I Don't Like This
The handmaidens finally realized something had gone wrong and dropped to their knees in a rush.
“Your Majesty the Empress! There must be some mistake!”
“Y-yes, that’s right, Your Majesty the Empress!”
“We don’t know anything about this! We only brought the things assigned to the Empress’s Palace!”
Regina sealed their frantic cries with magic once more.
Without any further interruption, the head attendant calmly recited every one of their crimes to the end.
Regina asked in a low voice, “What punishment should those who embezzled the imperial treasury receive?”
“If the amount is small, their wages are seized. If it is large, they are imprisoned and made to labor until they repay every last coin.”
“Is there one innocent person among them?”
“Not a single one.”
At the head attendant’s final words, the handmaidens began to struggle wildly.
But Regina’s magic pressed down on all of them so hard that not a sound could escape their throats.
“Summon the knights and have them handle it.”
“At once, Your Majesty.”
A short while later, the summoned knights dragged every one of the Grand Empress’s handmaidens out of the Empress’s Palace.
Even as they were hauled away, they seemed desperate to make excuses, but Regina’s magic would not allow it.
When the surroundings finally fell quiet, Regina smiled brightly and said, “Then shall we redecorate this palace?”
Once the people sent from the Grand Empress’s Palace had all been taken away, there was no one left in the Empress’s Palace.
Only the handful of handmaidens and attendants Conrad had assigned to Regina remained.
“Everyone, go outside the palace for now.”
At Regina’s order, the head attendant from the imperial palace and the handmaidens all moved at once.
Anyone who hesitated would have to endure the suffocating pressure of Regina’s cold gaze. They had already experienced that pressure indirectly more than once, so they obeyed without a single word.
“What is Her Majesty planning to do?”
“I don’t know.”
There was no way Chloe, who held the right to control the treasury, would simply reduce the budget further. Which meant Regina intended to solve this alone.
Those who did not know her power precisely were naturally worried.
Meanwhile, left alone in the Empress’s Palace, Regina fell into thought.
Would I have a proper basis to seize financial authority from the Grand Empress if I redecorated this palace with magic?
If she pointed out the cheap furnishings sent to the Empress’s Palace, the Grand Empress’s faction could always excuse it by claiming the imperial budget was too tight.
As for the people sent from the Grand Empress’s Palace embezzling funds, they would simply brand it an individual act of misconduct.
It was a textbook case of cutting off the tail to save the body, but unless an especially massive scandal erupted, the nobles would certainly let it slide.
“I need something bigger than this.”
There was no way Chloe, who had stolen the Empress’s Palace budget, had stopped at just that. If Regina inspected the imperial palace thoroughly, more serious problems would surely come to light.
For now, I’ll clear this place out first and solve things one by one.
She planned to bring in the retainers staying at the Mardine estate under the pretext that the Empress’s Palace needed trustworthy people.
Soon, Regina’s hand drew a graceful arc.
Bright light spilled through the air. At the same time, red mana moved along the line of her slender white fingers.
The windows and doors along the corridor flew open one after another with sharp, cracking sounds. After opening every door in the Empress’s Palace, Regina stirred a light wind.
The delicate gust swept outward, carrying the dust away with it.
“Wow!”
As the dust that had flown far into the sky suddenly burst into flames and burned away, the handmaidens watching the magic, as well as the head attendant, were left speechless.
“Magic!”
“Her Majesty the Empress was a mage?”
Awed wonder filled the eyes of those who witnessed power they had never seen before.
Beyond them, passing knights, nobles visiting other palaces, and administrators all caught sight of the strange phenomenon unfolding above the Empress’s Palace.
Regina’s abilities had already become quietly known through her act of saving Conrad.
But since she had not used magic again after that, quite a few people dismissed it as nothing more than rumor.
Today, however, everyone in the imperial palace became certain that she was indeed a mage.
Meanwhile, Conrad, who was walking out after finishing a meeting in the main palace, also sensed the commotion from the Empress’s Palace.
Seeing flames rise beneath a clear blue sky, he twitched his brow.
