Chapter 9

At the royal garden party, Nicholas pretended to read a book while observing which children were whose and what their personalities were like. However, he was thinking that the problem was that children's faces change a lot as they grow up.

Just as the party was about to end, he sensed someone behind him and turned around.

There stood a girl about Nicholas's age.

She stood out from the crowd.

Her hair was ice blue, and her eyes were deep purple.

That alone was quite rare, but she also had deep purple lipstick on her lips.

His eyes were immediately drawn to her lips,

"Is it true you can't read yet? I can't believe it. What kind of picture book is that? It looks like a baby's book."

And venom spewed from those lips.

It was the first time he had been so boldly and openly insulted, and Nicholas was taken aback.

But when he noticed that the people around him were laughing, he immediately switched his mindset. He calculated what the best course of action would be given the attention he was receiving.

In the end, he decided that it would be best to leave the venue with a hurt look on his face.

This would probably please the queen, and he wouldn't have to deal with the girl he had just met—Martina Olbrant, the daughter of the Marquis of Rinsel.

Nicholas basically didn't speak to people he met for the first time.

He had learned from experience that it was dangerous to interact with someone before he knew what kind of person they were.

Afterward, it seemed that the fact that she had openly insulted the king's son in a public place became an issue, but it was quickly hushed up. It was obvious whose hand was behind it.

The next garden party came soon after.

And for some reason, Martina Olbrant also arrived soon after.

Though it was no longer their first meeting, she was still largely unknown to him.

Nicholas furrowed his brow and showed his rejection by remaining silent, but she did not back down and seemed to anger even more.

"Why can't you learn to read? It's not that hard. Why can't you do it?"

"Where are your friends? Why can't you play with all these people?"

"Hey, why don't you say anything? Can't you speak? Are you sick?"

She bombarded him with questions like water pouring over a board.

This was why Nicholas sighed inwardly at the thought of interacting with people he didn't know well.

Moreover, her anger showed no sign of subsiding, and she continued to insult him throughout the garden party, leaving Nicholas to wonder when she would finally be satisfied.

From then on, he encountered Martina Olbrant at a rate that could only be explained by someone pulling strings behind the scenes.

Nicholas, as always, continued to observe her.

She was a mysterious girl.

For some reason, she always confronted Nicholas, no matter what.

Even in public, her direct and unfiltered words and actions would surely lower her own dignity. Why were her parents letting her get away with it?

Had the queen instructed them to turn a blind eye?

Probably so.

However, it was questionable whether the queen herself was pulling the strings.

Because whenever someone else tried to interfere, she would glare at them fiercely and never team up with them to gang up on him.

Most importantly, she never brought up her older brother, Prince Albert.

If the queen was behind it, she would surely have made her compare herself to her older brother, but she never did, which was unnatural.

In any case, if her attacks were not a desperate attempt to get his attention, disregarding all dignity and social skills, then the conclusion of his observations led to only one place.

—She had a high probability of having special feelings for him.

Nicholas took this conclusion very seriously.

Special feelings, especially infatuation, can make people fools without limit.

In fact, Nicholas had seen several cases where multiple men and women had lost their composure due to the intricacies of love and infatuation.

Moreover, there were historical figures like the beauty who brought down a kingdom, or the tragic love between a noble and a commoner, which were recorded in history books, albeit with some embellishment, as significant events.

And there was a characteristic courtship behavior in boys during adolescence, where they would misbehave to get attention from a girl they liked.

She was a girl, but it couldn't be said that only boys engaged in such behavior.

Since the sample size of children was still insufficient, more data was needed to re-evaluate this.

Despite this, Martina Olbrant continued to cause a commotion unilaterally, and gradually more children joined in.

Among them were boys who seemed to be trying to get Martina Olbrant's attention, but she ignored them and even intimidated them with a blatant glare.

At times, he sensed a hint of madness in her behavior.

Her lack of social skills, which were essential for a noble, remained unchanged, and this would eventually lead to the loss of her social network. She had already lost her friends, so she must have realized it.

Yet, she continued to insult the second prince.

A short-lived passion could be understood, but a passion that continued over time and across days was abnormal, especially when directed at someone she might have feelings for.

It could be dismissed as just a child's behavior.

However, the historical figures mentioned earlier were examples of people who had gone to extremes due to a certain kind of obsession and delusion. And this was not limited to romantic feelings.

Throwing oneself into something with all one's might, to the point of leaving a name in history, whether for a great achievement or a great misdeed, was a type of person considered an outlier among humans.

Nicholas had only read about such people in books and had never met one in person. If she was truly a unique individual, there was no more valuable sample.

He was looking forward to observing her more closely when he was expelled from the royal garden party for having a bad influence on the children.

Being separated from his object of interest left Nicholas quite dissatisfied, but soon after, Martina Olbrant was proposed as the second prince's fiancée.

It seemed to be the queen's arrangement, and Nicholas was genuinely grateful for this harassment.

This way, she would accompany him as his fiancée at every event. The queen would surely make sure of it.

Thus, on the day they met as fiancés, Nicholas stood before her with the feeling of having captured a fine prey.

Years passed since they became engaged, but Martina continued to insult him.

In a way, this meant that her courtship behavior had been repeated for that long, but it was no longer just a matter of adolescent behavior.

She was, in a sense, a true believer.

She saw nothing but one thing, ignoring everything else.

