Leave the Villainous Second Male Lead Alone - Chapter 8.11

The soldier bowed his head. Between gasps for air, he delivered the grim news.

“Admiral, a message from the capital… His Majesty the Emperor has passed away.”

Callisto’s face hardened, his expression turning to stone.

The emperor had been bedridden for over a decade. His illness was so severe that his death was long expected. In hindsight, the timing made sense. Even in The Prince’s Blade, the emperor’s death occurred shortly after Callisto’s forces defeated Roen’s rebellion.

However, the cause of death seemed to differ from the original storyline. In the original, Roen wasn’t killed in battle; instead, he was captured by the rebel forces and executed. His head was severed twelve times by the executioner and displayed on the walls surrounding the imperial palace, left to rot for months.

The sickly and frail emperor could not endure the sight of his son being so brutally murdered—not out of love for Roen, but because Callisto had mockingly paraded Roen’s mutilated body before him. By the time Roen’s remains were nothing but carrion for crows, the emperor passed away alone in the desolate palace.

But this time…

“The imperial guard assassinated His Majesty?”

“Yes, Admiral…”

Callisto gazed out the window with an unreadable expression. The sky was streaked with the faint hues of dusk, scattered with a few drifting clouds. A seabird cried mournfully in the distance as it soared overhead.

With the deaths of both his half-brother and his father, Callisto was now the last surviving member of his bloodline.

I reached out to gently stroke the back of his hand, hardened and roughened by years of sea air. It ached to think how much he had endured.

“Was it the Empress?”

Callisto’s lips twitched slightly, as if acknowledging the thought. If the emperor, who was destined to die of illness, had instead been assassinated by the imperial guard, the most likely suspect was indeed the empress.

The messenger, still bowing low, confirmed in a quiet voice, “Yes, Admiral. We don’t have all the details yet, but the current assumption is that the empress orchestrated it.”

But why? Why would the empress do such a thing? I struggled to make sense of the situation.

The empress’s only son, the First Prince Roen, was dead. Surely she would have learned of his defeat and demise by now. With the First Prince gone, the natural successor to the throne was Callisto.

Even though Roen had staged a rebellion, the Feron Empire did not practice collective punishment. The empress couldn’t be deposed based on Roen’s crimes alone. Despite their miserable marriage, the empress’s only remaining shield was the emperor himself. For her to have orchestrated his assassination was akin to handing the throne to Callisto on a silver platter.

“What’s the situation in the palace?”

Callisto pressed the messenger further. Though his voice remained cold and detached, I could sense his unease. The messenger, trembling, could barely respond.

“The empress… after announcing His Majesty’s passing…”

“What?”

Unable to hide my shock, I sprang to my feet.

This was a perilous moment. All the legitimate heirs to the throne were absent from the capital. The First Prince was dead, defeated in the civil war. To announce the emperor’s death under such circumstances would only throw the empire into chaos.

Tradition dictated that the emperor’s death be concealed until a new heir ascended the throne, precisely to avoid such turmoil.

Even Callisto’s fingers stiffened for a moment. After a pause, he spoke.

“If she’s declared his death, she must have announced the next emperor as well.”

“Yes, Admiral…”

The messenger’s confirmation snapped me out of my thoughts. Callisto’s intuition was correct. A traditionalist like the empress wouldn’t announce the emperor’s death without simultaneously naming a successor.

Callisto curled his lips into a cold smile.

“Did she crown herself?”

The messenger flinched but nodded, unable to lift his head.

“I see. The empress has long served as regent, so it’s not surprising she’d take it a step further.”

“Admiral, the empress cannot ascend the throne. The entire empire is in turmoil…”

“Law is made by the emperor. If the empress—no, the new emperor—says it’s right, then it is.”

“But the empress doesn’t have De Visch blood, Admiral. She doesn’t have the sigil of the imperial family. There has never been an emperor without the sigil in the history of the empire.”

Though trembling, the messenger pressed his point. Callisto, however, gazed lazily into the distance.

“Well, does De Visch blood even matter so much? We’re not breeding racehorses.”

“Calli!”

That wasn’t something to say in front of the messenger. Grabbing Callisto’s arm, I quickly gestured for the messenger to leave. Bowing hastily, he retreated.

“Sit down, Calli. Let’s take a moment to clear our heads.”

Callisto followed me to the window-side chair and sank into it heavily. His eyes, sharp and frosty earlier, now seemed dull and unfocused.

I leaned in, cupping his cheeks in both hands. His skin felt unusually cold.

I wiped a thumb over his lip. The bitten skin was raw, and a faint smear of blood stained my finger.

“Brother, I…”

Callisto’s voice cracked as he murmured, almost to himself. I stayed silent, waiting for him to continue.

“I never thought of the emperor as my father. Not once.”

Callisto had fled the imperial palace as an infant and spent his childhood in Wynyeates. Even after reclaiming his title as prince and returning to the empire, he’d had little contact with the emperor.

Though the emperor had tearfully welcomed the return of his long-lost son, his interest in Callisto seemed superficial at best. Save for a brief appearance at Callisto’s victory parade, the emperor had remained bedridden, too ill to engage.

Even when Callisto had gone missing for years, the emperor had made no real effort to find him. To the emperor, Callisto was less a son and more a tool—a convenient counterbalance to the empress’s faction.

“I don’t want to live like that.”

I nodded slowly. Callisto might share the emperor’s blood, but he was nothing like him.

“If you hadn’t taken me in, maybe I would’ve turned out the same,” he added quietly.

“No, Calli. That’s not true.”

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