Revenge Alliance (2)
Rachel replied politely, bowing her head at Kaiden’s question.
“I’m not shrewd enough to calculate and weigh every single word before I speak.”
“Speaking so freely and without restraint is precisely what they call being shrewd.”
Kaiden rested his chin on his hand and studied her. An ambiguous smile played at the corners of his mouth.
“You must believe that the king of a nation wouldn’t dare kill the imperial prince’s nanny inside the imperial palace itself. Am I wrong?”
It wasn’t an incorrect assumption. If rumors spread that a foreign monarch visiting during the founding festival had harmed none other than the prince’s nanny, it would bring Kaiden no benefit whatsoever.
“In any case, if my attitude seemed to you as though I were disregarding His Highness the Prince, then there must indeed have been some fault in my conduct.”
Fortunately, Kaiden appeared quite capable of objective self-reflection. He continued in a calm voice.
“But it seems there has been a misunderstanding.”
“A misunderstanding?”
“I… I never…”
He scratched his cheek and frowned.
“I have never found the princes unpleasant.”
“…I see.”
Rachel pondered briefly before speaking again.
“Should I thank you, then?”
“…You really are an amusing person.”
Kaiden took a sip of apple wine and changed the subject.
“May I ask you one question?”
“Is there something about me that piques Your Majesty’s curiosity?”
“You’ve already learned something about me. In that case, wouldn’t it only be fair if I learned at least one thing about you?”
She had only asked in passing whether he drank often. Rachel gazed steadily at Kaiden. He waited for her answer, one eyebrow slightly furrowed.
“Does Your Majesty truly have questions about someone like me?”
“Quite a few.”
Quite a few? The unexpected answer made her brow crease.
Wait a moment.
A good idea suddenly occurred to her. Before Kaiden could speak, Rachel cut in.
“Then how about we take turns asking each other whatever we’re curious about?”
“Now that is a rather tempting proposal.”
Kaiden’s reaction was positive, just as she had expected. His eyes narrowed like a wildcat’s as he looked at her.
“I didn’t realize you held this much interest in me.”
“…Is there anyone who wouldn’t be curious about the founding king of Adamant?”
Her curiosity was purely personal, yet the man before her was a figure shrouded in mystery to the outside world. Aside from his battlefield exploits and the ghost stories surrounding him, almost nothing was known.
“Then I’ll take the first turn.”
Kaiden set down his wine glass. He crossed his arms and hooked one leg over the other.
“Where are you from?”
“…Pardon?”
“It doesn’t seem like a particularly difficult question.”
True, it wasn’t difficult. Strange, perhaps, but not difficult.
What is he asking this for? Is the nanny’s hometown really that interesting to him?
After a brief hesitation, Rachel answered in a calm voice.
“If you’re asking about my birthplace, I don’t know it. As I mentioned before, I was an orphan before being adopted into a count’s family.”
“…My apologies.”
Kaiden tilted his glass with an awkward expression, then jerked his chin toward her, signaling it was her turn.
“…Your Majesty, by any chance.”
Rachel stared at the apple wine sloshing inside her glass. Kaiden’s face reflected on its transparent surface.
“Have you ever heard of Angel’s Breath?”
A terrible silence fell. It was so profound that even the creaking of old wooden furniture—normally inaudible—sounded loud.
“……”
Rachel closed her mouth at the expression on Kaiden’s reflected face. He stared at her with dazed eyes, as if his soul had been stolen away.
After a long pause, Kaiden finally spoke.
“…Did you say Angel’s Breath?”
“Yes.”
Rachel lifted her head slightly and met his gaze.
“My question doesn’t seem all that difficult either.”
“…How do you know about Angel’s Breath?”
She had expected him to ask exactly that. He was probably wondering how a young lady raised in a count’s household could possibly know the name of the continent’s most notorious assassin guild.
“The person I held dearest in this world was murdered.”
It was a truth that sounded like a lie. Because of Angel’s Breath—because of Ian Angel—she had lost the most precious thing she possessed: her own life.
“Without even knowing why I had to be killed.”
