The Beautiful Predator and the Hidden Blade

Even so, my unsettled heart refused to find peace, and a heavy gloom lingered over me. I buried my face in my pillow, letting out a sigh for the umpteenth time.

I felt as though I had been running as hard as I could, only to realize I was right back where I started. Even the Crown Prince, a man I thought incapable of love, had crumbled and become a doting mess before the might of the “Original Work.” I had believed—or at least hoped—that even if he did fall for me, it wouldn’t be like this. If he had realized his love more naturally, through a proper sequence of events, I don’t think I would be this distraught.

But he fell for Llewellyn simply “because he had to.”

Whenever I closed my eyes, the faces of Erkel and my family floated before me. Ironically, while my brothers came every night to hold my hand, the imagined faces of the dead left a much stronger impact than their living warmth.

If Erkel’s hypothesis was correct, the story would progress as long as we cut out the fluff and hit the “Keywords” of the main plot. There was an advantage to this: we could potentially control the timing of when certain keywords were satisfied.

The problem was whether the things we desperately needed to avoid—”Erkel’s death” and “Leo’s death”—were considered major plot points in the original work. If they were mere side-branches, cutting them out wouldn’t cause a disaster. But if they were part of the grand tapestry…

Then, just as the Crown Prince fell in love out of nowhere, those deaths would eventually happen as well.

“F**k me…”

If that was the case, all this struggling was meaningless.

The main cast would gather around Llewellyn anyway, following the great tide of fate, and after hardship and adversity, they would meet their “Happy Ending.”

The Crown Prince, who had waited exactly one week, sent another invitation. Last time the excuse was the garden; this time it was something else. After avoiding him twice with my own excuses, I finally accepted the third. Having tea at the Celiase Palace with the Crown Prince was officially added to my regular schedule.

When Elliot heard about it, he joked, “Are you plotting something with me, the future Crown Princess?” He meant it as a jest, but for me, who knew the original story, it felt far too real. I told him that if he ever said that again, I’d kick him regardless of our friendship.

At first, I wondered if this was any way to live, but eventually, I reached a point where I could hollowly laugh while munching on cookies. The Crown Prince simply watched me quietly. He no longer poured the tea himself or tried to feed me snacks. Once a proper distance was maintained, my jagged nerves began to dull.

“Do you remember that cat?”

“The cat?”

Knowing he was referring to the cat the Second Prince was bullying on the day the Crown Prince cut my neck, I nodded. Come to think of it, surprisingly, that cat had been living in the Crown Prince’s palace. I remembered being shocked that he had even given it a name. Was it Momo? It was far too cute a name to have been picked by him.

“You said you’d come to see it, but you never did.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say I’d go right away. If I said that now, he might move our meeting place to the Crown Prince’s Palace immediately.

“It has quite a personality, so I struggled a bit. Richion was quite flustered.”

He was telling me that Richion had come over without knowing the cat was there and had been ambushed in the hallway, causing a scene. “Ahahaha,” I laughed, but my lips stiffened again at the sheer surreality of trading jokes with him.

Flustered. Come to think of it, was the Crown Prince flustered by the current situation as well?

He had lived a life distant from human emotions, only to fall in love as if struck by Eros’s arrow. Even more so if the object of his affection was a child who hadn’t even lost her baby fat yet. No, maybe that part was fine. From my perspective as Llewellyn, the Crown Prince was a damn pedo, but in the Empire, a four-year age gap was nothing significant. In fact, as the Crown Prince’s marriageable age approached, candidates ranging from my age to adults were being discussed.

This made me curious about what happened after Llewellyn chose the Crown Prince in the original work. How did he handle the succession, having chosen power over love? Since it was a novel claiming to be a “Happy Ending,” it likely ended with “And they lived happily ever after,” but in reality, happiness is not a permanent emotion. To be happy throughout an entire relationship or marriage is a pipe dream.

Would he go mad and choose love because he almost lost Llewellyn once? Or would he pass the succession to another sibling? Erkel was dead, and it wouldn’t be the Fifth Prince, Lucas… so the Third Prince? A Princess? It certainly wouldn’t be the Second Prince. Since this wasn’t in the main text, even Erkel probably didn’t know the answer. The novel ended at “The two confirmed their love.”

I gazed at his reddish-blonde hair fluttering in the wind. He was like a brilliant jewel, so dazzling that one couldn’t help but lose themselves in his presence. If I didn’t know this world so well, I might have been charmed with a lighter heart. Or, if this were a world full of true dream and hope—a story where no one died and everyone was happy—I wouldn’t feel this heavy.

