A King is Born on the Road

The seemingly endless granary area ended, and the wasteland continued until it reached the mountainous area.

In terms of climate or soil, it wouldn’t make much difference, but it felt that it made a big difference whether the Hall family was managing or not.

The party set up tents in the middle of a boring dirt road with no hill and decided to stay overnight.

Iris asked Annamaria, who was acting as a supervisor and urging her subordinates to set up the tents.

“The desert must be more desolate than this, right?”

“No sh… Ah, oh. You’ve never been to the desert, have you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s mysterious when you look at it for a short moment, but it’s a place where you think it’s the land of death if you look at it for a long time.”

“I see.”

The Knights of Tejas seemed to have been to the desert once, but everyone didn’t want to talk about it, as if the memory was terrible.

But they told Iris over and over again that it was not a place to enter on horseback.

When the tents were finished being set up, it was already late at night, and Iris was sitting by the campfire outside for a while, looking at the night sky. It was a night where it seemed like the stars were about to pour down like rain.

As she sat and counted the stars for a while, a guard ran frantically.

“Captain!”

Hayer first checked the news from the guard, and Iris got up with a hunch that something was wrong.

Hayer, who checked the writing on the cloth given by the guard, said to Iris.

“The wedding has been scheduled.”

“What?”

Iris ran and checked the cloth, and there was a letter from the capital.

Annamaria, who checked the letter together next to her, said.

“Isn’t it rather good? If the bride doesn’t show up at the wedding on May 1st, it’s over.”

Iris, whose heart skipped a beat for a moment, was a little relieved by the words, but then started to get nervous again at Hayer’s words.

“The fact that they gave such an exact date must mean that they have something planned.”

He said, and wrote a letter back. It was a letter to Iris’s mother, Celios Lepos, asking about the exact situation.

In Luwan, falcons were usually raised to be used as messenger birds. The falcons of Luwan were small and clever, and the Luwans were good at teaching and raising falcons.

The falcon returned to the capital. Iris kept her eyes on the falcon until it disappeared.

After a while, she asked Hayer.

“Are you familiar with Sid?”

“Yes, of course.”

“…Not a good person.”

Hayer smiled at her words.

“I know.”

Seeing his strange smile, Iris unknowingly clenched her fist and asked.

“…Did he use violence against you, too?”

“Well, don’t brothers grow up fighting?”

“There’s a four-year age difference.”

“That was fine. I grew up quickly.”

Hayer tried to pass it off as if it were a trivial matter, but when he realized that Iris was overly concerned, he looked perplexed.

Eventually he went on.

“It wasn’t much. As I said, I was big from a very early age.”

“……”

Hayer burst into laughter.

“Why do you look like that?”

“Hayer is a man who tells silly jokes all day and never says things that he doesn’t want to talk about even if he dies soon.”

“You want to hear stories I don’t want to tell.”

“……”

“It’s a very bad habit.”

Hayer said that and, without further explanation, gestured toward the tent.

He was friendly and gentle with women, but it was not above the responsibility of a captain.

He was absolute within the Knights of Tejas, and Iris had no choice but to obey Hayer’s orders.

She reluctantly returned to the tent.

Hayer thought it was best not to recall memories he didn’t want to recall. What he hated the most was his father, followed by his brother, and the third was his mother.

* * *

The moon loved the king of Luwan.

In other words, what the moon does not love is not the king, so the king pursues the moon.

In the 25 years since the reign of King Eswa, a full moon has never risen. It always stopped at the quarter moon and the lower waning moon, and returned to the half moon again.

Then, not long ago, a full moon appeared around the time Sid, the eldest son, went to meet Iris Lepos as his wife.

In the middle of the capital of Luwan, the royal family and the nobles remained firm from the moment the full moon rose.

The fact that the moon was full when his son Sid strengthened his position meant that the moon did not love the current king.

This was inevitably considered a religious issue for the Luwans, who believed that the god Tilla determined the king through the moon.

[King Eswa hands over his seat to his son and steps down from the throne]

Not too long ago, such words were written on the square in the middle of the capital.

The culprit was immediately found and executed, but there was no way to calm the noisy citizens of the capital.

At the time of his accession, King Eswa Lepos, a fifteen-year-old boy, sat reclined on the throne as if he was a man of great age.

He looked at the king’s office window in the direction of the moon.

“How can you be so cruel?”

Eswa blamed Tilla with his icy blue eyes.

After the death of the previous king and the accession of Eswa Lepos, the full moon did not rise.

The sages looking for the cause soon found out that Eswa Lepos was born in the belly of a mistress, not as a legitimate child.

Even upon hearing the news, his cousin and the late king’s daughter, Celios Lepos, revealed that she had a child hidden from him.

Eswa feared that something like this might happen, so as soon as the former king died, Celios was confined to the east wing of the royal palace. Nevertheless, she secretly gave birth to the child.

Eswa remembered Celios’s eyes shining with joy at that time.

When it was revealed at the same time that Eswa was not a legitimate child and that Celios had a hidden child, the eight noble families of Luwan were divided into two.

Still, there were those who said that the current king—Eswa’s—legitimate son, should be the first heir to the throne, and those who said that Celios’s child, the former king’s descendant, should be the first to be succeeded to the throne.

The former was called the White Heron because it was centered on the Hall family with the egret as its crest, and the latter was called the Black Swan because it was centered on the elders of the Everhart family who used the black bird in their crest.

In this situation, Eswa’s inferiority complex was bound to grow gradually.

Eswa could not relieve his anger even though he killed all the sages who said he was the son of a mistress.

The pain at that time is still piled up, but the moon, which has never been full since he took the throne, is now full.

It was obvious how it would be written in history books.

A king who sits on the throne without the qualifications of a king

The king who was not loved by Tilla.

As Eswa’s resentment against Tilla grew, the corridor around the king’s office became noisy.

King Eswa learned to distinguish these sounds from the time the former king decided to pass the throne to his nephew.

After a while, it was Sid Lepos who entered, the eldest son who made him feel ashamed.

Sid greeted the king and opened his mouth.

“Winter is getting longer. It’s time to revise the overall tax rate, Your Majesty.”

King Eswa clicked his tongue at Sid’s words.

The bride he went to find ran away, but Sid became confident because of the full moon that day. There was no doubt that the moon rose for him.

Sid continued.

“Hasn’t the full moon that you’ve been waiting for so long risen? It’s time to let the citizens know that our royal family is in the care of God Tilla. In other words, it is time to open the hearts of citizens by reducing the tax rate.”

His son is a grandchild of the old fox, Ritero Asheri, and has a resemblance to his wife.

It did not mean that he was ignorant to Sid’s words that meant ‘The full moon, which had not risen throughout the reign of King Eswa, only rose when I inherited the throne.’

He was deliberately raking his father now. It was a signal to step down from the throne and give it to him.

The king could still carry a spear and shield into battle.

He was able to speak again without fear.

With such a man’s desire, the throne was still a pity to give to his own children.

However, when his son came out like this, his judgment twisted.

“What proof is there that the full moon is for you?”

Eswa retorted with a sneer.

afterword

whole royal family fucking sucks besides iris and hayer bye