The Poisoned Cup

"You are... pregnant, Your Grace."

The results had come in in less than a month.

Cesare could not force out a single word for a long while. In the heavy silence that pressed down on the room, the physician's shoulders hunched visibly. A murderous glint flickered in Cesare's eyes, the kind that looked ready to part the man's head from his neck at any moment. He glared at the physician for a long time before finally exhaling a slow, deep breath.

...Damn it all. Pregnant, of all things. If he had seen this coming, he would have been a great deal more careful. Ha... fuck.

He didn't know anymore. Cesare von Valois — the iron-blooded ruler whom not even the Emperor dared treat carelessly, a cold-blooded man utterly without mercy. In the original novel, this was the villain who committed every manner of atrocity before meeting a gruesome end. And he had transmigrated into that man, only to end up pregnant.

The Cesare of the original story was a man with no shortage of enemies. And yet the fact that he remained standing meant, in other words, that even if every one of those enemies hurled themselves at him at once, they still could not bring him down. If you asked how he could have been so strong, any number of reasons would present themselves. But pick out the decisive one, and it was this—

He had no child.

In other words, he had no one to protect. That was precisely what had allowed him to commit atrocities more monstrous than anyone else's. The one thing every person has at least one of — someone they want to keep safe — he had not had at all. Because he was lonelier than anyone, the Cesare of the original novel could face a villain's end without fear.

But I have a child now.

To be exact, it had come into being in barely a month's time. He hadn't wanted it — but he couldn't exactly throw it away, either. And that was exactly the problem. Cesare's gaze hardened, cold. I can't survive the way the real Cesare did.

To live as Cesare von Valois was to endure countless enemies. And a child, fragile beyond measure, would be luscious prey in their eyes. Which meant that if things went on like this, both the child and he would certainly lose their lives.

Of course, there was always the option of coldly casting aside everything — allies, the child, all of it — the way Leoneld did in the original... But he had never much liked that side of Leoneld.

Cesare let out a long sigh and opened his mouth.

"...Bring me Edward."

"...Pardon? Why would you need the aide all of a sudden...?"

"I take it my words amuse you? Do you intend to make me say everything twice?"

"N-no, Your Grace! I'll fetch him at once!"

The physician bolted from the room in a panic, and before long the aide stepped into the office in his place. Cesare stopped sorting through his documents and spoke offhandedly.

"I will be going down to my territory soon."

"Your territory, Your Grace? Understood. Shall I adjust the schedule so the residence stands empty for about a month, then?"

At the aide's matter-of-fact question, Cesare shook his head. A month? As if it could be managed in so little as that.

"No."

"Then were you planning a shorter visit — a fortnight, perhaps...?"

"Ten years."

"...I beg your pardon?"

The aide's eyes went wide enough to fall out of his head. And to the man who asked again, wondering if he had misheard, Cesare drove the point home like a nail, his voice cold.

"For the next ten years, I will not be returning to the capital."

"Y-Your Grace! What on earth are you saying! Ten years, out of nowhere!"

"Have the preparations made accordingly. And don't argue with me."

A pregnancy that was never part of the plan. I'll have to run. As far away as I can.

"Leoneld, drink this. It's all for your own good."

He had lived his entire life swallowing poisoned cups. Because his family, cold to him in every other moment, had looked at him with warmth just that once. For the sake of tasting that shallow, sweet affection, Leoneld had willingly gulped down the bitter poison.

But the result had been a gruesome death. There was no twist waiting. No miracle in which his family had truly cared for him after all — no such laughable thing had ever existed to begin with.

...Right. The truth is, I knew all along. That they had fed him poison out of jealousy of his talent, hoping to trample his gifts before they could bloom. That they saw him as nothing more than a rival to be cleared out of the way. He had known every bit of it. And yet there had been exactly one reason he could not refuse the poisoned cup, clutching at a hope thin as a thread.

Because I was... lonely.

Vomiting blood in a corner of the freezing floor, Leoneld met a desolate end. That was how his first life ended.

