Chapter 93: The Two Princes
After chatting for a while, Armand suddenly slapped his forehead as he remembered that the First Prince still needed to talk to him. He quickly asked Carle and his wife to take care of Evelia and rushed off to the nobles' hall to find the First Prince. Before leaving, he even reminded Carle.
“Make sure your wife doesn’t say any strange nonsense to Evelia.”
Carle understood right away. After all, back at Anna’s boutique, he had already experienced that cold and distant feeling Evelia gave off.
Evelia quietly watched Armand leave, obediently staying beside Carle and Melian just like he had asked. When she casually looked up, she noticed the Second Prince preparing to leave the high platform as well.
Their eyes met for only a second, and then both of them quickly looked away, as if they were complete strangers.
There was no need for either of them to reveal their connection at this moment.
Long before Evelia was sent to Armand’s side, the Second Prince had already told her that she didn’t need to avoid him on purpose, but also shouldn’t actively approach him.
If they needed to communicate, there were already ways for them to do so. There was no need to make contact and risk raising suspicion. Even small things like eye contact were to be kept brief and emotionless.
Still, Evelia’s appearance at the ballroom caught the Second Prince by surprise.
In their earlier conversation, the Second Prince thought Evelia hadn’t earned much trust from Armand yet. He had even been thinking about creating some opportunities to help her. But he didn’t expect Evelia to show up at the ballroom as Armand’s dance partner.
And Armand was the type who never brought a partner to dances. Now, showing up with a well-dressed woman like Evelia clearly proved how much she meant to him.
Because they were trying to stay hidden, their contact was limited to regular updates or emergencies. So Evelia hadn’t informed the Second Prince about this.
And really, there was nothing that needed to be said. Just by seeing her here, the Second Prince could understand Evelia’s current position clearly.
Evelia’s alchemically-crafted body was indeed excellent. When she entered his line of sight, the Second Prince couldn’t help but look at her a little longer. Not in a romantic way. He was admiring his own creation, the identity he had carefully crafted for Evelia, the “Red Crow.”
At this ballroom, besides Armand who usually came alone, there was one other person who always showed up solo, the Second Prince, Eric Cleia.
He and Armand shared a similar mindset. Both believed that women were troublesome, in one way or another.
Anyone who came up with the idea of using a beauty trap to lure Armand was likely someone with no real interest in women themselves.
In fact, the Second Prince disliked women.
This was because of his father, the old king, Pandelata Cleia, whose lust for beauty led him to make many mistakes.
Prince Solor (the First Prince) and Prince Eric (the Second Prince) looked very much alike, but they weren’t born from the same mother.
Solor’s mother was the eldest daughter of a duke, a proper queen chosen through an official royal marriage. The Second Prince’s mother, however, was an illegitimate daughter of that same old duke.
Back then, in order to protect his reputation, the old duke kept his illegitimate daughter at home and treated her as his “second daughter.”
But her life was hard. She didn’t get any real favor from the family.
She was beautiful and had inherited the good looks of the duke’s bloodline. But as the daughter of a servant, the duke didn’t value her.
He raised her completely differently than his eldest daughter. Although she was dressed up nicely for important occasions to keep up appearances, at home, she was just a scapegoat, looked down on like a rat in the house.
Those of higher status didn’t respect her, and those of lower status looked at her and thought. “Who do you think you are, acting like you’re equal to the real lady of the house?” They bullied her constantly.
In fact, she had more freedom when she was wandering the streets and doing odd jobs than she ever had in the duke’s mansion.
But her own mother used her to blackmail the duke, demanding a large amount of money.
Even so, that woman likely didn’t live long after stepping into the duke’s territory. The only reason the “second daughter” survived was probably because the duke showed a rare moment of mercy.
But suffering and hardship don’t always turn people into kind-hearted fairytale princesses. Not everyone repays evil with kindness.
This world doesn’t have that many saints. Not every girl is a romance novel heroine.
She had no one who loved her, so how could she ever learn to love anyone else?
All she knew was that she had to survive. And not just survive, she had to live better than anyone else.
She already lived like a bug, so why should she care what others thought anymore?
The younger daughter ended up walking the same path as her mother. With a beauty that looked very similar to the First Queen, she won the old King’s favor and became his mistress. While the First Queen was pregnant, she and the King did many inappropriate things, and when the First Queen was about to give birth, she became pregnant with the current Second Prince.
Maybe at that moment, she finally understood why the duke chose to keep her back then. Even if she didn’t marry the King in the end, her face alone could still bring great value.
