The Ember Beneath the Ashes
"I don't want to die……"
"What did I ever do to deserve this!"
A gloomy, miasmic air hung about the underground prison of the Imperial Palace, dark as a sealed tomb. When the Emperor descended its steps and beheld a scene utterly without light, he was compelled to invoke an artifact.
"I don't believe I've ever seen this place so crowded with people in my life."
"Your Majesty!"
"Please, spare us!"
Paying no heed to the maids Rohen had thrown in here through their confessions and voluntary surrenders, the Emperor made his way toward the far end of the cell block.
There, a woman with lustrous platinum-blonde hair lifted her head — her beauty undiminished by her long imprisonment, her gaze brimming with a virulent malice.
"The date of your execution has been set, Cestia."
"……You filth of a man."
"Your dying words are remarkably brief."
His gaze was cold, yet threaded through that coldness ran an unmistakable pity as he looked down upon her.
"I knew you were struggling. I knew you were jealous of Euphemia as well. That is why I kept my meetings with her to the bare minimum and devoted the greater share of my time to you. And still your anxiety drove you to commit a crime like this?"
"……"
"Where has the girl you once were gone? You have rotted into something truly hideous."
"All of your kindness, your consideration, your whispered words of love — they were all for that woman, every last one of them! Did you ever once stop to think how wretched that made me feel? At first it didn't matter. I believed you were that way with everyone!"
But the Emperor's manner toward Euphemia — and the tenderness bound up in it — had been unmistakably, categorically different.
"When her birthday drew near, you would always think about what she might like and prepare a gift with your own hands. But on mine, all you ever gave me was some expensive jewel. Do you even know what I love?"
"……"
"Of course you don't. We were given eight years to come to know one another, and you never learned a single thing about what makes me happy. No…… you never even tried to."
Cestia let out an empty laugh and raised her head to glare at the Emperor.
"A flower left untended always rots where it stands."
At those words, the Emperor closed his eyes and answered quietly.
"Love is not a decision."
Love is a feeling.
"If we could simply choose whom to love, everything would be a great deal simpler. But then falling in love would never feel like magic when it happened. The way it did when you loved me, Cestia……"
"How laughable, spouting pointless philosophy at this late hour."
"When I took you as my Empress, did I not leave the choice entirely in your hands? You knew as well as anyone that a person is never repaid in full measure for what they invest. And still it was you who became my Empress. I will not deny that I failed to give my best as your husband — but I never once turned my back on even my most basic duties. Did you forget that the one capable of treating your difficult pregnancies was Rohen? Had you not been blinded and pushed your greed too far, each of us could have been perfectly happy in our own place."
"Ha……"
The water had long since been spilled. What use was a hypothetical now?
"Even when the fire goes out, the embers remain buried beneath — and one day, they will flare up again."
The Empress bowed her head with a savage expression, spitting out that final, inscrutable remark, and the Emperor, watching her, soon turned and left the prison.
Even when the fire goes out, the embers remain — and one day, they flare up again?
My father relayed those words to me directly, along with a warning to guard myself carefully, in case the Empress had laid further schemes beneath the surface.
And yet, if such schemes had existed, they would certainly have amounted to acts of treason. The confessions would have dragged every last one of them into the light.
Was she simply leaving me to carry that riddle with me for the rest of my life?
I thought, not for the first time, that she had a remarkable talent for leaving a bad taste in one's mouth.
"P-Princess, you can't do this!"
"Let go!"
While making my rounds to continue the screening operation, I came upon Aria quarreling with the palace knights.
That room……
It hadn't yet been verified through confession, but it was the chamber where those suspected of involvement were being held — people placed there after the captured maids' testimonies had been cross-checked against one another.
There would be no shortage of maids trying to drag others down with them, after all, pointing fingers at whoever came to mind.
⟨ Conversation ⟩
For the next ten minutes, you may exchange words with any sentient living being.
And so I cast Conversation and walked slowly around behind Aria.
"Is there some reason for this?"
The moment she heard my voice, Aria whipped her head around and clutched at my sleeve, her words tumbling out in desperation.
"Mary……! Mary's locked up in this room!"
"Mary?"
"Mary would never do something like that! There's been some mistake!"
At the sight of her looking up at me, voice thick with tears, I turned my head toward the knight.
