“Have you checked whether she has a lover?”
“What…?”
A lover? Her?
Elhardt felt as though someone had struck him in the back of the head.
“As with most knightly orders, the expedition probably had an extremely skewed gender ratio. If so, there may have been someone she liked.”
There was some truth to that.
“It’s something that could easily happen during a grueling expedition. So that’s the first thing we should find out.”
“……”
“Your Highness…?”
“A lover is just a lover. Isn’t it common for a man and woman to date and eventually break up?”
“What?”
“I… was already thinking about marriage.”
Rick began to wonder whether the man he served was actually in his right mind.
“I decided I wanted to marry her the moment we met. It doesn’t matter who she is.”
Elhardt gritted his teeth as he said it, looking even more aggrieved than he had on the day he was stripped of his position as Crown Prince.
“Uh… You’re… serious, aren’t you?”
“You’re stating the obvious.”
Having spent his youth moving from one battlefield to another, Elhardt had never been interested in women.
With the fate of his country hanging in the balance, where would he have found the time to be distracted by something so pointless?
His sole goals had been to train himself further, encourage his soldiers, and win the war.
There had occasionally been bold women who coveted the Crown Prince’s bloodline and slipped into his tent, but he had coldly driven every one of them away.
He had thought people who allowed themselves to be swayed by women were pathetic.
He believed they simply lacked the willpower to resist their desires.
That was certainly how he had been…
And yet here he was, in the middle of an enemy nation, asking his subordinate for advice about love.
Even he thought it was utterly pathetic, but Elhardt had now realized for certain that this was not something he could control through sheer will.
He could come up with dozens of reasons why it was impossible, yet not a single one stayed in his mind.
Instead, he kept thinking endlessly about the possibilities, clinging desperately to even the faintest thread of hope.
“And?”
“You need to become a peacock.”
“……?”
“What’s the advantage of being younger? Isn’t it that you’re more youthful and fresh?”
Elhardt pictured Ser and himself in his mind.
Perhaps it was because the flow of time stopped inside the Black Rift.
“You said it yourself. She looked about the same age as your youngest sister.”
And Elhardt was the same age as Rick.
In other words, to anyone looking at them, Ser clearly appeared younger than Elhardt.
“Just… make sure you dress yourself up well.”
Rick, having run out of things to say, mumbled vaguely.
Elhardt’s face was handsome enough to make even another man admire him.
So much so that Rick wondered whether there was any point in putting even more effort into his appearance.
“Well… You look good as you are, too.”
Still, it had to be better than making no effort at all.
“For now, Your Highness, be grateful that she doesn’t have a younger brother.”
Elhardt could almost understand why he was supposed to be grateful for that, but not quite.
In any case, it was well known that the expedition commander had no family, so he nodded.
“I’ll ask my older sister about the rest and let you know.”
“Please do.”
Elhardt let out a quiet sigh before continuing.
“And… send word to the homeland and find out whether the other members of the expedition have returned.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Convey my intentions to Duke Valder.”
“You mean you’re going to move up the plan?”
“Yes. One month. We must finish all our preparations within that time.”
“Understood.”
Elhardt felt the priorities within him shifting.
‘I’ve spent my entire life devoted to the safety of my homeland.’
Now, something else was trying to take its place.
‘Perhaps this is for the best.’
Thanks to her, all the things he had agonized and hesitated over had been neatly sorted out.
And now he had even learned that he needed to take better care of his appearance. All things considered, that was more than enough of a gain.
‘For now, I should focus on tonight’s banquet.’
As if on cue, not long after Rick left, the Crown Prince’s personal attendant arrived to help him prepare.
“Which do you think suits my complexion better, this dark gray or that black?”
“Which is better? Brushing my bangs up, leaving them down, or only lifting half of them?”
“Doesn’t the color of the cravat look a little strange?”
The Crown Prince’s personal attendant broke into a cold sweat under the barrage of questions from Elhardt.
