“Were you perhaps waiting there to attempt another escape?” Louis asked, as if suspicious. Amelia quietly shook her head.
“If I were trying to escape, why would I be in the chapel? I would have been unlocking the chain on the locked door.”
It was a rare sensible remark. Louis let go of the suspicious expression and finally nodded.
“You weren’t in your room, so I was surprised.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
Amelia turned to Louis and replied with a face that showed she wasn’t the least bit sorry. Perhaps sensing the insincere apology, Louis neither jumped up in protest nor denied it.
“Then please rest.”
“You too, Louis.”
The moment Amelia stepped into the bedroom, the door closed. This generation’s Amelia was particularly lacking in sociability and warmth. It was only because she kept it hidden that she hadn’t caused trouble a hundred times over—had she been one to show it openly, she would have. Louis let out a sigh and turned away.
“…….”
Only after hearing the sound of footsteps fade into the distance did Amelia walk over to the bed. Her hands moved perfunctorily as she removed her pearl earrings and set them on the side table next to the bed.
“Why did they have to come at that exact moment?”
The truth was, she wasn’t in a good mood. Putting aside the fact that she hadn’t been able to escape, she hadn’t even been able to hear stories from beyond the walls.
“I had so many things I was curious about.”
She was curious about the world outside the castle walls. How bustling the markets were, what clothes people wore, what kind of houses they lived in, what they did in their free time, how they fell in love.
“And….”
And how ordinary people formed families and lived.
“…….”
Amelia was virtually a blank slate when it came to such matters. She had spent her entire life confined. The only beings Amelia had encountered in the world were her dead mother, Aaron, a few high nobles whose faces had grown familiar, Louis, and the handmaids who had been changed out time and again.
Ah, there was one more. A girl smaller and frailer than herself. Born as a twin to Amelia, she had had a nameless sister. The name Amelia was given only to the one who would carry on the line, and so.
“No, please. No! I’ll do everything you tell me to do, everything….”
“There has never been a pair of twin girls.”
The child who had died before reaching the age of three despite her mother’s desperate pleas. Amelia squeezed her eyes shut as she recalled the moment a knife was plunged into her sister’s heart. It was a terrifying memory that clung to her mind and refused to disappear, despite being from so very long ago, when she was so very young.
“Kill me instead!”
The moment she recalled her mother’s voice, like a scream, her hand slipped. Her hand, groping across the side table to steady herself, dragged the earring into her palm. When she closed her fist, the sharp post of the earring pierced her skin.
“…Ah.”
Only then did she come to her senses. Amelia let out a short sigh and dropped the earring. Blood was flowing from the pierced palm. It was no great matter. The numerous scars already remaining on her palm proved as much.
“I don’t want to die.”
She didn’t want to die like that. In Amelia’s black pupils, sharp defiance and hostility surfaced.
Before the night came when she would have to fulfill her ‘duty,’ she had to escape somehow. If it was impossible by her own strength, then by using something else—anything else.
***
“The day you must perform your duty isn’t far off, is it?”
Duke Russell, the de facto head of the high nobles, opened his mouth while raising his glass. Aaron, who sat across from him, quietly nodded.
“Already, this generation’s Amelia is twenty.”
“That is so.”
Duke Russell let out a low laugh and downed his drink in one go.
“Why don’t you have a drink? It’s not like you’re a real priest anyway.”
He gripped the mouth of the bottle and held it out to Aaron. Aaron smiled with a troubled expression and shook his head. Whatever his true nature, his outer shell claimed to be a priest.
“I don’t really feel like it.”
“Well, then.”
Duke Russell backed down easily. He did think of him as a rigid man, but whether Aaron drank or not was of little consequence to him.
“I’ve already prepared the man.”
Aaron’s hand, which had been fiddling with his empty glass, stopped for a moment. It was but a fleeting instant, so brief as to be imperceptible.
“Is he disposable?”
At Aaron’s question, Duke Russell laughed lowly.
“How could that be? It’s rare to get pregnant in one go.”
Of course, to avoid spreading sacrilegious rumors about a man entering and leaving the Saintess’s bedchamber, they couldn’t bring him in frequently. However, unless she happened to conceive on the first try, it wasn’t something that could be finished with a single attempt.
“Besides, there are quite a few cases where male children are born.”
