Do You Still Love Me?

The stunned stare was still fixed on him. Its owner watched him with round eyes stretched wide, and a thrill so sharp it raised gooseflesh skated up his spine.

"I keep telling you, Commander, your problem is that you're too honest. You still don't know the Duchess of Belois, after all this? That woman... Ah, fine, I get it. I said I get it! She's greedy. Fiercely jealous, too, and if you ask me, her anxiety runs rather high. Her family situation— Okay, okay, I get it! Anyway, that's exactly why you go after those things! She has to notice you first, Commander, before you can seduce her or do anything at all!"

A single failure had awakened him. He had no intention of suffering through anything so bone-deeply painful ever again.

So don't take your eyes off me, Isabella. If you turn away from me one more time, I can't promise what I'll do.

Rihard swallowed the words he could not voice and turned away.

"Rihard!"

Only after chasing him all the way to the stable where the horses and carriages were kept did I finally manage to call out to him.

Rihard stopped, as though he had been waiting. The slight tilt of his head said he had known all along when I would call his name, and the face that came with it was unbearably smug.

I marched up to him and fired.

"Are you serious?"

"Whether I am serious or not, Duchess, I believe you ought to be considering the fact that this is still the imperial palace."

"Richt!"

I bit his name out low, like grinding my teeth. Only then, as if he had finally tired of his unfunny game of playing the count, did Rihard rake a rough hand through his neatly combed hair. A low sigh. Then a cold gaze settled on me.

"What is it, Bella? Am I in your way again?"

"You think I'm the problem here?"

"Then what?"

"Announcing an engagement to Princess Sasha means declaring yourself the enemy of that damned Damon."

"Ah. I see."

"It means you're wading into a filthy fight over the throne!"

Rihard regarded me in silence. He only looked.

I was so stifled I could have stamped my foot. Engaged to Sasha? This man clearly hadn't grasped even half of how dangerous that was.

And there was no taking it back now. Everyone in that corridor had heard him. No doubt it had reached Damon's ears by this time.

"Do you have any idea why an offer like that went to Count Winston — passed over every great house in the empire, a man with no faction, no backing, nothing?"

That serpent of an Emperor had raised Rihard up as a shield. Had picked him out as the sacrificial lamb for Damon to rage against and tear apart.

Damon will try to kill you.

Chewing on the words I couldn't spit out, I did everything I could to steer him back toward the central palace.

"Even now — go back and call it off!"

"Bella, are you angry because you might not get to be empress?"

At the question, delivered while he watched me so calmly, the strength went out of my body — but he was serious. The moment that realization landed, I crushed down the urge to weep. I had come too far to fall apart here.

In a voice gone dull and sunken, I forced the words out through my teeth.

"...If I wanted to be empress, Richt, you wouldn't be the slightest obstacle."

"Then you still love me?"

Asked with such careless indifference, the question sealed my throat shut.

"Answer me, Bella. Do you — love me?"

I had never dreamed those lips would ask me about love. As I stood frozen, Rihard came closer, unhurried.

Those dark red eyes reflected me, caught between yes and no, with perfect clarity. His fingers threaded through mine like a serpent. Held fast in his grip, I could not manage a single word. And as he watched me affirm nothing and deny nothing, a flash of cold swept through his eyes.

"If you're not worried about becoming empress, and you don't love me, then why do you care who I get engaged to?"

"..."

Rihard reached out and drew the serpent-shaped hair ornament free. The motion was so seamless I never even had a chance to feel that something was wrong. My pinned hair came spilling down over my shoulders.

A brief silence stretched between us, waiting for my answer.

I could not say anything. I could not confess that I loved him, and I could not tell him that Damon might kill him.

Nor did I trust myself to smooth it over with a clumsy lie instead of the truth, the way I had in those foolish days.

In the end I simply shut my mouth, a greater fool than I had ever been.

"Ha."

Rihard's lips twisted, his patience finally spent.

"You won't tell me a thing, yet I'm supposed to do everything exactly as you say."

"That's—"

"Then tell me. At the welcome banquet — what did Damon say to you?"

"..."

"Why does my engagement to Sasha bother you so much?"