"It is true, my lord. The Princess's wet nurse, Mary, is being held in this room."
That Mary was confined here meant the maids already screened had named her as an accomplice.
For a moment, sympathy stirred in my chest — but sympathy alone could not send the woman home innocent, and so I opened the door and stepped inside with Aria at my side.
"Mary!"
Aria darted toward Mary, who sat bound in the corner of the cell.
"We're leaving!"
With her small hands she fought desperately to undo the ropes, but Mary, head bowed low, twisted her body away and gently refused her touch.
"Mary? What's wrong! Hm?"
Aria circled the room anxiously, unmoored.
"……I'm sorry."
"Mary?"
Watching the heavy scene unfold, I walked over beside the two of them and spoke.
"There are guilty people here who name the innocent to save their own skins. So if my Dragon Tongue proves your innocence, shaking off the accusation and walking out of this room is no difficult thing."
"M-Mary…… hurry up and do the thing Rohen is talking about, and let's get out of here!"
Aria clutched at the hem of Mary's skirt and urged her on.
But Mary gave Aria one long, sorrowful look, then turned her gaze to me.
"There is no need to put me through any verification, my lord."
"Does that mean you took part in this treason?"
"Mary would never do that!"
Whirling on me in tears, Aria shoved hard against my chest and pushed past.
"……Yes. I took part in this treason as well."
"Mary!"
"I was the one who smuggled the peppyment into the palace and delivered it to Her Majesty the Empress."
Peppyment was a toxic herb that no one but a certified physician was permitted to possess.
Depending on the dose, it could plunge its victim into localized or total paralysis — which made its potential for criminal use all too evident.
"My father is a physician, so obtaining it was no trouble at all."
"Why would you do such a thing?"
"Because I believed that if the Prince and the Consort were gone, Lady Aria could grow up cherished by her mother, and be happy. Every time Lady Aria's efforts to win her mother's love crumbled — for no reason other than that she had been born a daughter — it cracked something in my heart to watch."
"……"
"So I judged that so long as Lady Aria could find happiness, it would be enough — even if it meant staining these hands of mine. I know it is a terrible thing to say to you, my lord Prince…… but to me, Princess Aria is a treasure beyond anything else in this world."
At Mary's words, Aria went rigid with shock, and then, repeating only the words no, no, she pulled the woman into a fierce embrace.
Like a bird spreading its wings against its nature to guard its own nest, wary of every intruder, Aria shielded Mary from the ring of knights closing around her.
"……Imprison her."
But at my words, heavy and unyielding, the knights pried Aria away from Mary by force and began to lead the woman off.
"I'm sorry…… Please, I beg you — live a happy life."
"Mary!"
"Being your wet nurse, Lady Aria — all these years, I have been happy."
It was like watching a scene from the memory of my own mother being dragged away on my birthday.
A corner of my chest ached, sour and throbbing.
No doubt because I could empathize, exactly, with what Aria was feeling at this moment.
But by that same measure, that feeling was precisely why I could not forgive Mary for her part in this treason.
At the very least, these people were not being punished for crimes they had not committed.
"No! I won't let you!!!"
Aria wailed, etching runes and a magic circle into the air through her mana.
Seeing it again, I marveled — a casting speed monstrous for her age.
But faster still, the knights, attuned to the surge of mana, seized her from behind and knocked her unconscious, catching her limp body in their arms.
When I turned my gaze to Mary as she was led away, she shed her tears in silence and vanished from sight, escorted by the knights.
"So that was what she meant by embers."
Everything sustaining her daughter Aria — she intended to erase it all alongside her own death.
Then, by forcibly carving an ember of vengeance into the girl, she would set her against the Imperial Palace in the years to come.
Aria possessed an overwhelming, almost unreasonable talent as a mage for her age, so once the Demonic Tree reached full maturity, there would be no shortage of opportunities for her to earn distinction.
And should she, through that distinction, marry the head of a powerful aristocratic house and begin checking the Imperial Family's authority — that would become a genuine headache indeed.
But if this really was her design……
Just how depraved could a woman be?
Her conduct was barely believable for a mother of even one child.
She would not have yielded to a demon in comparison. Not by an inch.
Then again……
If you went looking for the meaning of the word demon, the being that came closest to it was probably a human being, in the end.