The Legend That Couldn't Save Her
"I want you to live."
So do I, Your Highness.
I want you to live, too.
So then—
"Marry me, Cassion."
At Diana's words, the frail, sickly Cassion answered with the face of a man one breath from collapse.
"You're out of your mind."
Diana Viola Ehrenberg was the envy of every woman in the kingdom.
The only daughter of a ducal house that had helped found the kingdom itself, she was heir to a fortune — built by generations of business-savvy ancestors — said to be enough to swallow a small nation whole and still leave change to spare. As if that weren't enough, she was beautiful and brilliant to boot.
And so Diana had lived her entire life without a single worry.
Save for one thing: the accident that took her parents when she was twelve.
While she wept over that loss, her uncle, Count Kolkos, came to comfort her — and took up the post of her guardian.
Introduced to First Prince Dayson through the count's connections, Diana fell head over heels in love, and the heiress of the kingdom's foremost house and its crown prince promised to marry. It was only natural.
A perfect life, if you overlooked the absence of her parents. A life spent seeing only beautiful things, eating only the finest food, wearing only the most luxurious clothes. Everyone was kind to her, and everyone coveted what she had.
Which was why Diana never once imagined it.
Never imagined that at twenty-one, she would walk not to a wedding, but to the guillotine.
"Diana Viola Ehrenberg! Step forward and receive your sentence."
The king's proxy raised his voice, and Diana's body seized as if struck by lightning. Then, step by unsteady step, she dragged herself toward the guillotine.
With every step she took, curses for her burst from the mouths of the crowd.
"For deceiving the virtuous royal house and the good people of this kingdom, and for attempting to overthrow the state to serve her own greed, the criminal shall be put to death!"
As she took her place before the blade, the proxy bellowed once more.
Waaaaaaah—!
A roar like thunder swept the square.
"Stop it! O-our lady would never do such a thing!"
Jenice, Diana's maid, shoved her way out of the crowd and screamed. At the sight, Dayson — who had come down to the execution grounds to watch Diana's death with his own eyes — twisted his face into something vicious.
"What are you all doing?! Hurry up and carry out the sentence!"
He harried the executioner to be quick about it. At the prince's bark, the guards snapped into flawless motion. Jenice, reaching for Diana, was cut off by a wall of shields, and the lesser formalities of an execution were discarded without ceremony.
For a long moment, Diana stared wide-eyed at the man urging her toward her death.
Dayson — her fiancé, the crown prince of the kingdom — far from lifting the false charges laid upon her, was leading the charge to execute her. When she pleaded that it was all a misunderstanding, that he need only recall the memories of their love, he cut her down with icy contempt.
"I never loved you. I only needed the money and power you had."
You bastard.
Clank. The executioner locked Diana's wrists into the guillotine. Cheek pressed to the wooden board, she rolled her eyes toward the woman standing at Dayson's side.
Her cousin Bella leaned against Dayson's arm, wearing a sorrowful, pitying expression. Rage boiled up from the pit of her stomach.
Poor Diana. You should have just sat still and played the wallet. Why on earth did you suddenly try to act the head of the family when you'd never done it before? That's why I took it all from you. The money, the family name, the fiancé — everything.
Only days before, Bella had come down to Diana's cell in the underground prison, sneering that she and Dayson were in love.
"Since when? Since when have you and Dayson—"
"From the very beginning. From the moment you first met him."
The instant she heard those words, Diana felt the ground give way beneath her feet, and her whole life shook to its foundation. She had clung to the iron bars, rattling them, screaming that she would never forgive her — and Bella had only scoffed. Locked in that cell, Diana had been as helpless as a newborn.
The memory set her blood boiling all over again. Even now, her legs too spent from her brutal imprisonment to hold her, her eyes blazed bright.
Every jeer, every sneer, every curse drove into Diana's chest like a dagger.
And yet — it was too soon to give up.
She thought of the legend handed down in the kingdom.
"If three or more doubt a death, that soul shall be saved."
