211. Mirror (2)
211. Mirror (2)
- 1 -
"Right... there were her gifts."
Stella laughed with a pale face.
"Those 'kind' gifts she sent every single day... were nothing more than a conduit for poison, it seems."
That was Stella's answer when asked if gifts had been arriving regularly from Semira's palace.
The expression on her face as she gave a bitter smile, saying she 'thought it was just mockery,' was pitiful, but she soon put on a cold expression.
"She wouldn't have sent them personally. She would have arranged a detour or an escape route."
At my reply, she let out a hollow laugh. That faint, pale complexion looked even more consumptive than it actually was—Fate (緣).
"That she'd truly try to harm me. I never even imagined it."
I placed my hand atop her forehead.
"You were naive, Your Highness."
"... That may be so."
A somewhat impolite tone. But rather than pointing out the breach of etiquette, she simply smiled.
Her skin was cold, but her eyes alone held a vivid light.
"Rumors that Your Highness's health is poor are spreading throughout the demon realm."
I straightened her blanket and continued.
"Soon, Father will arrive as well."
The meeting with the Gluttony Duke.
This 'illness' was certainly a stratagem to shake the enemy, but this too was one of the goals.
For the Gluttony Duke was Stella's foundation, and the one who knew the secret of my birth.
"Rita..."
Stella's eyes wavered. A gaze where fear and anticipation crossed.
Her cold hand grasped mine. Compared to the chill of her skin, it was a hand that held a distinctly—Fate (緣)—firm strength.
At the same time, I thought that hand was like that of a drowning person clutching at straws.
"I'm so glad you're by my side."
I clasped her hand in return. I felt her cold hand gradually warming.
"Don't worry, Your Highness. Everything is going well."
Stella nodded.
Whether the glimmer forming at the corners of her eyes was tears, or simply an illusion brought on by her sickly pallor, I could not tell.
The smile, for some reason, did not form easily.
- 2 -
Golden, brilliant hair was being neatly arranged under the hands of several maids.
Beneath that beautiful hair, which seemed spun from gold, crimson eyes where darkness had settled gleamed.
The maids standing before the mirror grew tense every time her gaze touched them. The atmosphere was precarious, as if walking on thin ice.
Dark-red eyes turned toward the maid bowing her head beyond the mirror.
"Is it true that she has not been able to rise from her sickbed?"
"... Yes, Your Highness."
It felt as though her gaze alone carried weight.
A pressure, like a boulder set upon a pane of glass, crushed down upon the maid's shoulders.
Simply preventing her voice from trembling was the best she could do.
"... I heard she has remained shut in since yesterday."
"Tch."
The fair face twisted as if displeased.
That expression was not a pretense.
Rather, it was close to genuine anger.
"How shameful."
A crack momentarily appeared in her perfect figure, but even that crack seemed intentional, so beautiful was her appearance.
And that, in turn, made the maids even more terrified.
That perfection which tolerated not a single mistake.
'Whether it's failing to detect mere poison, or being struck by that poison and tossing about on a sickbed...'
In truth, she was genuinely displeased that Stella, the Second Demon Queen, was ill.
The weakness unworthy of the name Demon Queen had wounded her pride.
Semira's gaze shifted elsewhere.
Toward the maids who had been tending to her hair but had stopped mid-motion.
The maids' faces were filled with fear.
"What are you doing? Do you intend to waste my time?"
"M-My apologies!"
"Move instead of apologizing."
"Yes!"
And then again, this time toward another maid standing in the corner, her face having gone deathly pale.
That maid was repeatedly doing only two things: cautiously raising her eyes to gauge Semira's mood, or flinching while keeping her head bowed.
"Bring her here."
"Yes!"
"Y-Your Highness!"
Though no target was specified, the two maids who were particularly muscular and large reacted swiftly and dragged her before Semira.
As she was serving as a maid in the Demon King's castle, she too was a noble's daughter, but... now, that mattered little.
No—it was fortunate she was not immediately treated as a criminal or thrown into a dungeon.
"Speak."
"W-What..."
"I said, explain why the poison you lot used has confined the Demon Queen to a sickbed."
For that maid was the one in charge of the pleasures—Fate (緣)—between Leviathan, the Jealous Duke, and her.