Duke Russell gestured with his eyes to the servant standing beside him, and the attendant waiting on him deftly took out a cigar case. He then cut the end of the cigar and held it out to him.
“Huu…”
Duke Russell drew in the lit cigar. A deep, heavy smell began to fill the space where this secret meeting was taking place.
“We’ll have to keep using him until a girl with black hair and black eyes is born. There aren’t many black-haired men with their sanity intact.”
Duke Russell laughed and tapped his own head with his index finger. Aaron knew what took place in the basement of that secluded villa, so he did not ask the reason.
“This generation’s Amelia is a particularly wild, foal-like girl, so you’ve had much trouble.”
Duke Russell laughed and tossed back another glass filled with an amber liquid.
“Well, come to think of it, she was troublesome from the moment she was born.”
“…….”
“Twin girls, of all things.”
It was unprecedented. But there could not exist two Saintesses under heaven. Until the very last moment, they had striven to select the child who more closely resembled the previous Amelia. Apart from the striking features of black hair and black eyes, distinguishing the features of the other race was no easy task.
“In the end, it devoured even her mind, didn’t it.”
In any case, as a result, they had killed the weaker girl who resembled her mother less. The previous Saintess had gone mad watching her child die.
“I wish this time would be the last, too.”
Duke Russell muttered.
“It’s tiresome to order them to snap their necks and stab their hearts every time.”
Of course, it wasn’t because he pitied the innocent sacrifices. He had simply grown bored of ordering someone to die.
“If the House of Russell absorbing the Imperial family would set everyone at ease. But the young Emperor doesn’t know that yet.”
Duke Russell spoke, exhaling cigar smoke.
“He goes around subtly spreading tales that she’s a witch rather than a Saintess.”
“…….”
“Perhaps because he’s young, he doesn’t even know who holds the upper hand in power and acts quite impertinently, I tell you.”
His tone was clearly displeased. Indeed, he found Ivan, the current Emperor, extremely disagreeable. Ivan, who had ascended the throne at a young age, harbored deep resentment toward the temple and the high nobles.
“I’ll need to properly educate him one of these days.”
Duke Russell laughed and swept his hair back.
“In any case, keep a close eye on this generation’s Amelia until then. It’s no good to have things grow noisy before an important matter.”
“I will bear that in mind.”
Aaron answered obediently. In truth, he was a man who had pledged loyalty to Duke Russell.
“We’ll see each other soon.”
Perhaps pleased by that docile answer, Duke Russell carelessly tossed aside the cigar he was smoking and rose from his seat.
“Clear away the bottles and used glasses.”
Aaron ushered the servant inside and ordered him to clear the messy table. Then he opened the window to air out the room that still smelled of cigars.
“High Priest.”
“Louis.”
Just then, Louis revealed herself beyond the door she had left open.
“I found the Saintess and escorted her to her room. She wasn’t trying to escape; she was in the chapel near the north gate.”
She had come to report Amelia’s whereabouts. After that, Louis added that Amelia seemed to be feeling suffocated. Thinking of the coming-of-age night when her duty would soon be forced upon her, it was only natural to feel suffocated.
For all that, Louis, who was of a similar age and also a woman, pitied Amelia somewhat. It was an attitude different from that of Duke Russell or Aaron.
“Is that so.”
Aaron was willing to let that much advocacy pass. It was all the more so when he considered the conversation he had just had with Duke Russell.
“Make sure you check her movements especially carefully, but…”
Thus, he opened his mouth somewhat impulsively.
“If she does not show signs of attempting to escape, leave her to do as she pleases for a while.”
“Is that all right?”
Louis’s eyes went wide. Amelia’s face, which seemed younger and more pitiable despite being of a similar age, naturally came to mind.
There had surely been a time when she was so cute and lovely, Aaron thought.
“She’ll be broken soon enough anyway.”
Aaron smiled softly as he spoke. His gently curving lips and kind eyes were greatly at odds with his words.
“That much freedom…”
Of course, Aaron pitied Amelia as well. That was sincere. Even if it differed somewhat from the way Louis felt.
“…should be permissible.”
“Yes, of course!”
Louis brightened.
“Very well. Return to your duties now.”
“Yes. Have a good night.”
Louis left his room with light steps.
Aaron moved silently to the window. And he thought.
My beautiful flower. Yet the one I must someday twist and kill with my own hands….
The sky churned like Amelia’s jet-black hair in a wind that concealed savage ferocity.