The Man on the Throne

The Grand Duchess's words and manner were cold as ever, but to Eleanor that hardly mattered anymore. When she was young, the Grand Duchess had always worn that icy expression and spoken in that frigid tone, and she had assumed it was because the woman disapproved of her—a bastard child. So she had avoided her as much as she could. But now she understood.

That the Grand Duchess cared for her. That she cherished her.

That the frosty gaze the Grand Duchess turned on her had love buried beneath it. To Eleanor's eyes now, the emotion radiated plainly from the woman's every look. And so a single word from her could not help but fill Eleanor's heart to its very depths with warmth.

The silence stretched on as Eleanor drowned in the wave of feeling, and the Grand Duchess began to look faintly anxious.

There was no reason to hesitate. Eleanor lifted the corners of her mouth and answered.

"I'd love to, Mother. I want to come along."

She had no idea how she had come back to the past, but she absolutely could not let slip this chance to undo everything.

I can never marry Joshua.

Everything had begun with that marriage, and so Eleanor resolved that no matter what it took, she would break the engagement.

And then another question rose unbidden to her mind. Joshua's words in the moment she was dying. He had gripped her throat in both hands and whispered—

Real—what did he mean by that? If there was a real one, then surely there was a fake. And what could that be?

Having followed the thought that far, Eleanor shook her head to drive it away. There was still plenty of time to find out.

The same dream again.

The moment Charles opened his eyes, he swept his gaze over his surroundings and felt a strange familiarity. Then it struck him—this was the scene that had been repeating itself in his dreams of late.

The Imperial Palace. His grandfather had often taken him by the hand to have audiences with the Emperor when he was very small, so recognizing where the dream was set had come easily.

The only difference was that the man at the center of the palace now was not the Emperor he had met in childhood. Charles narrowed his eyes. The man wore a crown upon his head, and his expression radiated arrogance. In this dream, which he had dreamed again and again, the man looked exactly the same every time. He was the human being Charles despised most in all the world.

Joshua Hareis.

How could that man be wearing the crown? Just as the question rose in him, Joshua flung something from his hand. It struck the floor with a clatter and went skittering across the stone. It was a dagger. The woman kneeling there in threadbare, worn-out clothing lowered her gaze and stared at it.

"...Well? What are you waiting for? Didn't you want to die so badly?"

At Joshua's sneering voice, Charles folded his arms and watched him. He didn't know why he dreamed this, but he had always wondered—why Joshua could behave like the master of this palace. Hoping that today, at last, he might learn the reason, he looked on with detached eyes as the woman raised her head.

She picked up the dagger and drove the blade straight into her own heart. And in that instant, for the first time, Charles saw her face clearly. It differed greatly from the face in his memory, yet he knew at a single glance. The woman was the one he had longed for all this time.

...El?

It was Eleanor. Eleanor's body was crumbling away, but he stood frozen, unable to move a muscle. Even as the blood welling from her heart spread into a dark pool, Charles could not make himself move. Tears gathered in his eyes.

No. This can't happen... El!

"El!"

Shouting, Charles bolted upright and heaved for breath. The thin blanket that had barely covered his bare torso slid down and pooled at his waist. His scarred upper body was already soaked through with sweat, and even the sheets and blanket felt damp to the lightest brush of a finger.

"Haah... haah..."

Slowly steadying his ragged breathing, Charles turned his head toward the window. Beyond the glass, dawn was already faintly breaking.

He pressed the back of his hand against his eyes. The heat that would not leave them burned as fiercely as the fire in his chest. At length, he let out a sigh of relief.

"The same dream again. But..."

Today had been different.

Lately Charles kept dreaming of the same person. Of none other than Joshua—her fiancé.

At first he'd dismissed it as a meaningless dream. But the same dream, the same scene, repeating over and over, had begun to strike him as strange. And only today had a feeling of dread finally surged up in him.

How Joshua had come to be in the Imperial Palace, playing at being its master—that no longer mattered. Only one thing did: the image of Eleanor dying, dominating his mind.

Has something happened to El?

Even as the ominous speculation took shape, Charles kneaded his feverish brow. For the past few days, every time he had this dream, an inexplicable fever had followed, leaving him miserable. Pushing aside the blanket from his legs, he gathered up the clothes scattered across the floor.

