Fight Fire with Fire

"Hrk. Does the crown prince even know what love is?"

Astar craned her neck to peek at the gossip sheet Rihard was reading, then went green. A beat later, she let out a full-throated shriek.

"Hold on. Engaged? The crown prince is getting married?"

"He is. It's right there in print."

Philip pointed this out with a sigh. Only then did Astar rein in her excitement and glare holes through the gossip sheet.

Her gaze wandered across Rihard's face before landing on Philip.

"With who?"

"Who do you think?"

"Don't tell me—Duchess Belois?"

Philip shrugged, and Astar screamed again, louder this time.

"That woman has finally lost her mind?!"

"Astar."

Rihard, silent until now, called her name in a low warning.

"Commander, aren't you even angry? An engagement. He's getting engaged! To that blockheaded royal! Some of us spent ten years busting our asses in the frozen North because we believed one throwaway promise from the Emperor!"

"Anything new on Haute Forest?"

"Don't you dare change the subject! Who cares about some stupid forest right now?!"

Philip made no move to stop Astar as she bounced around the room. His own feelings weren't so very different from hers.

The reason Astar was this worked up was probably that she'd witnessed that moth-to-flame love ten years ago with her own eyes. And how wretchedly it had ended, too.

Even hearing it secondhand, Philip was furious. He could only imagine how much hotter the fire burned in her.

Yet Rihard, the man at the center of it all, didn't so much as flinch. He folded the cheap pulp gossip sheet in half, pushed it aside, and spoke again.

"Haute Forest."

"...Nothing useful. The hunting festival's right around the corner, you know? I leaned on some of the merchants traveling through Belois territory—they say security's tight as a drum. Mining's been shut down completely, from the sound of it. The trading companies they used to deal with are wailing like the sky is falling."

"And even so, we've found nothing..."

Rihard murmured the words, pressing hard at the bridge of his nose. Astar snatched up his trailing thought.

"It means somebody either planted those things there or bred them on purpose. Assuming that's even possible."

Breeding monsters. The bare hypothesis was enough to chill the silence.

Philip, who had been quietly watching Rihard sink into thought, cut into the conversation.

"Wh-what if we were to request Duchess Belois's cooperation?"

"No."

"What are you saying, Sir Philip!"

Rihard and Astar answered almost in the same breath.

Rihard lifted an eyebrow at her, caught off guard. He hadn't imagined she would be the one to refuse. The Astar he knew should have seized this very crisis as the perfect pretext to shove him toward Isabella.

Meeting that puzzled stare, Astar planted both hands on her hips.

"Commander, listen carefully. With things the way they are now—"

With the gravity of a general unveiling a battle plan, she pointed at the gossip sheet Rihard had shoved away.

"We have to make Duchess Belois come to us for help."

An awkward silence settled over the room. Judging that the two men had failed to grasp her brilliance, Astar raised her index finger and elaborated.

"I'm saying you need to hold the upper hand, Commander."

"Hey, Astar. That's not what this is about. If monsters really are being bred artificially in Haute Forest, we have a serious—"

"Which is why our gallant Commander should hand the intel right over to Duchess Belois—the woman he went and got engaged to—and beg her pretty please to hear him out?"

"That's not happening. No—if those things slip loose, people die. And the forest sits far too close to the capital."

"Haute Forest is sealed. The Belois knights will comb every inch of those woods before the festival. Besides, the intelligence isn't even confirmed, is it? If we share something we're not sure of and it turns out to be nothing, will you take responsibility for that, Sir Philip?"

Philip muttered a sour, "No, that's not—but still." Having talked her senior into a corner, Astar turned to Rihard with her chin held high and her ambition on full display.

"So, Commander. Let's fight fire with fire."

"Now what are you scheming?"

"Answer an engagement with an engagement! Make a public declaration! Show the world you've got nothing to be ashamed of, and when Duchess Belois comes crawling for help, sweep her off her feet looking so damn magnificent she can't possibly say no!"

