Gravis immediately searched for any other presence behind the queen dowager. He found no one. She must have come to the dungeon alone.
“…Mother. Did you also know the secret of my brother’s birth?”
“Gravis, I…”
“Mother, please answer me… I must know!”
It was Joachim who chided Gravis for hounding his mother.
“The queen dowager had likely been fed the rumor by her bloodline purist retainers. But back then, Mother was still in love with our father. Rumors were just that—rumors—and soon faded away.”
Gravis recalled the rumor that the headmaster had told Ionia.
“I don’t believe it. What did Father think of you? He thought of you as his own son, brother. Isn’t that why he made you the crown prince?”
“At first.”
“At first…?”
“Our father’s love for Mother was something akin to deep-seated delusion. Since I took after Mother in my features, he naturally didn’t doubt that I was his biological son.”
“Of course. There is no proof that you are not our father’s son.”
“But when Mother committed suicide, our father’s suspicions were aroused as to whose son I was. Of course, our father knew that my mother had not been a virgin when she married him, and confirmed as much in the bedchamber—and he had made her his by force regardless.”
Joachim laughed at himself.
“The queen dowager must be familiar with this. She knows how presumptuous our father was, and how cruel he was to all but those he loved.”
Adele trembled, but remained silent.
“Back then, Lagarea’s hair was not yet as gray as this. Our father, comparing me to this man as I grew older, must have gradually had his suspicions concerning my birth, eventually falling into madness. The decisive factor was my mother’s death.”
Gravis recalled his father in his final years. He was told that the king had died of illness, but in those days, Gravis was rarely allowed to see him.
“But when his doubts began, I was already betrothed to Emilia, Princess of Francoure. There was little Father could say then. I was an illegitimate child because the woman whom he had so triumphantly taken from this man had already been carrying his half brother’s child in her womb. I was not his son. He could disinherit me.”
At the time, Gravis was just shy of eight years old.
“He must have been too proud to say anything. If he had, it would have exposed Lagarea’s true lineage and the fact that he had forcibly taken his fiancée.”
“I must insist…there is no proof that you are not of our father’s blood, brother. It could all be Lady Brigitte’s delusion.”
“I know. But what do you think, Gravis?”
He couldn’t stop shaking from the sense of despair welling up from the depths of his body. Even Gravis could not deny the possibility that what his brother was telling him was the truth.
“I loved you, Gravis. But I had my reasons for not giving up the throne.”
Gravis clenched his fists. When had his brother, who had always been so kind, begun to distance himself from him?
Of course. Around the time Lady Brigitte became bedridden…and Gravis met Ionia.
“I thought you were the rightful heir to the throne. I fully intended to make you the crown prince. You, with your dark hair, your royal blood of Fanoren and Francoure…until my mother died, leaving me with her will.”
“Brother…”
“I finally made up my mind when Kyle was born.”
When Kyle was born. That was the year Gravis started school.
“What in the world does Kyle have to do with this…?”
Joachim did not answer his question.
Clutching the rusty bars of the dungeon cell, Joachim continued to stare at the criminal who might have been his father.
“Kyle looks more like you than he does me, doesn’t he? Why do you think that is?”
“…Because dark hair is common in our royal bloodline, of course.”
“Even though I look nothing like our father?”
Gravis and Kyle looked more alike than any uncle and nephew should.
At that moment, he heard a small sob behind him. Adele brought her fist to her mouth and burst into tears.
Doubt and fear filled Gravis’s mind.
“…What are you trying to say?”
He didn’t want to hear it.
He didn’t want to hear what his brother had to say. He no longer wanted to peer into this dungeon of filth hidden beneath the resplendent palace, this horrifying royal secret.
“Kyle is not my son. He is your half brother.”
“…No.”
“Yes. Our father, King George, stole Princess Emilia’s memory of how he violated my mother until his seed quickened in her womb.”
“No!”
With his hands still on the bars, Joachim slowly looked back at his half brother.
“Gravis. If you want to think it’s all conjecture, that’s fine. You can conceal the truth with that. But listen carefully.”
“Brother…”
“Once there was a girl, royalty of the north, who was treated like a whore by our grandfather and birthed his bastard son. She was the mother of this corpse of a man. There was also a woman whose memory was stolen by our father and who was made his concubine before she could help it. She was this man’s beloved and my mother.”
Gravis’s heart broke.
“Finally, there is the woman who was raped by our father, left with no memory of it, and gave birth to your half brother, whom she thinks is my son. She is my queen… Three generations in a row, and what did they ever do to deserve this?”
Gravis wanted to cover his ears. But he could not.
Because Gravis had to know the hidden truth. The truth about the purgatory that held Joachim captive. He had to face his own foolishness in not seeing the truth.
“…How do you know that Kyle is not your son?”
While Gravis’s voice trembled with despair, Joachim’s was impossibly calm.
“I have never performed my duty as a man with Emilia. Not once.”
“What…?”
The queen dowager began to tremble at Joachim’s confession. Her face was white.
“Our father was absolutely obsessed with my mother. Beside the man who had sunken into mad love, there was I, whose hair and eye color were the same as this old man’s, but whose face bore a striking resemblance to that of my mother. At the time, my betrothal to Emilia had already been arranged, and yet…our father would come to my bedchamber every night and call me Brigitte.”
At that moment, something within Gravis shattered entirely.
“Our father was a man of impressive physique, just like you… There wasn’t much I could do to resist. He no longer thought of me as his son. He took the memories of the attendants and destroyed the evidence, but he never took mine.”
Joachim’s ever so calm face.
No. It was not calm.
It was the face of a man who had given up on life.
“So you see. Ever since, I have been unable to fulfill my role as a man.”
From the depths of the dungeon came the roar of a beast.
It cried in agony, attempting to tear off its chains.
The beast roared in despair at the monstrous treatment the man who may have been his own son had received.
“Emilia is fortunately unaware of this. She has endured my absence in the bedchamber since our wedding night and is fulfilling her duties as queen. As one would expect from the princesses of Francoure, all of them are noble and brave…just like you, queen dowager.”
“Your Majesty… I…”
The queen dowager was trembling.
“I know. You knew that your niece was being raped by your husband, but you did not know that I myself had become a substitute of my mother to my father.”
Gravis froze. He looked back at his mother.
“Is that so unthinkable? That our father raped and impregnated his son’s queen? And that the queen dowager had given her tacit approval?” Joachim smiled calmly.
“Mother…you knew?”
“I wanted to ask you the same thing, queen dowager. Emilia is your niece. Why did you, the noble and precious treasure of this land, allow your husband to rape your niece and steal her memory?”