C87
The Crown Prince asked as he quickly reached eye level with Liena, who knelt.
"Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?"
"I'm fine, Mikhail..."
Liena, who had been treating her lover comfortably according to her usual habits, regained her senses and corrected her tone.
"I'm fine, Your Highness. Rather, Your Majesty the Emperor..."
Upon seeing this, the emperor spoke for the first time since his second son appeared.
"Mikhail, what are you doing?"
"Your Majesty, the situation at the moment..."
"Didn't I ask what you were doing?"
Bam! The emperor threw something. It hit the prince's forehead as he stood up and fell to the ground. It was the fan that had relieved Liena's heat a moment ago.
"Mikhail!"
Liena was surprised and checked the prince's condition.
"Oh my God! How are you? Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine. Are you really okay?"
"You fool! I'm fine, so why are you worried about me?"
Liena started crying, but this time she blocked the emperor's path as if protecting Mikhail.
"No matter how much Your Majesty is the Emperor, this is domestic violence! Domestic violence is wrong!"
Even Terence was quite surprised by Liena's actions. She was probably the only person in the empire who could reprimand the emperor without hesitation.
"Should I call it courage or stupidity?"
Of course, given the emperor's personality, he would never directly harm the noble lady of Cassius, but Liena acted like someone who knew no fear.
"Ha..."
The emperor's sigh contained indescribable feelings of absurdity and despair.
"Liena Cassius, come out. No. This is your prison, so we should leave."
The emperor walked out in large strides.
Terence followed, and the guards left the room, pensive.
"Liena, see you later."
The Crown Prince stayed until the end to comfort his crying lover.
"Mikhail! I'm worried about you!"
"I said I'm fine. Nothing will happen."
"I'm sorry. Only because of me..."
"Liena, I did all this because I wanted to. There's nothing wrong with you."
"Wait, don't go!"
"Stay safe here."
"Mikhail!"
After waiting for quite some time, the Crown Prince left the room where Liena was trapped and closed the door. The emperor burst into laughter.
"You're part of the love of the century."
"Your Majesty, Liena is not guilty of anything."
"Noisy!"
After catching his breath, the emperor pointed to the head of the imperial prison, who was trembling in a corner.
"Alright, please explain what I witnessed today in this room. The knight said everything was ordered by you."
Mikhail responded calmly without changing his expression.
"That's right. This prison is a very harsh environment for Liena, so I asked Iza to help her."
"Harsh? Where? It has everything, and even though it's said to be only for nobles, the royal family uses the same cell if they are locked up here!"
"It's harsh for Liena, who has always lived in the duchy surrounded only by good things. Besides, she's not guilty, right?"
"What?"
"I heard it too. Aren't all the crimes of the Iver Guild the work of Elliot Rudd?"
"So?"
"Liena is more of a victim. She lost the Merchant Guild she had worked so hard for because of Elliot. It's impossible to imprison someone like that."
"Are you saying that you took care of Liena Cassius because she was unjustly imprisoned?"
"Since I can't free her under my authority, I decided that I should at least give her some comfort."
"Alright, let's ask the guard."
The emperor pointed to the guard who had fanned the flames. He looked the shyest among the guards.
"Since when have you been helping the princess?"
"He, he... I've been taking care of my lady since she first arrived here."
He wasn't bold enough to dare lie to the emperor. The emperor looked at his son.
"How do you explain this? Yesterday, it was revealed that Elliot Rudd was the main culprit, so why did you take care of Lady Liena long before that?"
"That's because I knew Liena was innocent from the beginning."
"How?"
"I've been with Liena for a long time, and I trust her. She would never do anything wrong."
"What? Ah, really..."
Perhaps because he was so dumbfounded, the emperor couldn't easily continue speaking. Terence was a bit confused. Does the Crown Prince really not know Liena's true identity, or does he insist boldly on it even though he knows?
"It's not that either of the two possibilities is likely, but somehow it seems like the latter."
Birds of a feather flock together*. Just like Liena, who had an innocent expression on her face as if she knew nothing, Mikhail's shameless personality suited him better.
The emperor muttered in vain.
"What the hell did I do wrong? He wasn't like this before."
