Cold Rage - 2
"I believed she loved me."
Robert's voice lingered in her ears. The way he laid out his past with that blank face, as though it were nothing worth mentioning — it looked, if anything, composed. As though none of it meant a thing to him anymore.
There had been times, he said, when he'd felt betrayed upon realizing his love had been one-sided — and Robert laughed softly as he admitted it.
"Though it's nothing that concerns me anymore, of course."
Shhhraaak—
A blade cut sharp through the air. Sharper and rougher than usual, it made no effort to hide the fierce, almost feral momentum it poured out with every swing. Her feet ground into the earth with each step as the advancing sword carved line after line through the empty morning air.
Adele's sword had always embodied flow. Born of the rugged northern lands though she was, that blade alone had always brought softness to mind. But today, she knew full well, her sword was rough. Violent. A sword flows from the emotion behind it — and what had settled into her after hearing Robert's story was a small, seething anger.
Whum— From the first gray light of dawn until morning came, she had swung it, trying to shake loose the tangle of her thoughts. So why was it that her head only grew more crowded still?
"...Haah."
She stared at the sword standing frozen mid-swing, then slowly closed her eyes and tilted her head back.
Stripped down to its bones, Robert's story was the story of a man betrayed. A man starved for love who fell for the woman who came to him — only to learn that the love she whispered was a lie, that she had approached him for his family's fortune. Seen from the outside, it was a tale told often enough. The broken engagement, the estrangement — there had been circumstances behind it all. He hadn't dwelt on it much, he said. He'd brushed it off as another man's affair, nothing particularly special.
She had asked about the name Theresia only to learn whether it touched Robert in some way — not because the woman herself interested her. Adele pressed a hand to her brow, then dragged it down her face. There was no reason anywhere to take this so seriously. The past of a man with no connection to her — no. He was her adjutant now, but that was all he was. There had been no reason to ask in the first place, and even if she had asked, no need on earth to brood over it like this.
And yet.
...And yet.
Frowning faintly, Adele forced out a heavy breath.
Anger was a violent, searing thing. Once it caught, it blazed like flame, bursting forth again and again until it finally burned itself out. What she carried now was nothing like that. It was a cold so still that anything it touched might freeze solid. She was calm to a degree that startled even her — calm enough to see, with perfect clarity, what state her heart was in.
It was true that she was angry. The conduct that woman Theresia had shown was among the things Adele despised most in this world, and it made her burn that Robert had been made to endure it. But anger was not all she harbored. This feeling clung far more sickeningly than that. It was not the wrong Robert had suffered that gnawed at her — it was the words he had spoken before it. Even she found the thought ugly, and so Adele let out a bitter laugh and set down her sword.
Steel met the ground with a rough clang, and silence swept back over the training yard. No other sound remained. Nothing but the slow rhythm of her own breathing.
"...There was a woman, once, whom I loved."
Those words had shaken her. Because even knowing the two had once been engaged, she had assumed it a marriage of convenience. Hadn't she assumed there was nothing between them — just a betrothal stitched from house to house, without a single feeling in it? Looking back, the assumption was laughable. What possible reason could there have been to believe that?
Jealousy.
The word burrowed in among her hazy thoughts, and Adele gave a small laugh. It was the first such feeling she had ever held in her life — but Adele was not ignorant of her own heart. If she wanted something, she took it. If she wanted something done, she did it. Whatever caught her fancy, she made her own by any means necessary. Even when it was not a thing but a person, what Adele wanted was, in the end, what Adele got.
There was only one thing of which she could not be certain. He always looked at her with those hollow eyes, speaking words laced with emotion she couldn't read. But when Robert spoke of the woman called Theresia, his voice had been tangled. Complicated. If meeting the man Robert Taylor had awakened her to anything for the very first time, then surely it was to her own feelings.
"How ugly."
There had been a man who caught her interest — a man she wanted to make her own. So she had meant to keep him at her side. When she wanted something, it had always been so, and she had assumed this time would be no different. Instead, for the first time in her life, she had learned that some things refuse to be had — and that was how she had come to be smiling bitterly with a sword in her hand.
Perhaps this unease of hers was rooted in exactly this feeling. She needed to shake it off. But could she? Adele's life had always been lived in full confidence of itself — yet for the first time, she could find no conviction at all. Whenever the man called Robert came into view, an unease crept over her.
The day Mirazen was to return to the imperial palace, the people of the main castle grew noticeably busier — no doubt preparing to receive the party arriving from the palace. With both Adele and Mirazen tied up in one way or another, I, left entirely to myself, finally had a measure of peace.
Alone in my quarters as I was, the castle beyond the walls still buzzed. I would likely see Mirazen only moments before her departure, which meant I had a fair stretch of hours to myself until then.
And in that empty stretch, there was only one thing to think about. The name Theresia, surfacing so improbably here in the North. I frowned down at the crest Adele had handed me.
"Did she do this deliberately — so that I would be the one to see it?"
Theresia was foolish, it was true, but there was nothing wrong with her mind. Letting her name and crest slip loose at the very moment she revealed the princess's location to the enemy — that, she had almost certainly done on purpose.