She lived in a world where only Nicholas existed.

Despite knowing that her insults would only lead to a breakdown, she couldn't stop.

What else could this be called but pathological?

Nicholas was, of course, satisfied that his valuable sample was genuine, but he had hit a wall.

He lacked the confidence to continue observing Martina from a third-person perspective.

Nicholas had a deep understanding of aesthetics. He knew the power of beauty on humans and was well-versed in the ratios of facial features and the proportions of an ideal appearance.

Martina was so beautiful that she could be called the epitome of an ideal.

Her wavy ice-blue hair was so fine and transparent that it was a wonder it didn't melt to the touch, and her deepening evening eyes gently sloped, emitting a scent of night with every blink.

Her sensual curves, always wrapped in dark brown dresses, accentuated her pearl-like skin.

But above all, what captivated him was her lips.

Laden with deep purple, they were irresistibly soft and inviting.

Her passion always spilled from those lips.

She was like the embodiment of the "Queen of the Night," a symbol of carnal desire described in the Bible, rushing to his side the moment she saw him.

Just looking at her, just hearing her voice, aroused improper desires.

At first, he tried to push these desires to the back of his mind, attributing them to the reproductive instincts that come with physical growth, but it was difficult to suppress youthful instincts with reason alone.

Then, he could just act on them.

As long as he didn't cross the final line, there should be no problem.

It would be interesting to see how she would react if he made a sexual advance, and it would be a two-for-one deal if it relieved the frustration that clouded his objective thinking.

But Nicholas didn't do it.

He knew why.

Observing Martina was enjoyable for him.

It was enjoyable to watch a woman who should reign over the night become so obsessed with one man that she was on the verge of breaking down.

Imagining her inner turmoil and dilemma was exhilarating.

So, he didn't want to easily relieve her suffering.

—Sadism.

No, it was a bit too strong to call it sadism.

Because Nicholas was doing nothing.

He was just watching her come at him, spew venom, and self-destruct.

If anything, it was a fascination with venom.

In any case, it was a form of sexual perversion, and he no longer believed he could maintain objective thinking even if he removed his reproductive instincts.

This was a kind of obsession, which, in a broad sense, could be categorized as a form of love.

When he realized this, he was quite surprised.

He chuckled, realizing he had such a human side.

He felt that the more he indulged in her venom, the more he would be poisoned, but it was too late, and he continued to indulge in the festering poison without getting tired of it.

In this way, Nicholas enjoyed his days with Martina in his own way.

A subtle change occurred after his older brother, Albert, was appointed as the crown prince.

By this time, he could no longer avoid speaking to people he met for the first time, and he was interacting with people in a way befitting a noble, wearing a mask of a polite smile.

So, he had noticed.

He noticed that his older brother, Prince Albert, was at odds with their mother, the queen, and was protecting his half-brother, Nicholas, by restraining the slander and insults directed at him.

Nicholas found this unpleasant.

Originally, Albert's protection of Nicholas was not out of pure kindness.

He wanted to include Nicholas as a convenient spare in the crown prince's faction in case something happened to him.

Nicholas was considered incompetent, but as long as a competent administration was in place to carry out the prince's will, the rest would be taken care of by those around him.

This was a commendable strategy as a ruler, and Nicholas had no complaints about it.

The problem was that Albert did not approve of Nicholas's fiancée.

It was an open secret that Nicholas's engagement to Martina was a result of the queen's harassment, and Albert was trying to rectify it.

Every time they met, he would try to push for the annulment of the engagement, and Nicholas would gently refuse, pretending to be concerned for his busy older brother, but he was annoyed that Albert would meddle in their relationship without understanding the situation.

He could honestly say that he had no intention of breaking off the engagement with Martina, but if he did, he would surely be asked for a reason.

Their relationship was too complex and intricate to explain in words. Most importantly, even if Nicholas found Martina appealing, he doubted Albert would understand her charm.

But Albert, thinking that his younger brother was being modest, became even more insistent and started to act on his own, so Nicholas decided to take a hard line.

He exposed all the corruption from the ministers to the minor officials in the crown prince's faction and presented a report to his older brother.

He threatened them not to speak out about these matters to the still-breathing queen's faction.

He immediately regretted his actions.

He had lost his cool and made a rash decision.

The second prince, who was considered incompetent, had exposed the flaws of his own family that even the crown prince was unaware of.

It was obvious that his environment would change drastically.

Albert stopped interfering with Nicholas's engagement to Martina as requested, but he completely changed the way he looked at Nicholas.

He was no longer a brother to be protected but a brother to be utilized.

He was now assigning work to Nicholas with a full smile and even pressing him to share his observations of the major nobles.

When Nicholas asked how he knew, it seemed that Conrad had let it slip.

Nicholas tried to refuse, but Albert threatened him, saying that if he didn't ensure that the throne was secure, it would be his turn next.

As expected of someone who was to be the crown prince, he was not easy to deal with, and Nicholas found himself thinking for the first time that his older brother was rather annoying.

In any case, Nicholas thought that the danger of the engagement being annulled was over.

Rumors of the annulment were circulating among the crown prince's faction, but he thought it was fine to let them speculate.

He knew Martina wouldn't be intimidated by such rumors.

That day, she was sitting in his office, spewing venom as usual, so he didn't expect what happened next.

She suddenly became flustered and collapsed in front of a bewildered Nicholas like a puppet whose strings had been cut.