“Eric, let’s go make lunch too.”
“Huh? Wait, Kay—”
Kay dragged Eric, who had perked up his ears to listen to the gossip, away.
“Kay—”
Eric was no match for Kay in strength. Once dragged to the side, he found he could no longer hear Ye Tang and Vincent’s conversation. He pursed his lips in dissatisfaction and muttered softly, “That hunter is the Queen’s personal guard knight brought from Saint Ruby, right? Aren’t you afraid they might have some affair, rekindle their old flame or something?”
Kay shot Eric a sidelong glance. He knew that matters between men and women weren’t just something the young knights were curious about and loved to hear; even those veteran knights with plenty of experience listened with great relish, never tiring of it.
“As knights, the orders given to us are simply to protect the Queen well… As long as the Queen doesn’t betray our king, her private affairs are not for us to interfere in or even know about.”
The more you knew, sometimes the faster you died. So Kay didn’t want to know so much.
He had Eric sit with him on the other side of the now-lit campfire. They listened to the soft crackling sounds from the fire as they sliced the giant scorpion’s meat.
No knight had thought to bring a pot when leaving the castle, but years of wartime life had made Kay and a few more experienced knights habitually carry salt with them.
They skewered the scorpion meat on branches, salted it, and roasted it. Kay’s focused demeanor drew a resentful look from Eric, who could see Ye Tang and Vincent but couldn’t hear what they were saying.
“My Queen, what are you talking about?”
On the other side of the campfire, Vincent looked at Ye Tang with a smile.
“I’m saying you deliberately shot two arrows, one of which you intentionally missed and shot right in front of me to test whether Kay and Eric would protect me… Am I right?”
Vincent placed his right hand over his chest and bowed his head with a laugh. “How dare I? How could I risk injuring the Queen just to test two knights I don’t even know?”
“So you didn’t plan to avoid injuring me?”
Ye Tang crossed her arms over her chest. “From the angle that arrow was shot, you aimed for a spot one inch in front of my toes. Kay reacted because he didn’t realize that arrow carried no killing intent and wasn’t aimed at me.”
The hunter’s shoulder twitched slightly. He adjusted the triangular hat on his head, still smiling. “Your Highness, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Your address for me changed from ‘Queen’ back to ‘Your Highness’.”
Ye Tang stood before Vincent, scrutinizing the man.
Among the countless secondary interpretations of Snow White she had heard, one theory was that the Magic Mirror was the hunter himself. “Magic Mirror, Magic Mirror, tell me” was the Queen’s secret signal to summon her lover. Upon hearing the signal, the Queen’s lover—the hunter—would emerge from the hidden passage behind the mirror for a tryst with her.
Unfortunately, the hunter sent by the Queen to kill Snow White fell in love at first sight with the beautiful princess from the White family. He couldn’t bear to kill the pitiable Snow White, so he let her go and deceived the Queen.
From Ye Tang’s perspective, the Vincent before her had no improper thoughts toward Marinfield at all.
Or rather, Vincent didn’t care about women’s appearances in the slightest.
“Then let me say something you’ll definitely understand.”
“Vincent, you’ve always had the chance to rescue me and take me away from that cold-blooded castle. But you deliberately abandoned me there, leaving me to fend for myself.”
Ye Tang’s tone wasn’t particularly intense. But her gaze carried an imperious look down on him, the pressure from it enough to chill Vincent’s back.
“I don’t want to say that all your kindness toward me was fake. I just want to know why you didn’t come to save me.”
If the hunter really was the Queen’s lover, a Queen unable to get her lover to take her away might console herself that she and the hunter couldn’t oppose the king and his army. But if the hunter betrayed the Queen because he was bewitched by Snow White’s beauty, how heartbroken would the Queen be?
If Marinfield hadn’t been hypnotized, how desperate would she be, forever waiting for Vincent to take her away?
The hunter finally lifted his head.
A handsome face often hidden beneath the triangular hat bore a smile without a trace of guilt. “Your Highness, I don’t want to serve someone who needs saving by me.”
Ye Tang was momentarily stunned, then curved her lips.
“I thought as much.”
…She understood. If that was the case, she could accept this hunter. And she wanted to pull him to her side.
“Then Vincent, I order you to follow me back to the castle.”
Vincent’s expression didn’t change, not even the arc of his lips shifted a millimeter. “Have me follow you back… Aren’t you afraid His Majesty the King will suspect you of cuckolding him?”
Ye Tang’s smile became even more radiant. “That’s my business.”
