NOVEL NEXT Chapter 105: Unrequited love
Rian and Ren Xiyang explained exactly how they won against King Augustus.
The way they said it made it seem straightforward.
But the people listening to them all knew it was harder than it sounded. Creating a shield in a split second? Searching a few kilometres below the earth for metal? Sending metal or super-heated-air/plasmaup to the storm clouds? These weren’t things that any mage could do, and even if they could do it, they wouldn’t necessarily be able to do it under the intense pressure of lightning bombardment from King Augustus.
Baron Natrium, Hadrian Terra, Julia Terra, Earl Petrus, and Lady Petrus all felt that they needed time to think and digest what was said.
“Thank you for telling us,” Baron Natrium said on behalf of the others. “And congratulations again on winning.”
“If you have time, come visit us and we’ll host you,” Rian said to all of them. “Baron Natrium, if you’re still interested, we would be happy to collaborate. If any of you are interested, feel free to contact us.”
After final well-wishes, safe-travels and farewells, Earl Petrus, Lady Petrus, Baron Natrium, Lord Terra, and Lady Terra left.
Rian turned to Ren Xiyang. His eyes sparkled mischievously.
“Shall we have lunch now?”
“Sure.”
“You said you wanted sunlight, so we should eat outside. Should I—” Rian opened his arms suggestively.
Ren Xiyang gave him a deadpan look. He started to get up.
“No, no, you can’t exert yourself,” Rian pushed Ren Xiyang’s legs down. “You’re supposed to need more recovery time.”
“I’ll call Kel in then.”
The two had a stare-off.
Rian conceded. “I’ll hold your arm while you walk, then.”
“Turn around and let me finish changing first.”
Rian was getting hungry, so he obeyed Ren Xiyang’s words.
“Ready now?”
“Yes.”
Ren Xiyang stood in one place as Rian approached him. Rian stopped in a standing position behind him.
Rian was taller than Ren Xiyang, so having Ren Xiyang prop his arm over Rian’s shoulder wasn’t appropriate. Instead, Rian directed Ren Xiyang to lean into him, while bending his left arm up. Rian gently grasped Ren Xiyang’s arm with his left hand, while his right hand rested on Ren Xiyang’s right hip to ‘support’ him.
Ren Xiyang felt a shiver across his skin when Rian touched his hip. Rian’s hand felt soft, tender, and hot. His senses felt heightened, with someone’s limbs pressing up behind his arm and shoulder and back. He was thoroughly aware of Rian’s temperature.
His brain froze when Rian’s left thumb caressed his forearm.
Rian let out a light breath, resisting his impulses to try something more daring. He felt as though Ren Xiyang reacted, but he couldn’t be sure. “We’re ready, let’s go.”
“Hm.”
Not long after, Rian and Ren Xiyang emerged from the tent.
Kel and the other Rosewood staff were all relieved and excited. Their Lord was up! He could still walk!
“My Lord!” Kel said joyously. “Please seat, we’ve prepared your favourite foods for recovery.”
Ren Xiyang nodded. “Thank you.”
Kel came forward to relieve Prince Rian of his task. “Thank you, Your Highness, for helping my Lord. I can take over from here, Your Highness.”
Rian reluctantly let go of the almost-hug and allowed Ren Xiyang to transfer his weight onto Kel. More members of the convoy were coming to eat lunch as well, which meant he needed to act as a proper prince again.
After King Augustus stopped smashing things in his room, he walked over to his weapons rack and picked up his favourite sword. This was the sword he had asked Aurelia to retrieve for him earlier, back on the duelling field.
His hand closed over the handle and lifted it from its resting perch. It was heavy and solid in his hand. He narrowed his eyes and suddenly twisted, slashed the sword through the air—
The other side of the room remained still.
A pit formed in King Augustus’s stomach. He tried again, slashes, jabs, raising it to the sky—
Nothing. No lightning. No fire. No wind. None of the elements that were enchanted in the sword.
Did someone mess with his favourite sword?!
“Aurelia! Come in here immediately!”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” came Aurelia’s voice. She opened the door just enough to slip inside and closed the door behind her. She bowed her head. “Your Majesty, how can I help you?”
“Has someone tampered with my sword? Examine this for me!”
Aurelia stepped forward and accepted the sword. She couldn’t find anything wrong with it, but given her father’s dark-tempered expression, she didn’t say so.
“Well?” King Augustus demanded as Aurelia turned over the sword for the third time.
“Your Majesty, may I test out the sword?”
“Hurry up.”
Aurelia swung the sword in a small arc. Fire emerged from the edges.
King Augustus’s eyes narrowed.
