Prince Josh the Second and General Relia Amia moved deeper into the enormous palace, their steps light, their presence masked.
Josh made no attempt to return to spying on princes; his face was still dark with the quiet fury from before.
He didn't trust himself to keep calm if he overheard one more idiot breathing the wrong way.
Relia watched him out of the corner of her eye.
His anger simmered like a silent storm — tightly controlled, but frightening in its maturity.
How is he five…? she wondered as she followed.
Then voices drifted toward them.
Soft.
Hurried.
Nervous.
Instinctively, Josh grabbed Relia's hand and pulled her behind a large carved pillar. Naze, who was trailing from afar, nearly tripped over a potted plant trying to position himself so he could "watch" with his ears.
Two palace servants approached from a side path.
One carried a tied linen sack filled with strange purple leaves — leaves that pulsed faintly as if alive.
Relia's eyes narrowed immediately.
Josh's expression sharpened.
The second servant halted the first, panic in his voice.
"Gash! Why are you carrying that poisonous plant? Don't you know even tasting those leaves can take a man from paralysis to death?!"
At the mention of death, Josh's small fingers tightened around Relia's wrist.
Gash turned, face grim, and hissed sharply:
"Radu, do you want to die? Why are you questioning something the king ordered?"
Radu froze.
His entire body trembled so violently he nearly dropped the tray he was carrying.
"W–wait… you mean… the king himself sent you?"
"Yes," Gash whispered, voice lowering even further.
"And listen carefully. His Majesty intends to poison the generals standing beside the foreign prince — to humble him. When the boy has no protectors left… he'll lock him up and torture him for days before killing him."
Relia's heart dropped.
Josh's eyes went cold as frozen steel.
"The king felt humiliated today," Gash continued. "He wants to vent everything on that prince."
Radu swallowed hard, face pale with the resigned bitterness all servants carried.
"Gash, be careful. We servants are like disposable tools here. Once used, we're cut down. Even the royal princes seem disposable, they are too many — their numbers could fill a whole city…not to talk of us servants"
He shook his head again, defeated.
"I need to hurry," Gash muttered before heading for the palace kitchens, clutching the poisonous leaves tightly.
Radu watched him go with sorrowful eyes, then sighed and walked away.
When the footsteps finally faded, Relia and Josh stepped out.
Josh's jaw was clenched so tightly his teeth clicked.
His small shoulders trembled — not in fear, but contained wrath.
Relia could feel it.
His emotions rolled off him like black thunder.
She had never felt anything like this from him before.
Behind them, Naze also emerged from the shadows, face twisted in anguish.
Even blind, he could hear the truth.
He could smell their fear.
He could sense the cruelty behind the king's order.
For a fleeting moment...
a crushing dread twisted through his chest. 'What if we didn't stumble on this secret' he thought...
Because if we had eaten that food —
We the generals, might have died, but they have no idea just how unpredictable prince Josh is, the entire empire might not survive the night.
"That pig…" Relia Amia was the first to react, fingers twitching as if she were already strangling the king's soul through forty walls.
Her entire aura flared, an empath's killing instinct humming like a storm trapped in human skin.
Josh gently touched her wrist.
"My lady…" he said with that calm, warm little smile that somehow made the Empath Assassin instantly forget she could asphyxiate armies. "Relax."
Relax?
Relax?!
Relia blinked at him like a predator whose prey had just tapped her nose and told her to sit.
"We need to warn the others—" she burst out, panic slicing through her composure.
"Relax," Josh repeated—soft, lazy, annoyingly confident. "The food won't be ready for another one or two hours. Poison takes time to boil, especially this type. You must hide the scent, neutralize the bite, stabilize the reaction… they're nowhere close to finishing."
Relia stared.
Naze, blind, crouching somewhere—hidden behind them, mouthed silently:
"How… does he know THAT?!"
Josh continued strolling, hands behind his back like a seasoned general giving a casual weather report.
"Besides, we have bigger problems. There is a spy in this land. I need to stop that spy from returning to the Nazare Blade Empire to report to Alloysius."
Relia froze.
Naze froze.
Even the air froze.
Then Relia slowly turned, very slowly, as if afraid of what she might see when she looked at the five-year-old prince again.
Her voice came out in a whisper:
"…How do you know so much?"
Not 'how do you guess.'
Not 'how do you suspect.'
But how do you KNOW—with precision, certainty, and the exact internal logistics of poisons and international espionage.
Her heart drummed like war cymbals inside her chest.
Josh shouldn't know the inner workings of their mother empire.
He shouldn't even know the name Alloysius, much less say it like a man recalling an irritating subordinate.
He shouldn't sound like someone who had sat in war councils.
He shouldn't sound like someone who had ordered executions.
He shouldn't sound like—
She almost covered her face.
Alloysius was one of the seven half-brothers of the late Emperor, Josh Aratat , first of his name. Alloysius had betrayed the entire empire and this story was a dark history that has been kept secret among the escaped remnants for 5 years plus, the mere fact that Josh knew this, meant that he must have been planning something, and that terrified her more deeply than any battlefield ever had.
Josh caught her staring and simply smiled, that little "you know nothing" smile that made her stomach flip and her brain short-circuit.
Relia glared at him.
Josh sighed.
'If I tell you what I know,' he thought, 'you will lose your mind like Naze is currently losing his, and you would have to stop thinking for a while to recover your sanity. I am the king, after all… but I can't say that. A'Nui will enforce the consequences he warned me about.'
So he simply smiled again.
A calm, infuriatingly ancient smile.
Relia swallowed.
Naze whimpered.
And Josh walked ahead with the ease of a man who had watched a thousand years pass like afternoon rain.