No Entry Except for the Master - Chapter 2
“Have you gone mad? Why on earth are you going there, Your Highness?”
Pushing aside the attendants helping him dress, Louis erupted in anger. Teia lightly patted his shoulder and gestured to the servants to continue their work.
Gently nudged aside by Teia, Louis now stomped his feet in frustration. His behavior was somewhat disrespectful, but since Louis had cared for Teia since childhood, both Teia and the other attendants accepted this level of commotion without much concern.
“Even if Your Highness understands, I cannot! What is the meaning of this! After breaking someone’s engagement through an affair, how can they hold an engagement ceremony on the same day!”
The engagement between Grand Duke Teia Himeros and Lady Eris Diallia, daughter of a Marquis, had been annulled. Ordinarily, a broken engagement of a Grand Duke would have caused an uproar both within and outside the Empire, but thanks to Teia’s careful handling, the engagement had been called off without any outward scandal.
Even ending things there would have left the event talked about for years, yet the Crown Prince dared to hold his engagement ceremony on the same date originally scheduled for the Grand Duke’s engagement. And without hesitation, he had even invited Teia, Eris’s former fiancé, to attend the ceremony.
That engagement ceremony was today.
“If I’m fine with it, why are you making such a fuss, Louis?”
“This is an insult. It’s a direct provocation against Your Highness.”
“Why would His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince bother doing that?”
“Seriously! It’s infuriating! It’s because you let them off so easily that they look down on you.”
Tsk. At Louis’s overly blunt words, Teia gave him a slight warning glance, and Louis immediately apologized for his rude outburst. However, even as he apologized, he continued to fume, unable to calm down easily.
Most of the attendants serving Teia in this estate, including Louis, had been with him even before he was driven out of the Imperial Palace. Perhaps because of that, they still tended to treat him like the delicate and endlessly lovable child he had once been.
“Louis, calm down now. The engagement is already broken, and if His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince and the young lady truly love each other and got together, then it’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
Though Louis’s grim expression didn’t soften until Teia was fully dressed, he still saw Teia off with the composure befitting a skilled chief attendant.
Inside the carriage heading to the Imperial Palace, Teia sat across from his escort knight. Once Louis’s figure disappeared from sight outside the window, Teia shut it without hesitation.
“Didn’t Louis say anything to you?”
“He already lamented yesterday, wondering what to do with Your Highness being so soft-hearted.”
“Hahaha.”
Teia burst into laughter and lightly dabbed the corners of his eyes with his fingertips to wipe away the tears that had formed. Unlike Louis or the other attendants, Cesar handed Teia the documents he had brought with a fed-up expression.
“So, what do you think?”
“…I wouldn’t say I pity them, but it is a bit much.”
“What kind of answer is that?”
“The ones about to be torn apart by Your Highness, of course.”
“I haven’t said I’ll tear them apart yet, though?”
With a faint chuckle, Teia quickly reviewed the documents Cesar handed over. His brow furrowed slightly—apparently not the content he was hoping for.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. We checked every person entering and leaving the estate, but there were no points of contact with His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince. They were people we selected with great care from the beginning. There’s no betrayal.”
“That’s odd.”
Cesar silently observed Teia’s annoyingly handsome face deep in thought.
Louis always worried that Teia’s seemingly harmless and easygoing nature would lead people to underestimate him—but that concern only came from not knowing him at all. From the very moment Cesar met Teia, he had vowed that if he ever had to choose the one person in the world never to make an enemy of, it would be Teia Himeros.
“What should we do?”
“For now, wait. Let’s just treat this like a prelude. Maybe I’ll play along for a bit. They did look so adorably desperate, clinging on and hoping I’d go easy on them.”
“Then why didn’t you at least pretend to cry like they wanted?”
“I was going to, but the way they looked at me, full of hope… it just made me not want to.”
A mischievous smile appeared on Teia’s face. Knowing full well the cruelty hidden behind it, Cesar inwardly clicked his tongue.
“I was going to humor them and brush it all off since it was getting annoying… but now they’re both staring at me with such passion.”
Even without detailed explanation, it was easy to imagine. The expressions of the two who had tried to provoke Teia, only to be met with a reaction that showed he didn’t care about them at all—it must have driven them mad.
Did they really think Teia would blink just because he’d been betrayed in love? After years of enduring all that, if they still hadn’t learned, then the Crown Prince was truly pathetic.