She knew I was in the North. And she knew I was going to the princess.
How, exactly?
That question alone was the problem standing square in front of me. How had Theresia learned that I existed? Granted, she might somehow have come to know I was headed north — but my becoming Adele's adjutant and riding out with the subjugation force was nowhere near the point at which such news would reach the Central.
Ten days. That was all the time between my arrival in the North and my marching out with the subjugation. For her to have gathered the intelligence, slipped away unseen, and reported the princess's whereabouts within those ten days — it would have been impossible for anyone, however capable, Mirazen included. She must have had help.
And perhaps that someone even knew the princess was in the northwest. Killing the princess had been the goal from the very start — and if Mirazen, having learned that I was in the North, had used that fact to draw me in... then wouldn't that account for this whole affair well enough?
That the princess was in the northwest was a fact known only to adjutants and above, or to the imperial court's senior ministers. But the adjutants here were not the sort who would sell it. This power had grown out of Adele's mercenary band in the first place — meaning there was no one in it who bore the princess any grudge.
Which meant the one who had given away the princess's whereabouts belonged to the imperial house.
My gaze, circling the thought again and again, abruptly went still.
"...Keitel."
The one person in the imperial family with reason to check the princess — the only one who might make up his mind to kill her. The ministers had no such reason. Their business was to pledge loyalty to whoever would wear the crown; there was not the slightest profit in clinging to Mirazen, whose prospects had long since drifted out of reach of the throne. The pillars of power, after all, had already attached themselves to the Crown Prince.
Keitel stood at the head of that current, of course — but his creed ran to far crueler extremes. Show him the first hint of a threat to his power, and he would move to remove it. This was the first time Mirazen had ever come to the northwest, was it not? Hence the attempt on her life. The princess, motionless until now, had begun to move in search of a place of her own — and if that movement grated on him, and so he had tried to kill her, if only through another's hands...
My thoughts grew heavy. The moment Keitel's name entered the picture, it meant everything had been set in motion from the very instant the princess first declared she would go to the northwest. Theresia had entered into it then, passed the princess's location to the barbarians — and so, step by step, it had all come to this.
"Theresia Violet."
I stared down at the crest Adele had given me, then crumpled it in my fist.
She had been quiet for so long that I had judged her finished — incapable of ever rising again. Now I saw how wrong that judgment had been. The woman had taken it all as hatred, risen from the dirt, and crossed the line. Had she stayed in her own corner of the world, we might have lived out our lives without ever meeting again. Instead, Theresia had reached for me once more.
And she had touched Mirazen.
I had finally spoken of it aloud, but let the truth stand: the endangering of Mirazen's life was a regret I had carried for close to a hundred years. If a person has a reverse scale — the one place that must never, ever be touched — then surely this was mine.
I had planned on a longer stay in the North. I had thought there was room to move at a more leisurely pace. But it seemed the time had come to move again.
Come to the South — was that what she had said? I didn't know what was being prepared there, what waited for me at the end of it, but I was not afraid. I simply meant to cut the thread that bound me to the woman called Theresia. I had no intention of leaving her be any longer. If she had no place in the future I intended to build, then it would be cleaner to erase her from the picture altogether.
Knock, knock.
At the sound I turned, and a familiar voice came through the door. A glance at the clock told me how much time had slipped past. It had to be nearly time for Mirazen to depart — they had come to fetch me for the send-off.
"It's Lotos. Shouldn't you be coming out soon, my lord? Her Highness the Princess will be departing shortly."
"I'll be right out."
I answered and stepped outside; true to form, Lotos was impeccably turned out, one hand adjusting his glasses. His goatish beard was trimmed neat as ever. He looked me over, smiled faintly, and spoke.
"You've dressed up rather nicely, all the same. Her Highness won't be disappointed."
"Where is the Grand Duchess?"
At my question, Lotos studied me for a moment, then shrugged. "I expect she'll be out before long. Though if you're looking for her, I take it there's something you wish to say?"
"That's right."
I didn't care for the knowing smile he wore, but I nodded at the assurance that she would be along shortly.
What I had to tell Adele was simple enough: that I would likely be leaving the North ahead of schedule. And the words I had been meaning to give her besides.
I would pass briefly back through the Central, but I meant to go straight to Adrian rather than the ducal residence. With the South ahead of me, it could hardly hurt to keep ties with the Church — and in any case, once in the South, I would be moving with Adrian alone. There was no need for things to be awkward between us. Better to see each other often beforehand, and scrub the awkwardness away in advance.
When I lifted my head, a wind was blowing. The imperial banner snapped above the waiting carriage; a sea of people had gathered, and for a moment I even caught Lotos letting out a low gasp of admiration. Then the woman standing beside that carriage came into view.
For an instant I took her for Mirazen — but that cold white hair belonged to one woman alone.
Adele Igrit.
Just as the name surfaced in my mind, she smiled. It was a thoroughly pleased smile — the smile of a woman who had been waiting all this time for me to come.