Chapter 14

Shhk!

A cold blade grazed across Eaton’s face.

“Aaagh!”

He screamed, face drained bone-white, as though he might faint on the spot.

Fortunately, what had been cut was only the gag stuffed in his mouth.

“P-please, spare me, Count! Y-you said earlier you’d let me live!”

Able to speak again, Eaton protested through tears.

Christine seized his chin and jerked it up.

“You’ve quite the talent for drawing, Viscount Eaton.”

His cold voice rang out, reverberating through the wide hall.

Realizing what he meant, Eaton hurried to explain.

“That was… I was angry about being humiliated at Madame Hans’s party… it was only a prank…”

“A prank? You seem a bit old to be scrawling on walls as a prank.”

On his way back to Adele after hearing the bell, Christine had spotted the graffiti scrawled across her garden wall.

It depicted a naked woman entangled obscenely with a man.

Beneath it, someone had written:

In memory of a steamy night with the Marchioness

“Please, spare me! I’ll do anything you say! So please! Please!”

Bound to the chair, Eaton begged without pause.

“Answer everything I ask from here on, and answer it well. If there’s so much as a single lie in it, this blade will run you through.”

Christine drew his rapier and ran a finger along its sharp edge.

At the chilling warning, Eaton swallowed hard, his throat gone dry.

“O-of course!”

“Why do you torment the Marchioness?”

“That’s… because she refused my proposal…”

“Proposal? You mean the confession you made before her husband’s funeral had even ended?”

“The truth is, I’ve always liked her!”

“So is that why you poisoned the Marquis?”

Eaton shook his head quickly.

“W-what are you talking about! Everyone knows the Marchioness poisoned her own husband!”

“There’s testimony. No proof.”

“But the Marchioness fed the Marquis every single meal he ate, with her own hands.”

Christine’s hand, stroking the rapier, went still.

“Fed him?”

“The Marquis couldn’t move well on his own, so she had to tend to him at all times. Of course, the family kept it secret, for the sake of their honor.”

It was something he had never imagined.

He had known Adele married the old Marquis. He had not known the man had been an invalid, unable to move on his own.

“…Since when?”

“Since the wedding.”

Then, forgetting his own situation entirely, Eaton began to chatter on.

“In truth, ‘Marchioness’ was just a title. What House Oswald really needed was someone to nurse a man who was practically a living corpse. So they brought in a daughter from some pushover family, made her Marchioness, and worked her like a servant. Looks far more respectable than hiring a maid, after all.”

“A Marchioness in name only?”

“Yes! Count Grilles caught on to that, and put his own daughter in the seat.”

Count Grilles was Adele’s biological father.

“He married off his daughter knowing all that?”

“He needed money for his business right around then, I’d guess. Must have looked like a chance too good to pass up.”

Christine went blank, as though struck over the head.

Adele. Why, in the world…?

You said you’d become a noble and live well.

You left without looking back, following the father who’d abandoned you…

Was this the life you meant to have?

“The really rotten part is, he married her off on condition he’d get her inheritance share in advance. Didn’t matter to him if she got thrown out penniless once the Marquis died. In short — he sold off the daughter he’d abandoned as a bastard, for cash. The only one I ever felt sorry for was the Marchioness. Married off that young, not knowing a thing about any of it.”

Eaton, clicking his tongue, caught Christine’s eye and shut his mouth at once.

It wasn’t his place to say such things, after all.

“You know a great deal about House Oswald’s affairs.”

“We’re distant relatives, actually. On my mother’s side. Heh heh.”

“So do you truly believe she poisoned her husband?”

“I already told you. She fed him every meal he ate.”

“Who’s the first person suspected, when a husband’s poisoned? Knowing that — would she really have done it?”

“How would I know the ins and outs of—”

“No. You know. If you’d truly believed she poisoned her husband, you’d never have proposed to her.”

“T-that’s…”

Before he knew it, Christine’s rapier had come to rest against his throat.

That alone was enough to steal the breath from Eaton’s lungs.

“Do you know why I let you go, back at the party? Because I couldn’t kill you there without anyone noticing.”

