The Seed of Distrust
“…….”
Her fist clenched tight.
Moments like this always drove Belloa to the limit of her patience. Even so, she forced the feeling down, drew a deep breath, and let it out again.
“That isn’t what I meant. If anything, I thought it was more dangerous. If she already knows everything, she would never sit through the reception without taking some measure—not unless she has laid a trap.”
“Even so, we force it through.”
Gawin smiled. It was a smile like a final warning, turned on a foolish little sister who had taken fright at a single word from the Purifier.
“This is a fight, Belloa. Are you going to run because the battlefield scares you?”
“…….”
Belloa bit down hard on her lip. What he said was madness, and yet it was a madness she knew all too well. As always, Gawin made the decision, and seeing that decision carried out fell, in the end, to her. Now was no different.
“This is for the house. Go back to the banquet hall this instant and activate the Chaos-Tuning Stone.”
“…….”
“Belloa. You can do it, can’t you?”
In the end she had no choice but to nod, even as something inside her screamed that this was a thing they must never do. Warning bells rang without end in her head, and still she could not go against Gawin’s order.
As time passed, the reception ripened into full bloom. At the center of the hall a few noble couples had already begun to dance, and the guests’ eyes drifted naturally toward the bride and groom walking among them.
Odelli moved slowly through the reception at Ludville’s side, their steps carrying them through greetings and blessings offered as if they were the most natural thing in the world.
“Good heavens, these gems… From a distance I was certain they were diamonds. Don’t tell me that’s pielite?”
“This is the first time I’ve seen one with my own eyes. I always thought such stones existed only in the imperial secret vault… To think any still remained. Wherever did you find them?”
The guests poured out one marvel after another as they gazed at the couple’s wedding rings, and Odelli faltered for a moment at their words.
The imperial secret vault…
Surely he didn’t take them straight from that vault…
No. Impossible.
She shook her head and did her best to wipe the absurd fancy away.
“Ha ha. I can see just how deep His Grace’s love for Her Grace the Archduchess runs.”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen His Grace the Archduke keep to a gathering this long.”
“Well, with a beauty like this at his side, he could hardly slip away so easily.”
“His Grace’s eyes don’t seem to leave Her Grace for a single moment. To think the tale of their fated love was true. Wouldn’t this be the scandal of the year? No—perhaps of history itself…”
Joke and exaggeration followed one another in a steady line, but Odelli’s gaze was already drifting elsewhere.
She’s still here…
Castia Exepsion sat in silence in the seat of honor at the northwest of the hall. The formal dinner was over; it would not have been strange if she had left long ago. Yet she remained, her back set firmly against the chair, an empty glass in her hand, watching the crowd with a gaze both sharp and cold.
Even as Odelli spoke with the nobles, she kept stealing glances that way.
She isn’t staying out of any wish to bless us. Is she waiting to pick a quarrel again?
You may have gotten through the wedding in one piece, but don’t imagine this is the end. I still haven’t acknowledged you as mistress of House Exepsion.
That sort of perfectly typical spite. If that was all it was, Odelli would rather be glad. It would at least confirm that Castia had not taken Cardel’s hand—that she was fair to all, and would never join in anything her own measure judged wrong.
By now Odelli was even beginning, just a little, to look forward to it.
…Will she toss me a fat bundle of coin and tell me to leave Ludville?
She was watching Castia in secret, a faintly hopeful look in her eyes, when the glowstones throughout the hall flickered all at once.
It’s begun.
The music that had been flowing quietly cut off, and conversation died in an instant. Overhead the chandelier shivered with a faint rattle, and a foreign pulse began to make itself felt—a sign that the flow of mana was going wrong.
“……What is happening?”
“Have the glowstones failed?”
“All of them at once? That can’t be…”
The nobles set down their glasses and looked at one another with uneasy eyes.
In that moment Odelli’s gaze went straight to Belloa. Hands hidden behind her back, the woman was glancing about as if she shared in the confusion, playing along. Odelli understood at once what she was doing. A magic formula had been inscribed upon her hand, and that hand was closed around the Chaos-Tuning Stone. She meant to make herself the medium.
So she decided not to stop after all.
Odelli had expected it. Even after dropping Belloa a quiet hint, she had known it would come to this, because she knew how tightly the other woman lived in Gawin’s grip, and in the house’s. And still she had taken the risk of shaking her, for one reason.
To plant a very small seed.
A seed of distrust. The first step toward making her see that Gawin was a man not worth protecting in the slightest. Watching Belloa step forward like this, Odelli thought that first step—the one she had aimed for—might yet be achieved.
“Ludville.”
“Yes.”
As if he had already known, Ludville answered shortly and drew a rough stone from within his coat. It was, of course, no ordinary stone.
The stone that had lain in Ludville’s secret vault beside the Blood Crystal necklace.
The very thing Zeke had left behind, taking it for mere clutter and never bothering to steal it. Why else would Ludville have kept it locked away with a necklace that mattered? Because it was the only substance that could nullify the Chaos-Tuning Stone. He had found it at the end of thousands of regressions.
At that signal Ludville turned in a single motion to stand before her, as if he had been waiting. The instant his hand closed around Odelli’s wrist, her sky-blue eyes trembled, ever so slightly, and her heart began to race—a purely bodily response.
The Chaos-Tuning Stone could distort the flow of purification. Depending on how it was used, it might suppress that power or drive it into runaway: a device of interference. And now the conditions for its activation had been met.
Ngh.
A pain began, as if her heart were being wrung dry.
They mean to make me run wild…
But this life was not like the others. Odelli drew a quiet breath.
“Now.”
The moment the word left her, Ludville poured mana into the stone.
The Shard of Ilos.
Its true nature was a piece broken from the wall of the castle where an archmage named Ilos had dwelt in ancient times. The castle itself had fallen centuries ago, yet the fragment had been handed down to the present day. Once, that castle had been a single vast magical structure, said to hold within it a barrier that reflected every intrusion of mana from outside, and every attack. Truly—every one.
A mere fragment of a castle could hardly wield that legendary power in full…
But against the Chaos-Tuning Stone, at least, it answered perfectly.
And then it happened. The runaway Belloa had meant to draw out of Odelli surged back the other way, exact and opposite.
“……!”