In truth, Diana had never believed in legends. She had loved fairy tales well enough, but she wasn't so young as to mistake them for reality. She liked money more than stories — jewels, and the sweet words people whispered to her.
But now she believed. Desperately, utterly. If a castle could be raised on faith alone, hers would stand as an impregnable fortress.
"Let any who doubt the criminal's death raise their hands!"
Nearly every procedure that day had been skipped, but the right to raise objection was the one thing the executioner could not discard at will.
Clutching at straws, Diana waited with everything she had for someone — anyone — to stand up for her.
But her waiting came to nothing. Silence held in every direction, and time, heartless, kept flowing.
Is there no one? Is there truly not a single soul who will weep for me?
So even her last hope had been nothing more than a vain wish. Defeated, Diana let her head drop limply against the board.
Then—
"My laaady! Stop this! Our lady would never do such a thing!"
Jenice flailed desperately against the wall of guards, fighting her way forward, her face a ruin of tears and snot as she cried Diana's name as though her heart would break.
Diana's heart slammed back to life, pounding with expectation and hope.
Two more. I need only two more.
Had her desperate plea reached someone?
"I cannot accept Diana's death!"
Hard on its heels came a woman, red hair whipping in the wind — Chyo. Diana's aunt. Her mother's kin, with whom she had never once managed a proper conversation.
Diana had lived her whole life believing that Count Kolkos's family was all the family she had; only recently had she learned that her mother's sister was alive and living in the kingdom.
If she had known she would die like this, she would have sat with her aunt and talked the nights away. Sorrowful tears slid down Diana's cheeks.
With a grinding clang of steel, the king's soldiers closed in around Chyo and Jenice, blades jabbing up beneath their chins.
Diana wrenched her chin up as far as it would go, eyes blazing wide. Her clenched fists shook. She glared at the scene on the execution grounds as though she would carve it into her eyes like a tattoo, and screamed.
"Let them go!"
But the bonds around Jenice and Chyo did not loosen — they only tightened.
Cursing her own helplessness, Diana prayed with everything left in her.
Please. Just one more! Give me a chance!
The executioner's lips curled at one corner, as if he could read her every thought. When he raised the hand he had lowered, the iron chains binding Diana's arms snapped taut — and he did not wait another moment.
"Not content with mocking the lives of the kingdom's people through luxury and debauchery, she has insulted the royal house of Petrora and plunged the nation into chaos! Her crimes are grievous beyond measure. By the name of His Majesty Karman, King of Petrora, she is hereby condemned! Criminal, receive your punishment!"
"Mmph! Mmph!"
Diana shook her head with all her strength, desperate to buy even a sliver of time.
One short! Just one more! Even if it's a lie — let someone doubt my death! Please, please!
But her struggle was for nothing. The roar of the crowd, hungry for her death, swelled thicker and thicker.
Tears streamed ceaselessly down Diana's cheeks.
Not tears of sorrow, nor of fear of death — tears of fury.
Ah... if there is a hell! I'll be waiting for you there!
Boom—
The drum announcing the execution rolled across the square. When that drum had sounded five times, the blade aimed at Diana's neck would fall.
Boom. Boom—
The drumbeat marched on. The drummer lifted his sticks high for the fourth strike.
And then a fierce wind swept in from somewhere.
And a voice, heavy enough to crush the entire crowd, rang out across the square.
"Wait. Everyone's in such a hurry today, aren't they?"
"Who goes there?! An execution once begun cannot be stopped!"
The executioner roared at the sudden voice, craning his neck in search of its owner — but no matter where he looked, he could not find the culprit. Irritated, he snatched the drumstick from the drummer who had frozen mid-motion, and beat the drum himself.
Boom.
The fourth beat rang out beneath the executioner's own hand.
And just as the fifth and final beat was about to fall—
"Cassion Lichte Petrora!"
The same voice thundered down from overhead.
"They may have written me off as dead, but I am still a prince of this realm. Surely a mere executioner doesn't imagine he can silence me?"
"What?!"
