Chapter 77: What twenty years hid!

“Is there a portrait of the Queen Consort painted around the time she just married the King?”

What expression am I making right now? I thought I was acting quite calmly.

From sending back Philip, who locked the door again after leaving the storage, entering the main building, and coming to the King’s Brother’s study.

In my head, I kept recalling the face of that person I saw in my dream.

Along with the Queen Consort’s portrait I occasionally saw in newspapers. I couldn’t easily find a common point between the Queen Consort’s face, which looked somewhat pitiful even when smiling, and that face glaring at me fiercely in the dream.

It didn’t seem to resemble my current face much either.

If it’s a portrait from 20 years ago, from around the time she just gave birth to me, could I find a resemblance to him in the dream?

I looked up at the King’s Brother to seek an answer to my question. His worry for me was evident. In his expression. In his unwavering blue eyes.

Only then did I realize I wasn’t as calm as I thought. His furrowed brow stemmed from my edged appearance.

In those eyes like deep water reflecting even the bottom, conversely, there was not a hint of reluctance or denial toward me.

Even though he and Count Umbra are people who cannot stand on the same side.

“I have seen the face of the person who gave birth to me. In a dream.”

When I barely uttered the reason for finding the Queen Consort’s old portrait, he approached a little closer and stood by me. He held my two hands. My hands were colder than his body temperature, which was slightly lower than others.

“It disappeared when you pulled me out of the water, Duke.”

Even if I fall into the water in a dream again, I won’t see that person. That chain dragging me underwater won’t be able to bind me again either.

“Still, I remember that face clearly.”

Still, I couldn’t forget that face full of murderous intent toward me.

“I must check.”

Dosel, who consistently maintained a self-serving perspective. The Queen Consort’s current appearance completely unlike mine. It was proper to laugh it off as absurd words and move on. But I couldn’t.

It might seem strange, but I felt the opposite possibility more strongly. It wasn’t a clumsy foresight or premonition, but close to certainty.

The past I wished for least seemed to become a sticky swamp dragging me down.

So I had to check even more.

“…Okay.”

Was it because my trembling subsided a little? Eventually, he nodded. He slowly released my hands he held tightly.

Watching his back turning toward the bookshelf, I recalled the words Dosel said.

“Your father, Lux Splend, worked as a tutor in Count Umbra’s household.”

The hunter who abused young me, his name was Lux Splend. When using the expression ‘worked,’ his eyes glinted. What was glimpsed in those eyes was clear superiority.

“A person always depressed due to tough reality gradually became brighter. Tackling tasks he had almost given up on with enthusiasm again. He was very excited back then. Exactly like a person in love.”

Even while describing the positive change, one corner of his lip was curling up higher and higher.

“Was it about half a year later? He suddenly disappeared one day. Leaving everything behind. If not for me, your father’s things would have become trash without anyone looking for them. Well, they were mostly useless things anyway.”

Talking about Lux Splend’s poverty, the expression he wore was clear mockery.

“It was well over 5 years after that…, where was it. Ah, right, right. I remember again now. It was definitely Ramus. As you know well, it’s a transportation hub where roads lead to anywhere in this country. I met your father again at the post station there. With young you. I still remember vividly. That young you were truly thin. A child with not a bit of cuteness. Lux looked completely like a Beta. They were appearances impossible to see as doing well. Ashamed of his shabby appearance, he asked me to lend him money, so I gave him some. Not a large sum, but I didn’t give it expecting to get it back. Actually, I never saw him again after that. Unfortunately.”

Dosel, talking excitedly about the completely fallen Lux Splend, didn’t notice at all. That I was inciting his mouth with pheromones. The weak pheromones he emitted continuously from the moment he saw me were completely dominated by me and posed no hindrance. No, in the first place, I couldn’t feel any influence from his pheromones. Just as when I was a Beta.

“The only Omega your father had a connection with was Her Highness the Queen Consort. He gave birth to you.”

The only thing connecting Lux Splend, my father, and the Queen Consort was that he worked as a tutor.

“Do you really think I am the Queen Consort’s illegitimate child?”

“Yes.”

When my pheromones bound him a bit stronger, he answered with unfocused eyes.

“Since when? Since when did you think I was the Queen Consort’s son? When you first saw me at the Ramus post station? When you saw me again at Palmer Jewelry and remembered I was Lux Splend’s son?”

“Wrong. Neither… It’s not that, Count Umbra pressured us. Threatened to put us in court if we didn’t show results immediately or return the money. But we had already spent all the money, and there was no way to pay back immediately.”

Only then did he become honest, confessing in an urgent tone instead of putting on airs.

“So after racking your brains desperately, you came up with the idea to connect the very small tie between me and the Queen Consort. It would have been good to incite my vanity and subdue me with pheromones to make me offer my property to you, or getting a means to counter-threaten Count Umbra would also have been good.”

“Y-yes. Your words are all, all correct. But, but now I know. You, you are really the Queen Consort’s son. Count Umbra, can’t act high and mighty in front of me anymore. Because you are the proof that the Queen Consort committed adultery. Right, otherwise, just with Lux Splend’s bloodline, a strong, strong Omega like you couldn’t possibly…!”

From his appearance excessively denying Lux Splend, I could realize one fact.

“So the person who first thought of purifying gems wasn’t you but Lux Splend.”

“Th-that, that is true. It’s true I saw it written in Lux’s notebook. That is a fact.”

Dosel, encroached by my pheromones, nodded. I closed my eyes for a moment. It seemed like evidence that it’s an unmistakable fact I am Lux Splend’s son.

Then were his other words true as well?

“But realizing that thought is definitely my merit. It’s mine, researched persistently by me! Your father is a fugitive! Just a loser! It’s mine, all mine…!”

Dosel, who wasted 20 years absorbed in the preposterous theory Lux Splend came up with, seemed likely to babble that it’s his forever. I put him to sleep to silence him.

“…Jay.”

“Did you find it?”

“Yes…”

In his hand returning to my side was an old scrap. He always kept articles he considered important like that.

“Please give it to me.”

He hesitated for a moment but eventually complied with my request.

20 years ago, what was the King’s Brother, only four years old, thinking when he scraped the news of his half-brother’s marriage? I unfolded the evidence of loneliness he felt in his childhood.

Although faded, a portrait that was just neat except for that was revealed.

The current King, who was still the Royal Grandson at this time, was smiling brightly. On the day of the departure ceremony, I had seen him from very far away. To be precise, it would be correct to say I saw the light reflected by the gems on the crown he wore.

The young man smiling brightly as if he had the whole world seemed not to know yet how heavy the crown he would wear was.

And, I caught my breath. Only after exhaling a long breath did I move my gaze to the side.

A man who didn’t resemble me much was smiling shyly.

Features weren’t big or flashy, but a beauty with a graceful impression. Everything harmonious and balanced. It seemed to depict the appearance of a perfect god in imagination rather than modeled on a person.

I had to feel a sense of heterogeneity.

“I need a loupe.”

I found a loupe on the King’s Brother’s desk. It was placed exactly where I remembered. Without time to feel long sentiment at that fact, I put the loupe on my right eye and examined the faded portrait again.

Even magnified 10 times, the perfect formative beauty was flawless. Like a Brilliant cut calculated and cut without gaps.