Jill knelt down onto both knees within the flower garden and said, “Alright?”  Rho looked up at her with large, round, sparkling eyes.

The matching gown and knitted hat said to have been given to him as a present by Frieda were fluffy and cute.  Dragons were skilled at regulating their body temperature and were also resistant to both heat and cold, but Rho was fashionable and had recently taken to wearing things such as hats and scarves.

 “Be a good boy and read your picture book here, Rho.”
“Kyu.”

He seems to be saying, “Leave it to me,” but does he really understand?

“You’re our decoy.  You can call for dragons if someone lays a hand on you, but until then, I want you to stay still.”
“Ukkyu.”
“No matter what happens, I will absolutely, absolutely, come flying to save you.  So don’t worry about that.”
“Ukyuuuuuu!”

Rho cheeks filled with color and his tail waged back and forth.  Being helped by Jill seemed to be more important to him than the issue of being a decoy.  Jill, despite having been the one to propose this, deflated as she wondered whether she should truly be doing this.

I hope Rea doesn’t find out.

With that prayer in her heart, she quietly moved away and left Rho where he was.

A black dragon with golden eyes was wrapped in a fluffy blanket within a basket laying on top of a picnic blanket in the middle of the Dragon Buriel Flower Field.  He had a picture book as well as fudge and milk.  The sweets had been acquired from the kitchen.  The situation was utterly bizarre.

“…This is a blatant trap.”

Jill said such to the originator of the idea with narrowed eyes upon returning to the gazebo serving as their post.

“It’s better that it be this obvious.  After all, this is going to be a contest of strength.”
“There’s no telling what the dragons might do if something happens to Rho.”
“That’s part of the plan.  If he gets kidnapped, we can just follow the dragons.  And even if we don’t, the Dragon Consort’s Palace will be blown away should the Dragon King be exposed to danger.  I doubt a person who sees value in this flower garden would make such a choice.  He should naturally know the value of the Golden-Eyed Black Dragon too.”

Convinced for the time being, Jill sat down a small distance away from Maynard.  Tea and sweets had been placed on the table of the abandoned gazebo, and they unintentionally ended up appearing like they were having tea.

Seig and Camilla were keeping watch from another location, so the two of them were alone.  Maynard poured a drink from a flask and placed it in front of her.

“It’s medicinal tea.  It’ll warm your body.  Even if you’re wearing clothes with cold-protection magic sewn into them, it must be cold at this time of year.”
“Ah, thank you very much…  This medicinal tea, did you make it?”
“Yes.  I’ve loved things like poisons since I was a child.”

Jill sprayed out the medicinal tea she had been drinking.  Maynard laughed, “Hahaha,” aloud.

“It’s all right, there’s no poison in it.”
“Of course there isn’t!  But the way you brought up that subject just now, you did that on purpose, didn’t you!?”
“But Dragon Flowers are also poisonous flowers.”

As Jill blinked, Maynard plucked one of the white flowers that had been encroaching through a crack in the gazebo.

“It isn’t a particularly potent poison, so it isn’t very well known.  Eating a large amount will cause a sudden depletion of magical power.  According to a tale, these are flowers that bloom from the corpses of dragons.  Considering how a dragon’s flame burns magical power, there may be a relation to that.”

“…Does that mean dragons can’t be eaten!?”
“Were you, the Dragon Consort, planning to eat a dragon?”

He asked back with wide, round eyes.  Jill let her gaze wander.

“No… well, you know, if it’s edible, then I thought… at least once.  His Majesty also said it was possible…?”
“I see… No, I was just surprised. That sort of adventurous spirit is nice.”
“You understand!?”
“Yes.  It’s blasphemous and enticing.”

Maybe he’s a good person.  Jill had such a thought but then reconsidered.  Maybe not.

But… his impression is different from before.

She wasn’t letting her guard down, not after the incident with Laica.  Still, he was considerably different from how he had been before, when he had claimed himself to be the Emperor of Rave and incited a war.

“…Ano, Your Highness Maynard, do you have any desire to become Emperor or anything?”

There was no way he would answer honestly, but she asked anyway, just in case.

“Eh?  No way I want something that troublesome.  I’m a person who wants to always get in the Emperor’s way.”

But please don’t say something even more troublesome with such a refreshing smile.

