Come as the Pope's Heir

With that, Jay let go of the hand he had been holding. I drew mine back and looked up at him, wary. This man was a hazard of the first order—someone who could kill me the moment I stopped pleasing him.

If it came to that, I meant to scream and wake Zion if nothing else. A beastman's strength was a match for any ordinary soldier.

As if he had read the thought, Jay tilted his head and spoke. Lips as red as his eyes parted slowly.

"Strange."

"......What's strange."

"It's been a while since we saw each other, I'll grant you that, but you've changed far too much."

"......"

"From that arrogant young lady."

I held my breath. I had never imagined Jay would notice what even the Duke had missed.

I found my composure again at once. Showing I was rattled would be the truly suspicious thing.

I lifted my chin and did my best to sound like Aine—haughty, arrogant.

"If you're going to talk nonsense, get out."

"Then I won't talk nonsense. Just spare me a little of your time."

"......"

"You have to give me a chance to speak, too."

He smiled, bright and innocent. I was at a loss for words. So that had been the point all along...! From the start, he had come to talk to me.

Of course he would never have slipped past the Duke's tight security merely to hand over a bell.

What do I do.

I weighed it. Should I give him a moment, as he asked? What if he actually caught me out?

The more I thought, though, the more a conversation seemed useful—a chance to make it plain I had no interest in him whatsoever.

And as I had already realized, the male leads of this world were not people one could brush off lightly.

The bastard abandoned by God.

Cursed blood.

I squeezed my eyes shut, then let out a heavy sigh and nodded.

"Only for a moment."

"I knew it. You're softhearted, darling."

"Save the nonsense. Let's move first."

We were near the main house. Someone might see us.

I headed for the greenhouse—deserted, and well suited to a private conversation.

"The rear garden here is lovely. The flowers smell wonderful, and it's quiet."

"How long have you been here?"

"Since your fiancé and your lapdog started their snowball fight?"

"......Stalker."

"I wasn't planning to spy. I just never got the chance. As expected of my lover—the men you keep around aren't ordinary either. Makes me jealous."

I didn't answer. Jay didn't seem to expect one; he only let out a small laugh.

The farther in we went, the thicker the scent of flowers became. Moonlight lay over the place without reserve, and for some reason the hour felt a little unreal.

It would. There was a bitter irony in slipping away from every eye in the middle of the night with the very person I had most wanted to avoid.

"Do you like me?"

I threw it out on impulse as we walked.

Jay was the sort who did exactly as he pleased, and a no from him was a no—I had thought that if I turned him down once, he would leave cleanly.

Yet here he was, seeking me out on the pretext of delivering a bell and asking to talk. No matter how I turned it over, that was not the Jay I knew.

"Hmm."

He let the word trail off.

When the greenhouse came into view, he opened the door and answered.

"I've become interested."

......Wasn't that the very line that called down a true dead ending?

Stepping into the warm greenhouse, I felt a chill prickle over my skin. I sat, and Jay took the seat across from me, propping his chin on one hand and watching me with his head cocked.

The look was a little too much. I glanced away, and heard him laugh.

"I told you. Something's off."

"What are you talking about."

"People can change, but not this much all at once. You don't look anything like the woman who shoved a fortune at me and told me to become hers."

"......I must have been briefly out of my mind."

"It doesn't matter. Whoever you are. Even if someone else is in there."

"What is it you want to say?"

I stared straight at him. Just in case, I closed my hand around the bell beneath the table.

As if he had noticed, Jay smiled, pretty and bright.

"I don't think I can quit you."

"......"

I nearly swore out loud.

Why is he like this?!

First Asad, and now Jay—I was starting to seriously suspect I was raising my own gravestone.

I flung the question at him as it stood.

"Why? How? Weren't you getting tired of me?"

He had been growing bored of Aine when he laid eyes on the heroine, and he had decided to kill Aine—the woman tormenting the heroine, the obstacle lying between the two of them.

He had not hesitated for so much as a breath before making up his mind.

That was the kind of man he was.

So why me?

"It was the first time."

"The first time what."

"That someone worried I might die."

"......"

Jay straightened from his tilt and looked me dead in the eye. Then he smiled, pained.

"All my life I've only ever been cursed. Being worried over felt strange. And from a lover bought with money, no less."