"..."

"See? You won't tell me anything."

The hand that closed around a fistful of my fallen hair was slow. It was a rough grip, yet I couldn't even feel the pull.

I lifted my eyes to follow the step that brought him right up against me. I could see the hurt in them sharpening to an edge.

"If it's neither of those, only one thing is left. Do you pity me, Bella?"

"Can't you see that isn't the issue?"

"Ah. So that was counsel from the Duchess of Belois, not from Isabella? In that case, Bella."

Rihard bowed his head. His gaze had come so near it might as well have been touching me, and I drew in a breath.

Perhaps he felt that breath waver, for his eyes narrowed. That thin dark-red line drew itself straight between the two of us.

"You should have stopped calling me Richt."

"..."

"Next time, we meet as Count and Duchess, Duchess Belois."

The gaze that had seemed a breath away from meeting mine was distant in an instant. From the man turning his back on me, I could feel not a shred of lingering attachment.

Only after Rihard had ridden away did I realize I had been wounded by it. And even then, there was nothing I could do.

I could not speak the truth, and I could not deceive him with a lie. Only one choice remained to me.

Silence.

And the reality that even this moment had to end with me going to see Damon made me swallow a hollow laugh.

Damon stared at the lover seated across from him, her face gone deathly pale.

Isabella Belois. He already knew why she wore such a face.

"I hear there was a commotion in front of my father the Emperor's residence?"

At Damon's blunt question, Isabella blinked, slow and languid. Missing not one flicker of her reaction, he pressed on.

"That lowborn knight can't outgrow his old habits — this time he's set his sights on my sister. What do you think of that, Bella?"

"It may be love."

"You say that with a face on the verge of tears? What, because you loved him?"

No answer came. Isabella just kept her eyes on her teacup, her expression giving nothing away.

Unable to master his restlessness any longer, Damon rose from his seat. He simply could not understand it.

"Why does everyone fawn over that man? A baseborn knight with nothing to his name but a single sword!"

"How strange. In the letter you sent me before, didn't you write that you hoped the two of them would end up together? Since a connection to a powerful house would only mean trouble for you."

"Now, Bella, it won't do to leave out the most important part. Have you forgotten the premise — that the two of them won't get any absurd ideas?"

"An engagement doesn't necessarily have to do with the throne—"

"Think about who gave the order for it."

Planting a hand on the tea table, Damon bent his upper body forward and whispered savagely.

"His Majesty, of course."

Focus slowly returned to her eyes.

"Right. I don't know what unfunny scheme my father the Emperor is hatching this time, but..."

Damon, who had been muttering fiercely, carried away by emotion, cut himself off short. As though he had misspoken, he clicked his tongue and turned his gaze back to Isabella.

"Ah. Enough. Let's end the useless talk here. So, Bella — you've come to give me your answer to my proposal, haven't you?"

Even though the question reeked of a subject change, Isabella didn't point it out.

"Answer me. There's only one answer you can give anyway."

"Because my father embezzled Your Highness's Crown funds?"

"Even setting that aside — if you, whom all the world knows as my lover, cast me aside and run off to some insignificant knight, what do you think I would do?"

He might as well threaten me to my face.

Isabella laughed. Damon was absurd — pressuring her with insinuations while trembling with anxiety himself. So was her own sorry self, bound hand and foot by that one sentence.

"Who can say. If His Majesty intends to set up a new successor, then even Your Highness wouldn't dare lay a hand on Count Winston — would you?"

This was a provocation, and Isabella knew it full well.

The Emperor's true mind was opaque. He had raised Damon to crown prince, yet never passed him the throne. The greed of the powerful was hardly a rarity, but even making allowance for it, the Emperor's treatment of Damon was strikingly peculiar.

Had the Emperor possessed any other alternative, Damon would never have been free to build his faction the way he had.

And now there was Sasha.

"Ha!"

With eyes sharpened to a vicious edge, Damon strode up to Isabella.

"The throne won't be stolen from me — and even if it came to that, did you think I couldn't kill one miserable knight?"

His voice, as he asked it, was low as a serpent gliding along the ground.