How to Live as the Enemy Prince

“He didn’t tell me what he was planning. He simply said that soon someone could be investigating the prince’s room, so he asked to hide that.”

Alan practically swiped the letter off Yan’s hand, and opened to read it. As his eyes flowed down reading the contents of the letter, the ends of his eye shivered.

“…… This little bastard.”

He said he found a way.

“He thinks this will work!?”

Alan gave the letter back to Yan. Then he hurriedly took off his gown and changed his clothes. In the meantime, Yan opened up Calian’s letter.

His eyes shook as he read one particular paragraph.

…so if for some reason I do not wake back up right away…

Yan bit his lip.

The guy who tried to enter the palace with a sword. 

The guy who makes statues sing. 

The guy who gave up on being the young master and is now acting like an attendant.

The guy who brought all of them together, who said they don’t like poisoned tea so they just straight up eat poison.

He shouldn’t have trusted that kind of person.

—

At the end of Rumein’s banquet, which signalled the beginning of the smaller dinner party-

-Babump!

Calian’s heart beat loudly once. 

It started to beat at such an unusual speed that he could feel it even if he didn’t put his hand on his chest.

Calian quietly closed his eyes and opened them again.

Everyone’s wine glasses were filled. The empty coffee cup that was set in front of Calian was put away, and a beverage cup that took place instead of wine was put down. 

Calian stared at the beverage cup. Of course, it was a completely normal beverage. However, Calian wanted to make sure that it looked like the drink was the thing that poisoned him. There was no way one could say one was poisoned when one didn’t drink or eat anything at all after all.

‘It would take about half a day for the results of the poison detection test using magic reagents to come out. It didn’t matter if the truth that the beverage was completely normal was revealed afterwards.

Right now there were mages from the union that were spreading wildly the news about many mysterious deaths occurring everywhere, and before the shock of that news could even dissipate, the news of Calian’s death would add even more to the shock anyways.

No one will take interest in the detection result at all.

Calian lifted the beverage cup and slowly drank it. Silica turned her head and stared at Calian, as if she realised something. The two locked gaze at each other without any expression on their face, then both turned to the other direction as if they both promised to turn at the exact same time.

– Cough.

Randell heard Calian’s cough, and turned to stare at him.

Calian and Randell’s eyes met together for a brief moment. Suddenly, Randell’s forehead creased.

He had realised it. What Calian had planned.

How his sibling was feeling in terms of health. The reason why Calian talked to him like that. And what role he had been entrusted for today.

‘I’m completely fine.’

The reason why he answered with an expression that looked not fine at all, at his question worrying about him.

– Babump!

Calian heard the sound of a heartbeat again. The medicine completely dissolved.

And therefore, Calian’s heart stopped neutralising the poison.

The Tacrimosa poison that was slowly subsiding started spreading as if a drop of blood touched a body of water.

Calian felt his hand start to shake, and gripped it hard. 

His coughing became gradually louder, and more frequent. The nobles stared at Calian. Silica was making an uncomfortable expression, and he could feel Rumein looking over Calian’s condition.

Then, a strong pungent smell of blood suddenly came up to his nose.

– Cough!

From Calian’s mouth came out dark red blood and splashed onto the ground. The nobles all screamed in horror and stood up from their seats.

Babump!

The pain of his heart twisting became even more severe.

Just because you won’t die from it, doesn’t mean the pain is lessened after all.

To him, the ice spear that Arsen Hertz threw into his body felt like it was less painful than this. He was able to clearly feel his airway being burned up and his lung being shredded into pieces.

Calian couldn’t control himself from unconsciously grabbing at his chest and yelping in pain.

And in the end,

– Thud!

He lost his strength and fell to the ground.

“Prince!”

Everyone inside the hall became swept up in panic, and the Knights of Kaela surrounded the banquet hall. Soon, Rumein came upto Calian.

“Calian,”

Rumein got down on one knee to the floor and lifted Calian’s body. His small stature made him easy to carry into his arms. Quiet murmurs came from Rumein’s mouth.

Calian held on. He kept holding on, keeping his gaze onto Rumein. To make him remember someone that had the exact same thing happen to them, and to pull out the feeling of guilt he had buried in the past. And hopefully to lose just at least a little bit of reasoning.

In the end, Calian could only see Rumein’s eye start to contort as he passed out completely. Seeing Calian completely limp in his arms, his hands started to shake.

Rumein turned to face someone. Following his gaze, all the royal’s gaze turned to who he was facing as well.

“The person that he looked for in order to save his own life should not have been a mage that he had never met before, it should have been his own father!”

“So you finally………”

Rumein opened his mouth as if chanting something slowly. Soon, it became wrath.

“So you finally decided to harm my son as well!”

“If you’re only here to sightsee, you will lose him.”

Rumein’s eyes, his wrath, reached someone. The wrathful voice rang out in the banquet hall.

“Silica!”

The expression on the King that no one ever saw before, as well as the name that was spat out from his mouth, shocked every royal in the hall.

Franz bowed his head down, and spat out a swear word.

-Babump!

The power of blessing manifested again.

It put away the poison that spread throughout his body and took away the dead cells in his body.

Even though it was very slow, it was definitely healing his body.

Rumein didn’t see Calian being able to slowly take in small breaths at a time. The only one who saw that was Silica, who she gripped the skirt of her dress.

—

The gaze of the nobles didn’t pull away from Calian and Silica at all. Silica unconsciously bit her lip. She didn’t think that Rumein would do such rash action like calling her name out like that in this place.

The healer who was investigating the symptoms that appeared on his body spoke.

“It is definitely poison.”

The nobles all let out a sound close to a scream. The prince was truly killed by poison. Rumein ordered the healer to quickly take action.

The healer held the necklace in his hand and started to gather the divine power of Serenity. As he couldn’t use his own divine power like those pontiffs in legends, he needed time until he could manifest the power to detoxify him.

At that moment, Silica stopped what the healer was doing and spoke.

“It is not poison.”

As Rumein had yelled out her name amongst all of the nobles, she could not simply walk away from this place any longer.

“It is not a poison, but sickness. I’ve heard he usually suffers from chronic illness.”

That’s right. The reason why Freya died was also declared as because of sickness. That’s what she said, appearing with all of her knights behind her.

Rumein, who was vowing to himself not to ever walk away this time, opened his mouth.

“Silica. Stop there. I will not tolerate any more if you don’t.”

The healer quickly resumed his position and held his necklace in his hand. Silica put on a fake calm expression, speaking to Rumein with a smile on her face.

“It's unfortunate that Your Majesty doesn't seem to know. For now, tell these other people to leave first. I am worried that my child’s condition will get worse due to all these noises.”

Seeing the shameless and brazen attitude of hers, Rumein could no longer hold it back and was going to once again say something to the head of Kaela. However, someone’s voice stopped Rumein from beginning to speak.

“Calian was completely fine. I am not sure why you are labelling him as sick when he is not, but I’ve seen him every morning and I’ve never once thought that he had a problem with his health.”

Silica turned her gaze towards the voice that was opposing what she was saying.

“And, calling him ‘your child’? Of all people, isn’t Calian the one you should never ever call yours?” 

Silica's eyes shook heavily.

“I’ve told you to stop trying so hard. I’ve said that multiple times already.”

The person who completely turned Silica's words upside down in just one moment slowly turned their head and finished their sentence towards Silica.

“Mother.”

The light green eyes that stared at her.

Those were not Randell’s eyes.