"Are you out of your mind?"

"Oh, come on. You were getting engaged anyway. What's so wrong about squeezing a little use out of it?"

Watching Astar thrust out a clenched fist with that look of grim resolve, Philip shook his head. Rihard had stopped listening to her ages ago.

He didn't need to.

He had already resolved to use the engagement to keep Isabella's eyes fixed on him and him alone.

Noah nearly had a fit when he found the engagement contract carelessly tossed across the desk.

"Good heavens, why on earth are you leaving something like this lying about?"

I rolled my pen between my fingers and watched him gather the document up with reverent care. The engagement contract meant nothing to me. If things went sideways, Damon wouldn't give a scrap of paper like that a second glance.

What mattered was what I'd wrested in the course of drafting it. The pen spinning between my fingers lost its balance and dropped with a tap.

"Father did siphon off the crown funds. On Damon's orders."

"...Pardon?"

I gave him a brief account of what had passed between Damon and me. Noah stroked his chin, his expression turning considerably graver.

"Hm. I follow you, my lady. But with all due respect—even if Damon is mad, would he truly be deranged enough to funnel out his own money behind his back?"

"What if he had no other choice?"

Noah went still. Something that could never be put into writing. He seemed to turn it over in his mind, then muttered with a pained look:

"And Belois handled it in his stead?"

"Yes."

"...Ha. Why on earth would the Grand Duke volunteer for such a dangerous road?"

"Presumably he was promised something worth the risk."

"What could the crown prince possibly offer Duchess Belois that's worth all that?"

"I haven't dug that far yet. But apparently the hunting festival is going ahead as planned."

Noah blinked rapidly, as if ambushed out of nowhere. Very, very slowly, the meaning of my words seemed to reach him.

"Oh no!"

"Yes. The crown prince certainly has that much pull. When I kept pressing, he turned it around on me—asked whether something was wrong with Haute Forest. He had to have an answer ready."

"He asked you back?"

"He did. So smoothly, in fact, that I almost wondered whether Damon was the one who planted the monsters in Haute Forest."

I said it with a dry laugh, and Noah went rigid.

"You're joking. Please tell me you're joking."

Instead of answering, I shrugged.

"Oh, please! Tell me that isn't it!"

"It's only a thought. Nothing confirmed. Either way, the hunting festival is proceeding as scheduled, so that's what you should plan around."

"You should have stopped it somehow! What were you going to do if monsters actually showed up during the festival?!"

"On that score, we should be fine."

At my flat declaration, Noah's brows drew together. The fact that he didn't ask whether I was spouting nonsense proved our years together hadn't been wasted.

"Don't tell me..."

"Damon said it himself. The crown prince who rose on the backs of monsters—he'd bring him down with monsters too."

Noah tilted his head.

"...So?"

"Ah. Right. You don't know Damon."

"Don't I?"

"Judging by the way you talk, no."

Noah opened his mouth, then shut it, clearly holding back a great deal. It was just as obvious that he was dying to point out how spectacularly I myself had once been taken in by the man.

But that was different. Being fooled by Damon and knowing his habits inside out were two entirely separate things.

"Damon doesn't threaten with anything he isn't certain of."

"?"

"Apparently he once bluffed big and paid for it in humiliation."

Which meant that of everything Damon said, his threats were the most reliable words out of his mouth.

Damon only threatens with what he can actually deliver. Only what lies within reach of his own power. All to spare himself the shame of a threat that fails to land.

"When he says he'll end Rihard with monsters, it's because he's confident he can. At the very least, he has some means ready on that front."

The threat, and his attitude toward the hunting festival. If I'd possessed only one of the two, I never would have leaped to so extreme a conclusion.

But when coincidences stack?

They stop being coincidences.

Understanding finally dawned, and Noah pushed back with a face drained white.

"...You truly believe the crown prince is connected to the monsters?"

"If he isn't, why would he stake everything on the hunting festival? Why threaten with monsters at all?"

At my question, terror bled into Noah's eyes.