Though she was a distant relative belonging to a cadet line of the Jealous Duke's bloodline, a blood relative of Leviathan was still a blood relative.
This maid was as good as standing before the brink of death right now.
"Th-That is...!"
As expected, the maid's turquoise eyes shook violently.
"That cannot be! You know well Her Highness's abilities...!"
"Yes. I know well. Too well, which is the problem, is it not?"
The displeasure filling Semira's eyes deepened.
Because no matter how she looked at it, that maid knew 'nothing.'
Ignorance is generally of no help.
Unless it is harmful, that is.
"With the ability that person possesses, she could completely alter the poison's composition without my knowledge, after all."
The Jealous Duke, Leviathan.
Among the abilities he possessed, handling poison was merely an extremely small part.
He could transform a substance that becomes poison upon encountering a specific tea into a panacea instead. Naturally—Fate (緣)—the reverse was also possible.
"The Demon Queens are demons with bodies capable of withstanding even after receiving His Majesty's seed. No ordinary poison should be able to breach their resistance. Let alone an illness?"
This was why, after settling on mere lethargy as the poison's symptoms, they had drastically slowed its progression.
A poison capable of infiltrating a Demon Queen's body could certainly act as a lethal toxin to other demons.
Against this background, Semira's suspicion was only natural—Fate (緣).
"Th-Then a lethal poison was surely never used...! If the nobles in the palace started dying off recklessly, wouldn't that be disastrous...!"
"One cannot be certain of that. Perhaps she wanted precisely that."
"There's no way...!"
The maid's face darkened to black with terror and despair.
In such a situation rife with suspicion, it would not be strange if Semira named her the culprit and handed her over to Stella or the Demon King.
"Prove your innocence."
"How...!"
"Go to the Grand Duke and convey my regrets."
Poisoning a Demon Queen. An incident that could perhaps have escalated into assassination by poison.
This was a matter from which one must extricate oneself as swiftly as possible.
"Th-That..."
The terror rising on the maid's face deepened further.
Because she had realized that her master's order had been issued without the slightest regard for her own safety.
Semira, looking at that face, tossed her a single fragment of benevolence.
"You have not understood."
"Wh-What do you mean...?"
"You are going to die anyway."
Though it was not out of a desire to spare the maid, enlightening her to the situation was still help, in its own way.
"But your family may live or die depending on your actions now."
"...!"
Words tantamount to saying that hands had already been laid on the maid's family.
The turquoise-eyed maid gaped, then barely managed to produce an answer.
"... Understood."
"I shall expect swift results."
The maid bowed her head and withdrew.
After signaling another maid to watch over her, Semira stroked her neatly arranged hair and sank into thought.
A new possibility had suddenly occurred to her.
'Perhaps it's a feigned illness...'
But soon, she shook her head.
The only person the Second Demon Queen trusted was the head lady-in-waiting.
And she considered both the Demon Queen herself and the head lady-in-waiting to be figures incapable of devising such a stratagem.
Deng— deng— deng—
In the midst of that, her pointed ears perked up at the sound coming from afar.
"This sound is..."
Semira's brow furrowed.
It was a sound she knew well.
For it was the sound of the bell that rang when the main gate of the Demon King's castle opened.
"No way."
After a moment's thought, agitation suddenly rose on her face.
For if there was anyone who would visit the Demon King's castle unannounced at this time, as far as she knew, there was only one person.
- 3 -
Upon a dreadfully high throne sat a single being.
From within the black-stained shadow, two green eyes gleamed.
- A queen who ought to be sleeping is lying not in her bedchamber but on a sickbed.
The eyes blinked, their green glare burning.
At the same time, the one standing in attendance before him felt the surrounding air grow stifling.
- A strange thing. Would you not agree? Marquis.
"In-Incredible indeed... Yes..."
Marquis Glasya-Labolas broke into a cold sweat.
He kept his waist bowed before his lord, Leviathan, the Jealous Duke.
- Even when I heard that my daughter, having heard your words, had already prepared ceremonial robes for entering the Queen's palace, I merely thought it a cute gesture. Until just recently, that is.
"Y-Yes..."
Unlike his tranquil voice, the green eyes watching him held dire fury.
The fury of one who had failed to snatch what he desired from a potential enemy.
