The Evil Emperor's Fragile Heart

Bella's face went very pale and she fixed her gaze on the captured man, looking at him carefully. Jules could practically see the instant comprehension dawned on her and she staggered back.

Jules immediately slipped his arm around his fiancée's slender waist, steadying her.

"It's all right, Bella," he murmured softly. "I'm here. It's fine. It's all fine," he murmured in a soothing voice.

King Jaren narrowed his eyes. "This is a ghost corpse, isn't it?" he asked.

Queen Carolina nodded. "Yes, my late husband's spirit seems to be resurrected. I'm not sure how his body looks identical to his own when he was still alive," she murmured. "As far as I know, necromancy can only resurrect corpses in their decayed form, not their original bodies," she added.

Bella let out a soft cry. "This man…he really – is he really my father?" she asked, her eyes fixed on her mother Queen Carolina, and filling up with tears.

Jules's arm tightened around Bella's waist in a protective movement.

Bella leaned into her fiancé's embrace and hid her face in Jules's shoulder.

Queen Carolina sighed. "I never wanted you to find out about this, my dear child," she murmured sadly.

"There is nothing for either you or Bella to be worried about, Mother," Jules said firmly. He glared at the captured ghost corpse in the sparkling green magical net of Mana. "And as far as this ghost corpse is concerned – we will simply contain him until we know what to do with him," he declared.

The captured ghost corpse of Bella's father burst into merry peals of laughter. "What a chivalrous young man, this great Crown Prince Jules of the Emerald Kingdom!" he mocked. "No wonder you are so desperate to marry off your only daughter to this young fellow – look at how he is protecting little Bella even though he doesn't know anything about her origins – or about me – or about how I died. Isn't that right, oh so great Queen Carolina?" He laughed madly, and his eyes appeared even crazier than before.

Mana could now see why something had felt off about the man right from the start. The crazy eyes were actually proof that he wasn't human any more!

"I know the truth already," Jules said firmly – his voice soft, but with a hint of steel and perfectly showcasing his attitude towards his beloved fiancée. "Mother already told me all about it a long time ago, and both of us felt that it was not something which Bella needed to know for now. We wanted to leave you as a happy memory in Bella's mind – but well, now you have gone and ruined it with your own cold hands." Jules's two eyes of different colours glowed brightly with his magic.

For the first time since he had been caught in Mana's magical net – the captured ghost corpse seemed to be at a loss. He stared at Jules in shock and then turned to Queen Carolina.

Queen Carolina was beaming at Jules with a very, very proud look on her face, thanking all her stars and the high heavens that her little Bella had the great fortune to meet this magnificent young man and win his heart over. After all, even to those people on the outside and spread all over their world, the fame of Crown Prince Jules of the Emerald Kingdom had spread very wide – to all places far and near, and Crown Prince Jules of the Emerald Kingdom was someone universally admired and much loved by the people of all countries – especially the Emerald Kingdom (which was completely natural, since Jules was their much loved Crown Prince Jules after all) and the Sapphire Kingdom, which had claimed him as its own almost immediately upon seeing him with their beloved Crown Princess Bella of the Sapphire Kingdom.

And the young couple of Crown Prince Jules of the Emerald Kingdom and Crown Princess Bella of the Sapphire Kingdom was most certainly the best known and best loved and best blessed couple in their entire world – everyone simply loved them, and the two of them fitted so well together that they immediately made the others want to fall in love and find their own soul mates like this. They did give rise to envy, yes – but more than that, they gave rise to a feeling of harmony, and even he envy was not malicious most of the time.

Mana always felt that her Big Brother Jules and Big Sister Bella were the couple for whom words like "match made in heaven" and "made for each other" and "perfect match" were the best suited!

"You – you really know all about it?" the captured ghost corpse asked in a quiet voice, looking at Jules steadily. "Do you really know about how I betrayed Queen Carolina and the Sapphire Kingdom, and how the great Queen Carolina killed me with her own hands?"

Bella's face lost all colour.

"Yes," Jules said simply. "I know everything."

"And you still want to marry Bella?" the captured ghost corpse asked in a strange voice, as if trying to test Jules's will and determination as well as his love and dedication and a measure of his affection for Bella.

Mana and King Jaren and even Raven could have told him upfront that their Big Brother Jules, the great and magnificent Crown Prince Jules of the Emerald Kingdom was truly, madly, deeply in love with the amazingly smart and talented and beautiful Crown Princess Bella of the Sapphire Kingdom – and things like these didn't matter to him at all. Jules loved Bella for who she was as a person, and he loved everything from the top of her hair to the tip of her toes with a devout and dogged dedication that would stand any test of love in this world or in any other world. And since who Jules loved was Bella herself and not anything else, it didn't matter to him what other people around her did or didn't.

Besides, if Bella's father had been a cheat who had betrayed his own wife and the very same Sapphire Kingdom that had raised him to the position of the King Consort and lavished him with affection and reverence – then that was a problem with Bella's father, a problem of the previous generation – and besides, it had already been resolved by Queen Carolina herself with her own hands – and the only thing she had made a mistake with was not telling Bella the truth about her treacherous and traitorous father. But you couldn't really blame Queen Carolina – after all, she was only trying to protect the sole child she had, the child he loved and cherished more than anything else in the world. And Queen Carolina had believed (whether rightly or wrongly – that was a completely different matter altogether and probably not even the slightest bit relevant for any of the thoughts or thought processes that Jules would have gone through anyway – and there was quite a high chance that Jules would actually have tended to agree more with Queen Carolina rather than logic or reason or anyone else's opinion – both Jules and Queen Carolina – not to mention King Jaren – were very, very fiercely protective of their lovely Bella) that not letting Bella learn the truth at a young age would at least let her remain blissfully ignorant for a long time – in fact, she had probably hoped and prayed with all her might that Bella would never, ever have to get to know about this entire matter of how her own biological father had been a deadly spy instead who had gotten so deep into the Sapphire Kingdom and blended in so well with everything that even the Queen of the Sapphire Kingdom herself would be completely and utterly taken in by his charm and his pretences and that Queen Carolina herself, who had always been known and revered for her acuity, reasonability, coldness and so on – would completely and utterly fall into his trap like an innocent little rabbit.

Had this man ever felt any remorse what he had done and how he had betrayed the most sacred of all relationships and the most sacrosanct of all trust in the world and in the heavens? Had he ever even had the slightest of regard and the slightest of affection for the grand queen who had bestowed her love and trust and everything upon this man who did not deserve even the smallest iota of it? And if he did have even the smallest hint of any affection at all for his wife Queen Carolina, did he not have the any feelings of guilt or any regret or any hesitation while so heartlessly trying to assassinate the very wife that he had promised to love and cherish and protect? And what about his baby daughter – was the bond of blood so thin, and did it have any value or any relevance or any effect on this man, or did he completely not care about anything besides his own goal? Not even a child of his own blood?