Yuliana von Valentine (2)
It's fine? Just like that? Why? How?!
Yuliana was too shaken to get another word out.
Don't tell me... she noticed?
That was what ran through Yuliana's mind. In truth, Evangeline was hardly thinking anything at all.
I'm so tired I could die, and she wants to drag up ancient history. Why should I have to sit here and listen to her story?
There was no way to know what Evangeline was thinking. Wound tight, Yuliana swallowed against a dry throat.
"Th-that is... but—"
"So. In short. You put a Shadow Doll on me because you wanted to find out what kind of person I am. Is that it?"
"Eep—!"
Evangeline did not seem the least inclined to let the matter pass.
Only then did Yuliana understand. Evangeline had not come to talk at all. She had come to carve a lesson in blood, with her own hands, into the insolent wretch who had dared fasten something as outrageous as a Shadow Doll to her!
...That, of course, was nothing but Yuliana's delusion. At that very moment, what Evangeline was actually thinking was this.
I'm sleepy.
All she wanted was to tie the conversation off and go back to sleep. She had cut straight to the point not out of any hunger for bloody revenge or a moral lesson, but simply because she wanted a promise that it would not happen again, and she wanted it quickly.
"That's... what I mean is..."
Yuliana's mind went white. It wasn't fair. Not once, in all the time before this, had things ever turned out this way. Why now, of all moments? Why against her, of all people?
"...Uuu..."
Watching Yuliana come entirely unstrung and start to whimper, Evangeline thought:
What is wrong with this woman?
And only then did she finally see it.
This woman was a hopeless mess.
"...You really aren't going to kill me?"
"I told you, it isn't anything like that."
With the First Princess sniffing in front of me, I let out a long sigh.
"Do you take me for some killer who does it for pleasure...?"
"I-I'm sorry."
"Ah. Enough of that."
Only after Yuliana had barely pulled herself together did I rise from my seat.
"I'll be going, then. If fate allows, we'll see each other again."
"W-wait!"
Yuliana's urgent voice stopped me. A moment ago she had been radiating an aura that all but begged me to leave, so I turned, wondering what she could possibly want now.
"What is it?"
"I-I'm the student council president of Polaris."
"Yes. Oscar told me."
Now that I knew the student council president of Polaris was, in fact, this sort of hopeless mess, I was starting to worry about the academy.
Is it going to be all right?
"I-if you ever run into trouble during your time at the academy, please come to the student council room whenever you like. Anything within my power, I'll help you with..."
"You will?"
"O-of course. What good is being in-laws if we don't look after each other?"
She had already stopped sniffling, straining to hold the dignified bearing of a princess together again. There was something pitiful in the effort, but for the moment I said I understood.
"Thank you. If anything comes up, I'll stop by."
"Th-then. Go carefully. It's late."
I left Princess Yuliana behind—eyes swollen from crying, fighting to keep her composure—and stepped out to Prince Oscar, who had been waiting.
"You've been waiting all this time?"
"Well. Yes."
Oscar wore that particular smile of his, the one that made him look good-natured, and started down the stairs ahead of me at an easy pace.
"What did you and my sister talk about?"
"Oh, this and that."
There is no world in which I tell him she bawled like a hopeless mess.
I let the rest trail off. Oscar, having heard me, simply went down the stairs without a word. We reached the bottom, and as the last footfall landed, he spoke.
"...She may not seem it, but she is the Empire's next heir to the throne."
I had no idea what to say, so I kept quiet. Oscar went on.
"First in the line of succession. President of Polaris's student council. Neither is a seat one can claim on luck alone."
So he said. The princess's hopeless display had shattered her image to pieces, but the Shadow Dolls she made were, at the very least, of a high order. A doll split from a spirit and worked to that standard would have been near perfect at the quiet labor of tailing rivals and listening in. Short of that vanishingly small handful of masters whose senses had been honed past the five and into a sixth, noticing one at all was all but impossible. Even I, had I been a single step slower in catching its presence, would have lost it by a hair as it slid back into the dark, and catching it would have been beyond me.
"Of course I know."
I answered him calmly. Princess Yuliana might be a hopeless mess, but she was no incompetent. Skill with Shadow Dolls meant she was exceedingly good at the fight beneath the surface: gathering intelligence through the dolls, and using it to check her rivals and remove them. That was why she had kept using them, and why she had survived the contest for the throne. Her only flaw of temperament was that when events strayed far from what she expected, she could not master her panic; her judgment slipped, and she flailed. She was young, and comparatively inexperienced, so the flaw showed itself large—but the more time passed, the more it would fade.
