Delphina Cornwall (1)
"It is a synthetic chimera, developed in utmost secrecy at a research institute under the royal palace."
The Chief Steward spoke to Delphina, who was staring into the iron cage before her with an uneasy face.
"A living weapon, made from magical beasts captured in the Human-Demon War. Even within the kingdom, its very existence is a secret wrapped inside a secret."
Behind three layers of thick iron bars loomed a magical beast vast as a mountain. Two pairs of wings, six legs, and a head that looked like two skulls half-fused into one, with three eyes glittering across it. The tail forked three ways—fur on one prong, scales on another, slime on the last—and the furred prong split into three again halfway down its length.
"Three beasts were fused into this chimera whole, their brains never removed. Its conscious will to resist will be three times as fierce, and three times as violent, as that of an ordinary magical beast."
Delphina swallowed dryly, her expression drawn tight. The Chief Steward glanced at her and added, more quietly:
"If you succeed in pacifying this synthetic beast—a creature that lives in a constant state of rage—then even Princess Evangeline, in the grip of her madness, should be well within your power to calm."
At that, Delphina lifted a hesitant hand.
"...Um. Excuse me."
"Yes?"
"Is there a reason I have to do this against a chimera, instead of against Princess Evangeline herself...?"
"The one you must pacify, Lady Delphina, is not the princess as she ordinarily is, but Lady Evangeline seized by madness. We have already cross-checked the matter. Unless you can reliably pacify this chimera, you may consider calming Her Highness impossible."
"I-it's that bad?!"
"...It remains only a possibility. But I cannot say there is no chance her illness will worsen beyond even this. His Majesty hopes that as she heals in body and mind at Polaris Academy, the princess's heart will mend little by little as well."
He paused, as if steadying his breath, and then went on in a low voice.
"The worst possibility, however, must be kept in mind."
A hiccup escaped her before she could stop it. Delphina's shoulders jerked in a shiver.
"Well then. Shall we begin?"
"Ah—! Yes!"
The shiver passed as quickly as it had come. Delphina nodded in a rush and turned toward the chimera beyond the bars.
Iron answered her. Clang, clang—crash. The synthetic beast shrieked and drove itself into the bars again and again, as if pain were a thing that happened only to other creatures.
"GRAAAAAAAAH!!!"
Every limb and both pairs of wings were lashed round and round in chain, and still its ferocity had not been checked in the slightest.
Delphina did not flinch, and she did not give ground. She simply stood where she was and looked, steady and unblinking, into the beast's eyes—one at either side of the head, one set in the brow. Three in all.
...Astonishing.
The Chief Steward did not say it aloud. From beneath the floor where her feet were planted, a faint holy power was welling up, thin and luminous as a river of stars. Holy power in such measure was something one felt only from a paladin, or a high priest. Inborn talent, then? Slowly, a light of expectation gathered in his eyes. A last resort—and one I had already, in my heart, given up on. But perhaps, truly—!
"...Grk. Grrr..."
Mid-shriek, the beast's three eyes began to close.
Thud.
"...Lady Delphina?"
A dull sound struck the floor. Droplets of blood were slowly darkening the stone.
"Lady Delphina! Are you all—"
She raised one hand without a word and stopped him. Her eyes had never left the beast.
The Chief Steward watched her in silence. The blood came faster, and the beast slowly lowered its head. Two of its six legs buckled and folded; one pair of wings ceased their thrashing and hung slack. Two of the three eyes drooped half-shut, and from one of its two mouths a long tongue spilled, loose as a sleeper's.
"...Grgh."
Then, with a heavy booming thud, the synthetic beast lost consciousness entirely and went down.
"...Lady Delphina."
"That'll do, right?"
She turned to him with a confident grin, and her body began, slowly, to tip backward.
"Whoa—"
He lunged in at once and caught her carefully as she fell.
"I... I did it."
Looking down at her smile, the Chief Steward murmured in a voice that trembled, quite unlike him.
"...You truly did."
"What's that supposed to mean."
Delphina answered in a deliberately sulky tone.
"You sound like you never believed in me."
A complicated expression crossed his face. He shook his head slowly, and when he spoke again his voice had gone firm.
"Splendidly done. You have passed."
"Hooray..."
She smiled a loose, strengthless smile, and her voice thinned as it went on.
"Now I can, too. Just like Mother..."
He drew a sharp breath.
"...beside the princess. Toge... ther..."
Her stammering head drooped. She was fast asleep in his arms, a happy smile still on her lips, and the Chief Steward whispered, as if the words were meant for no one else:
"...I leave the princess in your care, Lady Cornwall."
"There's another special-admission student?"
"Yes."
At the Chief Steward's answer, I tilted my head.