After regressing to that miserable past, Leoneld made a vow. This life, I will live for myself alone. He carved it into his bones — that he would never be deceived again, never again be used by those vile people. But resolve alone did not make the world bend. He was the thirteenth of thirteen princes, lowest in the line of succession, and the residue of years of poison had long since accumulated in his body. With no strength to protect himself, there was still nothing he could do.

"In your honor. Have a drink. It's a gift from your elder brother — you had best feel honored."

The arrogant voice of one of his half-brothers, and the violet liquid that swayed in the cup. It was a vicious poison. He knew that fact all too horribly well — and still, Leoneld had no right to refuse.

"...I accept, with thanks."

Why did my life always have to flow like this, straight into the gutter? Will I never escape this yoke? Just as despair was swallowing him whole—

"It's an antidote."

Cesare von Valois. The duke they called a heartless, cold-blooded monster had, for the first time in Leoneld's life, reached out a hand to him first.

"...I'm grateful for it, truly, though I can't imagine why you would extend such favor to me."

He couldn't trust it. He suspected that inside that ornate bottle, behind the pretext of an antidote, might lurk a horrific poison that would take his life in a single swallow. Or else it was a scheme to make use of him for some greater gain.

"The reason is simple."

Fine. Let's hear this brilliant scheme of yours, then. He was confident now that no betrayal could shock him anymore. But Cesare's answer swerved clean past every expectation Leoneld had.

"Because I like you."

Absurd. An obvious lie. And yet why — why on earth did his heart lurch at such a half-hearted lie? He couldn't begin to fathom it. It was a strange, dangerous sensation.

So Leoneld decided to test him. So that he would never waver again, so that he would never be fooled into misery again, he bared every honed edge of his suspicion and malice without restraint.

"Unless you were my enemy, what reason could you possibly have to feed me such a careless lie? You are deceiving me right now, Duke."

An enemy. You are my enemy. No — you must be. Because otherwise, if he handed you even a scrap of trust and was thrown away yet again... he didn't think he had it in him to survive that.

But Cesare, absurdly, took the blow head-on and stepped a pace closer.

"Because I wanted to. I want to have sex with you, Your Highness."

He had pulled off something so enormous for one reason alone — the blunt, impure desire to have Leoneld's body.

Leoneld could not utter a single word for a long while. Not out of rage or a sense of betrayal, but because his mind had simply stopped dead at an answer so absurd, so ridiculous, he had never heard its like in his life. What on earth is this man...?

From that day on, Leoneld racked his brain, thinking and thinking. But no matter how he turned the problem over, he could not make heads or tails of Cesare's motives. Was the man simply mad?

Time flowed on amid the questions and the confusion, until at last the day of the grand ball at the Fourth Prince's Palace arrived. As if ill omens were never wrong, the Crown Prince appeared that day as well, wearing a sinister smile and offering Leoneld the poisoned cup right on schedule. One look was enough to tell that this was a lethal poison beyond all comparison with anything before it. The fingertips holding the cup trembled faintly. He, the powerless thirteenth prince, could not refuse.

...So this is really the end. Was he to meet his end so hollowly, so soon? He squeezed his eyes shut and raised the poison to his lips — and in that very instant—

Crash—!

With a sharp crack, the cup in Leoneld's hand was knocked mercilessly to the floor. Violet poison sprayed in every direction between the shattered glass. And amid the crowd of frozen onlookers, Cesare — who had planted himself squarely in front of Leoneld — seized his wrist in an unyielding grip.

"A poisoned cup, I see."

As if the stares around him meant nothing at all, Cesare shot the Crown Prince an icy glance, then turned a light smile on Leoneld.

"Rather than a bitter cup like this, wouldn't you prefer tea with plenty of sweet sugar cubes?"

In that despair, where darkness seemed to bleed in from every side, he was visited by the illusion of a bright halo shining above the silhouette of Cesare, who took his hand and led him out. Salvation. Yes — it was the first light that man, rotting away his whole life in the shadows, had ever witnessed.

