While Rodel nursed his ambition and hatred at the detached palace, a man in the heart of the royal palace sat clutching his head, groaning in frustration.
"Good grief... How did he grow up to be so utterly foolish?"
They were in a room resembling a boardroom, gathered around a large round table. There were three people present.
The first was the master of the palace himself: David Aiwood, King of the Aiwood Kingdom. He was the man who reigned at the pinnacle of the nation, yet today, the king—who usually stood before his people with dignified poise—was slumped deep into his chair, his shoulders hunched.
The cause of the King's distress was the repeated misdeeds of his third son, Rodel.
"To think he would fire magic at a classmate in the middle of a lecture... What on earth was he thinking?"
"He likely wasn't thinking at all, Father."
The one who answered was a young man seated at the same table. This was Richard Aiwood, the First Prince of the kingdom. In his mid-twenties and already formally invested as the Crown Prince, he was the man virtually guaranteed to be the next king.
"Or perhaps his capacity for thought has simply withered away. I wouldn't be surprised if his skull was stuffed with nothing but chiffon cake."
"Richard, that isn't funny."
"I wasn't trying to be funny. I am being entirely serious."
When the King glared at him, Richard merely snorted in disdain.
"He is a beast whose pride has done nothing but inflate. It was a mistake to expect him to possess any proper intelligence... Surely we all knew he would cause a disaster like this sooner or later."
"......"
The King met Richard's words with a heavy silence.
He knew it would come to this. Richard was right. Although Rodel was of royal blood, he was a man a stranger to both tolerance and mercy. He lived only to satisfy his bloated ego and his base desires. Though he was Richard's half-brother, Richard had never once thought of him as family.
"Why not use this incident to deal with him once and for all? You have the perfect justification, do you not?"
"Do not suggest things you know are impossible. You understand the situation as well as I do."
It wasn't as if the King hadn't considered removing Rodel before. However, the harsh reality was that he could not.
Rodel was protected by the legacy of the late Queen Dowager and the influence of the Concubine. The most the King could manage was to isolate Rodel and his mother in the detached palace to prevent their poison from spreading to those working within the main royal residence.
"Honestly... why did Mother raise Rodel that way?" the King muttered resentfully.
Of the two shields protecting Rodel, the most formidable was the late Queen Dowager. While a child's character is often blamed on the parents, the King had played no part in Rodel’s upbringing or education. Rodel had been claimed and raised entirely by the King’s own mother.
Her name was Frederica Aiwood. Her reputation was good—too good, perhaps.
A master of manipulation and political maneuvering, Frederica had once united the fractured nobility to oust the former king, a notorious tyrant. She was the architect of the kingdom's current foundation, having dismantled the absolute central power of the monarchy to distribute interests among the nobles through decentralization.
Because she could ensnare the heart of any man with a mere few words, some detractors mocked her as little more than a high-class courtesan—but her historical achievements were far too great for such petty insults to stick. It was because of her legacy that her faction remained robust even after her death, serving as an ironclad shield for Rodel.
"Even though we are both her grandsons, Grandmother never showed the slightest bit of affection for me or Andrew. To be honest, I never understood what she was playing at," Richard said, his eyes narrowing.
The 'Andrew' he referred to was the Second Prince, Richard’s full brother.
"I do not like to speak ill of the dead, but it almost feels as though she intentionally sabotaged Rodel's education. No one could end up as such an unhinged, idiotic prince by accident."
"Surely that is an exaggeration. My mother saved this country from a tyrant. In her final years, she likely just lost her judgment because she doted on her youngest grandchild too much."
The King let out a weary sigh. Though he denied his son's theory, the truth was that even he—her biological son—never truly understood what his mother had been thinking.
Frederica was a genius who had saved the nation, but she had originally been a mere baron's daughter. The former king had taken a fancy to her and forced her to become his queen. In the process, her family's house was annihilated. Her parents, relatives, and even her fiancé were all slaughtered because they had opposed the marriage and incurred the tyrant's wrath.
(Your family and fiancé were murdered, you were forced into the bed of a king you hated... then you destroyed him and seized his power. Mother, what was truly in your heart?)
The King asked the question in his mind, but there was no one left to answer. Frederica had passed away without ever revealing her true intentions to her own son. Perhaps she could never bring herself to trust a child born of the man who had ruined her life. Or perhaps there was another reason entirely.
"I believe we have had enough sentimentality for one day. Shall we discuss the path forward?"
The speaker was a man who had remained silent until now, listening to the King and the Crown Prince. This was the Prime Minister, Verios Crocus. As Celestine’s father, he was the most powerful man in the kingdom after the King himself.
"Prince Rodel is a villain, but a petty one. He lacks the vision for grand-scale malice. Our priority must be to dismantle the faction standing behind him."
"I agree," the King nodded, looking toward his closest confidant.
The faction that worshipped the late Queen Dowager was a constant thorn in the King's side—a source of internal strife that blocked his policies at every turn. He could not leave a group that might use Rodel as a figurehead for rebellion unchecked. They had to be systematically crushed.
"I have confirmed that Marquis Eiger, a heavyweight of that faction, has made contact with Prince Rodel at the detached palace. It appears they are plotting something."
"Keep a close eye on Eiger. If we can catch him in an act of treason, it will give us the leverage we need to break the faction once and for all."
"Understood."
Verios bowed and prepared to take action. For him, the Rodel problem was deeply personal. Because of a contract signed by his own father under the Queen Dowager's influence, his daughter Celestine was bound to Rodel as his fiancé. To free her from that pathetic man, the faction had to be brought down as quickly as possible.
While Rodel plotted in the shadows, his enemies were moving as well. The political storm brewing in the royal palace would eventually reach its climax, all because of the actions of a single boy in the very near future.