"After meeting Liena, I was reborn. That girl gave me a new life."
"That damn Liena, Liena..."
"I didn't expect Your Majesty to understand my feelings now. You were always strict with me. You were kind to the son you left outside."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Once, when my father left the palace, I secretly followed him. Every time my father left like that, my mother's nerves became very sharp."
"Mikhail."
"I asked my grandfather over and over and heard the truth that my father was going to see the illegitimate son he had left outside."
Mikhail's eyes darkened.
"I saw them from where I followed. A father and his illegitimate son playing ball. The person who gave me a royal sword to train gave a ball to his illegitimate son."
"How can you compare yourself and Terrence on the same level? Aren't you my legitimate son?"
Mikhail, who would become emperor, basically had to know how to use a sword, but Terence, who had to live in the shadows as the emperor's illegitimate son, didn't need that. If he gains strength, wouldn't it be more likely to be misunderstood as a contender for the throne?
"I didn't know you would be jealous of that. I learned to use the sword without my father knowing."
Terence looked at the hilt of the sword he wore at his waist. When Terence asked to learn how to use a sword, the emperor gave him a ball.
After that, Terence abandoned his irrational expectations and learned to use a sword by begging the knight assigned by the emperor as his escort. Because he pitied Terence's situation, he was able to learn while avoiding the emperor's gaze.
He had no resentment towards his father. He did in the past, but he doesn't know if it would be more accurate to say that it disappeared over time without expecting anything.
"Is it the same over there?"
Mikhail also seemed to have overcome his resentment towards his father in his own way.
"My father can't even imagine the difficult childhood I had because I was the legitimate son of the emperor. Still, I'm fine. Liena healed all the pain I suffered back then."
"At the end, aren't you willing to reflect on the mistakes you made?"
"I apologize for breaking the rules of the Imperial Palace Prison. However, I don't regret my actions. All rules require flexibility."
Mikhail expressed his opinion in a surprisingly confident manner. That attitude, combined with Mikhail's beautiful and solid appearance, created the power to make even absurd logic seem plausible.
"Funny guy."
The emperor said something that couldn't be distinguished whether he was saying it to his son or to himself.
"The guy who used to criticize his older brother for his old-fashioned etiquette and use his titles now talks about being flexible when his lover is in prison."
"Father, that's..."
"I really don't know what to do with you."
At that moment, someone ran towards here.
"Your Majesty! What's happening?"
It was the empress. She looked at her husband and son, trying to understand the situation.
"I heard that Your Majesty is very angry and is looking for the crown prince. From what I heard, it seems there was a little fight between father and son, what was the reason? No way..."
The Empress's eyes turned fierce as she looked at Terence.
"Is he the one who created a rift between father and son?"
"Empress, find out for yourself. If you ask someone here, they'll give you an answer. Everyone gathered and deceived me."
"They deceived you?"
Instead of answering his wife's question, the emperor looked at the crown prince and opened his mouth.
"You seem to think that you saved your wife just by being flexible, but this is a challenge to the authority of the emperor."
He was surprisingly calm. As if the anger or disappointment earlier was fake.
"Who provides comfort to suspected criminals, offers guards as servants, and extravagant luxuries?"
Terence seemed to understand how the emperor felt, even if he didn't express it verbally. He was angrier than ever before. It was unacceptable.
When the unprecedented crime committed by the Iver Guild was revealed, the emperor felt quite offended, but not so angry.
"Is this a crime that arises from a personal desire, not an act of denying the authority of the emperor?"
He's not sure, but that's Terence's assumption.
He was relatively limited as long as he didn't violate the authority of the emperor. In other words, his rebellion meant a challenge to imperial power.
The emperor looked around and spoke solemnly.
"If the crown prince does not uphold the authority of the emperor, how can the royal family of Asteroth stand firmly on this land?"
Everyone held their breath and listened to the emperor.
"Therefore, I, Dominic Vinarta Asteroth, hereby declare that I am dismissing Mikhail Petus Asteroth from the position of Crown Prince."
A bomb that could devastate the state of the Asteroth Empire fell in the midst of the imperial prison.
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