Chapter 192: Dragon Intelligence
Sunlight poured through the high windows in long columns, dust drifting slowly through each shaft of light — like fragments left over from time itself cracking apart.
A faint floral scent moved through the air, mixing with the occasional birdsong from outside. The reception room was very quiet.
Draudillon stood near the window. The hem of her pale pink dress caught the light along its edge, turning soft gold. Against the backlight, her silhouette looked even smaller than it usually did — like a flower that had been forgotten in a corner.
Sebas stepped forward half a pace, the hem of his black tailcoat shifting with the movement.
"I'd like to understand certain... legends and capabilities relating to dragons." He measured each word, his eyes on Draudillon. "The relationship between the founding of the Dragon Kingdom and the dragon connected to it, specifically. And any records about that dragon."
Draudillon's gaze dropped somewhere unfocused, as though she were searching through memories that had been sealed away for a long time.
"The Dragon Kingdom was founded by my great-grandfather — the Brightness Dragon Lord. And the dragon lineage you're asking about, Sebas-san... I do carry it."
Her voice had gone quieter than before, touched with something like wistfulness.
Sebas filed the title away in silence: Brightness Dragon Lord.
But with that answer came a deeper question. His gaze settled on Draudillon. She caught the unspoken meaning before he could form the words.
The corner of her mouth curved — a brief, self-mocking arc.
"I didn't inherit my great-grandfather's power."
Her voice carried a quiet undercurrent of resignation that she didn't quite manage to suppress.
"If I had inherited even half his strength, the Dragon Kingdom wouldn't have been treated this way by the beastman nation."
Sebas lowered his gaze and quietly noted this: the offspring of a dragon and a human has drastically reduced power.
"Your Majesty," he began, with careful deliberateness. "In that case — the Dragon Kingdom's struggle against the beastman nation... why didn't your great-grandfather intervene?"
Draudillon didn't answer immediately.
The wind from the open window stirred her long black hair. Sunlight lay across her shoulders and made that young, girlish face look all the more delicate. Several breaths passed.
"He doesn't care whether the Dragon Kingdom lives or dies."
Her voice was as light as a feather landing on still water.
"If he were willing to act, the beastman nation would never have dared to be this brazen."
Sebas's brow drew together. This degree of estrangement and indifference toward one's own descendants was beyond what he understood blood ties to mean.
"Why?"
Draudillon looked through the window at the blue sky over the distant rooftops.
"Because dragons are powerful, long-lived, and difficult to understand. Decades mean nothing to a dragon — they're a blink. Human kingdoms rise and fall. Generations are born and grow old. To a dragon, that probably looks the way we watch an anthill being built and then collapsing."
She brought her gaze back to him.
"A dragon with no need to worry about its own survival will often do things beyond human understanding, driven purely by whims. The Dragon Kingdom..." She paused. "It might only have been my great-grandfather's idle experiment. Or perhaps he simply founded it because he was bored."
The curve at the corner of her mouth barely qualified as a smile.
"Even my own existence may be nothing more than part of that experiment."
The reception room went quiet.
Sebas looked at the small figure in front of him. Something moved behind his eyes that couldn't easily be named.
"...I'm sorry," he said, quietly.
Draudillon shook her head.
"Don't apologize. I've been used to facing things alone for a long time. And so has the Dragon Kingdom."
She said it calmly. But in the last few words, something dry and faintly bitter crept into her voice without her permission.
Beneath the soft, childish "adorable" presentation — beneath the performance — something that was genuinely Draudillon's own was showing through.
Lakyus was standing a few steps away, watching.
Her eyes went wide.
The small girl who had just been holding her hands and calling her "little sister" in that soft, babyish voice — that same girl now had a weight behind her eyes that had no business being there at her apparent age. A fatigue worn smooth by years of grinding against something that wouldn't give.
The innocent brightness in those large eyes was gone. What had replaced it was the quiet settled resignation of someone who accepted things long ago.
"...Your Majesty?"
Lakyus asked it hesitantly. She couldn't quite reconcile the girl who had been soft-talking at her a moment ago with this sudden atmosphere of a woman who had been carrying something alone for far too long.
Draudillon's body went briefly, almost imperceptibly, still.
She snapped back to herself. Blinked — the expression of someone startled awake from somewhere far away. Then she looked down at herself: the pale pink dress, the body that looked like a porcelain doll.
The Queen's shoulders pulled tight.
Terrible. She'd let her real feelings slip.
Draudillon moved quickly. She rearranged her expression, rebuilt the innocent, cheerful smile, and put her voice back in its soft, rounded register.
"Hmm?" She tilted her head, arranged her face into the picture of complete obliviousness. "What's wrong, Lakyus-san?"
Then, as though suddenly remembering a damage-control technique, she raised one hand and made a point of wiping the corner of her eye. The gesture was large — deliberately visible.
"Wuu... talking about the beastman nation makes me so frightened... it's only because of Lord Lucian and Sebas-san that the Dragon Kingdom managed to pull through." She buried her face in both hands. Her shoulders made small shuddering movements. Dry, unconvincing sob sounds emerged from between her fingers.
The sounds did not particularly resemble actual crying.
Draudillon's fingers quietly parted, just wide enough to let one eye dart rapidly across everyone in the room.
Lucian, standing just inside the door, caught the entire performance from start to finish.
The corner of his mouth twitched.
The acting was so obviously staged that only someone determined to believe it could manage to. Even if she was going to fake being pitiful, she could at least cover the peeking eye. The gap between those fingers was wide enough for him to see that eye rotating — if she tried this on a street corner in the capital, she'd be lucky to get two copper pieces out of the crowd.
And yet —
Lakyus moved.
Two steps forward, closing the distance. Her approach was careful — the way you move toward a small animal that might startle at any moment. She bent down, reached out, and gently drew the still-fake-sobbing Queen into her arms.
"Your Majesty..."
Her voice was quiet and warm, filled with something that bordered on maternal.
"You've had it very hard, haven't you."
She said "Your Majesty" — but the arms holding Draudillon were arranged exactly like a mother settling a daughter who had been crying too long and needed to stop.