The Beauty of a Beautiful Lie
"......"
"Still, you served at my side for so many years. It's only right that I grant you one final mercy. Hanging would hardly suit someone of your noble bearing."
"......"
"Well? Why aren't you taking it? Didn't you want to die so badly?"
Pull the sword out, he said. The Emperor curled his lips into a radiant smile as he spoke, and he looked more beautiful than anything else in the world.
A sob welled up in her throat — Eleanor forced the rising blood back down and dragged her hand across the ground, drawing the dagger that lay before her from its sheath.
Even at a glance, the finely honed blade looked sharp enough.
It was the first time she had held a weapon since he had ordered her to let go of her sword.
The Emperor leaned down toward Eleanor as she stared blankly at the blade.
"Go on. Stab me, just like that."
"......"
"You begged me to kill you, time and time again. You wept and wept, saying you couldn't bear to live anymore. I'm only granting your wish. What's the matter?"
The Emperor spoke leisurely, tilting his head back. If you die by my hand, I'll carry the guilt for the rest of my life.
He murmured it in a voice weighed down with sorrow, as though he meant every word, and Eleanor let it pass in one ear and out the other.
She tightened her grip on the dagger.
But every last ounce of strength had already drained from her body; even holding the dagger was an ordeal.
Those trained in the sword knew exactly how to grant a painless death with a single stroke. Eleanor was no exception — though it had been years since she'd last held a blade, the feel of it was still alive in her hands.
But now, with every tendon in her limbs severed and not a scrap of strength remaining, the method she knew would not let her die in peace.
The moment that thought finished forming, she drove the dagger in her hand into her own chest, without a flicker of hesitation, straight toward her heart.
She forced strength into the hand that trembled and shook, then collapsed forward with a dull thud. Gathered what remained of her body, braced the hilt of the dagger against the ground —
Then, raising her upper body just slightly, Eleanor let her full weight fall. The blade, pinned between her chest and the floor, sank deeper and deeper into her breast.
A wet surge — the blood she had swallowed moments before spilled from her mouth in a rush.
With trembling fingers she wiped the thick blood from her lips, and she knew her end was close at hand.
The Emperor watched her shaking hands and drew near. The guard knights standing around him tried to hold him back, but one murderous glare from him sealed their mouths, and they quietly stepped aside.
At the end of her life, there was something Eleanor wanted to ask him.
A woman as chaste and lovely as a lily. Helena. The Empress of the Empire. The woman this man had loved, and loved, and loved.
Why? Why would this man— Eleanor parted her lips.
"......Why...... did you...... kill...... her?"
"What was that?"
"......Hel......ena."
"......"
The Emperor's face froze. Then, slowly, one corner of his mouth began to curl upward.
"Oh dear. So you knew?"
At the cheerful voice in her ear, Eleanor clawed at her fading consciousness and forced her eyes wide open.
It was true! It really was true!
Her lips trembled. Even after seeing Helena's closest maid meeting Joshua in secret with her own two eyes, she had refused to believe it. And yet he truly had killed the woman he loved with his own hands.
She could not comprehend it. A woman of fine blood and finer character — why? The one he loved — why?
She forgot to breathe as she stared at him, her eyes brimming with horror. But the Emperor only smiled brightly, his face the picture of delight.
"What's the point of bringing her up now? She's long dead, after all. Isn't that right?"
"......"
"Oh, that reminds me. Your parents — I hear the Empress's family dug up the graves of Grand Duke Prihoson and his wife."
At the words that fell so carelessly from his lips, as if only now remembering, the veins at Eleanor's temples swelled.
She forced her failing strength into her eyes and stared at him in disbelief.
His gaze swept over her, blank and empty. Not a trace of guilt showed anywhere in it.
"That's right. I ordered it done. They dared to raise a hand against the Empress — neither the culprit nor her parents could be left in peace. Don't look at me like that. All of this is your doing. If only you had stepped down from your seat as Imperial Consort without a fuss, I would never have gone this far."
At that voice, stripped of even a shred of feeling, Eleanor's breath caught in her throat.
How could you. How could you dare defile them? Had he forgotten, completely, who it was that raised him — despised and scorned by everyone — to that seat of power? Unbearable rage surged up through her, and Eleanor's body began to shake.
Watching the warmth drain out of her, the Emperor bent close to her ear and whispered. As if granting her one last kindness, he laid bare the secret he had kept hidden all this time.
"There was something I'd always wanted to say to you before you died. The truth is, you disgusted me from the very first moment I saw you."
