182. I’ve Been Waiting for You

2024.03.30.

Solen Racha sensed that the southern forces had entirely shifted from the missing Bollonico to Noel.

Just by watching Harol Companni floundering helplessly among them, one could already tell who now held control over the southern faction.

The sudden reversal of atmosphere caused the entire 1st Knight Division to falter.

Solen Racha gritted his teeth.

The mood within the knight division had already been poor, ever since Eugene Kimfri—the madman—kept spouting his so-called truths throughout the journey.

They had nearly turned him into a corpse and gagged him just to shut his mouth, yet the words of a highly trusted knight like Eugene Kimfri were more than enough to unsettle the others.

If he now opposed the prince, the very identity of the knight division—the guardians of the imperial family—would be blurred beyond recognition.

“I am the sword that protects the imperial family. How could I ever raise my blade against His Highness the Prince?”

His sharp blue eyes swept over Ariesta, the duchess, trembling with lips bleeding from biting them too hard, and then over the western Duke and Duchess of Celentina, who stood flustered and at a loss.

Solen’s pale throat bobbed once.

“I acted rudely for the sake of the Emperor’s safety. As Your Highness says, this place would indeed be better under your command than mine.”

Solen Racha quickly defused the tense atmosphere, stepping back and signaling his subordinates—who had drawn their swords—to sheath them.

“However, if things go awry, the responsibility will fall entirely on Your Highness.”

“Unnecessary worries.”

“Then so be it.”

Solen Racha bowed crisply and, sheathing his sword, led his men out of the reception hall.

The moment he stepped outside the mansion, his brows furrowed. His heart pounded rapidly. This humiliation was unprecedented.

For a brief moment, he had been completely overpowered by Noel’s presence.

Unconsciously hiding his trembling hands, Solen turned his attention to the unnervingly silent surroundings.

***

After retreating from the grand villa, Solen Racha swiftly ascended the canyon’s shortcut, catching up to the party of the exiled prince.

As the son of Jurgen Racha, once hailed as the King of the North, there was no reason for him to lag behind in these northern canyons.

As Solen Racha climbed the rugged terrain, his brow increasingly twisted in distress.

The hot springs flowing through every snow-covered corner of the canyon were red with blood. And standing there, halting his path, was Clade.

“So you’ve finally realized I’m your opponent?”

A faint smile played across his face, already made eerily beautiful by splattered blood.

Scattered around him were the bodies of his subordinates, sent ahead earlier—men who groaned weakly on the ground. All were elite swordsmen, second to none.

The exiled prince, having cut down several pursuers, showed no fear at Solen Racha’s arrival. Instead, his expression relaxed, as if relieved that Solen had come exactly as expected.

‘Relief?’

Relief?

That word clashed completely with the hellish scene around them.

It was also an emotion one should never feel when facing the strongest opponent in all of Euphris.

Without a word, Solen Racha charged forward across the rough ground. Between his furrowed brows, sharp winds whistled past.

“S-S-Such—!”

“Commander!”

“S-Solen Sir—!”

The members of the 1st Knight Division, who had rushed after Solen Racha, stood agape, stunned by how quickly the battle had ended.

Who was Solen Racha?

He was the knight who served the Emperor at close quarters, recognized by the Emperor himself as the Sword of the North and the Sword of the Imperial Family.

Moreover, he was one of the few swordsmen who had reached the rank of Swordmaster.

Yet this Solen Racha, against the blade of a prince who had been imprisoned for over ten years, was forced into retreat, step by step, until finally his sword slipped from his grasp and he dropped to his knees.

Solen Racha’s strong jaw was mercilessly kicked by a boot.

The exiled prince wiped Solen’s blood from his face with the back of his hand, then scanned the faces of those standing behind.

Meeting the eyes of each one as they flinched, the prince, as if sensing no time to linger, seized Solen Racha by the collar and hurled him toward them.

“Anyone who stands in my way of punishing traitors after ten years will receive the same treatment.”

The knights’ eyes trembled wildly, alternating between the retreating red cloak and the severely injured Solen Racha groaning on the ground.

***

Meanwhile.

Drietter, the Grand Duke, who had been leisurely entering the plaza, accelerated his pace toward the grand villa upon hearing that his daughter had been detained by Solen Racha.

He was greeted by Ariesta, who rushed out of the villa and threw herself into his arms.

“Ariesta!”

“Father!”

Her beautiful lips were bleeding and torn from biting.

“Solen Racha—I’ll make you pay for this!”

“The Emperor has completely lost his mind! Father, you must not serve such a man as your sovereign!”

Ariesta shuddered, recalling the Emperor’s intention to take Clade’s wife as his own.

Desperation laced her voice, even though many were listening.

Drietter, stunned by Ariesta’s intense reaction, knelt down to meet her eye level as she nearly collapsed.

Her watery eyes were damp with tears.

Ariesta often cried and raised her voice when things didn’t go her way, but fundamentally, she was a daughter who valued dignity.

That she now spoke without regard for the gazes around her left him no choice but to listen.

