Confession

Since I had already used Healing today, I couldn't cure the Duke's daughter right away.

That aside, I had no intention of fully curing her tomorrow, either.

Granted, I would be in a difficult position without Duke Asis's support. But from his perspective as well, no one but me could cure his daughter. They'd said it was total paralysis, after all — so I intended to heal only her upper body. Calling it an advance payment would be about right.

"I will assist you with your bath, Your Highness."

After ten days cooped up in a carriage, I was finally able to bathe inside Duke Asis's estate. When the maids assigned to attend me came trailing after, I wrote them a note saying I was perfectly capable on my own and turned away.

Thanks to my memories of a past life, I had been able to establish a firm sense of self early on. That self was influenced to some degree by my child's body, but it remained mature enough — and I had no desire, while being tended to, to let a gaggle of maids watch a seven-year-old prince blushing at a woman's touch.

Fortunately, they didn't cling stubbornly at my words and withdrew without protest. Once my first bath in ten days was done, I made my way to the chamber the steward had shown me.

"Welcome back."

Mother's hair was still slightly damp; she must have bathed before me. "I'll be finishing my business with the Duke tomorrow, and then we'll head home."

"I see."

She looked at me with a worried face. "The ones who killed you, Mother — this is something I have to do so they pay for it."

"Rohen…… vengeance only begets more vengeance. It frightens me. I'm afraid you'll keep walking a road stained with blood. That you have to endure something this heavy at such a young age — it breaks my heart."

At her words, I closed my eyes for a moment, then began to write. "I've learned that not everyone repays kindness with kindness. So I will become an Emperor with power strong enough to protect the family you dream of. I've come to understand that it's absolutely necessary."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Mother had no answer for that. She likely believed that watching her own execution had lit this fire in me — and being the gentle soul she was, she probably carried a heavy guilt over it as well.

It pained me to do it, but I felt I needed to lean on that guilt a little. Otherwise, she would try to talk me out of every single step I intended to take.

And so, for the first time in a long while, I fell asleep that night on the same bed as my mother.

*

The next morning, Duke Asis hosted us for a breakfast banquet. His wife, seated beside him, watched me brimming with expectation — but since I couldn't speak, the conversation inevitably flowed toward my mother. Even so, perhaps because her counterpart was a Duchess, Mother looked considerably tense. She was, after all, an Imperial Consort in her own right.

It was a table where both sides were exchanging a deal neither needed to yield on, so her excessive meekness left me a little disappointed.

"Shall we be going?"

When the breakfast came to a close, I moved with them to another wing of the estate.

Duke Asis's daughter, Lapis Viol Asis, lay quietly upon her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bed. Only a corpse should have eyes as lifeless as a dead fish's — yet here sat a living corpse, a walking dead girl. Not a flicker of vitality remained in her.

"Lapis."

The Duchess stepped close and gently stroked the girl's blue hair. Lapis's vacant gaze, which had been staring blankly into the air, drifted sideways.

"……Mom?"

"Yes. Today, someone has come to heal your body, Lapis — none other than His Highness the Prince himself."

At the Duchess's introduction, I stepped forward and gave a slight bow of my head.

"No need."

"Lapis?"

"……It's over already."

Lapis shook her head vigorously, sorrow written across her face.

"It'll fail again, and then you and Dad will cry all day. I don't want to see that anymore. I can't stand watching it."

"What are you saying……!"

"Couldn't you just…… kill me instead?"

I thought there was nothing normal about a girl smiling as she said those words. Every human being fears death — yet Lapis, who was only eight, had already grown indifferent to it.

Then again, I suppose I might be the same. Struck down by total paralysis, bedridden, watching your family grieve over you day after day. Having to rely on other people's hands even to relieve yourself — your self-respect would be shattered beyond repair.

"Excuse me."

I showed the Duchess my note, then stepped in front of Lapis.

"It's going to fail anyway…… so couldn't you just turn around and leave? That way Mom and Dad can keep their hope that maybe, maybe I could still be cured?"

"No."

I needed Duke Asis's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠support, so I had no intention of granting her request. Setting down my pen and paper, I directed Healing at Lapis. My intent was exactly as I had planned from the start — to heal only the paralysis of her upper body.

"Try moving."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

Hearing me, Lapis tried to move her arms with a look of sheer disbelief. But her muscles had gone unused for far too long, and her arms refused to answer.

"What is the meaning of this!"

Behind me, the Duke glared at me, his face crimson. Thinking him a daughter-fool of the highest order, I reached out and pinched the softest, most tender patch of skin beneath her armpit.

"Ow!"