But things were different now. This was the chapel of an abandoned, ruined monastery.

A place almost no one visited, in the cold, short days of winter.

“Die here, and you won’t be found until winter’s passed. By then you’ll be a half-rotted husk.”

“Hwuck! C-Count, please spare me! Please!”

Eaton wept again, tears and snot streaming.

“Then answer me properly.”

“I— I honestly don’t know who killed him. But the Marchioness was always devoted to the Marquis, through and through. I don’t think she poisoned him.”

“Then who do you think did?”

“I really don’t kn— hk!”

Eaton, who had been denying it firmly, flinched the instant his eyes met Christine’s. Then, in a voice that trailed off to nothing, he murmured.

“St… one…”

“The Marquis’s eldest son?”

“Yes. Someone saw the two of them quarreling, the day the Marquis died. And it was Stone, from the very start, who pointed the finger at the Marchioness as the culprit. Though — that’s only my guess.”

“Right. Stone.”

Murmuring to himself, Christine suddenly turned a fierce glare on Eaton.

“Then why didn’t you speak up for her? You said you liked her.”

“What difference would it make, someone like me speaking up for her? Stone is heir to House Oswald.”

House Oswald.

One of the five great houses that made up the Council of Elders.

With the Marquis’s death, Stone, as heir, had automatically become a member of the Council. He was far too powerful a figure for a nobody noble like Eaton to touch.

But Christine saw straight through to what was really in Eaton’s heart.

“No — you wanted her driven further into a corner, didn’t you. Once she was broken down like that, she’d be so much easier to have.”

“—!”

“Did I hit a little too close to the mark?”

Christine’s voice had sunk low, sinister.

Eaton felt an instinctive stab of terror.

“I… I won’t say there wasn’t some of that in me…”

“So did you actually spend a steamy night with her, then?”

Eaton hung his head.

“The truth is… she never so much as glanced my way.”

“How unfortunate.”

“Then I’ll take it you’re going to spare me now…”

Christine shook his head.

“Didn’t I tell you? If there was so much as one lie in it, I wouldn’t let you live.”

“But I told you everything, truthfully! It’s the truth!”

“And the graffiti on the wall?”

“—!”

In that instant, Eaton understood.

That Christine had never meant to let him live, not from the start.

“Have you already forgotten what you confessed with your own mouth, not a moment ago? That the graffiti was a lie.”

“T-that’s…!”

As Eaton stared at him, face gone rigid with dread, the corner of Christine’s red lips curved up, thin and faint.

“There is one way you could still live, mind you.”

“What is it?”

“Settle everything at once, and leave Greenhill.”

“But my family has lived here for generations! Anything but that!”

“Then die here instead.”

He was utterly resolute. There was no other option left, if Eaton wanted to live.

Eaton nodded, his face crumpling as though he might cry.

“I’ll leave.”

Clang!

Christine tossed the rapier down in front of him and turned away.

Still bound to the chair, Eaton stretched out a foot and dragged the blade closer. Its sharp edge cut easily through the ropes holding him.

But the moment that fine blade was in his hand, Eaton fell prey to a dark temptation.

Christine stood there now, his back utterly exposed, defenseless. And empty-handed, besides.

However brave a warrior, what could he do bare-handed against a surprise attack from behind?

Just as he’d said himself — if he died here, he wouldn’t be found until winter had passed. Everything would be buried, flawlessly, without a trace.

“Yiaaah!”

He drove the rapier into Christine’s back with all his strength.

But in the next instant his face drained white and his mouth fell open.

“Guh— th-this is…!”

His terrified pupils trembled wildly, then suddenly blew wide with horror.

Fwish!

A shadow, grown vast and monstrous, lunged at him with terrible speed.

“Gyaaaah! Aaagh!”

A reek of blood rose with the horrific screams that echoed through the ruin.

---

Christine walked out of the monastery stark naked, without a single thread on him.

Moonlight settled over skin so pale it seemed translucent, and silver hair streamed in the wind — he looked like something from another world entirely.

