Chapter 5 - Finding the Missing Piece

Chapter 5 – Finding the Missing Piece

Viola’s riding skills were excellent. Not only was she good at horseback riding but also proficient at fencing. She might have been a princess, but she had lived a completely opposite life from other princesses. Her personality was far from princess-like, and her nanny sometimes remarked that she should have been born a prince.

Her mannerisms were ill-suited to sitting still and embroidering in the first place. Since Koronis was currently a kingdom with no princes, it was naturally her duty to lead as its ruler someday.

After a while, she arrived at a lake. She felt like something was about to burst out of her body, so much so that her head was burning up. Viola got off her horse and placed her hands into the lake. She splashed her face with the cool water. After washing her face for some time, something rustled behind her and came out from the woods.

It was a cat, walking gracefully with its tail raised. The black cat rubbed itself against Viola’s leg and acted cute.

“Ming? How did you get all the way here?”

Viola had been worried because she had gone and left the poor thing all by herself, but fortunately, she had managed to track and follow her mistress’ scent to find her way here without getting lost inside the forest.

It had been three years since Viola had lost her mother and started raising Ming. She desperately wanted to bring the cat with her to the Arpen Empire and thought about sneaking it inside her luggage.

Viola held Ming in her arms and rubbed her cheek.

“Ming…” She whispered. “Can I do it? What do you think?”

The smart little rascal appeared to understand quite well what Viola was saying. Although the answer was just a meow, it gave her strength.

Viola lay down on the grass and looked up at the stars punctuating the still night sky.

“I will never become the royal family’s toy.”

♛

After the first round of the hunt concluded, Lustian threw his game to the hounds since orc meat was too tough for humans to eat. Still, this had been the first real fight he had in a long time.

Lustian led a subjugation force to battle whenever anyone dared to invade their territory. He would then return dominant after a seamless victory, and this time was no different. He had mercilessly decapitated any beast that tried to extend beyond their normal domain, which should keep them from lurking into human lands for a while.

He was soaked from head to toe in blood from the hunt, but he did not care. The crown prince shook his blood-soaked hair and walked to the barracks.

“The bath is ready.”

“All right.”

Inside, the servants had already finished preparing and were waiting for him. He took off his clothes, revealing a perfect body rippling with muscle.

“Feels good.”

Hot water sloshed around the bath as he settled himself in. His heart, which had been pounding ferociously since the hunt, gradually calmed down. As the servants set to work washing the gore from his hair, the outline of his beautiful face became more apparent.

A lot of eyes were on the crown prince. Regardless of age or sex, all onlookers naturally drew their eyes to his face. His smoldering countenance together with his powerful body were enough to make even gods envy him. Unlike his appearance, however, the prince’s heart was ice cold.

Nobody had been able to win the crown prince’s heart. He exuded an oppressive aura that would freeze one’s spine, demonstrating that he was a man who did not easily give away his affections. A knight entered the barrack.

“It is a message from His Majesty.”

The prince opened the parchment to confirm the message and frowned.

“New Crown Princess Candidate…”

“They are sending another bride?” He continued with pursed lips. “Don’t they get tired?”

Lustian leaned his head back and closed his eyes in disinterest. The knight that was standing next to him quietly voiced his confusion.

“I don’t understand why you refuse every time.” He murmured.

“You only end up uncomfortable,” Lustian said, “Holding a body you don’t want.”

“That may be true for you, Your Highness, but I don’t think that is the case for your counterparts …” The knight trailed off at the end.

Lustian had zero intentions of embracing a woman from another kingdom. He wasn’t going to take charge of yet another responsibility the emperor deemed fit to saddle him with. The princesses who had arrived in the Arpen Empire so far became concubines without ever having shared his bed. They themselves chose to be concubines.

Well, even if he ordered them to leave, they weren’t in a position where they could depart so easily. The emperor would never simply watch from the side and allow such a thing to happen.

There was an unspeakable secret within the Imperial Palace. Two hundred years ago, the emperor at that time had signed a contract with a god.

‘I will rain my blessing down on the Arpen Empire so that you will no longer have to wander around like beasts. I will give you unmatchable wealth and strength. In return, I only have one condition: find the one who possesses the other half of my heart. This oath you swear will be carried out through you and generation to generation after you. If it is broken, the Arpen Empire will fall.’

His words were more of an order than a contract. The First Emperor of Arpen, however, was blinded by greed at the time and couldn’t predict how hard fulfilling the condition would be for his future descendants. Since then, every future Emperor of Arpen carried on that oath.

Lustian resented the god more than he was supposed to revere him. The prince had watched how his mother sorrowed because his father cheated on her with these other princesses for his entire life, so as a result, Lustian refused his duty.

The fact that the emperor had thrown this chore at him before suddenly disappearing only caused his resentment towards him to grow larger and larger. A fire rose within Lustian and he burned with rage at the absentee emperor who would rather travel leisurely while the country’s borders were in such disarray.

‘How do we know whether that god’s companion is a princess or not? We have been looking for 200 years and still not found her, haven’t we?’

It was true. The previous emperors had slept with many princesses in order to uphold the generational oath; however, they could not find the god’s companion. The reason that they still held steadfast to the belief that she would be a princess was because they only had one clue:

‘The God of Judith’s companion will be born to the noblest of positions.’

Legend has it that women who suffer through poverty all their lives are reborn as nobles. So, the god’s companion, who had lived through the greatest of agony, would have to be someone with the highest position a woman could attain from birth: a princess. Thus, every emperor of Arpen since then asked each country to send only their highest-ranking princess as a potential crown princess. Then, they had to check through intimate contact whether she was the woman they were searching for. Although no detailed methods were passed down, all the past emperors went through the same process.

‘I’ll never give in to that god’s will.’

Lustian bit his lips and dunked his entire being into the hot bathwater, which had been drawn from the Judith River. Doing so made him feel alive. The unslakable thirst burning inside him began to fade away little by little.

The air rumbled. The skies darkened and rain began to pour down in heavy torrents. He felt a stiff pain in his heart. Lustian’s face slowly contorted as a cold sweat began to form upon his body. The startled servant tried to call for the priest, but Lustian waved his hand.

“It’s all right. I can just jump into the river for something like this…”

♛♛♛