Sees was a prophet.
Oathria had no doubt about it from the very start.
Not to mention how he could bond with her without a heart, or the sheer will it took to survive without one… but now… this—the cane, the divine light, the way he knew about a birthday not even her closest confidants knew…
So why?
How could anyone call him fake?
"You… knew…" Sees turned, his smile calm but ultimately self-mocking. "I am a fake prophet. I'm sorry, Your Majesty."
Oathria's eyes widened. "What do you mean, 'fake'? What about your heart? Your bond with me? What about this?" she demanded, gesturing sharply with the cane.
Sees looked straight at her, his gaze steady. "It's not my power. Last night, something happened that I don't understand…"
"A power was granted to me by an unknown being. I don't know, maybe more than one. They said I am the ninth…? It's complicated, but I don't think this is the power of a Prophet. It might be from a malicious being, for all I know," he explained honestly.
"What I witnessed was divine. Do you think a Dragon Lord cannot differentiate between the holy and the corrupt?" Oathria now sounded genuinely offended.
"Your Majesty, the real Prophet has taken charge. He can accurately see the future. He can predict the weather and the gender of ten different unborn children," Sees said, a slow, amused smile touching his lips. Why did it feel like he was the one consoling the Dragon Empress?
But it made a kind of sense. Oathria must have thought she'd bonded herself to an amazing man.
He wasn't.
"I'm sorry, my Lady. I know… the thing you're most upset about is perhaps the prophecy from seventeen years ag—"
"It wasn't a prophecy," Oathria sharply cut him off. Her left hand shot to the nape of his neck, pulling him close. "It was an oath."
"Your oath," her eyes bore into his as she whispered, pulling him in until they were mere inches apart. "To me."
She wanted to die by his hands. She must.
"It wasn't about seeing the future. It was about dying at the hands of the one person I respected. The one person who promised to take the burden from me. You."
The woman was furious.
"And if I say you are a prophet," she released him and turned away, her voice final as she strode toward the woods once more, "then you are."
His eyes followed the woman as she walked unhurriedly to the tree line, the new cane floating into her left hand. With a flick of her telekinesis, she lifted scattered branches from the forest floor.
Sees grasped his chest.
His heart was gone, but in its place was an unbearable, swelling fullness.
So Oathria had never misunderstood his words that day. She had never taken his solution for granted. She had come all this way to die by his hand.
He knew what she'd witnessed with the cane could be misinterpreted as divine. Heck, it might be divine. But that wasn't the point.
The point was, to her, he was real.
Prophet or not.
Everything he had done until today, divine or not, was real.
What he had spent his life doing… in her eyes, mattered.
"Lady Oathria," he called out, walking lightly to approach her. "Are you angry?"
[Congratulations! Oathria Alicei's Love Points have increased by 10!]
[Congratulations! Oathria Alicei's Love Points have increased by 10!]
[Congratulations! Oathria Alicei's Love Points have increased by 10!]
The notifications kept ringing in his head, so he whispered a command to turn them off. The moment the system went mute, he concentrated to look deeper into—[+3], [+3], [+3], [+3]—aw, come on, turn that off too!
Ahem. Deeper into Oathria's eyes.
"If what you said was true, then I only became a 'true' prophet last night. Congratulations on bonding with a true prophet, after all," he lifted his chin with pride, his arms akimbo.
Oathria's cold, darkened eyes slowly thawed. The misty grey of her irises seemed to catch the sunlight differently.
"What kind of a fake prophet dares to take my life for me?" the woman patiently asked, once again lifting her face to look closer at him. "Silly child."
Sees smiled and let her see his faint blush. You know what? This woman deserved to see the effect she had.
"And what of your accomplishments until then? Do you not count them as the work of a prophet?" Oathria scoffed coldly. "Did I bond myself to a charity?"
"You did," Sees huffed with pride.
"And what of your prediction about the broken dam of Rugad?" she asked.
Sees scoffed, "That dam staying intact for that long was the miracle. Incompetent bastards…"
"Your instruction to build giant wave breakers with magic on the coast of Ires?"
