My Beloved Princess ~The Boy Called Incompetent Rises with Only a Sword and the Princess's Devotion~ - Chapter 103: The Absent Head Consort

Chapter 103: The Absent Head Consort

When she was little.

Kuroyō’s playground had been her father’s study in the Phoenix Pavilion.

The kowtow she offered Father.

Her father had hated seeing his still-young daughter kneel.

Saying his study was his castle and there was no need for such stiffness there, he would catch his daughter’s arm and pull her back to her feet. Before he was the great Dragon Emperor, he had been a gentle father.

That space, which even the Six Consorts did not casually enter, had been like a secret base to young Kuroyō. She ran energetically between shelves piled with books, pulling out whichever ones caught her interest and pestering Father to read them to her.

“Father. I want to read this today.”

“A military treatise from the age of the ancient Dragon Palace, hm? Kuroyō, you really do notice different things.”

He gently stroked her glossy black hair.

Father had been so pleased whenever she chose books difficult even for adults to understand that Kuroyō had started deliberately picking the most abstruse ones. She had probably just wanted him to praise her.

“But listen, Kuroyō. You don’t need to force yourself to spend every day buried in study. If you hate it, I’ll speak to Rakuyō myself. That woman takes the whole education-mama thing a little too far.”

“No, Father. I wish to become a wise wife who supports her husband, like Mother.”

Even now, she could not forget the indescribably delicate look that had crossed Father’s face at that moment.

“What kind of man do you want to marry?”

“A man as strong and kind as you, Father.”

“Oh? A man like me, huh? Not to brag, but you won’t find another man this good no matter where you look.”

He bent his fingers into an L shape and struck a pose, making his teeth gleam. In response to her joking father, Kuroyō stretched up on tiptoe as far as she could and declared with all her might,

“Dragonkin society is vast. I will definitely find one!”

The sight of his earnest daughter had probably been adorable. Father broke into a grin and lifted her up just like that.

“Father. I am no longer at an age where being tossed up in the air would delight me.”

“What are you talking about? You only just turned three.”

“Mother taught me that once one turns three, one must not delight in childish games.”

“…Man, I’m worried. Isn’t Rakuyō overdoing it?”

In the end, her small body settled onto Father’s lap. In that place more precious than any throne, Kuroyō swung her legs and drank in the scent of old paper to her heart’s content. Then, when she leaned back and looked up, Father’s valiant face appeared upside down. She asked what she had long wondered.

“Why is there no Head Consort-sama in our pack?”

That question must have touched on a delicate matter. For the first time, Father’s face clouded. Though still a child, Kuroyō keenly sensed it and tried to withdraw the question.

But before she could,

“Do you want to know?”

Father’s gentle voice fell from above her. Relieved, Kuroyō gave a small nod.

“I had always wondered. It is unnatural that Mother, who is ranked second, holds the greatest authority and uses the Tower Palace, where the Head Consort resides, as though it were her own.”

She had not meant to criticise her mother. Kuroyō had simply wondered. She had been taught that the Head Consort was the highest authority, yet somehow her mother, the General Consort, was fulfilling that role. She could not help finding that contradiction strange.

To his daughter’s innocent question, her gentle father answered with a wry smile.

“The Head Consort is an absolute, immovable position established by law. None of the other consorts can be promoted to it. Not even your mother, who holds the real power.”

“Has Head Consort-sama passed away?”

“No. She got fed up with me.”

“Hm. A wife’s virtue is to devote herself to her master. Are you saying Head Consort-sama abandoned you and left, Father?”

Already undergoing elite education from Mother, Kuroyō had been dissatisfied by that. To stay close to one’s master and die for one’s master. That was also the ideal she envisioned.

Seeing his daughter puff up her cheeks in displeasure, Father laughed in amusement.

“I was the one who broke a promise. We’d agreed we’d make do with just the Six Consorts. That’s how we had decided to live, and we’d kept to it for so long. I was the one who changed course partway through.”

“Just the Six Consorts? Was your pack small, Father?”

“Yeah, it was.”

“I cannot believe it. It is so large now.”

Black Emperor Castle, where one hundred thousand people lived, was a great city. Having grown up seeing its elegant streets at close hand in all their glory, Kuroyō could not imagine what life in a small pack had been like.

“Our current prosperity would have been impossible without the Head Consort’s achievements.”

Father let that slip in a murmur.

“Was Head Consort-sama strong?”

“Oh, overwhelmingly so.”

“Even more than Mother?”

“That’s right. She was stronger than Rakuyō.”

“That is amazing. A woman stronger than Mother truly exists?”

It was in dragonkin women’s nature to admire strength. As they grew, that admiration turned toward males of their own generation, but when they were little, it was directed at the backs of their father and mother. Drawn to the idea of a woman stronger than the mother she respected, Kuroyō’s face lit up with a bright smile.

Perhaps his mature-seeming daughter’s delighted expression, even at the age of three, pleased Father greatly, because he began to speak with unusual enthusiasm.

“The only one who could fight at my side was the Head Consort.”

“What?! To be able to fight beside you, Father, is a great honour indeed.”

