In the Moon Tower - 1
Hoo— hoo—
It was still too early for anyone to be awake. At the mournful cry of an owl, Yuria slowly opened her eyes.
Her body ached with hunger after a day without food, but her mind, lost in thought, never once registered it.
She had faced Robert, and a day had passed since then.
Shutting herself in her room had been her way of carving out time alone. Had she truly been wrong? Yuria stared quietly at the blank wall, which reflected nothing back at her. She needed to steady her wavering heart, to set her thoughts in order. She confessed, at least to herself, that her resolve had faltered, if only for a moment. For a brief instant, she had shown emotion at the words Robert had spat at her.
There had been no reason to waver. Not the slightest. Hadn't she always made the right judgments for the family? And yet, if she had to name the reason her conviction had come into question—
Well. Yuria pondered, still fixing her gaze on the wall.
Her long, flowing hair had at some point been cut short. A bob that barely grazed her shoulders. As she shook her head once, a faint breath escaped her lips.
"...I'll admit it. I was wrong."
She thought she could understand why Robert hated her. The fault lay in how weak she had let her heart become.
Because she'd harbored her dead mother's words in some corner of her chest, she had neglected her brother under the pretext of caring for him, and everything she'd done under the banner of reforming him into a worthy member of the family had gone awry. Who could have known it would break Robert this badly?
She should have been harsher. She should have treated him so that those eyes held nothing—not resentment, not any such emotion—nothing but reverence and loyalty toward the family alone.
Hadn't she once blamed her brother for being too soft? Yet in the end, it was her own heart that had weakened. Cutting her hair had been an act of atonement for that sin.
She had believed she'd changed, that she no longer cut such a pitiful figure—and yet he claimed to hate her. For him to say such a thing to his Young Matriarch was, in itself, a crime.
Should she punish him? She debated for a moment, then shook her head. There was no need for punishment right away. However grave the offense, surely one deserved time to make amends.
"Because I am the Young Matriarch."
Leniency toward one's kin was, after all, another quality a Young Matriarch ought to possess.
She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them slowly. The room, washed in soft moonlight, looked cleaner than before. On this night when the full moon had vanished, her blue eyes gleamed in the warped light.
...The glow was pale—cold and chill, as if frozen over.
A whole cluster of events followed on the heels of the Full Moon Festival. There was the Family Head Council, a gathering of noble houses led by Duke Taylor's, and there was the Hunting Rite, where men captured beasts to present to the ladies. I had no right to sit any of them out.
Not that I would have skipped them even if I could—the reason, of course, was the Princess.
"The one closest to the Crown Prince was the Princess."
Their relationship was far better than the one between Yuria and me, but even so, there was a certain awkwardness between us.
Still, if I wanted to approach the Crown Prince, I needed her.
What I required was the groundwork to become one of his inner circle, and with House Taylor behind me, that wasn't so difficult a door to open. My true goal, however, was to become his loyal servant.
Only then could I watch his every move. Observing him from the closest possible distance, and striking him from behind when the moment came—that was surely the best approach.
Treason, by any other name. But in truth, the Empire meant little to me. If anything, I wondered whether its disappearance might be the better outcome.
Yet my own strength alone would not be enough. At the very least, I needed a faction that would stand fully behind my will. To slaughter the Crown Prince, I would need that faction—so for now, the plan was to start gathering information, beginning with Arwen.
"Then the last place I'll head to is... this."
On the map of the Empire spread before me, my gaze came to rest on the imperial capital at its very center.
Eden, the City of Light—the paradise of humankind said to have been founded when the Moon God descended in ages long past. Since it had never once suffered a foreign invasion, the number of times the Imperial Palace had rung with blood could be counted on one hand. One might even call it the city that symbolized the Empire's prosperity.
My mood was strangely complicated. If my long-cherished wish came true, it would mean the Imperial Palace itself would vanish from the Empire.
The Crown Prince would die, and naturally, the imperial family—who would surely become my enemies—would not be spared either.
With the quill in my hand, I drew a line through the palace's location on the map.
This map was, in its way, the plan I had been quietly building. If I meant to deal with the Crown Prince, I would have to gather strength step by step; the thought of marching on the palace hadn't crossed my mind even once. I'd be nothing more than a single moth flying into the flame.
I had the experience of my past lives to thank for that. It was why I felt no particular tension even while entertaining so grand a scheme as toppling the imperial family. Even if I couldn't fully recover my former realm, having it back to a certain level would help considerably.
The assassin I'd dealt with last time had been low-tier, but facing multiple knights at once was still beyond me. How many imperial soldiers had marched to subdue me back then, I wondered. In my memory, there had been at least five hundred.
I killed every one of them before the Princess appeared and I died—but this time, I had no intention of fighting alone, so it would be fine.
The only problem was who, exactly, would be willing to join me in treason. Alone, one can do nothing. It took me several lifetimes to truly grasp that fact. But the more one rushes such matters, the worse they tangle. For now, I could afford to think slowly—after all, a few names already surfaced in my mind.