“Is there… something on my face?”

He tilted his head, seriously stroking his face, looking every bit sixteen. This was the guy who had felt like an adult since the age of fourteen, making it impossible to call him a “kid” even as a joke. Come to think of it, Erkel had said that was all an act. It was funny seeing him pretend to be awkward in front of me when he was likely still the cold, distant Crown Prince to everyone else. Actually, I wasn’t really laughing; it was just a situation that deserved to be called funny.

“You’ve got ‘handsome’ on your face.”

When I gave that half-hearted, lamenting reply, the Crown Prince smiled like a painting.

His eyes crinkled so beautifully that for a moment, I forgot the situation. He was beautiful, but when those frozen, inhuman eyes filled with emotion, he became truly soul-stirring. However, it seemed that while his eyes melted, my heart froze. Seeing that, you can actually laugh? I thought to myself. Are you f**king kidding me? Laughing now? When I’m this miserable?

“Am I handsome?”

“Unless one has very peculiar tastes, everyone will think so.”

“And you think so too.”

“My tastes are very universal, Your Highness.”

The Crown Prince laughed cheerfully. It was a laugh fitting for a sixteen-year-old, distinct from his previous tones.

“Your Highness.”

I stopped mid-smile, startled by the face that appeared as the door opened. A stiff-faced Leo approached and whispered something in the Crown Prince’s ear. Usually, Leo wouldn’t care how others saw him; he would hug my head or smile wordlessly like he was looking at a small animal, radiating a sweetness like sugar on the verge of melting. But now, he was even restraining his gaze toward me. Clad in his crisp uniform with his lips set in a firm line, he felt like a stranger.

The surprises didn’t end there. The Crown Prince hummed, pretending to deliberate, before granting permission for someone to enter.

“Who is coming?”

“Someone who is closer to you than to me.”

The only person I was that close to in the Imperial Palace was Erkel. Excluding Erkel, who wasn’t currently at the palace, the only other person worth mentioning for “closeness” would be the Third Prince, Richion Acareon. However, the person who walked through the door broke my expectations in the worst way possible.

“To behold the future Sun of the Empire… could there be any greater honor than this?”

The Emperor’s most beloved concubine. The woman who had bypassed the Empress to emerge as the Crown Prince’s most powerful political rival. It was Annette.

The dress, a pale sky-blue that deepened toward the hem, was voluminous at the bottom but kept decorations to a minimum at the top—it suited Annette so perfectly it seemed made for her.

Annette was beautiful today, as always. I watched the two of them, both boasting faces that sparkled from either side. When Annette first walked in, I was so restless I was practically hovering off my seat, but now that things had come to this, it felt so surreal it was like watching TV.

It was as competitive as the finals of a pageant for the Empire’s most beautiful person. For now, the victory went to Annette. I wasn’t sure how it would be in two years, though.

“A precious gift came in, and I brought it because I thought it would suit Your Highness well.”

As Annette laughed while covering her mouth, the Crown Prince replied graciously.

“If you received something so precious, you should have used it for yourself. I am glad to see that my brother’s palace affairs are so prosperous.”

The terrace bloomed with laughter at the underlying jab—if you’ve got something expensive, use it for your own household. I deliberately stuffed snacks into my mouth, acting as if I didn’t have the slightest interest in their conversation.

After a long while of chatting about palace rumors and the flowers in the garden, Annette turned her gaze toward me. It wasn’t hard to smile back as if I knew nothing. Annette, who only knew how to be loved, had dragged a “naively innocent” twelve-year-old into the arena.

“When I heard that Your Highness and Llewellyn were sharing a friendship, I thought it was just one of those floating rumors that pass like clouds, but to think it was actually true.”

I didn’t see the point in her covering her mouth after saying everything she wanted to say. Regardless, I kept my mouth shut because I was the ball caught between two players. When Annette swung the first racket, the Crown Prince returned the volley with ease.

“Could it compare to the connection forged when I wrote the letter of introduction for her to become Erkel’s playmate?”

“The Count is like my own sibling, after all. It was only natural for me to want to see my lovely nephew from close by.”

Come to think of it, was the Fifth Prince nine years old now? It was an age where he should slowly be stepping away from his mother’s skirts. Seeing that Annette had made the arduous journey here, she seemed to have judged that it was time to make a decisive move. Had it been last year, she would have called me separately to subtly test me; she wouldn’t have come here to bring it up so openly. Annette was skilled at staying in the background and using others as a front.

Seeing her altered attitude, the Crown Prince’s smile deepened. This was no longer the “Original” Crown Prince—it was the familiar face I knew.