Lapis reflexively curled her upper body and pushed her hands toward her side. No — she tried to push them. The hands rising so slowly trembled and dropped back down again. But those flinching, twitching fingers were unmistakable proof that they were moving along her will.

"That pain is proof that you are alive, right now."

Her blue eyes trembled, shaken in more ways than one. And I turned to the Duke, who was staring just as dumbfounded as his daughter, and wrote:

"As for the paralysis of your lower body, I will cure it when you grant my second condition."

"Mom…… it moved! My — my hands moved!"

Only now grasping what had happened, Lapis wept big falling tears as she reached for the Duchess. And the Duchess, casting aside every shred of her composure, pulled her daughter into her arms and began to sob.

"And what is this second condition?"

"First, you must hear my first condition."

Having written that this, too, was a kind of advance payment, I left the room with my mother at my side.

"Wait!"

"……"

But Lapis's voice called me back.

"I want to know your name, Your Highness……"

So there were still people who didn't know a prince's name, apparently. I gave an awkward smile.

"Rohen."

With that answer, I gave her the lightest of waves and left the estate.

*

He was a Duke — a man of that rank, bowing at the waist to see off the carriage carrying me away.

And I was not the Emperor. I was nothing more than a prince with no backing, no power of my own. Still, if this made him move, then surely the entire Neutral Faction would back Duke Alteir's execution.

All that remained now was to force the criminals to confess their crimes from their own mouths.

For the journey home, we took care not to let exhaustion pile up, staying a night in each territory we passed through. And so we returned to the imperial capital, Veronica. I saw my mother safely to the inn, then set off for the palace alongside my father's knight.

"……His Highness the Prince — are you truly seven years old?"

When the knight walking beside me suddenly posed the question, I smiled and wrote in reply. "Sir Brand, what kinds of things had you experienced by my age?"

"……"

Faced with the question turned back on him, Sir Brand shut his mouth tightly. It was answer enough: I had simply walked a different road than ordinary children, so of course I'd matured early. Who else could claim to have watched their own mother executed at seven years of age?

"His Majesty the Emperor and Her Majesty the Empress are at their meal now, I'm told."

He had asked a passing maid in my stead. I wrote my thanks and quickened my pace.

The great doors of the dining hall stood firmly shut. The chatter drifting from within sounded like the Empress and Aria. Sadly, the warm and intimate family hour was over.

I kicked the doors — doors that would not have opened easily by hand — and sent them flying wide.

BOOM!

At the thunderous sound and the sudden swing of the doors, everyone inside — the maids, the Empress and Aria mid-meal, even my father — flinched in shock.

"What manner of manners are these, bursting in while we dine!"

The Empress raged at me, her voice rough and sharp. I approached her with a blank expression.

"There is no place set for you here. Return to where you came from."

Blah, blah, blah.

If she wanted to pour all that venom out at me, she was only giving me exactly what I wanted. What I wanted to hear, however, was not this flavorless drivel.

In an instant, silence blanketed the room. Everyone who had heard my voice froze in stunned confusion.

"You — you spoke……?"

The Empress jabbed a finger at me, incredulous — but it didn't last long.

"The odds of miscarriage were too high, and even if I carried to term there was no guarantee it would be a son, so I deliberately ingested Peppyment to induce the miscarriage. Then I recruited that concubine Euphemia's assigned maid and had Peppyment smuggled and hidden inside her chambers."

As the truth she had hidden so carefully began spilling out against her will, the Empress clamped her hands over her own mouth. But her mouth did not stop. She went right on baring her crimes, raw and unvarnished.

"And once that commoner bitch was executed, my father and his supporters were to denounce Prince Rohen and demand his deposition, just as we'd planned. Once the deposition succeeded, I intended to marry my daughter Aria to the heir of some illustrious house and seize a generational transfer of imperial power."

The voice wrung from her stopped. And I found myself astonished, in a different sense entirely, to realize that the crimes she had confessed amounted to nothing more than what had put her own mother on the execution block.

Well — I suppose it made sense. Confession only forced out violations of codified law; matters of mere morality went unspoken.

"No────! No, I never────!"

The Empress had gone deathly pale, panicking at the words that had just left her own lips.

"You — you've brainwashed me! That's what this is!"

I gave her a scornful little laugh and wrote my reply. What Confession forces out are acts that violate codified law.

"Fabricating false crimes to pin on an innocent, and attempting to forcibly enact a generational transfer of imperial power."

And so her crimes were, in truth, quite simple.

"That is unmistakably treason."

The paper had curled slightly at the corner, so I smoothed it out flat with my hand.

"The sentence, naturally, is death. Your Majesty, my dear stepmother."