Brushing the damp hair from his brow, he cocked an ear toward the sounds outside the room. Footsteps were pounding down the corridor. A moment later came a faint knock at the door.

"My lord? Are you awake? It's urgent!"

The familiar presence and voice belonged to Daniel, Charles's aide. Daniel spent far more of his time at the Marquisate of Berihmen than at his own home, but even he did not wake his superior from sleep at this hour.

Wiping the sweat from his jaw with the back of his hand, Charles cast a glance at the clock on the table. A little past six. Something dire indeed, to raise such an uproar at this hour.

"Come in."

Daniel scrambled through the door, his hair standing in disarray. He hadn't even dressed properly, and Charles frowned at the sight of him. Something about Daniel's rumpled state made the fever feel as though it were climbing higher still.

Pressing the cool back of his hand to his burning forehead, Charles spoke.

"Daniel. What on earth is so important this early in the—"

"He's vanished!"

Charles froze. The sentence was cut off at both ends, but an anxiety unlike anything he had ever felt seized him.

"...What did you just say?"

"The—the Marquis has disappeared!"

The moment Eleanor arrived at the Raiwens Grand Ducal Estate, she parted from the Grand Duchess without so much as a greeting and entered a different hall.

Brilliant chandeliers flooded the hall with light, and beneath them several dozen round tables were arranged across the floor. The tables bore desserts and drinks of every kind—confections that even a passing glance revealed to have been crafted with hours of loving care.

Listening to the lovely strains of the orchestra stationed to one side, Eleanor made her way to a secluded corner. She would only feel at ease somewhere no one could see her. Settled into her corner, she discreetly surveyed the people filling the hall.

Every family with any power seems to have come.

Young people her own age had gathered in clusters, chatting and laughing gaily. The most conspicuous among them was Sebastian Raiwens, son of Grand Duchess Raiwens and host of today's social gathering.

With the sweetest face in the world, the young lord was bestowing gracious smiles on the crowd circled around him. Watching the theatrical performance, Eleanor snorted inwardly in disgust.

In her previous life, she—like everyone else here—had believed the young lord Raiwens to be an elegant, refined gentleman. But once the truth came out, he had proved a filthy, vile creature, nearly a match for Joshua himself.

No. In a way, he's even more of a piece of trash than Joshua.

One of his more repulsive exploits had been handing his own wife over to a retainer. Joshua had once told her the reason Sebastian did such a thing, and the reason was simple.

He got bored.

And even knowing that ugly truth, Joshua had kept Sebastian at his side—because the man's connections were useful to him.

Eleanor, meanwhile, had learned what Sebastian really was, and for a long while afterward, merely seeing him at parties and banquets had made her retch until she could barely stand.

If only everyone knew what a monster lurks beneath that face. Scorning Sebastian with a contemptuous stare, Eleanor soon turned her head with a studied air of indifference and waved over a servant circulating through the hall.

Sipping the nonalcoholic fruit wine the servant brought her, Eleanor sank into thought.

During the carriage ride to the Raiwens estate, it had dawned on her that today was the very first social gathering she would attend at the Grand Duchess Prihoson's side.

The Grand Duchess disliked putting herself on public display, and so attended only gatherings she absolutely could not refuse. Eleanor had been to far more of them than she had—but whenever the Grand Duchess was present, Eleanor had discreetly stayed away.

She had thought that the wisest course at the time. Never realizing that the more 'consideration' Eleanor showed, the wider the gulf between the two of them grew.

By a stroke of fortune, she had been granted another chance at life. She would not waste it on regrets.

Eleanor, sitting alone in a comfortable chair in the corner of the hall, felt eyes flicking toward her. The looks—shots of curiosity, contempt, and other mingled emotions—were familiar enough, but this time, unlike before, she squared her shoulders and met them head-on.

She lounged at her ease, utterly indifferent to their stares, when suddenly she became aware of another gaze fixed upon her. It carried a feeling of a different quality entirely from the ones before.

The emotion in that gaze—pricking at her skin like needles—was so unclear in its meaning that it left her genuinely puzzled.

"..."

Eleanor turned her head—and her breath caught in her throat.

...No. That's impossible.