The Empress Who Woke

"What on earth has happened, Your Majesty?"

When Arisa opened her eyes, the head maid came rushing to her bedside, weeping loudly.

She wanted to rise, but her body was so heavy that even a single finger refused to move.

"…What happened?"

Arisa asked with difficulty, her voice still thick with sleep.

"Your Majesty, do you truly not remember? You were floating in the Red Spring. The maids on their way to the laundry at dawn found you there, and… oh, Your Majesty."

Then she remembered the night of that nightmare.

Logan was dead.

No matter how she wailed, Logan never opened his eyes again, and his body had grown steadily colder in her arms.

From now on, know your place and do only as I command. If you attempt any foolishness, you will end up the same way he did.

She had pulled her cloak over her head and returned to the imperial palace listening to her father's words. She could not remember with what state of mind she had made the journey back at all.

Only that, just before entering her chambers, she had discovered her entire body coated in Logan's blood, and the thought had come to her that she needed to wash it away.

Without a moment to consider any other course, Arisa had thrown herself into the Red Spring before her very eyes.

Had she wanted to die?

Had she meant to end her life?

Even that she could not recall. Only one thing remained vivid in her memory.

The Red Spring had lived up to its name.

It was not Logan's blood reflected on its surface. The entire spring had been truly, utterly stained red, like blood itself.

"…Thank you. You saved my life."

"But, Your Majesty, but…."

The head maid sobbed harder still, unable to continue.

Arisa found her hand drifting, without her willing it, to her belly.

"The child…"

"I have failed you, Your Majesty. I could not protect the seed of the imperial family."

Not only the head maid — every soul standing in that room wore an expression of grief.

Arisa stared blankly into empty space, her face blank as stone.

He was gone. What use was a child without him?

"His Majesty the Emperor—"

"His Majesty returned yesterday. And there is one piece of joyful news."

The head maid wiped her tears and forced a smile onto her face.

"Joyful news?"

"They say the Emperor's Knight survived seven days in the Forest of Illusions. So long as that knight lives, the demonic beasts will trouble us no more."

Her voice was brimming with hope.

"The knight… you must mean Sir Daisy Rainer."

"Yes, Your Majesty. Though it seems she is indeed a knight of House Rainer."

Arisa gazed vacantly into the air.

Having lost her reason to live, should she throw herself into the spring once more — or, if not that…

Unbidden, Arisa recalled her father mercilessly severing Logan's head, and her brother laughing at his death. Their contemptible smiles would not leave her, and it tormented her.

"His Majesty the Emperor has arrived."

A maid announced it from outside, and a moment later Franz swept into the room, his robes billowing.

His expression was terribly dark, and he seemed angry.

He had always carried a certain coldness about him, but something was different now. He was ferociously on edge, like a man standing on trembling ground, straining with every fiber to keep from falling.

"Your Majesty, Her Majesty the Empress has only just woken, and—"

"Everyone, leave."

Franz spoke in a low, gloomy voice before the head maid could even finish. The head maid and all the maids retreated from the room in a flurry of backward steps, and the vast chamber was left to Franz and Arisa alone.

"This is a problem, what you've done."

Franz said, his voice low and sunken.

His eyes held no feeling at all as he regarded a woman who had nearly died only hours ago.

It was an atmosphere entirely unlike anything between them before. Until now, he had performed tenderness whenever others were watching, and even in private they had kept the courtesy of comrades bound by a shared purpose.

"I overlooked your pregnancy without so much as asking whose lover it might have been. And now a suicide attempt? In the imperial palace, no less? Are you in your right mind?"

Arisa said nothing.

To be precise, it had not been a suicide attempt. It had only been the thought that she needed to wash the blood from her body.

Or — had she, in truth, wanted to die?

"Everyone knows this marriage is a political arrangement. But the contract we made separately was formed so that I could consolidate my power base over three years, and in return grant you your freedom. Yet if the Empress were to die in the imperial palace — in the sacred Red Spring of all places — would that not only deepen my reputation as the Cursed Crown Prince?"

Arisa forced her withered, cracked lips to move.

"I heard that Your Majesty's knight survived the Forest of Illusions. Surely the stigma of the curse will vanish now."

At her words, Franz's gaze on her grew rougher still.

If she, already pregnant, had fallen into the sacred Red Spring and lost the child, it was obvious the rumors of a curse would only have grown worse.

"…I am sorry. It will never happen again."

Unlike moments ago, when her eyes had gazed into nothing, something like resolve was slowly filling them now.

"I will trust you. In any case, it would be best to see the term of our contract through."

Just as Franz delivered this cold reply and turned to go—

"You won't ask why I did it?"

Arisa asked, in a voice that sounded like it had been scraped out of her.

"…"

"Aren't you curious?"

