The Crown Prince In Hiding

Chapter 23

Redbone

Knight Studies.

While the students were getting ready to head out to the grass field,

Princess Nora, in the changing room, was still stuck on the image from this morning.

Nora felt certain that what she’d seen this morning was another side of Mr.Fury.

What had made him so taut—all of it came from Rafinya meddling with the thing he loved and lived for.

It wasn’t as if Nora didn’t understand.

She glanced to her right. At the far end of the bench… was Rafinya.

Rafinya herself seemed quiet all morning… after seeing Dan like that.

Nora had no idea what Rafinya was thinking now, but if she tried anything strange—which Nora believed would happen again—

it might not end well.

The whistle blew for assembly. Nora pulled her socks snug and stood to go out.

On the grass, Dan Burn was warming up.

“What do you think the instructor’s having us do today?”

“Feels like it’ll be combat drills.”

Dan nodded.

“Mr.Fury.”

“?”

“Are you angry at Rafinya?”

Nora asked it straight.

“Getting angry at a kid is pointless.”

“And this morning… were you angry?”

“I was angrier at myself for being so shallow.”

He didn’t answer Nora directly, leaving it for her to chew on.

Beeeeep!

The whistle shrieked.

Instructor Soros appeared and bellowed across the entire field—a signal everyone knew meant hell had arrived.

For students who deliberately dropped Knight Studies, they didn’t have to put on their best performance, but they still had to participate.

Today was obstacle endurance training from the Knight track—in simple terms, a mini version of “military training,” consisting of running, rope climbs, crawling through obstacles—meant to build physical strength… in the Knight style, and in the style of this world.

“Owwww!!! I can’t! I can’t do it, instructor!”

Nora heard the distant shriek of the bookish type like Christina. Others showed it in similar ways: some kept straight faces but were exhausted, some lay flat in surrender. If you liked this, you loved it; if you hated military training, these two hours were real hell.

“Tired, are you? Go be tired somewhere else!”

Maybe because second year was close—whatever the reason—Instructor Soros seemed especially furious.

Even so, for Nora, this was easy stuff.

Princess Nora, hair tied in a knot, climbed the rope to the upper platform, her long, lithe body supported by both arms.

At the top, Dan reached out a hand. She took it, and he pulled her up.

“Thank you, Mr.Fury.”

{ What bloody nonsense about asthma! If you’re really on the verge of dying, it’ll disappear on its own! Bratty little runts! }

Instructor Soros’s voice snarled through the amplifier at the kids below to get up the rope. Nora glanced that way, then back.

“How would asthma just disappear? What is he even saying?”

“I think he’s not entirely wrong. I don’t know.”

“Mr.Fury?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think that kind of thing is more in the mind.”

“Really?”

“But I’m no doctor—no need to believe me.”

Nora propped a hand under her chin, thinking a little.

“Mm… do they train like this in Diablo?”

“What a strange question.”

!

Just then… the one climbing up after them—Rafinya.

She’d started later and was released later…

Nora and Dan turned.

“Why bring up those demons out of nowhere?”

“I was just curious.”

Rafinya looked on, expressionless.

“Savage demons like them don’t need training like this.”

Rafinya hopped past Dan and Nora and dropped down to the next station…

“…”

Dan stared after her… while Nora’s face tightened—unsure whether to flinch at having let Rafinya overhear the last line, or at Rafinya’s insult right to the prince’s face.

“…Truth is, she’s right in her own way. We don’t have anything like this.”

Dan shrugged.

“The weak just die. Simple as that.”

“Are you saying your soldiers are like that from birth?”

“Yes.”

Dan nodded.

“We don’t have sword-dance lessons or boxing or anything.”

“You should try taking boxing class.”

“Are you suggesting I become even more dangerous than I already am?”

“I take it back. Forget I said anything.”

“Boxing, huh? Mmm? You have a point.”

“Please don’t. Humanity already sees no way out as it is.”

“You talk like I’m a natural disaster.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I feed you, water you, grill you fish every day, and this is the thanks I get?”

“Just teasing, Mr.Fury.”

Rafinya slid down from the rope tower and sprinted toward the next instructor station.

However…

Behind that calm face, a thought had caught.

The truth was, this wasn’t the first time Rafinya had heard Nora and Dan talk about “Diablo.”

She’d heard it many times before, at different moments.

Nora brought up Diablo often—and asked about it bluntly, out of the blue.

What ordinary person talks about Diablo like that?

All she could do was wonder…

And then, after a while… from that sediment of suspicion, combined with the almost-faded memory of all those teeth she’d seen in Dan’s mouth that time—

it all fused, making Rafinya stop mid-stride.

…She froze in the middle of the field.

A question mark popped up—

A few lines connected themselves in her head, forming a state of huh? for Rafinya.

Could it be that…

the art he wielded… was tied to Diablo?

Night falls—twelve-oh-two a.m.

The dorms were locked; the rule was that students were forbidden to wander. Everyone had to be in bed.

But you know how it is—someone who’d already been sent to the discipline office twice like Rafinya didn’t care about rules like that. She broke them whenever she felt like it.

The window slid open; moonlight washed softly over Rafinya’s stern face—she’d been waiting for this moment.

She climbed out from the fourth floor of the dorm. In just three or four seconds, she vaulted, touched down on brick and balconies in two or three beats, and landed cleanly.

Child’s play.

Rafinya took off at a run, vaulted the four-meter gate, swept past the fountain and the academy guards, and headed for the structure farthest from the dorms.

Professor McClaff’s office.

A private space that contained information on new kinds of magic and numerous research spells not yet made public—all collected into tomes on the bookcase behind his desk.

Originally, Professor McClaff never kept valuables in his office. If a thief broke in, all he’d get would be paper, paper, and more paper—and he wouldn’t even understand what was written on it.

So the security wards were only mid-level.

Which made it easy for Rafinya to break the lock and slip inside.

Because right now, the thought in her head was this:

whatever magic—or technique—Dan used… might be a new art that lets humans “imitate” the Diablo people’s power.

If Mathema was researching technology to replicate Diablo biology—

then why couldn’t Velmount devise something like that?

The more she thought about it, the more it made sense that the punch that time had sent her back to the feeling of the first sword blow she’d ever taken.

And it made even more sense that Princess Nora Ophilis would go so far as to cozy up to him.

And nothing would click more neatly than Casca Saint Maximin seeing the potential of such magic and wanting to recruit Dan to fight alongside her.

If Dan was a user of mimicry magic—or whatever you call it—then when he said he’d learned it from Velmount… that might… be true?

Rafinya searched the shelves—book after book—stacking them to the side, until she pulled out one volume…

She stopped… lifted it and brushed off the white dust. Clear red letters on the cover:

REDBONE

On the Landmass of Diablo.

(Redbone: On the islands of the Diablo people)

—An important record by Sir Harry Kane.

Sir Harry Kane—

A Velmount hero whom Rafinya knew.

....And she began to read.