Ryan walked through the halls, the small paper package in his hands. Despite its size, it felt remarkably heavy.
Though his expression remained collected, Ryan’s feelings were a mess. He was holding a miracle cure for an otherwise incurable disease. It would be priceless in the eyes of anyone who was facing death at the hands of the Red Eye plague, but there was only enough for a handful of people. There was no way it could help everyone who was suffering.
Ryan couldn’t help but remember his own sister and her painful coughing fits. But right alongside hers were the faces of so many other people, people whose names he didn’t know.
Misha’s uncle—that man from the People of the Forest—had given Ryan the medicine to do with as he wished.
I could use it as it is, or I could analyze it to try and reproduce it—he said I can do whatever I like with it.
Though he knew he should be hurrying, that man’s voice echoing in the back of his mind slowed his pace until he finally came to a stop.
On the one hand, he had the all too human longing to save his own family, but as a king, his heart was just as desperate to help the people of Redford. Those two feelings were tearing him asunder.
All kinds of things flashed through his head, but in the end, the last one was the image of a person he respected the most. Someone who always had a gentle smile, who loved his family and his kingdom more than anyone. When the young Ryan had sat on his lap, he had taught him over and over that a country existed only because of its people.
“Being king doesn’t make you more important than anyone. He just needs to act that way to keep his people safe,” his father had said with a smile. “The king is really the highest-class slave in the kingdom.”
At the time, Ryan had been too young to understand what that meant. But from the way his father had smiled when he’d taught this son his lesson, Ryan understood that it must have been a good thing. He remembered the way his older brothers and the king’s consorts had shaken their heads and rolled their eyes at the king’s comment, and he remembered how his little sister had only just been born. Those blissful, carefree days had shaped Ryan into who he was today.
The king’s decision to stay behind in the capital, to stay with his people so as to assuage their fears even a little bit during the last plague, would likely be viewed as foolishness by others looking back on events. However, the fact of the matter was that he had stayed true to his principles until the very end. Ryan had nothing but respect for him as a father and as a king. His siblings who had survived that horrible time with Ryan all felt the same way. Yes, even Lalaya, suffering as she now was.
She had been born weak, bedridden by the slightest bit of overexertion. Her condition made it all but impossible to carry out the royal duties that were expected of her, and no one hated her for that more than Lalaya herself. So whenever her body allowed, she dove into books. Gathering knowledge, learning about Redford, learning other languages to deal with foreign diplomats—she was always working hard as best she could.
She hated showing that side of herself to others, so she had garnered a reputation of being a useless princess who locked herself in her room all day, but she never argued with that. She believed others when they called her useless. But of all the royalty that were left, Ryan felt Lalaya was the only one who held themselves with a proper noble spirit. He knew exactly what she’d say if he brought that medicine before her.
“A nation exists because of its people, right?” he mumbled. “She’d just scold me for acting out of character.”
Finally releasing his lower lip from the grip of his teeth, he smiled. When he started walking again, there was no longer any trace of hesitation in him.
Conan didn’t think twice after Ryan put the medicine in his hands. “Ida, give this to Lady Lalaya right away,” he said.
“Wait, what?!” the king shouted in shock. He had brought the medicine to the doctors so they could analyze it and attempt to develop their own version of the remedy, so Conan’s instructions took him quite by surprise.
“We’ve barely got any of the medicine—how can we waste it like that? Maybe it’s just because I’m not educated in medicine, but wouldn’t you want as much as you can get your hands on for research?” Ryan said.
“Of course we intend to use it for research. But Lady Lalaya comes first,” Conan replied.
Ryan slumped his shoulders. “I doubt she’ll take it if you try.”
“That is hardly an issue. We’ll just tell her it is a new kind of fever medicine. Once she’s taken it, there’s no going back,” Conan said with a bright smile, the other doctors nodding in agreement.
“You can’t give her special treatment just because she’s royalty. The people are what make Redford what it is. Are you going to sacrifice hundreds of people just to save one life?!” Ryan shouted, his tone entirely unexpected from a king.
Conan took on a deathly serious expression. “We don’t want to save her because she is royalty. We want to save her because we care about her.”
“My apologies for interrupting, Your Majesty, but...do you know where Lady Lalaya is at the moment?” one of the apothecaries spoke up, causing Ryan and Conan to break from their staring contest. This apothecary wasn’t a person of high enough station to dare speak to the king directly, but even as his face paled in fear, he pressed on. “Right now, she is visiting the infirmary where we are keeping patients of the plague. She decided that since she is already sick, she has nothing to fear from them, so she wanted to visit them each one by one and encourage them not to give up hope.”
Ryan’s eyes went wide. He had assumed she was still in her room.