He had assumed Elhardt would simply put on whatever clothes he was given, as he always had, and skip all the fuss of dressing up.
Instead, he was forced to stay with Elhardt far longer than he ever had when helping the Crown Prince prepare.
“At this rate, we’ll be late for the banquet…”
“Ah, has it already gotten that late? I suppose this looks decent enough… I’m not sure.”
Watching Elhardt inspect his reflection one last time in the mirror, the attendant thought to himself:
The hostage prince would probably be the man who attracted the most attention at tonight’s banquet, simply because of his appearance.
“Let’s go.”
“Yes, Prince.”
With the attendant guiding him, Elhardt headed toward the banquet waiting hall.
“Oh my, that man…”
Fortunately, all his effort seemed to have paid off, judging by the stinging number of gazes directed his way.
“Isn’t that the hostage prince from the detached palace?”
He nearly felt humiliated by the people whispering openly while blatantly looking him up and down.
But the moment he spotted Ser standing there waiting for him, those feelings melted away like snow.
The Crown Prince standing beside her, everyone else around them, even the place they were in—all of it disappeared from his sight.
‘Ser.’
Wrapped in a softly shimmering, water-blue dress, she looked so divine and noble that she reminded him of the glory of the days when she had been called the Goddess’s Knight.
‘It was a good thing I put in the effort.’
There was no way he could have tolerated standing beside her looking shabby.
***
“…Elhardt?”
I doubted my own eyes.
The man walking toward me was definitely him.
I could sense his distinctive mana scent from afar.
‘He looks like a completely different person.’
I already knew he was extremely handsome, but dressed in formal attire and properly groomed, he stood out astonishingly.
‘Why did he go this far with his appearance?’
With a trap involving the “love potion” already being prepared, he had shown up looking like he could provoke someone’s desire even more.
“Ser.”
Elhardt strode toward me without a trace of a smile and held out his hand.
“I kept you waiting.”
He didn’t even spare a glance at the Crown Prince standing beside me.
Elhardt naturally took my hand, which I had placed over his, and tucked it into the crook of his arm. Only then did he smile.
As if he were finally reassured.
“It’s been a while, Elhardt.”
Surprisingly, it was the Crown Prince who greeted him first.
“This is the first time I’ve seen you dressed so properly. Even though we’ve known each other for quite some time.”
I was slightly surprised by his unexpected familiarity and looked between them.
“Thank you for helping my maid.”
“You don’t need to thank me. I did it because I wanted to.”
“I see.”
Elhardt casually brushed off the Crown Prince’s clearly deliberate remark as though he hadn’t understood its intent.
He was about to start walking toward the banquet hall when the Crown Prince spoke to me.
“Ser, about the offer I made earlier. Why don’t you think it over one more time?”
“Pardon…?”
What offer had he made me again?
I’d been too busy spying on the Crown Prince’s Palace security system to pay much attention, so I couldn’t immediately remember.
“Moving into my palace.”
Ah, that one.
This time, Elhardt’s body tensed. Apparently, that had gotten through to him.
“I’ll treat you well. I’ll make sure you lack for nothing.”
Wow. He really knew exactly how to get under his skin.
I had already given the Crown Prince a definite answer before, yet the fact that he was asking me again in front of Elhardt made his intentions painfully obvious.
“Your Highness, I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.”
I lightly tapped Elhardt’s arm with my fingertips.
I felt his body flinch.
I hoped he understood that as a signal to calm down.
“There must be more than enough attendants and maids who would be happy to serve Your Highness. But the Prince needs me.”
I smiled brightly and looked up at Elhardt.
“Right?”
As though he had been waiting for those words, his golden eyes met mine and trembled softly.
“That’s right, Ser.”
After taking a breath as though carefully choosing his words, Elhardt whispered,
“I’ve reached the point where I can’t live a single day without you anymore.”
Uh, what?
It’s… not quite that serious, is it…?
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