Crow broke out into a nervous sweat the moment he saw Roy’s face. “Uh, are you okay...?” he asked.
Roy did not look good. He was constantly pale these days, in a way he had never been in Crow’s recollection. Roy marched to the beat of his own drum (which just so happened to beat many times faster than everyone else’s), so whenever anyone lobbed criticism his way, he shrugged it off and kept going as if nothing had ever happened. He was that kind of person.
Fie was the first girl who had ever driven him to such a state. Now that’s saying something, Crow thought. His thoughts drifted to his young mentee, who had turned out to be a girl (surprise!) and the princess to boot. In his very first memories of her, she was in pain, but as the year went on, the ratio of memories in which Fie had acted like a blissful idiot rose dramatically. Even now, he bet, she was probably off wandering around somehow without a care in the world, not even minding her new nickname.
Still, Crow knew there was more depth to Fie than her outward actions betrayed. In fact, it was the simple soul in front of him—not Fie—that was the issue. He was depressed now because he had charged ahead towards his goal, disregarding Fie and hurting her in the process. In some ways, Roy was a hard man to understand but, in other ways, all too easy.
“Come on, buck up,” Crow told him. “I get what you’re going through, but now’s the time to bring your A game.” Maybe this, Crow thought, would be a more effective method of pulling Roy out of his slump.
Over a year had passed since an attempted assassination on Fielle. It turned out that the assassins were not only after Tomas but Fielle as well. After the (unsuccessful) attempt on Tomas’s life, Roy, having received Tomas’s letter, immediately decided to protect Fielle. There were precious few people who knew the relationship between Prince Tomas and Princess Fielle. The ringleader of this plot, the king of Divine Luciana, had pursued the princess’s hand in marriage with the understanding that even if she refused, her parents would probably have pressured her into accepting. To prevent that, Roy had arranged the fake marriage in his usual extraordinarily tactless and utterly absurd way. However, the most absurd part was that it worked. Fielle was safe from the king’s clutches.
However, the king’s foolishness only rose to a new level, and one day he arranged for poison to be slipped into her tea, thinking (and rather rashly at that) if he could not have her, he might as well kill her. Fortunately, Roy employed a master of poisons in Fielle’s staff, and she narrowly avoided falling into the king’s hands again.
As a result, everyone around Fielle went on high alert, and those who suspected a culprit on the Daeman side of the incident began to mutter that this was Fie’s doing, rooted in her jealousy of her superior sister. Maybe her jealousy was so great that she had tempted that king into hiring an assassin in the first place. (Of course, Fie was completely innocent and had zero connection to the case.)
However, there was another insider apart from the one on the Daeman side. The investigation concluded that the poison had been brought in from Orstoll. Now suspicion turned to Duke Zerenade, the leader of the aristocracy in the Dark Dominion. It was thought that his goal was to, by assassinating the queen, tank the king’s popularity, gain support from Divine Luciana, and solidify his right to the Dark Dominion, and seize the power of Orstoll for himself. An investigation on Duke Zerenade commenced, and as it proceeded, it gathered proof little by little of his various other crimes, like slavery and smuggling. The Dark Dominion’s days were numbered.
Unfortunately, this did not resolve the case of the attempt on Princess Fielle’s life. The original source of this mess was the king of Divine Luciana’s foolish, one-sided love. As far as the government was concerned, arresting the duke would more or less resolve the whole case, but Roy and the others, this was now the most critical moment. They wanted to find proof that Divine Luciana was involved. Also, there was evidence that the duke had not acted alone, but had an insider within the palace. Roy wanted to find that person too.
As a matter of fact, the one suspected of being the man behind the curtain, a.k.a. the palace insider, was none other than Chancellor Zorace. Therefore, none of the information coming out of the investigation was being passed on to him.
Crow figured that this must have been a very complicated situation for Roy, as he looked up to his uncle as a respected figure.
“Yeah, I know,” Crow said. “But come on. If we blow it now, all the one-sided, horrible things you did to Heath—I mean, Princess Fie—to save her sister would be for nothing, right? We have to see this through. No, we will see this through...”
Roy made a ghastly expression as Crow’s words blasted him like a bomb. Worried, Crow quickly switched tactics. “A-Anyway, how about we get some lunch?”
“No, I have work to do. Besides, I don’t have an appetite.”
Things were going from bad to worse, Crow thought. Not once had he ever heard Roy claim he didn’t have an appetite. Maybe having no one around to guide him was making him depressed. The only thing left from his father, in the late king’s imbecility, was debt, and Roy’s mother passed away when he was too young to even remember her face. Zephas was, perhaps, the closest thing he had to a mentor figure, but Zephas was a commoner. If only there was someone else, a relative, who could get to the core of Roy’s life, a life of one who must walk the path of the king.
Just then, a voice behind them said, “May I ask how you plan to conduct your affairs of state without eating first?” There stood Zorace, carrying a bulky stack of official documents. “A king must always mind his health.”
“My apologies,” Roy said, taking the advice with good grace. “You are correct, my lord uncle. Come, Crow, let us go eat.”
“Sure.” Now that, Crow thought, was at least some relief.
Zorace sighed and then handed his stack of documents to Roy.
“What are these?” Roy asked.
“The documents detailing Duke Zerenade’s wrongdoings, per the investigation you ordered. As it appears to be such a large-scale investigation, I’ve also taken the liberty of arranging the materials such that I was able to find.”
Roy and Crow leafed through the documents, stunned. There was everything Roy wanted: proof of the Duke’s involvement in Fielle’s assassination attempt, a list of the co-conspirators, the plans to overtake Orstoll by colluding with the king of Luciana, and even information on who this king was.
Zorace watched their bewildered expressions. Written there was all the information Roy had wanted. Yes, all the information. He knew they wanted everything down to the proof of the connection between the duke and the king. Only a conspirator-turned-betrayer could have provided this proof. Handing in this evidence was tantamount to a confession.
“My lord uncle...” Roy began.
“This was an eye-opening experience for me as well. Perhaps I should have treated you more like family...” Zorace murmured.
As he spoke, his eyes lit upon the figure of Princess Fie who was, for some unknown reason, terrifying her maidservants by attempting to climb a pillar on a second-story balcony.
“I bid His Majesty to do with these papers as he pleases,” Zorace said, and he charged off towards the balcony.