Chapter 107
CRASH!
With a heavy crash, the wardrobe toppled forward. Grizelle stared with frightened eyes at the man who had knocked it over.
The man she had once longed for, the Second Prince Arendtert, had now become an object of terror. His red hair was disheveled as he glared fiercely. His gaze alone seemed capable of strangling a person, for it was filled with hatred.
“It’s because of you. Because of you that my life is ruined!”
“Aren, don’t say it like that, think more positively… Kyaah!”
A vase flew toward Grizelle as she tried to soothe him. Behind her came the pitiful sound of shattering porcelain. Arendtert muttered through clenched teeth.
“Positive? Don’t make me laugh.”
“A… Aren…”
“What part of this cursed situation is positive?”
Arendtert strode across the room toward her. The closer he came, the more her body trembled. He seized her by the collar and lifted her clean off the ground.
“If you have a mouth then say it. What is positive? That my life is ruined because I got entangled with someone like you? Or that the entire Empire now knows me as a scoundrel?”
“Hiiieek!”
Dangling helplessly in the air by Arendtert’s grip, Grizelle cried.
How had it come to this.
The gentlemanly and polite Second Prince had vanished like an illusion. What remained was a dog of a man who drowned himself in alcohol and lashed out in violence whenever he pleased. Whenever he saw her, he was itching to beat her.
“You can still become Crown Prince!”
“…What?”
“Now that both the princes are engaged, the Crown Prince Selection will begin. If things go well there…!”
“Ha. Do you think that is possible?”
Arendtert threw Grizelle aside as if finding it absurd. He pressed a hand to his forehead and groaned.
“There’s no chance in the Noble Council vote or the monster hunt. I can’t become Crown Prince. It’s over.”
“You never know until you try.”
“Easier said than done.”
“But you can do it, Aren. Her Majesty the Empress can sway the conservatives. And the monster hunt? Aren, you subdued the Maw that opened in the palace all by yourself. You saved me, remember?”
“How could I forget. That was when my life began to twist.”
Arendtert let out a cold laugh. Yes, it had begun then. When he became dirtied by entanglement with Grizelle Willoughby.
He had gone to persuade Sylaria after her sudden request to break the engagement and had encountered this vulgar woman. Because he had saved her when monsters poured out of the Maw, he had become tightly bound to her.
Every moment, he bitterly regretted it.
He should have held on to Sylaria no matter what.
He should have thrown away his pride and begged her, forced the engagement to continue. If he had, he would have been politically superior to Euclid, and he wouldn’t be tied down by Grizelle.
‘If only I had succeeded on the first night.’
Arendtert bit the soft flesh inside his cheek. His lingering regrets were endless.
Even if he had failed to persuade her to stay engaged, if he had at least claimed Sylaria on her first night with Euclid. Back then, it hadn’t been entirely impossible.
But Arendtert had failed in everything. And the woman before him was both the result and cause of that failure.
Unfashionable, coarse, vulgar. A woman he had never once considered as a partner even for a moment.
Yet this woman had become his match.
If he had to be engaged to someone other than Sylaria, he had hoped at least for someone beautiful or elegant. It could have been like that.
“Damn it!”
The more he thought about it, the more rage boiled up. Arendtert spat out a curse and kicked a nearby chair. The chair rolled across the floor toward Grizelle, yet he didn’t even glance at it.
“Another mess today, I see.”
“Mother…?”
As Arendtert fumed, a leisurely woman’s voice reached his ears. When he turned his head, he saw Cressida wearing an irritated expression.
“Instead of preparing for the Crown Prince Selection, what are you doing?”
“There is no point in preparing something I’m bound to lose.”
Arendtert replied sullenly. At her son’s insolent answer, Cressida’s eyebrows shot up.
Ever since he became engaged to Grizelle, her once obedient son had changed. He now believed that Cressida also bore some responsibility for his engagement.
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