“I don’t mean in the sense that I could entrust my back to her. She was so strong there was no need for me to protect her. Even in a place of certain death, I never had to spare a thought for her safety.”

“Is it not the duty of dragonkin men to protect their consorts?”

“Yeah, it is. But she was in a class of her own. To put it simply, she was a woman on the level of a Dragon Emperor. Does that get it across?”

The shock Kuroyō felt then had been tremendous.

Men were naturally stronger than women. No matter how strong the Six Consorts were, there was no reason they could defeat a man of the same rank. And yet her father himself, the strongest of the dragonkin, had flatly declared that she had been his equal.

“Amazing! Amazing! Amazing! That is amazing, Father!”

Her cheeks flushed, and her voice went shrill.

She felt as though she were floating. Kuroyō had been thrilled.

“Where did Head Consort-sama go? Is it impossible for me to ever meet her now?”

Her eyes shining, she asked as if pleading. However, Father’s response had not been encouraging. He gave only the curt answer that her whereabouts were unknown. Kuroyō was disappointed.

“I think she’s alive. She’s the sort who’d take down an apocalypse-grade monster while humming to herself, then turn it into a side dish for dinner.”

“Then… will the day come when I can meet her?”

“Yeah, you’ll meet her someday.”

“What kind of person is she, I wonder? I am very much looking forward to it.”

At the sight of Kuroyō’s sparkling eyes, Father pointed toward the wall at the very back of the study.

“That’s the Head Consort.”

There, a portrait of a woman hung on the wall. She had been beautiful.

Soft, lightly wavy hair. Gently drooping eye corners. A mouth set in a mild expression. Fair skin. A delicately lovely face that looked almost fragile. She possessed a beauty of a very different kind from that of Mother, Rakuyō.

And Kuroyō burned the person depicted in that portrait into her memory.

She stared at it so intently it might have bored a hole through it, engraving it in her mind together with her admiration.

And now, that very person she had admired in her childhood had appeared before her eyes.

As her mother-in-law.

◇◇◇◇◇

“The Head Consort? What are you talking about?”

Looking down magnanimously at Kuroyō, whose forehead was pressed to the filthy floorboards, the woman frowned as though she were truly at a loss. Raising her face from the kowtow, Kuroyō looked straight at that person, who still bore traces of the man she loved. The shape of his features was probably more like his father’s. Mother and son did not resemble each other to such a striking degree, but there was one point in particular where the resemblance remained strong.

“The eyes. From the moment I first met him, Kishō’s eyes felt strangely familiar to me.”

Perhaps because she could not grasp the point of the story, her mother-in-law tilted her head deeply.

Kuroyō placed a hand over her chest. Confirming the pounding of her heart, she closed her eyes.

“Not long after entering the academy, I met Kishō beneath the Dragon King Tree.”

Red blossoms dancing in a storm across everything.

At that time, for some reason, Kuroyō had felt a sense of familiarity with that person who should have been a complete stranger. Amid the swirling crimson petals, the instant she laid eyes on him, her heart had pounded without her understanding why. Before she knew it, his face had been right in front of hers, and Kuroyō had been staring fixedly at his eyes.

“It seems to be a bad habit of mine that I unconsciously draw close to the person I have feelings for. Then why did I come to feel that way? Most likely because his eyes were so very like yours, Head Consort-sama.”

“I’m still not really following. Naturally my son’s eyes resemble mine.”

“I admired you, Head Consort-sama.”

The feeling of admiration she had held in childhood still continued unbroken even now. If anything, Kuroyō felt it had only accelerated from the moment she realised her mother-in-law’s true identity.

“Father is the strongest man among the dragonkin. It seems you were the one who could fight beside such a father. A woman on the level of a Dragon Emperor… you can scarcely imagine the shock that gave the child I was. But because of that, I admired you. I longed for a strong woman I had never yet seen.”

Kuroyō felt her face growing hot with excitement.

The mother of the person she had fallen for was the very person she had admired. If this was not fate, then what should one call fate? At that miraculous coincidence, Kuroyō’s emotions were more stirred than ever. Her usual poker face had completely crumbled away, and an innocent expression from her childhood peeked through.

“There is a portrait in Father’s study. A precise portrait, almost like a photograph.”

“…………….”

“You understand now, do you not, Head Consort-sama? It is your portrait.”

The portrait displayed near the ceiling. She had looked up at it again and again and burned that face into her eyes.

There was no possibility whatsoever that it was someone else.

Kuroyō quietly rose to her feet.

“Now I understand it clearly. The admiration I felt for you overlapped with Kishō, who has the same eyes, and became affection. We truly had met for the first time.”

There was no room to wriggle out of it. There was no way she could conceal it.

Her mother-in-law, who must have understood that, let out a great sigh as if surrendering.

“I see. So you knew from the very beginning. I did think your manners were strangely polite.”

“Faced with Head Consort-sama, even that was hardly enough.”

“When we came face to face, you showed no sign of surprise. Could it be that, even before seeing my face… before you returned home, you had already realised my true identity?”

“It was about four months ago that the possibility occurred to me. The trigger was when I was investigating Kishō’s attribute affinity.”