With that, she narrowed her golden eyes slightly. “Besides, why should I always act according to Osborne I’s mood? I am the princess of Saint Rubifalist. My homeland, my country, is Saint Ruby. I want to return to my own nation, not be a hostage under house arrest in Castellion.”
Vincent paused, as if he hadn’t expected Ye Tang to be so direct. He glanced toward Kay and the others by the campfire. “If your knights hear these words of yours, your position in Castellion will worsen. And if these words reach your royal brothers’ ears—”
Half his face shadowed by the triangular hat, the hunter’s tone turned icy. “Do you want to start a war?”
If Ye Tang hadn’t figured out who wanted to murder Marinfield, or what attitude Marinfield’s brothers and father had toward her, she might have mistakenly thought the “war” Vincent mentioned meant war breaking out between Castellion and Saint Rubifalist.
In other words, based on her answer, Vincent would immediately know whether Ye Tang had figured out who her real enemy was and what she was truly facing.
“—Why not?”
To Vincent’s surprise, the once-naive little princess said something no princess or queen should say.
The current Marinfield seemed more like a tyrant.
“The first emperor of Saint Ruby made a covenant with the elves: ‘Let the wisest rule,’ not ‘Let the wisest man rule.’ And yet? Because I’m a woman, my brothers directly struck me from the list of heirs. My father tacitly approved his sons’ violation of the covenant with the elves to avoid civil war. They married me off to Castellion, hoping to borrow Castellion’s hand to kill me.”
“What glory or splendor is there in such a country?”
Ye Tang was calm, but amid the calm shone a hint of madness.
She was like a cluster of flames, alluring in their glow, yet burning pain into anyone who touched them.
“Saint Rubifalist didn’t just deny me and my wisdom. Saint Rubifalist denied women’s wisdom, denied women themselves. Shouldn’t I change such a country?”
“Today it’s me being denied; tomorrow it will be thousands more ‘me’s denied for the same reason. I know Saint Ruby will deny more women in the future, burying their wisdom. Why should I turn a blind eye, turn a deaf ear, and become a silent accomplice?”
“When I was little, I didn’t let my brothers or my father bend me into what they wanted. Now, I have no intention of dying quietly as they wish, honoring my father’s desire by sacrificing myself in a foreign land for the country’s peace, becoming a stepping stone for my brothers’ power.”
Ye Tang extended her fair palm toward Vincent, awaiting a single answer.
“I don’t like the current Saint Ruby, so I will change Saint Ruby. Will you come with me, Vincent?”
Ye Tang hadn’t severed her connection with Diesel. Every word she said to Vincent, Diesel in the mirror heard clearly.
The little nightmare couldn’t explain why he was covered in goosebumps. The only thing he was sure of was that Ye Tang wasn’t joking. If she said she wanted war, she was dead set on starting one.
Even given the current situation, she was just a queen in name only. She had no soldiers under her command, only a maid who came to inform her, a cook missing a toe… and possibly a level three nightmare of little use.
“Your Highness—”
Vincent removed the triangular hat that had always covered half his face. Unexpectedly, the hunter who had seemed sly and cunning, full of schemes, now had tears streaming down his face.
“You’ve really grown up.”
“You’ve truly lived up to my expectations, growing perfectly.”
“I’ve been waiting all this time for you to resolve to fight for the throne. Now I’ve finally waited.”
Ye Tang, whose hand Vincent had grasped, was momentarily speechless. She looked at the two wooden plugs in his ears that blossomed like flowers, saw his wood-toned hair, and thought of something.
She had realized on the road to the forest that Vincent, willing to escort Marinfield to Castellion, supported the wise ascending the throne—he was with the Covenant Faction. But she hadn’t known why Vincent was with the Covenant Faction.
If Vincent was an elf, though, it all made sense.
“…Vincent, are you an elf?”
“Half-elf, my Your Highness.”
Wiping away his tears, with a smile like an old father… no, an old grandfather, Vincent said, “My grandmother was an elf.”
“Then Vincent, if I never decided in this lifetime to compete with my brothers for the throne—”
The elegant half-elf smiled, placing his right hand over his chest and bowing slightly. “Then I could only wait quietly for the birth of the next wise one.”
In fairy tales, adult lions pushed cubs off cliffs to train them.
The half-elf before Ye Tang was clearly more ruthless than a lion. If the child he had his eye on, the potential wise one, lacked the will to fight back from desperation, he would let that child fend for herself.