And the one I considered most important among them was Adele Egret.
My gaze drifted from the map to the handkerchief I had failed to return last time. I had promised to come to the North, and I intended to visit before the year's end. If I failed to appear again, her temper made it all but certain there'd be hell to pay—so it went without saying.
What troubled me was whether to warn her of what awaited her. Saving her was non-negotiable, but handled carelessly, she might come to suspect me. My thinking and my demeanor had shifted considerably since just days ago, because I had cast aside thoughts steeped in indifference and complicity.
This was my 101st life, but after shedding my lingering attachments, I had resolved to treat this life as my first. So much had already changed that it was fair to say this life shared almost nothing with the ones before. Clinging to the past would only muddy my thoughts. So I had adjusted the plan slightly—away from something close to assassination, toward instead crushing everything and forcing the change through. That was why I had resolved to save Adele.
That she would be framed for treason was a certain future. Whether she would follow my will when that moment came remained an open question—but that was something better decided when the time actually arrived.
So what must I set in motion first? I had already more or less worked that out.
"What I need to use are the Princess—and Taylor."
There was no real bad blood between the Princess and me, though lately I'd begun to harbor a small doubt. Did the Princess truly know nothing about the Crown Prince's attempts to kill me? If she had known, she had hidden it from me; if she hadn't, that was strange in its own right.
And so I felt no guilt. If anything, approaching her this way to uncover her true colors would be a far greater gain for me. Rather than be used by someone else, better to grit your teeth and bear it. Better still to learn the truth first—and be the one doing the using.
And Taylor... I had given that considerable thought. Because I had never once touched House Taylor itself.
I had killed everyone and erased the name Taylor from existence, but I had never actually ascended to the seat of Family Head myself. As if I'd decided long ago that my place was simply here, I had never even contemplated climbing higher.
But with this life, there was no need for that anymore. Yuria no longer held even the slightest meaning for me. There was no reason to consider her, and besides, my current position felt too low to make proper use of the Taylor name. After all, our dear Young Matriarch had reclaimed so many of the privileges that even my office—my standing—had grown ambiguous.
A future in which I became Family Head... when the thought occurred to me, I had to laugh. I intended to bring down the imperial family with my own hands, and I would do it while leading the very house sworn to serve them most faithfully.
It wasn't a settled future. But if I set my mind to it, there was nothing I couldn't do. I no longer had any hesitation left—if I willed it, it would be done. Yes. Just as Adele had said to me once.
"Because that's what I've decided."
Thud. I covered the map, now marked with all manner of notations, with a wooden board and surveyed my surroundings. Anyone who saw it would find themselves in a very awkward position. A line drawn boldly through the imperial family—whatever the eye, it would look like conspiracy to commit treason.
A smile crept onto my face unbidden. It had been a long time since I'd felt my heart beat like this, and it was unmistakably pounding faster than before.
Having hidden the map completely and confirmed that nothing stirred in the vicinity, I slumped back into my chair. All this mental exertion had left me tired. With the broad strokes of the plan in place, there would be no problem moving forward—but what awaited me ahead was a future I knew nothing about. The variables I could already see were more than one or two. At the very least, this future was clearly different from the one I had originally known.
The nearest engagement was the Family Head Council, held in the capital. As far as I recalled, nothing happened there—but I was certain I would meet the Princess. Meet her, earn her trust, then meet the Crown Prince and become his man. That much, I supposed, was my current objective.
I intended to meet the Crown Prince before autumn's end.
'That way, the plan can start turning.'
Granted, since I was the very man he'd framed for treason, there might be some ill will at present—but casting aside a servant who appeared to be nothing more than loyally devoted would not be easy for him. At least outwardly, it was best that I remain a scrupulously clean official, without a speck of dust on me.
As I sat steeped in these thoughts, a breeze slipped through the open window. Come to think of it, it was autumn now. After the Full Moon Festival, the weather always turned with startling abruptness—a wind that had felt endlessly hot would cool in an instant.
I closed my eyes at the breeze cooling the sweat on my brow, leaned my head against the chair's backrest, and savored, for a moment, the small reprieve it brought. And only then did a variable I had forgotten surface in my mind.
I had set it aside for the moment, but it was what Saintess Adrian had told me last time. Mirajen and Adrian were friends, wasn't that right? I had known it, but this time, it might prove quite useful.
Haven't we agreed we'd meet again, when we last parted? If we were to meet again, wouldn't this trip to the capital be the time?
"...If we meet again, this time it might be fate."
Adrian was the one I could never quite reach—always as if something were twisted just slightly out of place. It felt as though meeting her in those lifetimes had simply been forbidden. Whenever I sought her out of need, she was always away.
But this time was different. Without my even trying to meet her, without even wanting to, we had crossed paths as naturally as if it had all been arranged.
Adele had come to the Full Moon Festival, and the Saintess and I had met once more on the street. I didn't know what these things were trying to tell me—but if it was a chance, I had no intention whatsoever of letting it slip.
A chance. If this truly... was fate.
Then this time, without fail, I would see it through to the end.