Having finally located the voice, the executioner lifted his head — and there, impossibly, high above the scaffold, a man came flying on the back of a wyvern.
Even at that distance, the color of the man's eyes was as vivid as if he stood inches away.
Gold. The hereditary mark of the royal bloodline.
And clutched in his hand — the royal treasure that had vanished years ago.
The man brought the wyvern low and leapt down onto the execution grounds. By the time his boots touched the earth, not a single soul doubted who he was.
Golden eyes and a royal treasure aside, the face itself bore, unmistakably, the features of the prince who had disappeared years before.
"Y-Your— Your Highness?"
Diana's eyes flew wide open.
Cassion — the boy the world had given up for dead — stood before her, grown into a man. And not merely grown: radiant and robust, so breathtakingly so that she could not have torn her gaze away if she tried.
"It's been a long time, Diana."
Broad shoulders. The ripple of muscle that flashed beneath his clothes with every movement. Hair so black it seemed to swallow the sunlight, and golden eyes of such unfathomable depth that no emotion could be read in them at all — the sight held her captive.
Diana swallowed hard.
"A-are you really Prince Cassion? You're... you're alive?"
"Thanks to you. Though I can't say I like the state I find you in. I came to repay a debt — and it seems, thankfully, I haven't arrived too late."
The debt Cassion spoke of repaying — Diana remembered it at once.
"The day I ran, you saw me — and still you kept your silence. Because of that, my pursuers caught up late. And the jewels you gave me carried me through danger more times than I can count. You saved my life."
To Diana it had been nothing more than a fleeting moment of pity, yet Cassion had carried it with him all this while — enough to appear at her execution to repay it.
None of it felt real. She could not believe what was unfolding before her eyes.
When she had been framed and thrown into prison, every one of the sweet-tongued souls who had flocked to her had turned their backs — even the ones she had believed were family.
And yet Cassion, whom she had helped exactly once, had come to stand between her and the blade.
"You do need the help, don't you?"
Cassion asked it lightly, and when he smiled and winked, that cool, forbidding face warmed like the midday sun.
As though spellbound, Diana nodded.
The returned prince planted himself in front of Diana. The moment his deep shadow fell over her, she felt an inexplicable, bottomless relief wash through her.
"I, Cassion Lichte Petrora, cannot accept Diana's death."
The prince had stepped forward for the empty ritual born of the legend — and to shield Diana, the woman branded a traitor.
A stir rippled through the crowd, and hope flooded Diana's face.
The legend's condition had been met. Now something magnificent might happen — something that would save her.
...
But no matter how long she waited, no dramatic salvation came.
The hope Diana had allowed herself drained away, leaving her hollow.
So a legend really was just a legend, after all.
Even so, it wasn't as bitter as she might have thought. Three people had braved danger for her sake. That alone was enough.
"Thank you, Your Highness. I won't forget this — not even in death."
Diana whispered the words so quietly they barely left her lips. She had every intention of exacting her revenge even from beyond the grave, and tacking one act of gratitude onto it would hardly cost her any extra effort.
Through the commotion, voices clamoring to hurry Diana's execution began to seep in.
Cassion sank to one knee, bringing himself level with her eyes.
"Don't think of it as a debt. You saved my life once, so I'll count yours as saved by me. We're even now — no debts between us."
...
"And aren't you giving up a little too quickly?"
Before she could ask what he meant, he murmured, low enough that no one else could hear.
"I want you to live."
Boom—
The drum sounded once more, as if to mock Diana's hope, and the blade rose high overhead.
And just as she thought it was truly, finally over—
Don't worry, Diana. You will be saved.
Cassion's voice echoed inside Diana's head.
This is... a magic message?
Words carried without sound — only a mage's magic message could do such a thing.
Diana's eyes went wide. She opened her mouth to answer him.
But the lovely voice that had once been likened to a nightingale would never sound again.
The blade fell — and she died.
Laughably, the last thought Diana had as death took her was of Cassion.
His Highness... was a mage?