In the end, the Second Prince was just an illegitimate child. But compared to his mother, his status was slightly higher.
After all, when the King had to marry the Second Queen for the sake of the unborn child, she was married in under the title of “second daughter of the duke.” So the Second Prince became the child of a duke’s daughter and the King, putting him on the same level as the First Prince.
The Second Queen did exactly what her own mother had done, used her beauty to stay connected to power. Even though she hated the old duke for being obsessed with beauty and making her life miserable, she still ended up using the same method to degrade herself.
The power struggle between the two princes began from the moment their mothers gave birth to them. The two boys were born less than a year apart, and both were sons, so the court quickly split into two factions. Of course, both mothers worked behind the scenes to gain advantages for their sons.
The First Queen wasn’t gentle or kind either. Back when they lived in the duke’s household, she was one of the people who treated the Second Queen harshly. And now that someone was trying to compete with her son for the throne, she secretly set many traps and obstacles.
But a noblewoman who lived high above the world could never truly fight against a woman who had crawled through the mud, who had even sold herself to become a mistress.
In the end, the First Queen died quietly but with a twisted look on her face, alone in her room. The first person to discover her body was the ten years old First Prince.
Even the “House of Nightingales” was secretly created by the Second Queen. When the Second Prince was still a baby, she had already begun bribing powerful ministers and turning a former orphanage into a secret assassin organization. All of this was a “gift” she prepared for her son.
She was a wicked woman, and she wanted her son to inherit that darkness that had brought her success.
Unfortunately, the Second Queen didn’t live long either. A few years after defeating the First Queen, she also lost her life.
Everyone said she died in a carriage accident when a landslide hit the mountain. No one survived. But everyone knew that was just a cover story. No one ever saw her body.
People said the crash threw her off the cliff, and her body was too horribly damaged to identify. Some whispered that her death was a hundred times more brutal than the First Queen’s.
The Second Queen died on her way to visit the House of Nightingales. That’s why no one in the Second Prince’s faction dared to investigate too deeply.
They feared that her death would expose their ties to the secret organization. So the matter was quietly buried. The only big public reaction was the grand funeral, which was just as fancy and formal as the First Queen’s.
The First Prince also attended the funeral, just like the Second Prince had attended the First Queen’s funeral years ago.
At the funeral, the two stood in front of the tomb, one in front, one behind, staring at the gravestone, but it also felt like they were watching each other.
At the time, the Second Prince was fifteen, just a year younger than the First Prince.
Even the Second Prince himself later found out the carriage had problems. His informants said there were traces of a fight, signs that it wasn’t an accident.
But everyone just shook their heads and refused to speak more. All they could do was sadly repeat, “Both of the empire’s queens died under suspicious circumstances.”
When he was still very young, his mother had already introduced him to the House of Nightingales.
She taught him what it meant to have slaves, what a loyal dog was, and handed him the whip. She made the young prince understand the cruel joy of punishment, and ordered him to speak out cruel commands.
But most of the time, it was his mother who enjoyed this the most. She took pleasure in hearing people scream under the hand of her own son. It was like she was taking her past suffering and putting it onto others, without getting her own hands dirty.
After she died, all that power passed to the Second Prince.
Whether the slaves cried or laughed, they now only followed his commands. He no longer acted like a puppet obeying his mother’s orders, like when she used to say, “My child, use your whip and tear his flesh apart.”
Now, he thought, “The whip should land where I decide.”
A few years later, the old King claimed to be ill and withdrew deep into the palace, and the true battle between the two princes began.
The Second Prince appeared to be much more friendly and easygoing than the serious First Prince, but that was just on the surface.
Armand often said the Second Prince’s fake smile was disgusting. And actually, the Second Prince thought the same.
Whenever he looked in the mirror and saw the light pink eyes that his mother gave him, different from the First Prince’s bright red ones, he felt sick.
At one point, he even wondered if Armand was like him, since Armand’s fake smile was just as disgusting. But in the end, he decided Armand was just a rude, reckless man who didn’t know how to shut his mouth.
The most ironic part was, the Second Prince wasn’t that different from his mother.
He sent Evelia to Armand’s bed, wasn’t that just repeating the same path his mother had once walked?
But that wasn’t something he needed to worry about.
All he needed to care about was whether Evelia could win Armand’s heart. At least for now, he was satisfied with how she was doing.
The Second Prince said nothing more. He didn’t even glance back. He simply turned around and left the ballroom.