces, may I accept? And would it also be acceptable to take donations from those who don’t wish to send their forces?”
“That’s acceptable. We must respect those with a love for our country,” he responded immediately.
From the look behind his eyes, I could tell he was sneering at me. In his mind, he had no problem letting allies of the Sevensworths fall in battle alongside us. It would only weaken his opposition while making him stronger. He also likely assumed that whatever we received in donations wouldn’t even come close to exceeding standard wartime taxes.
Now that we’d all heard his verbal agreement, all that was left was for the king’s aide to draft the official record. Soon enough, he’d realize he made a mistake.
In any case, we had time to prepare. Our covert operatives had discovered that Thorsdale was constructing a new magic weapon called the Sun Flower, so they weren’t likely to mobilize until that was complete. Rumors of it had already leaked to other countries, but that couldn’t be helped since it was massive enough to be seen from a far distance.
✦ ✦ ✦
After I returned to the Sevensworth estate, I told Ana everything that had happened. Before I was even finished, she began to cry and told me that she’d stay with me no matter what. She was so cute that I felt like I was going to lose my mind.