Aurelia offered the sword back. “Your Majesty, I cannot find anything amiss with your sword. I can find an expert mage for you to examine it further.”
King Augustus snatched the sword back. “No. You find someone to break the damned contract instead.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
After Aurelia left, King Augustus looked at his sword again. But when he tried the same move as Aurelia, there was no fire again!
“Fuck!” He tossed the sword aside and tried a different magical weapon on his display weapons rack, then another, and another.
None of them worked! None of their enchantments activated!
It took him a while, but King Augustus eventually came to the realisation that he couldn’t activate these magical weapons without magic!
The overwhelming majority of enchanted items needed at least a small amount of magic to activate. The communication mirrors and other magical technologies made by Earl Rosewood and Prince Rian were an exception.
King Augustus’s magical weapons weren’t an exception. With a snarl of anger, King Augustus threw his sword. The blade stabbed into the wall.
“Damn them!” he screamed.
This was all Rian Azure’s fault! Damn Azure! Damn Rosewood too! Why wasn’t Ayden Rosewood killed with the rest of his stupid family?!!
He clenched his fists, his gaze going to the duelling field that he could see from his room.
How could he have lost? It was impossible! There had to be a trick!
How could water possibly defeat lightning? How did they get all that metal?
And everyone was watching! Everyone could see he was winning, right?
And yet—!
King Augustus went obsessively over every detail of the duel, but he still couldn’t figure out the Sedaverians’ tricks.
But what if his Angio nobles figured out those tricks? His Angio nobles better not learn badly from the Sedaverians!
Smash! Crash! Slash! His room became littered with broken items.
Outside, Prince Marcus’s look of disdain deepened. Smashing things? How old was his father now, huh? Tsk, what a pitiful old man. Angio shouldn’t have a leader as weak as him.
After lunch, Duke Mauveine went around the convoy, checking everything, including the new supplies.
Two Angian groups came: Duke Ignis’s group and Viscountess Venemum’s group.
Duke Ignis would accompany them out of the central fief and through the Ignis fief. Viscountess Venemum would accompany them for the rest of the way, taking them to a different border crossing location between Sedaveria and Angio that was closer (albeit the crossing was much more difficult).
Duke Ignis had an unpleasant expression on his face. When his eyes fell on Prince Rian and Earl Rosewood still sitting at the lunch table, that expression worsened. “You have a tight schedule, we need to get going now.”
Duke Mauveine nodded politely. “We understand, Duke Ignis. Please start first and we’ll follow immediately.”
Duke Ignis mounted his war horse but he didn’t leave. Instead, he directed his war horse to walk back and forth, keeping an eye on the Sedaverians.
He didn’t believe that Prince Rian and Earl Rosewood won. Those two Sedaverians definitely did some kind of trick. Restricting King Augustus’s magic was part of their plan to take over Angio. Duke Ignis wasn’t even sure he believed that King Augustus’s magic was actually restricted. Prince Rian could have said it simply to make them think so, thus giving other nobles false confidence to try something and create chaos in Angio!
Duke Ignis would watch them. The moment they slipped, the moment they made a mistake, he’d make them confess.
In contrast, Viscountess Venemum’s overall stance was cold and stand-offish. Her eyes were unreadable as she looked at the Sedaverian convoy’s preparations. After a glance at the watching Duke Ignis, she entered her carriage.
Kel thoughtfully set up a lot of bedding in the Rosewood carriage. Rian ‘helped’ Ren Xiyang into the carriage and was about to sit down too, when a certain someone appeared.
“Your Highness.” Count Aegean crossed his arms and looked quite displeased.
Rian cursed his luck today and turned around. “Yes, Count Aegean?”
“Come talk with me and Duke Mauveine.”
Rian inwardly sighed. “Yes, Count Aegean.” He shot one (two) more looks at Ren Xiyang before he followed Count Aegean.
“Is there anything else, my Lord?” Kel asked.
“No need,” Ren Xiyang said.
Kel gave him a warm look. “Rest well, my Lord.”
Once the door closed, Ren Xiyang opened the top skylight, a special feature of the Rosewood carriage. Sunlight feel on his face and hands, energy which he absorbed into himself.
He closed his eyes, spreading his awareness out. This way, he could sense all the nearby movement. The Sedaverian convoy got into formation and started moving. Duke Ignis’s group led, while Viscountess Venemum’s party followed in the rear.
Ren Xiyang retracted his surveillance. He took a deep breath and sighed.
With the duel over, he now had the mental space to think about other things. Sure, there were politics to handle in the aftermath of the duel, but Rian would deal with that. He took out his notebook and pen from a drawer installed under the seating and wrote out a new to-do list.
