This time?

As Litania looked up with a puzzled expression, Orbis avoided her gaze and continued speaking softly.

“I’ve heard that humans can fall in love at first sight.”

Humans, he says.

Someone listening might think he’s not human himself.

“Falling in love at first sight, sure. That happens. But marriage is different, isn’t it?”

“Shouldn’t you marry someone you’ve fallen for?”

Orbis wore a slightly perplexed expression. It was a face of genuine incomprehension, not teasing.

“Well, not that such people don’t exist, but I prefer natural encounters…”

“Lord Orbis!”

Interrupting Litania’s words, the head servant burst in, his complexion not just pale but ashen.

“Huff, huff. I’ve been looking everywhere for you… What on earth were you…”

“I was dancing with Princess Litania.”

As Orbis tried to take Litania’s hand again, she quickly slapped the back of his hand.

“D-don’t touch me!”

“Good heavens. What are you doing!”

The head servant exclaimed in shock.

Not at Orbis, but at Litania.

“Princess Litania, what rudeness are you committing towards Lord Orbis!”

Litania was taken aback by the servant’s scolding.

Despite her lowly status, Litania was still a princess.

She didn’t know how great a marquis Orbis was, but even if he had founding merits, Litania still outranked him socially.

Moreover, it was a woman’s right to refuse when a man she just met tried to hold her hand.

Even between lovers, one has the right to refuse unwanted contact, so how was it rude to just push away an attempt to hold hands?

Litania was dumbfounded.

“Head servant. You seem unaware of the hierarchy, you are now…”

“Do you not know who this person is?”

The head servant interrupted again, shouting.

“The Marquis of Aeternitas who rules the Dragon’s Nest… Lord Orbis, the Divine Dragon!”

“…Divine Dragon?”

Hearing a word she had never expected, Litania looked up at Orbis.

The pupils in his blue eyes narrowed.

* * *

The story rewinds to a few hours earlier.

“Is it true that Lord Orbis has arrived? Is the Guardian Divine Dragon really here in the Imperial Palace now?”

Princess Herna, who had come to the Crown Prince’s waiting room, couldn’t hide her excitement as she rushed in to ask.

“Calm down, sister. You’ll make mistakes in front of Lord Orbis at this rate.”

“Ah, Vapor! Don’t say that! It makes me even more nervous!”

“That’s why I’m telling you to calm down. What if you commit a rudeness in front of him and he decides to abandon Beriberbium and become the guardian deity of another country?”

“We’d be finished.”

Herna replied seriously to the joke meant to ease tensions. Prince Vapor, sensing the gravity of his words, quickly straightened his posture.

“You’re right, we’d be finished. But if we do as we’ve been taught, there won’t be any problems. We endured that grueling etiquette training for days like this.”

“Sister, is my hair alright?”

“Sister, what about my dress? The lace on my petticoat got wrinkled when I leaned against the stairs earlier, should I go change?”

“They said he’ll be here soon! None of us can leave our posts!”

As he watched his siblings fussing over their appearances, Crown Prince Ferus kicked the leg of a stool in irritation.

“Everyone shut up.”

At Ferus’s command, the other princes and princesses flinched and stepped back. The siblings stood in line hesitantly, but their faces still couldn’t hide their anticipation and excitement.

The sight secretly annoyed him.

He was the Crown Prince. It had been long since his coming-of-age ceremony, so he would become Emperor as soon as he received the throne from his father.

Thus far, he had only envisioned a future where he would ascend to the highest position in the empire.

The Divine Dragon was a being more noble than the Emperor. However, until now, he had remained in his domain called the “Dragon’s Nest” and never showed himself.

There were rare occasions when he visited the Imperial Palace, but only the Emperor could meet the Divine Dragon, so others, including the Crown Prince, had never seen him.

Even the Emperor had last met him 19 years ago, so he was treated almost like a legendary creature.

‘Not only has such a Divine Dragon suddenly appeared at the Imperial Palace, but he’s also going to attend the Spring Ball?’

There’s a big difference between a legendary creature being revered more than the Emperor, and that being actually showing up and revealing itself to people.

Ferus felt uncomfortable, as if someone had suddenly perched on top of his head.

“Why are you all so nervous? He probably won’t be interested in each individual royal descendant.”

“But brother, what if we make a mistake while greeting him?”

“So what if you make a mistake.”

Ferus shrugged and sat cross-legged in the armchair in front of the fireplace.

“A dragon wouldn’t care about human etiquette.”

“Brother, stand up!”

Vapor, turning pale, shouted at Ferus. Seeing the desperate bewilderment in his younger brother’s expression, the Crown Prince reflexively rose.