"That coast was ransacked by a tsunami a hundred years ago and they still took no precaution?" He shook his head tiredly. "And it barely worked. We still need a proper evacuation procedure. They were just lucky last year."
"If not because I was a prophet, they wouldn't even have listened to m—"
Sees rambled on and on, and when he finally looked back at Oathria, he saw her warm smile had returned.
To receive a warm smile this often from such a majestic being…
Unfair.
She was leading him on and on…
"Avalanche precautions… landslide-prone locations… the incentive to close up mines, only for the mine to collapse a week after," the woman listed, a teasing glint in her eyes. "Yes. Our fake prophet is very, very lucky."
"I-I was just… deliberately exploiting my title to get things done!" He snapped, flustered.
"Of course," Oathria nodded sagely. She then softly nudged him with the handle of her new cane. "Why?" she asked, "Did you not notice that I've been following the news about you all these years, just from how much I've talked?"
But the woman suddenly flinched, her eyes widening in horror. "AH! I exposed myself as a cree—"
"PFFFT—AHAHAHAH!"
Suddenly, everything felt light.
Everything felt right.
Sees had never known that a woman he'd met just once had given him this level of respect and admiration.
Usually, even as the Prophet, his words didn't carry as much weight in reality or politics. If he didn't play his cards right, he might as well have tied himself to the stake and lit the fire. Not to mention, he had been a teenager until just seven years ago.
But this woman, whom he had only met once when he was a mere child… had given him more acknowledgement than all the people he had met before or since.
More than the people who came begging for help.
More than the people who used his name for their own agendas.
If he had never been crowned a prophet, living in that world would have been a horrifying fate.
Seeing how Sees's gaze followed the hand she used to carry the new cane, her expression soured slightly. To gift her a cane, of all things. Not that she was ungrateful, the gesture itself was touching, but did he truly see her as a woman in need of a walking aid? A crutch for the crippled?
Well, yes, objectively speaking, one of her legs did have the bone exposed. And yes, she was currently limping. But for a dragon of her power and lineage, such wounds were a temporary inconvenience, an easy fix with enough mana and time. A cane was… so terribly mortal.
"Your Majesty, try to make a fire with your magic using this cane," Sees suggested, seemingly excited about something.
Oathria narrowed her eyes, the misty grey depths shifting from his face to the elegant wood in her hand. "Is this a magic item?"
He simply nodded.
Hesitant, and with a newfound sense of caution, Oathria gathered the firewood into a neat pile. She then raised the cane, tapping the tip of it lightly against the topmost log.
POOF!
A blast of fire, violent and instantaneous, erupted from the point of contact. Both Oathria and Sees flinched back from the sudden, roaring ignition. Recovering her composure, Oathria made a gentle swiping motion, coaxing the inferno down to a manageable, crackling campfire.
She then turned to him, her earlier offense completely forgotten, replaced by a look of curiosity.
"What more is this?" she asked as she examined the seemingly innocent, decorated cane. "The light earlier, huh?"
Sees nodded, a swell of pride warming his chest. "The light earlier," yes. He had every right to be proud of that masterpiece.
"Your Majesty, this is still your birthday celebration. Thus, as the chief organizer of this party, I command you to wash up while I cook the food," he declared, pointing imperiously toward the river with his chin. "There's a space behind that large rock if you want some privacy. Well, not from the fishes, though, lucky them…"
Oathria's head whipped toward the rock he indicated, her eyes narrowing into slits. He had washed up while she was gone. Which meant the fishes in this river had been… privileged. Greedy. Indecent.
How dare mere fish eye her groom!
"I will explain what your birthday present can do as we eat. Now, please go and wash up," Sees insisted, gently escorting her toward the water.
"Sure. That will be delightful. Thank you, Prophet Cecilius," Oathria's voice was distant, her attention fully captured by the flowing water. "How about I catch us some fish too?"
"Huh?" Sees blinked, looking at the generous portions of elk meat. "But this is plenty. We won't be able to finish it all."
Oathria's eyes glinted with a cold light. "Do not worry. I will eat all the fish for you, my dear Prophet."
Sees could only stare at her retreating back, bewildered.
What are you on…?