Budapest, Summer 1828
The night was as black as ink. The dim, flickering lamplight of the cellar danced on the damp walls, casting long shadows over three tense faces. The air was thick with the scent of mold, earth, and a hint of rust, making it hard to breathe. Franz, fresh from his near-death experience, felt a tremor in his hand—not from fear, but from the lingering adrenaline of deflecting a fatal blow. He quietly repeated the assassin's heavy French curse, "Merde... Retraite" (Damn it... Retreat).
"They're French," Kossuth stated, his voice a low, somber toll. "Their movements were precise, their daggers poisoned. They weren't common street thugs; they were trained mercenaries."
Széchenyi slammed a fist onto the dusty wooden table, the thud echoing in the small space. His voice was cold, laced with barely contained fury. "Why would they frame us Hungarians? This is a blatant attempt to put us in the crosshairs!"
"Inciting conflict is just the surface," Franz replied, his eyes deep and penetrating, as if he could see through the fog of deceit. His voice was cold and sharp as a drawn sword. "If the 'Prince' were to die at the hands of 'Hungarian revolutionaries,' Vienna would have a perfect excuse to crush Budapest under its boot. But the real reason..." He paused, his gaze sweeping over Kossuth and Széchenyi like a monarch assessing his allies and future pawns. "...is me. For me, Franz Joseph Karl Bonaparte, simply being alive is a crime to some."
He looked at Széchenyi and spoke the name, one word at a time: "Charles X."
Széchenyi stood up abruptly, a look of revelation on his face. "You are the son of Napoleon! As long as you live, you are a sword of Damocles hanging over his throne! He would never allow a Bonaparte heir to grow up under the protection of the Habsburg Empire!"
"So the question is," Kossuth added, his voice chilling and alert, "how did they know your location? This 'educational journey' was never a coincidence; it was a carefully woven web from the very start."
A suffocating silence fell over the cellar. Franz closed his eyes, a name he desperately wanted to disbelieve slithering into his mind like a venomous snake: "Metternich."
"He was the one who suggested I leave Vienna for Transylvania. He once told me, 'Royal bloodlines must be forged in the fire of the earth to truly shine.'" Franz opened his eyes, now sharp as an eagle's. "Looking back, every step of this journey feels like a trap he set. Count Reinhardt, my guardian, has been distracted and uneasy the entire time. And last night, he did something completely out of character: he got drunk—a man famous for his discipline, who usually doesn't touch a drop at banquets. He's more than just an accomplice; he's likely the inside man."
Széchenyi lowered his voice to a whisper, full of gravity. "That means someone in the Viennese court is openly colluding with France. This game is much bigger than we thought."
Franz nodded slowly, as if accepting his own death sentence. "Exactly. And next time, they won't fail."
Kossuth took a deep breath, breaking the tense silence of the cellar. "So, you must disappear. It's your only way out."
"Fake your death," Széchenyi immediately understood, his eyes gleaming with a new plan.
"We can stage a perfect ambush," Kossuth added. "Let the son of Napoleon officially 'die' on the map. Then, you can live under a new identity. It's the only way for you to escape the Habsburg cage and rebuild your empire from the shadows."
A fire ignited in Franz's eyes—the hope of a long-caged lion finally seeing a way to freedom. "I'll turn their plan against them," he said, clenching his fist, each word ringing with power. "They think I'll die on the road, and I will let them have their wish. I will 'die' in their ambush to regain my freedom and contact my supporters in France—the old imperial generals, families loyal to Bonaparte, and even those who yearn for a republic. This requires time, but more importantly, it requires freedom."
They unrolled a rough map, studying the likely location for the "death scene"—the complex, forested mountains north of Târgu Mureș, the perfect place for a staged accident. He had to return to the hotel and pretend everything was normal, or the whole plan would be in vain.
"We will buy you time," Széchenyi promised.
Franz slowly stood up in the shadows of the cellar, his figure appearing tall and resolute. "From this moment on," he declared, his gaze like a torch, as if he were declaring war on all of Europe, "I am no longer a prisoner of the Habsburgs, but the sole heir of Napoleon!" His voice echoed through the cellar, a proclamation of the end of one era and the beginning of another.