Feeling a chilling sensation run down his back, he turned his head to find a mysterious figure standing there, about a head taller than him.

“Divine Dragon…”

“We greet Lord Orbis!”

The siblings’ greetings drowned out Ferus’s awkward words.

Stumbling away from the chair at Vapor’s urging touch from behind, Ferus straightened up as soon as his eyes met the Divine Dragon’s.

“C-Crown Prince Ferus greets Lord Orbis, the Divine Dragon.”

“…”

Orbis silently looked around.

As if he had been gauging where to sit rather than observing the royal descendants, Orbis sat properly in the armchair where Ferus had been sitting until just now.

“Wow…”

Someone among the younger siblings let out an awed exclamation.

The Divine Dragon, with his dazzling golden hair and blue eyes, was indeed more beautiful than the rumors suggested.

His delicate and soft eyes were elegant, and his eyes that seemed to pierce through one’s soul shone so brightly they felt almost sacred.

Orbis’s appearance, sitting with perfect posture wearing white gloves, evoked expectations and admiration as if embodying the image of an ideal absolute being.

“Um, I am Princess Herna. I greet Lord Orbis, the Divine Dragon.”

Herna stepped forward with a reddened face and greeted Orbis politely.

“Prince Vapor greets Lord Orbis, the Divine Dragon.”

“Princess Mare…”

Orbis’s expression remained impassive as he received the continued greetings from the royal descendants.

Despite his gaze that seemed to regard them like wooden blocks lined up, the royal descendants could barely contain their excitement at finally meeting the Divine Dragon they had only heard about in rumors.

Watching this, Ferus felt his insides twisting.

‘Damn it. In fact, that thing isn’t even really a Divine Dragon.’

The Divine Dragon was the guardian deity of the imperial family, but that didn’t mean he actually protected the imperial family or the royal descendants.

The Divine Dragon simply existed in his place. He allowed humans to give meaning to this and let them thrive under his shadow. It was closer to neglect than acquiescence.

‘Pretending to be a god when you’re just a monster.’

Because the dragon was there, neither magical beasts nor immigrants from other countries dared to covet the Beriberbium Empire. For this reason, he was called the Guardian Dragon.

In truth, he could fly away to another place whenever he got bored, or trample the empire whenever it annoyed him.

That’s the kind of being a dragon is.

An unpredictable natural disaster.

The reason the Beriberbium Empire prospered by proclaiming itself as “a country under the protection of the Divine Dragon,” with the dragon that everyone feared as its guardian, was simply because the empire’s first emperor realized the dragon’s nature faster than the leaders of other countries.

A capricious and fierce dragon.

But that dragon’s emotions react differently from humans’.

‘A dragon doesn’t get angry over things like this.’

Ferus steadied his breathing.

If the dragon was likely to be angered by a lack of manners, he would have shown his displeasure immediately upon their first encounter. After all, a Divine Dragon wouldn’t bother to consider the feelings of a mere Crown Prince.

The fact that he was quietly receiving their greetings meant he probably didn’t see any problem with Ferus’s earlier statement.

‘In the end, he’s just a stupid monster who doesn’t even understand manners. He probably came out here just to mimic humans for his own amusement.’

Feeling slightly more relaxed, Ferus cleared his throat and opened his mouth.

“That concludes the greetings from the twelve princes and princesses.”

As the blue eyes that had been facing the wall lights turned towards Ferus, he suddenly felt wide awake. Ferus felt as if the dragon’s gaze was like a knife stabbing his throat.

The Divine Dragon was not in a good mood. He had that intuition. For a moment, he wanted to flee, but he barely suppressed his fear.

‘No. It’s just my imagination. If the dragon was angry, we’d all be dead already. He doesn’t practice patience.’

Just as Ferus lowered his eyes, relaxing his stiffly tensed shoulders, a voice as deep as if it might submerge flowed out.

“If the greetings are over, I shall get up now.”

“Lord Orbis, are you already returning to the Dragon’s Nest?”

“No. The ball will be starting soon.”

Though his tone was gentle, it clearly meant he had no time to chat with them because he had to go to the ball. Ferus, bristling at the obvious dismissal, asked,

“All the royal descendants have gathered here to meet Lord Orbis, isn’t it extremely rude to leave without even returning our greetings?”

“The Crown Prince seemed to know.”

Looking down at Ferus with a cold tone, Orbis continued.

“That a dragon wouldn’t care about human etiquette.”

Hearing his own words thrown back at him, Ferus’s eyes widened before his lips pressed tightly shut.