"That was...... the situation......"

"No one worries about me. Not even if I might die. They'd rather I did."

"......Jay."

I closed my eyes, then opened them a little and said,

"What are you doing right now?"

"Fishing for sympathy."

"Why go this far?"

"Because I want to keep you beside me. Until this feeling cools. Until I can feel that it wouldn't matter if you died."

"And what I want?"

"Of course you're free to want what you want. But if you refuse me here, I'll be hurt. And I might go mad with jealousy and kill your fiancé and your lapdog."

That was a threat.

I let out a long sigh.

As expected, this one was the real wild card. To think he would hold on to me merely to burn through his own feelings.

Then why am I so calm about it.

Perhaps because I had already been through the wild cards named Asad and Zion. His change no longer felt entirely strange.

Fine. Better to end it in one stroke.

I lifted my head. When our eyes met, Jay wore an uncharacteristically tense expression.

It was the first time I had seen that face on him, and I wanted to commit it to memory—but.

"All right. Fine."

"I knew you were the bold type—"

"On one condition. You have to accept it. Otherwise I can't grant your request either."

"What is it?"

Jay looked puzzled. I drew a deep breath and spoke in a steady voice.

"Attend the banquet celebrating the imperial princess's return, three weeks from now."

"Hm. Is Her Imperial Highness gracious enough to welcome even the master of an assassination guild?"

"No. Under a different qualification."

"A different qualification?"

I clenched my fist. This really might get me killed. Still, dying one way or another came to the same thing. If so, at least let it be certain.

Certain enough that he would fall completely for the heroine and grow sick of me.

And this was personal greed, but—

"As the Pope's successor."

The smile that had never left Jay's face froze, terrible and sudden. Cold sweat ran down my back.

His reaction was as frightening as I had expected. The red eyes that had held nothing but affection a moment ago filled with killing intent, and his voice dropped.

"How do you know that?"

"I happened to learn it the last time I went to the Holy See."

"......"

An absurd excuse, of course—but how was he supposed to tell whether it was true?

Jay gave no answer. All I wanted was to clutch the heart hammering as if it might burst.

The bastard cursed by God.

God meant the Pope.

Jay was the illegitimate child of the Pope and a dancer who had come from another land. She had gone into hiding with him in her womb, and once the Pope learned of the pregnancy, he found her.

But a child not born of a recognized wife—a child of an illicit union—was treated as a filthy creature, so the woman had meant to die together with the child. Only the dancer died. The child lived.

Every priest of the Holy See said Jay had to be killed. Even the Pope turned his face away.

Cursed blood.

The bastard abandoned by God.

The impious epithets followed him, and when the Pope would not choose, there were even moves to send assassins after his life. It was not only that he was an unholy child. If he became the successor, the balance of power within the Holy See itself might shift.

But Jay did not die. He killed the ones sent to kill him and sent the bodies back. He learned how to kill in order to live, left the Holy See, and slipped into an assassination guild.

In truth, though, the Pope had loved the dancer, and he had loved Jay, the child born between them. He regretted to the bone that he had failed to protect them, too busy watching the priests.

I suspected, privately, that the times Jay vanished were to check on the condition of his father, the Pope.

Jay hated the Pope who had failed to protect him, and loved him at the same time. So he lingered around him, watching for his safety, lest the priests harbor some wicked intent.

"You want to go back to his side, too. Don't you."

"Keep meddling and I won't be responsible for what I do."

"You don't have to do as I say. I'm only telling you that this is my condition."

Jay watched me with eyes cold enough to freeze anything they so much as brushed. I swallowed hard.

In the original story, Jay's end is wretched beyond words. He is defeated by Asad, and even the Pope is murdered under mysterious circumstances. Because Jay refused the succession, the seat remains empty, and in the end the one who killed the Pope becomes the new Pope.

When Jay learns the truth, he turns the Holy See into a sea of blood and walks the road to his own ruin.

If I could, I wanted to help him fall for the heroine more surely—and to change that cruel ending.

And if he refused this offer, I could use the refusal as grounds to break with him. Either way, a parting was the destined conclusion. It was only a question of sooner or later.

"If you don't want to, you don't have to. But then I can't grant what you asked—to stay by my side."