- Though that was because I had not expected it to boomerang in such a ridiculous fashion.
At last, when those two eyes bore down upon his back, the marquis felt an acrid smell mixing into the air he breathed. In real time, the air was turning into poison.
The longer the reply was delayed, the more potent that poison would become.
It was a reprimand aimed at the one who had been entrusted with this matter.
"I-I will!"
- Hm?
At the voice spasmodically blurted out, Leviathan's eyes tilted sideways.
Sensing the reaction was not entirely bad, Glasya-Labolas immediately continued.
"I will resolve it properly! I! Most certainly!"
- How?
Glasya-Labolas racked his brain desperately.
Ordinarily, he would have bristled at the indignity of a marquis of the demon realm being reduced to such a wretched state.
As the marquis's influence was not insignificant, even an archduke could not easily brush him aside.
But not now.
Pride had no room to even enter his mind at this moment.
For this operation against the Demon Queen had been proposed by himself.
"Semira...! By pinning the blame entirely on that woman...!"
- Semira? It is Her Highness the Demon Queen. You should speak properly, Marquis.
Though he remembered the archduke vomiting forth violent fury at Semira's insolent attitude not long ago, the marquis did not mention it.
He merely bowed his head deeper, displaying a willingness to listen—Gyeong.
The two eyes filled with a malevolent glare narrowed.
- And pinning the blame? You merely used genuine chastity in this matter.
Grasping the meaning behind the words, the marquis hastily bowed his head.
"Ah, yes! This affair is clearly Her Highness's sole arbitrary act! She used a different poison without our knowledge!"
- Right. Being in the palace makes that possible, does it not.
Tok-tok.
From behind the marquis, the sound of knocking on the door could be heard.
The moment the two eyes turned toward the door, 'Clunk!'—the door swung open.
Beyond that door, a man walked in and immediately bowed his waist.
"Your Highness."
- What is it.
It was the Chief Chamberlain of the Grand Duke's palace.
"Someone has come from Her Highness the First Demon Queen's palace."
- ... She's made the first move.
"And..."
Just as the marquis was inwardly cursing the Chief Chamberlain and raging at Semira under the pressure of the gaze turning toward him again, the chamberlain's words continued and the gaze shifted away.
The marquis inwardly let out a sigh of relief.
"... is what they said."
Immediately after the Chief Chamberlain's report, the archduke fell silent for a moment.
The voice that followed was tinged with a hollow laugh.
- ... Ha. Swift, aren't they. It's exactly as if they were aiming for this moment. Marquis. You were far too late.
"I-I will handle it quickly!"
- You may go.
"Yes!!"
At his lord's permission, the marquis hurriedly bowed his head and withdrew from the throne room.
At that behavior, brimming with the visceral relief of a survivor, the two green malevolence-filled eyes narrowed once more.
The one who came to his mind was the Second Demon Queen.
- Had I underestimated her.
Leviathan's lips slowly curled upward.
His smile was as sweet and dangerous as honey steeped in poison.
"This is becoming interesting."
That voice carried anticipation. Like a child who had discovered an amusing toy.
But that anticipation was never pure.
- 4 -
Before lunchtime began.
Deng— deng— deng—
At the tolling of the bell that resounded throughout the entire palace, I lifted my head and gauged the location of the sound.
The palace was to the east, and the sound came from the southwest.
It was where the main gate of the Demon King's castle was located.
"... He's here."
Stella's face grew even paler. A reaction that made it hard to imagine she was about to meet her father.
I took her hand.
"Rita?"
"Your Highness."
In a calm voice, I met her eyes.
Stella's gaze was deeply affectionate.
Her demeanor brimmed with anxiety she could not hide, though she tried hard to remain resolute—Fate (緣). At the same time, her face revealed how much she wanted to lean on me.
It wasn't that I felt no resistance, but I did not let it show.
"Everything is going according to plan. Don't worry."
As I reassured her, I gazed out the window.
The red midday sky was darkly stained.
A colossal shadow was approaching the Demon King's castle.
The shadow was vast enough to swallow the sky, and its mere presence made the air grow heavy.
It was as though the entire world was holding its breath in time with his footsteps.
- ...
Abruptly, I realized I had met his eyes.
Tok-tok.
Immediately afterward, there was a knock at the door.