"......"
"What? Surprised? Even the way you'd break into that bright smile whenever you looked at me, that shy little act of yours — I couldn't stand a single bit of it. Oh! But there is one thing I'm truly grateful to you for. Without you, how could I ever have taken this throne? Hm?"
Staring into that grinning face, Eleanor wailed without a sound. But nowhere in his eyes was there even a hint of pity for the woman hovering on death's edge.
It was the truth, without a single grain of a lie — he seemed relieved, at last, to have unburdened himself. Eleanor gazed up at that bright, unclouded face through her dimming vision and slowly closed her eyes.
What had Joshua thought, all those years, watching her labor so devotedly to place him on the throne?
"I truly am grateful to you for that. And yet......"
Joshua let the words trail off, then seized Eleanor's slender throat in both hands and squeezed with all his might. He knew perfectly well that a little more pressure would snap the fragile column of bone. Eleanor's eyes rolled back as her breath was crushed out of her.
"Does the Emperor need you anymore? No — only when you're gone will my throne be complete. Not you. Me. I'm the real one. I am the real one."
"Gahk... gh...!"
What... what is he saying?
Eleanor clenched a fist that had no strength left in it. She couldn't make sense of Joshua's final words. She tried desperately to think, but her vision was blurring, her breath growing fainter by the moment.
With the last of her strength, Eleanor forced her eyes wide open — as though to carve his face deep into her memory.
Even in death, I will never forgive you.
Even in death, she could not close her eyes in peace.
It felt as though she were being sucked down into a deep, dark abyss — a dizzying, endless descent. As if someone had seized her by the ankles and was dragging her down, down into a blackness without beginning or end. She was swallowed by that deep, dark sea, unable to breathe —
"Hah—!"
Eleanor's eyes flew open and she gulped down air in ragged gasps. Clutching at her throat as though to spit out water that had flooded all the way down it, she hacked and coughed and retched.
She had been in the sea. She had been dragged down into a fathomless, pitch-black ocean with no bottom and no shore.
......It's dark.
Eleanor raised her hands and felt her way up her own face until her fingers found her eyes. She could feel her eyeballs shifting beneath her fingertips. Her eyes were open — and yet all that lay before her was darkness black as ink.
Not a single point of light.
Seeing nothing at all, she cautiously pushed herself up onto her elbows and stayed perfectly still for a long moment.
By the time her eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness, a question flashed through her mind.
Death.
I was supposed to be dead. It wasn't a dream — I died. I know I died.
The fine-honed edge of the dagger slicing through flesh. Her body crumpling. That cold, cold gaze.
The moment the memory finished forming, nausea surged up her throat and she dropped forward, clapping a hand over her mouth as dry heaves wracked her body.
She waited for her stomach to settle, but her body refused to cooperate. Her limbs hung useless, as though she'd labored for days without rest. Try as she might to rise, her legs would not bear her weight. In the end she gave up, slumped back down to the floor, and pressed her knuckles hard against her lips.
I died. I drove that blade into my own chest — the sword he threw at me.
Eleanor rolled her eyes restlessly this way and that. The darkness swallowed everything from view, but an anxiety she couldn't name engulfed her whole body, and she couldn't bear to sit still.
Then where is this? Heaven, or hell?
Calmly, she narrowed her eyes and looked around.
Then, light. Sudden and blinding, it seared her eyes. She squinted against it and looked again — and there before her stood an enormous mirror.
When did this get here? Half wary, half curious, Eleanor edged closer to the mirror.
The moment she stood before it, an image began to gather in the glass, as if it had been waiting for her. She recognized the person in the mirror — and her face went blank with bewilderment.
Charles?
She rubbed her eyes and looked again, hardly daring to believe it — but there was no mistaking him. Charles, son of the late Marquis Derik Berihmen, close friend of Grand Duke Prihoson.
The last time Eleanor had seen Charles was at her wedding to Joshua. After that, he had shut himself away on his own lands and refused all contact with the world.
From time to time Joshua sent close aides, again and again, to summon him to the capital — and every single time, Charles deflect them, demurring that he was too foolish and ignorant to be of any use to His Majesty.
So why was a man who almost never came to the capital now standing here — in the Imperial Palace, no less, inside the Emperor's own residence? And he looked older than he had at the wedding. There was blood on his armor.
Eleanor slowly turned her gaze to the person standing before Charles.
Joshua.
He was nothing like the Joshua she had seen for the last time.