Flecks of red blood were scattered across his pale, white cheek, and even that was strangely beautiful.

Zimmer hurried over and threw a long cape around him.

“Did you know the Marquis was an invalid, unable to move on his own?”

Christine asked, wrapping the cape about himself.

“Yes, well… though it seems House Oswald kept it a secret.”

Christine’s eyes sharpened.

“Then why wasn’t it in your report?”

Zimmer, of all people, looked at him as though this were absurd.

“Have you forgotten you told me there was no need to investigate the Marchioness? Because she was a traitor, you said…”

Remembering his own words, Christine’s brow furrowed.

“There’s no need to look into Adele. But look into the late Marquis Oswald’s death. And into Stone Oswald, as well.”

“Thought you might say that. It’s already underway.”

Christine paused and looked at him, and Zimmer gave him an easy smile.

“Had a feeling you’d want to know, sooner or later.”

Uncanny instincts on this one. Reads minds, practically.

“And pack up a few of my things, and take them over to Adele’s house.”

“Yes, Commander!”

Christine found Zimmer’s smirking grin thoroughly irritating.

It was the look of a man who’d known exactly how this would turn out, all along.

“It’s not what you’re thinking.”

“I wasn’t thinking anything!”

“Irritating. Just as I said.”

Grumbling under his breath, he climbed into the carriage.

Zimmer scrambled up after him and asked.

“But are you really going to be all right with this?”

“With what?”

“Living under the same roof as her, right in the thick of mating season, no less, and winter’s the worst of it. And with His Majesty apparently thinking of marrying you to Princess April — if anything unseemly were to happen…”

At Christine’s scowl—

“I’m only saying, that’s all. Yes. Not that it matters to me, either way…”

Zimmer began industriously wiping the window with his sleeve, until the back of his head stopped prickling under that glare.

“It’s the Emperor’s order.”

“Pardon?”

“There’s something I need to find, through her. A blank document bearing the Emperor’s signature.”

Zimmer’s face showed a flicker of shock.

“Then — don’t tell me you approached the Marchioness on purpose, deliberately?”

“I told you already. I don’t care for traitors.”

This time it was Zimmer whose face went blank with disbelief.

He’s saying he didn’t approach her because he liked her?

When his feelings swing wild every single time he’s near Adele? When his eyes go that hot, every time?

---

“Adele, don’t come closer — stay back!”

“Oh god! What kind of beast could do something like this…”

Blood stained the pure white snow a dark, blackish red, everywhere… and there, collapsed in the middle of it…

“Aaahh!”

Adele woke with a scream, her eyes flying open.

Looking around, she saw her own familiar bedroom, lit by the faint flicker of a candle.

Hah… it was only a dream…

She must have tossed and turned, unable to sleep, and finally dozed off without meaning to.

And somewhere in that doze, she’d had the nightmare.

Always the same dream.

Adele brushed back her sweat-damp hair and got out of bed.

Glug, glug…

She opened the wine bottle on the mantel and drank straight from it.

Christine was mistaken about something.

She was no longer the little girl who could be coaxed to sleep with a cup of sugared milk.

On the nights sleep wouldn’t come, she leaned on wine like this instead.

Feeling the sharp burn of the strong wine scrape down through her insides, she walked over to the bookshelf beside the fireplace.

She pulled the books out of the bottom shelf and felt along the wall behind it—

Creak.

The wall behind the bookshelf slid open like a drawer.

Inside sat a small box. Inside the box was a red scroll of paper.

Something the late Marquis Oswald had hidden in the deepest corner of his safe, while he was alive.

It had seemed important enough that Adele had smuggled it out with her, eight years ago, when she left House Oswald.

Absurdly enough, there was nothing written on it at all. Only Grand Duke Valencia’s signature, at the bottom.

That signature had been a little unexpected — she’d always assumed that, being on bad terms with the Council of Elders, he’d naturally been on bad terms with the Marquis too.

And not long after, that same Grand Duke Valencia had become Emperor.

A blank document, bearing the current Emperor’s own signature…

What could it possibly mean?