Once they had moved to a quiet private room, Cesare held out a teacup with effortless grace, as if nothing had happened at all.

"Black tea. Will you have some?"

Leoneld stared at the cup being offered to him with an unreadable expression. It was a fragrant, sweet banquet of black tea. But his sharpened senses caught, in a single breath, the faint trace of something medicinal hidden beneath it.

Even you.

A chill surged up from the depths of his chest. So it had been deception after all. Was even that dazzling act of salvation nothing but a shallow trap, laid to take him in completely? Leoneld's lips curled upward into a bitter smile.

"It seems you wish to deceive me again, Duke."

The air froze in an instant. Cesare's smile stiffened hard. And as he took in that bewildered reaction exactly as it was, Leoneld went on in a voice sunk cold and quiet.

"...Duke Valois. How many times do you suppose I have drunk a poisoned cup in my life?"

"Your Highness... that is..."

"A dozen times, a few dozen... it is not something that can be expressed in numbers like those. 974 times. That is how much poison I have had to swallow."

The impossible number slipped out between Leoneld's lips. It was the hellish count from before his regression — the number of times he had foolishly drunk deep for even a scrap of his family's false tenderness. While Cesare's eyes shook violently with bewilderment, Leoneld's gaze returned to the teacup.

"And yet a man like me."

Leoneld lifted his head and looked Cesare dead in the eye. In those blue eyes swirled a deep, dark emotion that Cesare could not begin to read — something deeper than betrayal, a vast emptiness aimed at the entire world.

"Do you think I wouldn't see through that flimsy little trick of yours just now?"

His gaze, sunk into a frigid stillness, bored through the cup of tea. Cesare had frozen solid, unable to offer a single word of excuse — and into that silence, Leoneld smiled bitterly once more and reached for the teacup.

"...Or."

Click. The sound of slender fingers closing around the cup rang out with cruel clarity. Leoneld gave Cesare a bitter smile. So do I have to play the fool and swallow it down again before you're satisfied? It was self-mockery.

"Should I drink this one too, knowing full well that it is a poisoned cup?"

In that moment, Cesare's face drained visibly white. Something enormous shifted in his eyes, a change of heart unfolding in real time before Leoneld's gaze. Like a man struck hard over the head by something, Cesare began to look at Leoneld with entirely different eyes. What filled them was guilt, and... an aching pity.

"No."

Cesare's hand shot out and roughly snatched the teacup from Leoneld's fingers. At the unexpected strength of his grip, Leoneld's eyes widened slightly.

"You don't have to drink it."

Cesare's breath was coming rough and ragged. Watching the man's fingertips tremble visibly around the cup, Leoneld felt a strange dissonance. Wasn't this the man who had been trying to deceive him? Then why did he look more wounded than anyone?

"I... want you to be happy, Your Highness."

The words hit him like a blow to the head. It was not hypocrisy. There was no political calculation in it, no residue of dark desire — only a pure sincerity that wished for his well-being and nothing else. For Leoneld, who had lived his whole life among poisoned cups and deception, it was a raw, enormous tenderness he had never once received.

And that tenderness was so unfamiliar, so vast—

...Ha.

It frightened him. He had noticed long ago what the man meant to do to him, and yet, laughably, he wavered. Even knowing full well that the man had tampered with his tea. Leoneld's blue eyes shook violently. Staring at Cesare with sunken, hollow eyes, he murmured low.

"You really are..."

A strange man. I can't even look at my own feelings for him anymore. In that case, there was nothing for it but to put them to the test.

Without hesitation, Leoneld drained the cup in a single swallow.

"...?!"

While Cesare stood frozen, dumbfounded, the empty cup came down on the table with a sharp clink. Slowly wiping the tea from his reddened lips, Leoneld gave the flustered Cesare a languid smile.

He had drunk countless poisoned cups in his time.

"The more I learn about you, the less I understand you."

And whether this, too, was poison — he would know soon enough.