"Even if you turned to murder instead of suicide, I would have no cause to wonder why. See to your recovery."

Leaving only those words behind, Franz swept out of the room with a chill wind trailing in his wake. A still deeper shadow fell over the face Arisa was left with.

Daisy remained in Lanke still, recuperating in the castle of the Van der Dite family.

After hearing that her heart was gone, Franz had hurried back to the imperial palace — but she neither understood what that meant, nor wished to. When word came that the Empress had lost her child in an unforeseen accident, she simply assumed that was the reason.

The strange thing was that even hearing all this left her untouched. If anything, it occurred to her that Franz ought to have stayed with the Empress instead of coming here in the first place.

To think her heart could grow this peaceful.

Daisy found herself realizing once more just how wondrous the power of magic truly was.

She stepped out of her room and wandered the castle courtyard. Because Margaret — Matheus's mother — had insisted that the cold wind would hinder her recovery, she was swaddled head to toe in a thick woolen blanket.

Lanke, freed of its demonic beasts, was profoundly tranquil, and the endless falling snow almost seemed a symbol of the peace itself.

Daisy loved this cold. When the chill seeped all the way into her bones, the aches of her heart so often slipped her mind.

"I'm telling you, the youngest young master is handsome no matter how many times you see him."

"Right? Look at that gleaming hair. How does a man who lives on battlefields have hair that soft?"

"And those eyes? Like jewels set into his face."

The murmurs of passing maids told Daisy that the quiet peace had been broken. Sure enough, Matheus was approaching from far down the path.

"You should still be in bed, shouldn't you?"

He strode over and was standing beside her before she knew it, and Daisy found herself wondering whether she could really poach such a talent from the maids of Lanke and carry him off to the imperial palace.

Wouldn't that be stealing one comfort from the women of Lanke?

"I honestly cannot understand you. How could you even think of entering that forest? Do you know how shocked everyone was when His Majesty carried you back? We all thought you were dead."

Every time he saw Daisy, Matheus launched into a fresh litany of scolding. She had apologized any number of times, but apparently his anger had not cooled.

"If I'd asked, you'd have told me not to go. Besides, it turned out well, didn't it?"

"Good results are supposed to excuse everything? You went in there to die."

Matheus struck straight at the heart of it, and Daisy stopped dead in her tracks.

"…Was I that obvious?"

"Only an idiot wouldn't have noticed. You've always been a fool, but not this kind of fool. Just how much — did the Empress's pregnancy wound you that badly?"

Matheus asked, his scolding softening into a sorrowful expression.

He had known her heart, which meant Matheus had known it too… and perhaps Verdi Urde as well, and Andre Maxstein. Perhaps even Margaret, and Carl, and Matheus's brothers had known all along.

Then — did the Empress know too?

Even thinking of her now did not hurt.

To think that a grief so violent it had made her throw away her life could vanish like this, in a single instant. She almost wished she had gone searching for a magician far sooner.

"It's all gone."

"What do you mean?"

At Daisy's abrupt words, Matheus asked with a face full of suspicion that she hadn't fully recovered after all.

"My feelings. You knew about them, and His Majesty knew about them too. They're… gone."

"…What?"

"I told His Majesty. That I would still serve him with all my loyalty."

"Your feelings vanished in a single moment? How is that even possible? You threw your life away and now you're over him?"

Matheus asked, as if the whole thing were absurd.

She had told him everything that happened in the forest after Franz left — even meeting the Archmage — but she had never spoken of her heart. And no wonder; no one had ever believed she loved the Emperor.

"No. A magician took them away. She said she doesn't grant the wishes of humans, but that she would grant mine. I never once made a wish — I suppose it must have been my wish all along."

As the conversation drifted further and further into the realm of nonsense, Matheus's face turned to pure incomprehension.

"That Archmage you met? She took your feelings for His Majesty away — feelings you never even wished to be rid of?"

"Yes. So now even when I look at His Majesty, I feel nothing."

"…"

"I want His Majesty to be happy with the Empress. I mean that. Truly."

Matheus looked at Daisy with an unreadable expression.

The snowflakes were growing heavier than before.

"Do you think our grandmother had a wish too? And if she did, did that Archmage grant it?"

"I told you — she doesn't grant the wishes of humans."

"So you did."

"But what do you suppose 'the Child of the Red Crystal' means?"

Matheus wiped the strange look from his face and fell deep into thought.

"Could I… possibly be connected to the magicians?"

"But you're a Rainer. Where in the entire Lowes Empire would you find anyone with bloodlines as certain as yours?"

"True enough. Well, now I have one more mystery to puzzle over."

Daisy lifted her head and watched the snowflakes drifting down from the gray sky.

Her heart was so at ease, she felt she could sink into a deep sleep at any moment.