“Please save Clade. Help me, Father!”

“Ariesta!”

“I know. Ten years ago, Ari made the same request. I know how much you strained yourself fulfilling my plea—relocating our estate, and afterward enduring the Emperor’s pressure over my marriage prospects.”

Without hesitation, Ariesta knelt before her father.

Her beautiful silver hair scattered over the filthy ground, smeared with snow and dirt. The Duke’s body stiffened.

“I admit my mistake and beg your forgiveness. Truthfully, I’ve always wanted to apologize to you. But now, my plea to save Clade isn’t just blind desperation. Father, you crushed the rebels at my request, for the sake of my future—but you knew, didn’t you, that those people were never rebels to begin with?”

“Ari, how could you possibly know that…?”

While she had been broken-hearted after her engagement to Clade was broken and her relationship with Bollonico soured, Ariesta hadn’t merely lain still and cried.

She had watched in silence, observing how the world truly turned.

“When the head of the Kimfri Count’s family—our neighbor, our closest friend—and his eldest son took their own lives. That night, after returning from the funeral. I saw you weeping bitterly in your study, Father.”

“Ari…!”

“This is the final chance to correct the wrong.”

Ariesta clutched her father’s large hand and pleaded.

“Father, I’ve made countless mistakes in the past, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life living that way.”

“But… what you’re asking is treason. This is different from before. There’s a difference between acting unknowingly and knowingly, Ari!”

“It’s not treason—it’s a chance. The final chance to correct the wrong. Help Clade depose the Emperor and return us to our rightful place. I beg you.”

“But Ariesta. What about your future? If you depose the Emperor, you won’t be able to marry any of his sons…”

Meeting her father’s clouded eyes without flinching, Ariesta finally spoke the words she had suppressed for ten years.

“I’m tired of living a life of constant caution just to become someone’s wife.”

“Ari…!”

“I wish to become a proud landholder, to succeed you as the Duke of Drietter.”

“!”

“Please, Father. Help me ensure that the ruler I serve will never again be Igor Euphris—that dreadful demon.”

Ariesta prostrated herself once more, pleading.

Drietter’s trembling gaze turned toward the distant peak of the great canyon, where Clade’s group ascended like a crimson tide.

Another moment of choice had arrived.

***

Each time the eerie wind lashed against the rock towering at the canyon’s peak, it produced a sound like someone sobbing.

Igor, seated beneath a massive tree trunk thick with frost-covered moss, drank straight from a wine bottle. Wine spilled between his golden beard, but he paid no mind, gulping down drink after drink.

“Alexei, your son is late.”

A soft sigh escaped, sending a wisp of white breath into the air.

That breath carried ancient memories, and Emperor Igor’s blue eyes sank into the distant depths of the past.

The eldest son, deprived of the throne by his younger brother.

The first prince, exiled to this barren, frozen land after his cruel nature drove even his fiancée away.

Igor Euphris.

Each time he sucked at the bottle’s neck, memories that never faded replayed endlessly across the snowcapped peaks.

He had excelled more in wielding a sword outdoors than in studying imperial doctrine, and thus fell out of his father’s favor.

The days when he had naturally assumed he would become Emperor turned to ash, scattered by the wind, leaving him only the hollow title of Grand Duke.

He felt abandoned—sent to a desolate land where snow never ceased and monsters invaded at will.

Even though the eldest prince, Igor Euphris, had repeatedly fought in monster hunts and wars, earning great merit, he was denied the throne.

His father had told him, as if matching the indelible stigma branded upon him, to forsake the crown and instead become his younger brother’s sword—a border king, exiled to the frontier.

Have you ever had something snatched from you just as you were about to grasp it?

What if that ‘something’ was more precious than anything else?

What if you lost not only the throne but also your fiancée?

The late Marquis Rev, unwilling to send his daughter to the barren North, had exposed the scandal between the second prince Alexei and Eleonore and forced the marriage.

Igor’s father, Emperor Leon at the time, secretly wished for the virtuous Eleonore to become Empress, so he feigned reluctance and asked Igor to understand.

Instead, he pushed for a marriage between Igor and Marilyn Companni, who held fertile lands and great influence.

Becoming a Grand Duke, Igor—feeling the throne and even the woman had been stolen by his brother—ground his teeth, married Marilyn, and defiantly fathered Bollonico.

“When was it? A few years before you died, wasn’t it?”

After marriage and fathering a son, you told me to stop showing feelings for Eleonore.

As if it were natural in noble society to have mistresses—yet the one who took everything dared warn the one who lost, coldly.

How could he ever forget that humiliation? That single sentence had become the spark of rebellion.

Igor sucked the bottle dry, then smiled, his lips curling at the faint presence he finally sensed.

It was Clade.

“Are you badly hurt?”

Covered in blood from head to toe.

The son of Eleonore.

“You’ve pushed yourself too hard.”

Igor kept smiling as he gazed at Clade’s beautiful face, so like Eleonore’s—but then his icy blue eyes flashed upon meeting the cold, Alexei-like gaze.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”