Perhaps judging that the story was likely to grow long, her mother-in-law offered her a chair. Kuroyō obediently accepted and sat down facing her. They were so close that their knees almost touched.

“After concluding that, in theory, having no attribute affinity at all was impossible, I remembered something Father had once told me. That the Head Consort was the inheritor of the seventh attribute.”

“Honestly, that man. Even though he promised not to tell anyone. He really is troublesome.”

“Father is soft on me. Please forgive him.”

Her mother-in-law gave a wry smile and shrugged.

“If Kishō possessed the seventh attribute, then naturally he would not correspond to any of the six attributes. It would also explain why he had been judged to have no attribute affinity. At that point, I was able to theorise that he might perhaps be the Head Consort’s son.”

“But that alone is insufficient. Even if he possesses the same seventh attribute, that does not necessarily make him my son. He might have been a complete stranger, and the possibility that he was my grandson should also have been considered.”

Her mother-in-law was right.

Dragonkin lives were long. Even if her mother-in-law, who had left decades ago, had a grandson, there would have been nothing strange about it. Kuroyō had understood that possibility perfectly well.

That was precisely why, when she had been looking into the problem of attribute affinity, she still had not reached certainty. So when had she become certain?

“Head Consort is also the title of the highest authority. The master and the Head Consort stand as equals, and their power of speech is the same. In other words, the normal state is one in which a pack has two supreme authorities.”

“That is why princesses are forced into political marriages as well. Because of the Head Consort’s authority. Honestly, what a ridiculous custom. You have it hard too, don’t you?”

Nodding with heartfelt understanding, her mother-in-law took two red fruits from the basket, tossed one to Kuroyō, and bit into the juicy flesh of the other. Kuroyō clutched the one she had been given as though it were a treasure, set it on her lap, and lowered her gaze to its red sheen.

“Once, Kōran caused a huge scene and was dragged off to the headmaster’s office. At that time, Seiran-dono said something strange.”

“Something strange?”

“She insisted that Kishō had brought with him a letter of recommendation from His Majesty. Yet Kishō had no recollection of that, and when asked, said he had merely been given a letter from his mother. Neither of them seemed to be lying, and yet their accounts flatly contradicted each other. Do you not find that strange?”

Her mother-in-law smiled gently. Kuroyō found her own lips curling in response.

“At first glance, their claims appear contradictory, but if you are the Head Consort, then everything fits. The moment I realised that possibility, I understood it all.”

Including why Kishō’s eyes had felt so familiar to her.

“I will put it bluntly. You still possess the seal of the highest authority, the seal of the Head Consort. And you used that seal to write the letter of recommendation.”

“Correct,” her mother-in-law said matter-of-factly. Her face even looked somewhat satisfied.

“The seal of the highest authority is one that husband and wife use jointly. In other words, the Dragon Emperor’s seal and the Head Consort’s seal are the same. Most likely, when Seiran-dono saw the seal of the highest authority stamped on that recommendation letter, she misunderstood. She thought, ‘This is an imperial command from His Majesty the Dragon Emperor.’ If so, then it does not contradict Kishō’s claim that his mother had handed him a letter.”

“If she had properly read the recommendation letter, she should have realised it was not from Kokuren. That woman neglected to confirm it.”

Letting out a weary breath, her mother-in-law shot a resentful glare toward the entrance where Seiran had departed.

“Head Consort-sama. One can hardly blame Seiran-dono for misunderstanding. She entered Father’s pack ten years ago. Head Consort-sama had already left long before that, and at present Father, the Dragon Emperor, was the only one who could use the seal of the highest authority. She could hardly have dreamed that Head Consort-sama was still alive, much less that she would stamp a recommendation letter for her son and send it.”

“That is true enough.”

Her mother-in-law gave a wry smile and exhaled in exasperation.

“Still, it does not change the fact that that woman’s blunder was the trigger that exposed my identity.”

“To put it bluntly, yes, that is what happened.”

“That recommendation letter had been sent to an old friend, you see. But I never imagined the current headmaster would be that woman. That was a miscalculation.”

“It seems the previous Alliance Consort, Shunka-dono, has passed away.”

“I see… that is unfortunate.”

As though suppressing her feelings, her mother-in-law’s face went expressionless, and she lowered her eyes.

Kuroyō had heard that the previous Alliance Consort, Shunka, had been her companion since their student days.

Several hundred years. How much pain came with losing a comrade who had shared both hardship and joy for so long? Kuroyō could not imagine it, but Ōka’s face suddenly rose in her mind. A sharp pain pricked her chest.

Sunlight streamed in through the small window.

The sky outside was clear. She could see cows grazing on pasture. Her mother-in-law raised her face.

“There is something you want to ask me, isn’t there? Is it about attribute affinity? Or do you want to know about my feud with that woman? Where should I begin, I wonder?”

“As you wish.”

Tossing the half-eaten fruit into her mouth, her mother-in-law wiped her lips with a handkerchief. A faint smile rose on that lovely face.

“Let’s see. Then shall I tell you a story from long ago?”