- Rosewood farms
- Farms in the Rosewood fief
- Continue development of crops in greenhouse 1
- Continue development of crops in greenhouse 2
- Reformulate fertiliser for wheat W12.8a
- …
Ren Xiyang’s list accidentally turned into a list of his new ideas for future agricultural research, before he remembered to add other tasks such as ‘expand schools’, ‘admin’ and ‘accounting’.
Once done, he opened the window between the carriage interior and the front of the carriage, so that he could talk to Kel, who was sitting with the driver.
“Kel, can you come in here to talk about the Rosewood Group?”
Kel pursed her lips. “Is this about work?”
Ren Xiyang nodded.
Kel’s face became stern. “No work! You must rest, my Lord!”
“But I can sit and talk—”
“Please rest, my Lord. We cannot bear to have you work while injured. You’re always telling us to take sick leave whenever we’re sick or injured!”
Ren Xiyang: “…” Defeated by his own instructions. “You’re right, Kel. I’ll rest now.”
Kel gave a big smile of relief. “Thank you, my Lord!”
Ren Xiyang closed the window and leaned back.
Well. There weren’t many things he could do by himself with what he had at hand.
He looked at his to-do list, and his eyes slowly went down to the item at the bottom of the list.
- Rian
His mind automatically skittered from his subconscious thoughts and looked elsewhere on the list.
Rn Xiyang curled his fingers and exhaled.
Think about Rian.
His thoughts went silent as his mind filled with flashes of images and stirrings of unidentified emotions.
He couldn’t keep ignoring things.
Ren Xiyang covered his eyes with his hands.
He needed to think about it.
His stomach fluttered with unease.
Oh, damn it, maybe those feelings he had been having weren’t gender envy.
Maybe it was because he liked him.
Like him, like him, like him, his subconscious thoughts echoed.
Ren Xiyang’s ears and face grew warm. Like, in a romantic way.
Rian’s mischievous smile and wink appeared in Ren Xiyang’s mind. Rian’s duelling pose appeared in Ren Xiyang’s mind. Rian’s collected poise while talking to other nobles appeared in Ren Xiyang’s mind.
Rian was objectively very attractive and handsome.
Ren Xiyang’s heart started beating faster, the traitor.
I like him.
Now that Ren Xiyang had admitted it to himself, his subconscious mind offered a new flood of images and ideas—hugging, holding hands, kissing, undressing each other—
One could almost see the steam rising from Ren Xiyang’s head.
It took Ren Xiyang longer than he wanted to admit to clear away the images and return to the topic at hand.
Okay, he liked Rian, so what?
He didn’t even know if Rian was attracted to men. They had never actually talked about each other’s orientations.
But if he thought back to how Rian acted…
The way Rian often met with him.
The way Rian was quite jealous of Florence for no particular reason.
But that was just Rian being Rian, just boys being boys, just princes being princes, right?
—But then there was the way Rian’s thumb caressed his arm earlier today.
What if he likes you too? a little voice whispered.
—But then again, Rian had been very close to Ren Xiyang for a long time, for almost as long as they had known each other. The way Rian acted hadn’t really changed. So Rian didn’t like him romantically, surely? Rian couldn’t have been in unrequited love for over two years, surely?
Ren Xiyang felt a pang of guilt at the thought. No way, surely not, Rian always spoke his mind around him! Rian wouldn’t, couldn’t, hide such a big thing. Could Rian hide such a big feeling??
Ren Xiyang made a face. Why were feelings harder than doing taxes?
With thoughts chasing thoughts around his head, Ren Xiyang opened up a new sheet in his notebook and made dot points: what he knew, what he didn’t, and how he could go forward.
In the Imperial carriage, Rian had the sudden urge to sneeze. He suppressed it, but not after Count Aegean gave him a suspicious look.
In the beginning, Duke Mauveine and Count Aegean sat opposite him, and they had stared at him in silence for a good few minutes.
They both looked stressed, tired, and a bit haggard around the edges.
Which made Rian a little guilty, but not repentant.
“Do you have anything else you’d like to tell us?” Duke Mauveine broke the silence.
“It depends on what you mean,” Rian said.
Count Aegean scowled. “You understand perfectly well what we mean. How long have you been planning all this? Do you understand the consequences of your actions? Do you still want to be Crown Prince of Sedaveria?”
Ren Xiyang: There’s no way Rian could hide something so big—
Rian: Hey!!
Ren Xiyang: —and have an unrequited love for so many years.
Rian: ….…..….….….. (;ﾞ°´ω°´)
It sounds like everyone likes reading a least a little bit of politics so…I will try hard to include some 😅😅
However! That means seeing more of the [actual] side characters and less of Ren Xiyang and Rian so….. You’ve picked your poison right? ;P