Prince Aidan should never have been able to pull it off.
The Kingdom was too vast. Even a king who tried to stop its war machine from rolling forward would be crushed beneath it, let alone a prince ranked outside the top ten in the line of succession.
Yet he had found an opening, a loophole:
The Kingdom could not admit Prince Aidan was involved without losing face and violating its own rules, much less bow to the Elves. And Prince Aidan was determined to start a war. If the Elves failed to catch him, he would keep causing destruction. If they did catch him, he could claim he had acted on the Kingdom's orders.
Either way, war was the only path left for the Kingdom and the Elves.
Annan felt the third prince was not telling the whole truth. What grudge could Prince Aidan bear against the country that had raised him and even given him his surname? Why would he want to drag it into war?
And how did the third prince know so much about what was going on behind the scenes?
"Why do you know all this?" Annan asked. Watching the Third Prince, who had also broken the "rules" time and again, he began to form a suspicion.
The Third Prince's eyes were as deep as still pools, but now complex emotions churned within them—anger, disappointment, and a trace of sorrow that was hard to detect.
"Because... I've been covering for him and letting him do as he pleased all along."
"So even now, you still want to protect him?" Annan looked at the grieving Third Prince, then blurted out, "That doesn't sound like something a man who was using him would say."
"Why do you say that?" His emotions gradually receded, and the masked distance