And that was not all. The reason she had built a position unmatched even among her siblings was probably not her ability alone. The unqualified backing of one brother. In effect, the symbolic weight of a faction hardly different from an alliance between two heirs of the imperial house.
I spoke to Oscar with a measure of honesty.
"I'm glad the affection between siblings seems so strong."
"...Affection, is it."
Oscar murmured it, small and bitter.
"I wonder whether such a thing exists at all, anywhere but between my eldest sister and me."
It did not take me long to understand him. The Empire was a neighbor with whom we shared a border, and so, whether one wished to hear it or not, news of every kind had a way of seeping across through the channels underneath. In the house of Valentine, masters of the Empire, five children held a claim upon the next throne: two daughters and three sons. Of them, two held the greatest power—the first, the eldest daughter, and the second, the eldest son. But unlike the eldest daughter, who had at her back the full support of Oscar, dead last in the order of succession and one who had abandoned the throne entirely, the eldest son had to build his faction by his own strength alone. The third child, the second son, and the fourth, the second daughter, had not given up their claims. Set Oscar aside—the fifth child, the third son—and those two were still in the fight.
Perhaps the reason Oscar clung so hard to a marriage with me was itself one large insurance policy.
The public reason for the betrothal was a symbol of amity between kingdom and Empire. One layer down, the hidden reason was to strengthen the princess's faction. But beneath even that—at the floor under the floor of what he truly wanted—lay the real purpose. If, on the chance of chances, a possibility so thin it was nearly none, the worst case, and yet... if Yuliana were to lose the struggle for the throne, then the marriage would be a pretext. A stepping stone, so the two siblings could flee at once into exile in the kingdom.
If that were so, could Oscar's heart toward me truly be called pure, all the way through?
"What has you thinking so hard?"
Oscar's voice reached my ear as I sank into the thought. The grave tone of a moment ago was gone as if it had never been, and in its place sat that earlier smile—sly, and yet somehow good-natured.
"...It's nothing. Let's go."
Right. Why should I have to trouble myself over some other country's fight for a throne? The only thing in this situation that actually concerned me was that marrying a man was, physiologically, impossible. I could not afford to forget the real point of it now.
I moved quickly to his side and looked up into his face, steady and intent. And I pictured that oily face lying half-naked on a bed, looking back at me...
Gyaaaaaaah.
...Good. Motivation enough.
"...Is something the matter?"
Oscar looked down at me with an odd smile. I didn't like that I didn't like the look on his face, but I decided to let it pass. He was surely off on some insolent little fantasy of his own again.
Imagine whatever you like. I have no intention of marrying you anyway.
"It's nothing."
I made a point of turning my head aside, sharper and more merciless than the moment called for.
"Princess!"
Just then Delphina stepped down from the carriage that had stopped in front of us.
"Where in the world did you vanish to without a word, Your High—"
Her gaze drifted, slowly, to the space at my side.
"Ah—Your Highness!"
"Ah, Delphina. Forgive me. I took her off without a word and put you to trouble."
The prince offered it like an excuse, looking awkward, and Delphina narrowed her eyes and let the complaints come.
"Honestly. Fiancé or not, this is too much. Do this without a word and I'm the one left in a bind. What does that make me, as her guard?"
I stared at Delphina, startled. If my memory was right, I had never once seen her raise her voice.
"Do you have any idea how long I searched for the princess?"
Good, Delphina. Don't let up.
"...Hah. It isn't as if I can say a word of this to His Highness. It's late, so I'll overlook it just this once. You understand?"
"I truly am sorry."
"Next time, you must at least tell me beforehand."
"Mm. I'll bear it in mind."
The prince laughed, sheepish, and scratched the back of his head. Delphina turned her eyes on me and said the very same thing.
"That goes for you as well, Princess."
What did I even do?!
...Though I was hardly in a position to say it. I was the one who had disappeared with the prince without a word. Knowing nothing of what had actually happened, she had every reason to think I had slipped away from the guard assigned to me and gone off to enjoy a secret meeting with him.
"D-Delphina. It's a misunderstanding."
"Enough."
"I can explain all of it."
I piled on excuses in desperation, but Delphina was angry enough that she turned her face from me entirely. While I floundered, she spoke to the prince in a voice like a cutting wind.
"Then, Your Highness, please take care on the way home."
"Mm. You take care as well. Princess Evangeline, I hope your night is a good one."
He turned to me as he said it, but I didn't spare him so much as a glance. I shut the door.
Delphina's angry because of you.