“…Honestly, even when I tell her not to overdo it, she never listens.”
Then he changed direction and started toward the Empress’s Palace.
“Pardon? Your Majesty, where are you going?”
“To see my empress. Handle the rest of the schedule yourself.”
“Wait just a moment—!”
The instant he kicked off the ground, the scenery around him changed in a flash.
He shot straight past the rows of pillars, gardens, and corridors toward the place where mana was trembling in the air.
Leaping over the wall surrounding the Empress’s Palace, he spotted Regina beyond the wide-open first-floor window, one hand raised.
“Ah.”
She was wrapped in a mysterious wind. Her red hair fluttered like petals, stealing Conrad’s attention in an instant.
Then—
“Ah, ngh!”
Regina, who had been letting her mana flow without restraint, suddenly clutched her chest at the sharp pain.
The crescent-shaped seal on her body flashed as it blocked the flow of mana.
Under the resistance, which was fiercer than before, Regina felt nausea rise in her stomach. She swallowed the surge with effort, but she could not stop the blood slipping from the corner of her mouth.
Conrad vaulted through the window and went straight to her.
“My empress is terribly stubborn.”
He muttered that this was supposed to be fixed with only light contact, then held out a handkerchief.
Taking it, Regina wiped her pale lips clean.
As aura flowed from Conrad’s hand, which had closed around her other hand, the turmoil churning in her body eased a little.
“I don’t like this.”
Conrad lifted Regina bodily into his arms. Startled, she flailed as her legs dangled in the air, but soon she looped her arms around his neck.
Holding her securely, Conrad climbed back out through the window. Then, heedless of the stares around them, he strode through the imperial palace without slowing.
Though handmaidens, attendants, and even passing nobles all bowed respectfully, he paid them no mind.
His rigid jawline made his displeasure plain for anyone to see. No noble was bold enough to speak to the emperor when he looked that irritable.
“Rena.”
Pale as death, Regina hid her face against Conrad’s chest.
Her forehead pressed against the bare skin exposed between the undone buttons of his shirt. She could feel aura and mana passing between them.
Conrad had been waiting for Regina to ask him for help. Yet even after several days, she had never once come to him.
All she did was hold his hand or calm her mana with feather-light kisses. It was infuriating, and yet he had endured it.
And even after things got this bad, she still didn’t come to me.
Once he realized she would have gone down before seeking him out first, Conrad’s mood sank lower and lower.
Isn’t this a breach of contract?
Regina had clearly agreed to help him break the Magic Barrier. She needed to recover her mana in order to destroy it, and refusing to make contact with him was practically a violation of their contract.
That’s why I’m angry.
He tried to settle on that explanation, but in truth he could feel that his emotions were something stranger than mere anger.
He liked the proud, distant way she carried herself, and yet at the same time he wondered whether she truly did not trust him that much.
Once that thought formed—that perhaps touching him was even more unpleasant to her than restoring her mana—Conrad was suddenly filled with a sharp flare of irritation.
He could not tell whether he was angry because Regina had neglected the contract, or because of something else entirely.
“We greet Your Majesty the Emperor.”
The guard knights stationed at the imperial bedroom bowed to Conrad.
“Open it.”
When the bedroom door opened and Regina and Conrad stepped inside, the knights closed it behind them.
Thud—
At the sound of the heavy door shutting, Regina finally came to her senses.
I made a mistake.
Because they had joined bodies on their first night, she had thought that only light contact afterward would be enough. But the mana she had gathered did not remain within her body forever.
Due to the mana seal, it slowly dispersed with time.
She usually checked her mana constantly, but she had not been able to do so properly because she couldn’t openly use it in front of Chloe’s people.
This is…
A mage who couldn’t even manage her own mana properly.
She was a failure as a mage.
If this had been a battlefield, she would have lost her life on the spot.
“…I suppose I should be grateful at least for that.”
“Grateful?”
As the soft bedding touched her back, Regina finally found herself facing Conrad directly.
Only after seeing the violent, surging depths in his eyes did she realize something had gone wrong, and she swallowed dryly.