Why had Ian killed her? Why had the organization betrayed her alongside him? She had been the guild master, so why?
“I wanted to know the reason, at least.”
Rachel clenched the hands resting on her lap. Her skirt crumpled horribly, fabric bunching between her fingers.
She had gained no information about Angel’s Breath or Ian from the old information broker in the back alleys, and afterward she had found no chance to leave the palace.
“There was a limit to what I could do alone. In the end, I never discovered why the person I loved had died.”
Once again, silence descended.
Kaiden’s expression grew doubtful before he spoke in a serious voice.
“…You have a life as tragic as my own.”
He set the glass he held back on the table. This time, he did not refill it.
“You asked if I knew about Angel’s Breath.”
A sigh threaded through Kaiden’s voice—a deep sigh heavy with long-held sorrow and lamentation.
“Yes, I know it. I know it very well.”
Rachel waited for him to continue. But Kaiden said nothing more.
“…Is that all you wished to say?”
“You asked if I knew, and I answered that I do. Isn’t that enough?”
Kaiden returned the question with a sly expression.
“Who is calling whom cunning now?”
Rachel closed her mouth in clear displeasure. Kaiden chuckled softly and nodded.
“If you have more you wish to ask, save it for your next turn.”
What a petty bastard.
While she inwardly cursed his cheap tactic, Kaiden posed his second question.
“Why are you asking me about Angel’s Breath?”
His golden eyes blazed with piercing intensity, as though they could see through anything.
“I’m asking why you would pose such a question to me, of all people.”
Because it had seemed as if he knew the person she had been in her previous life. But she could not tell him the truth, so she had to improvise.
After a slight flinch, Rachel lowered her head and answered.
“I want revenge.”
It was sincere. Revenge against Ian was her ultimate goal.
“…Against Angel’s Breath.”
“You want revenge?”
“Yes.”
“Against Angel’s Breath?”
“Correct.”
At her resolute, unwavering answer, Kaiden’s face filled with disbelief. His eyes seemed to ask, You?
“I heard that Your Majesty has traveled to every corner of the continent. Therefore, I thought you might possess information about the elusive Angel’s Breath, which is why I asked.”
The level of information available to a king was on an entirely different plane from what an imperial prince’s nanny could access. One only needed to consider how he had known about the dense reed forest near the imperial castle—a place even most citizens of the empire would never have heard of.
“…So that’s how it is.”
Kaiden’s gaze grew enigmatic. He stared at her in silence for a moment before speaking.
“I cannot tell whether this is coincidence or fate.”
“Pardon?”
“I, too, bear a deep grudge against Angel’s Breath.”
Kaiden smiled, baring his teeth. It was not a smile of goodwill but a warning smile steeped in fury and long-held resentment. The aura radiating from him raised goosebumps across her entire body.
“I don’t know what form your desired revenge would take.”
The glass on the table trembled faintly, reacting to the power Kaiden emitted.
“But I intend to erase the very existence of Angel’s Breath from this continent. I will leave not a single trace behind.”
Rachel had only speculated that Kaiden might have harbored some emotion toward the person she had been in her previous life. She had never imagined such a fierce reaction.
“…It seems Your Majesty…”
She barely managed to force the words out.
“…has also lost someone important to Angel’s Breath.”
“Someone important?”
Kaiden repeated her words, then smiled and corrected her himself.
“That word is not enough to describe how precious that person was.”
“Then… a member of your family?”
“No. Someone far more precious than that.”
It couldn’t be. Damn it. Please, let it not have been me who killed that precious person.
Let the tears he had shed at the grave containing only her ashes not be tears of frustration because he could no longer take revenge on her directly.
“…It was someone I could have given everything I possessed.”
So he had lost a lover. Strange that the highest person in a nation and she—who had lived her entire previous life at the very bottom—should have something in common. The difference, of course, was that she had been murdered by the person she would have given everything for, while he had lost the person he would have given everything for.
“You must have been devastated.”
“…Yes.”
Kaiden murmured, staring blankly at the glass in his hand.
“Death certainly strikes differently. Even though that person might have remained unreachable while still alive.”