“Do you know  Arnolt?”
“The older brother of His Highness Listeard and Her Highness Freida, I believe.  He has already passed away…”
“That’s right.  I’m two months older than him.”

Jill blinked and thought, Ahre, at that familiar-sounding phrasing.  Maynard continued speaking.

“I was often compared to him.  That said, my mother was a spoil of war from Kratos from a war more than twenty years ago.  She was brought back by the previous Duke Fairart.  While she did become an adopted daughter of a noble family connected to Duke Fairart, her position was rather delicate.  Apparently, she had been abducted while serving as a lady-in-waiting at the Kratos Royal Castle for the Southern King who was still the Crown Prince at the time.  Though, she was a beauty more than enough to make up for that.”

Maynard brushed his long hair aside with his hand.  The picturesque gesture implied that he took after his mother.

“And then it seems she forced into the previous Emperor’s harem.  It was a sort of harassment by the previous Duke Fairart.  The previous Emperor was favorable toward Kratos and was plotting to sell out the country under the name of peace, with peace being nothing more than a name.  The Three Dukes opposed this, and apparently struck Kratos first, before a treaty could be concluded.”
“That war happened because of circumstances like that!?”

Maynard gave a slightly wry smile at Jill’s surprise.

“It’s a story from before I was born as well, so I’ve only been told the claims of the Three Dukes and my mother.  However, considering the previous Emperor, I don’t think they were very far off the mark.  The previous Emperor refused, to an almost obsessive degree, to acknowledge the Dragon Emperor that the Rave Empire had long been waiting for.”
“You mean… not only because he wasn’t related by blood.”
“He must have been afraid. His Majesty the Dragon Emperor was born after that battle.  Perhaps he felt that he had been born in order to punish the Rave imperial family—or rather, him for having leaned toward Kratos.”

Then, was that how a father who bowed his head to the floor and begged for his life came to be?

“—His Majesty is pitiful. He was despised by his father for a reason he had no knowledge of…”
“It’s good, isn’t it?  That, happily, he wasn’t actually his real father.”
“That may be so!  But His Majesty returned to the Imperial Capital because he wanted to get along with his family.”
“He believes in something that naive… Is he an idiot?”
“You could powder it in sugar to make it easier to swallow?”

He wasn’t saying anything wrong, but Maynard’s expression as he reacted with exaggerated surprise to every little thing got on Jill’s nerves.

“Well, that’s how I ended up as a prince with no prospects of becoming Emperor.  As long as Arnolt, the grandson of Duke Leilsatz, accomplished in both the literary and military arts, upright in conduct, and handsome, existed in my generation, there was absolutely no way I could become Emperor.  It didn’t matter how many Crown Princes conveniently died.  I dislike dreaming of things I can’t accomplish, and I had absolutely no intention of becoming Emperor.”
“…Except, you didn’t renounce your right of succession to the throne.”
“My mother was something of a dreamer.”

With those words, Maynard put a cookie into his mouth and broke off the conversation.  He probably had no intention of explaining, or simply didn’t want to. Watching him from the corner of her eye, Jill deliberately started the conversation again.

“…I thought you would assert your right of succession to the throne and, with Kratos’s support, provoke the Rave Empire.”

Perhaps she could learn what feelings Maynard had when he chose that path in the past.

“Certainly, it wouldn’t be impossible.  I would make a good ceremonial figure for starting a war, after all… Princess Faelis, whom I had an audience with, said something similar as well.”
“You refused?”
“Well, it would have been impossible.  It might have worked if there were an opening to take advantage of.  For example, someone from the Rave imperial family being mercilessly executed or there being some tragedy that was obviously conspiratorial.”

Far too many things from past events came to her mind.

“Th-then, if there were an opening to take advantage of, would you do it?”
“As I said, I have no interest in the imperial throne.  I also refuse to climb aboard a ceremonial float that will conveniently be disposed of and die for nothing.”
“…Th-then, just hypothetically.  Hypothetically, if you were carried along by Kratos and moved to become the Emperor of Rave, what would the reason be!?”

He gave her a puzzled expression, but when she stared back at him without backing down, Maynard opened his mouth as though he had given up.

“…If it were me, being put forward as figurehead itself would be the objective.”

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