Chapter 26
It was as though some crushing weight had vanished from the hall all at once.
Only then did the gathered company finally breathe again.
Even Ando allowed a little of the tension to leave his shoulders. Kneeling formally, he bowed toward Antonius.
“Your Highness, a bath awaits before dinner. Allow me to escort you to your chambers.”
Antonius let out a breath of his own at last. He allowed himself a faint smile.
“Yes… gladly. Lead on.”
Andri led the party to one of the seaside residences that had been prepared in advance for their stay.
After exchanging brief words of reunion with Theodoros and the others, he guided them through the residence and showed them to the bath chambers, allowing the delegation a short respite at last.
The finest suite within the residence—complete with a private open-air bath overlooking the sea—had been arranged for Antonius.
Yet as Andri turned to withdraw, Antonius glanced back at him with the faintest trace of amusement in his eyes.
“And will you not show me your own quarters as well?”
“My room?” Andri blinked in surprise. “Of course… if it please Your Highness.”
Taking only a handful of close retainers with him, Antonius followed Andri back toward the main residence.
When they reached the corridor outside Andri’s chambers, Antonius motioned for the attendants to remain behind before stepping inside himself.
The moment he entered, his brows lifted slightly.
“Well. This is quite remarkable.”
“I told them such accommodations were beyond my station,” Andri admitted awkwardly. “But… I have accepted their generosity with gratitude.”
A bookshelf and writing desk had been placed within the room. Volumes borrowed from the library lay stacked carefully beside brushes, inkstones, and practice sheets. Spread across the desk was a half-finished map covered in notes and markings.
Antonius looked over it and smiled.
“I suspect there is little need for me to ask how life here has treated you. It would seem you have found no shortage of things to occupy you.”
“…Indeed, Your Highness,” Andri admitted with a small nod. “Everyone here has shown me great kindness.”
Then, quite suddenly, Antonius lowered his voice.
“Do not grow too complacent.”
Andri faltered.
For a moment, he could not grasp what his brother meant.
“The Dracoserpens are gentle creatures,” Antonius said. “Compassionate, even. Yet a farmer, too, may cherish his stock.”
Andri stiffened.
“He feeds them. Shelters them. Tends them with care. When a foal or calf is born, he rejoices over it — may even dote upon it.” Antonius’s voice remained calm. “Because it is valuable to him. Because one day it will repay him in labor, offspring, or profit.”
The weight of his words lingered in the air.
“Your Highness… surely you do not mean—”
“A hen that no longer lays is slaughtered. An aging dairy cow is butchered. Affection does not change that. Once their value is gone, their continued keeping becomes merely a burden.”
Andri opened his mouth, only to falter.
“But… would I truly possess such value to them?”
“You do.”
Antonius answered without hesitation.
“His Majesty may not perceive the matter so plainly. Yet at present, the Dracoserpens have displayed an unusual eagerness to establish formal ties with us. They accepted human labor as recompense with remarkably little resistance.”
Antonius looked directly at Andri.
“There is only one reason for that.”
Andri struggled to follow his reasoning.
Antonius hesitated only briefly.
Then, with visible resolve, he forced himself to speak the cruel conclusion aloud to his younger brother.
“…You are, by all known record, the first successful hybrid born of two different races. To a people with so few births among their own kind, you would be of extraordinary interest to them.”
Andri drew in a sharp breath.
He could not answer.
Antonius continued quietly.
“I had our scholars examine the myths and folk tales carried by the races of this continent. Among all the races of this continent, only humans preserve tales of marriages between different peoples.”
Humans were small. Short-lived. Without wings, scales, or fur.
And yet their numbers surpassed every other race upon the continent.
Why?
Because humans reproduced with extraordinary frequency.
And if tales of unions between different races existed only among mankind, then one possibility naturally emerged from it.
Humanity alone seemed capable of producing offspring with other races.
“And even if the offspring are not pureblooded…” Antonius said carefully. “If they possess the ability to transform as you do, then in the eyes of the Dracoserpens, they would scarcely be seen as different from their own kind.”
Without realizing it, Andri had clenched his fists hard enough for his claws to bite into his palms.
He wanted to reject it. To deny the suspicion his brother was casting upon the dracoserpens who had shown him such overwhelming kindness.
Yet no words came.
The friendship they offered him—was it truly nothing more than affection?
Were they hiding inconvenient truths from him? Trying to draw him fully into Tatsuno—as a weapon… or for breeding?
Were the Dracoserpens seeking relations with Imresia in order to increase the number of Demi-dracoserpens?
And from Imresia’s perspective—
would that not make its people little more than laborers and breeding livestock?
And Antonius…
had he understood all of this before offering manpower to them?
Doubt began to creep through Andri’s thoughts like something foul rising from deep water.
No. That could not be true.
His brother was an honorable man.
He would never steer the kingdom toward something so monstrous.
Andri had already written to him of the Dracotyrannus’s return—and of the terrible truth that the creature was his own father. Antonius’s urgent calls for military expansion had been what accelerated negotiations for the alliance in the first place. Beyond trade, the treaty now included mutual defense as well.
Looking upon his young Demi-Dracotyrannus brother, trapped within circumstances far too heavy for his years, Antonius offered one final thought.
Not as an order.
But almost as a prayer.
“Discern the truth.”
His gaze softened slightly.
“I place my trust in you, Andri.”