"Not an invited student in the same sense as Your Highness. After a brief video interview, she was granted qualification for special admission."
"Special admission, is it. What, some war hero's kid?"
"Yes."
I had said it without really thinking. The Chief Steward nodded all the same.
"The eldest daughter of Narcissa Cornwall, former 4th Seat of the Seven Swords of the Kingdom. Delphina Cornwall."
There was a sharp, crystalline crack. The teacup in my hand burst apart.
I looked at the full-length mirror hanging behind the Chief Steward.
Behind my reflected back, inside the glass, Narcissa Cornwall was staring at me—at the me who stood outside it.
Three days remained until the entrance ceremony at Polaris Academy.
There were any number of ways to get there, but the princess and I would be taking an airship. Thirty-two hours in the air. A squadron of wyvern knights was to escort us, and the route would be scouted in advance to confirm there was no danger, so apparently we had nothing to worry about. The path itself would not run straight; it would draw a long, gentle curve, planned so that the windows offered a view of the preserved wilds within the Inviolable Territory.
There was more besides. Things to be careful of while living at the Academy. The way classes were conducted. Places inside the grounds that were forbidden even to students. And so on.
I heard all of it, and I could not hold on to a single word. Which was only fair. I had never met Princess Evangeline before.
"We aren't boarding yet?"
"Once Her Highness arrives, she will board first. You will follow after, Lady Delphina."
"And inside the airship..."
"The cleaning, the headcount—everything was finished beforehand."
The Chief Steward explained it all kindly.
...I'm shaking.
I knew I was supposed to keep my dignity in front of the princess. The shaking did not care.
I had seen her often enough in newspaper photographs and painted illustrations, but only once in my life had I seen her face with my own eyes. A single moment, standing beside my mother as she set out for the battlefield, when the princess glanced our way. Princess and knight at once—the only princess-knight on this continent. The instant I saw her, it felt as if my heart had dropped clean through the floor of my chest.
Golden hair, brilliant as the sun hung in the sky, and a face in which beauty and a soldier's bearing lived side by side. That was the first time I had ever thought I envied my mother, who went to war at her side. And in that same breath, I decided. I would become a knight like my mother, and I would stand beside her.
The wish had come true in a shape rather further from what I had imagined than I liked to admit. Come true, even so. That part had not changed.
"...Her Highness is arriving."
The Chief Steward, who had been speaking into a radio, said it then. At the same moment I made out someone walking toward us from the far side.
There was so much luggage that I lost count; more than five attendants trailed behind, even at a glance. But the princess I was seeing for only the second time in my life was not the one I remembered.
Not golden hair shining like the sun. Platinum, gone white. The beauty was unchanged, and yet the dark circles sunk deep beneath her eyes had swallowed the old gallantry. I could not feel it anymore.
A sickness of the heart...
The Chief Steward's words came back to me. What in the world was hurting her like this?
"We have been waiting."
When the princess arrived, the Chief Steward bowed his head.
"P-pleased to meet you! I'm Delphina Cornwall!"
I blurted it out along with him and ducked my head low.
Oh no. My voice cracked...
I must have been too nervous. Not only had my voice broken, I had bitten my tongue hard on top of it. Had it sounded strange? Would she think I was some kind of oddball? I could not bring myself to lift my burning face.
"...Your Highness?"
Then I heard the Chief Steward, flustered.
Forgetting even my embarrassment, I raised my head, and the princess's expression was right there in front of me. Her brows were shot high. Her golden pupils had shrunk small, and they were trembling.
The princess was terrified.
Why? Confusion and all, I asked, carefully.
"Um... are you all right?"
At my words she flinched, shoulders jerking.
She would not look at me. When she spoke, it was so small that had I not been straining to hear, I would have missed it.
"......I'm sorry."
Then she stepped past me and went straight into the airship, quick as someone fleeing a thing she could not bear to face.
"Hah. Hah. Hah. Hah..."
The moment I made it inside the airship, I folded to the floor where I stood and dragged air in and out of me. My chest was heavy, as if my lungs had been swapped for lead.
The instant I saw that face—the instant I heard that child's voice—I could not breathe. It was as if Narcissa had come back to life and turned her eyes on me, and I did not trust myself to hold that gaze for long.
So I ran. I flung aside a child who had done nothing wrong, as if she were nothing at all, and I went alone.
By now, how strange must she think I am. She might be cursing me where I could not hear. She might already resent me as the woman who got her mother killed. And even if she thought none of that, the mere sight of her face set my body shaking, and there was nothing I could do about it.
"Sorry. I'm sorry..."
An apology that would reach no one. I stayed where I had fallen and said it to the empty air, over and over, for a long time.