The Price of Broken Promises

Daisy finally opened her eyes.

Even with the curtains drawn, she could tell the sun was already high overhead.

She lay still without moving to rise, and the memory of yesterday's visit from the imperial physician drifted back to her. She hadn't even opened the door, yet Sarura Maga had let himself in, clicked his tongue, applied salve to her wounds, and wrapped them in bandages.

What had he said again? That His Majesty the Emperor had ordered him to treat her no matter what happened?

It hadn't stayed with her.

Daisy rolled onto her side, gazing at the bandaged hand.

There was nothing she could do. It felt as though every last ounce of her will to live had been drained away.

You would think feeling nothing at all would be a mercy, but her heart kept aching as if it were being torn apart.

Thoughts of Franz kept creeping in, and whenever Franz surfaced, the image of the Empress followed unbidden. After that came the picture of the two of them talking tenderly together, and the child growing between them struck at her heart like a fist.

Daisy sat up abruptly.

Her breath came short, and she struggled to draw air. She closed her eyes and pulled in a long, deep breath, then let it out.

She felt as if she might cry.

Her jealousy of Franz and the Empress curdled straight into loathing for herself. Because she wasn't feminine enough. Because she couldn't sew or cook so much as a single dish and knew only how to swing a sword. Because she couldn't speak sweetly or dance gracefully.

Everything became a doubt turned inward on herself.

Then again, a woman who fought well and cut down monsters without mercy was someone you might want guarding your back on a battlefield—but not someone you would want to love.

All of it was her own fault for the presumption of loving the Emperor.

That was how Daisy condemned and despised herself.

It had been one-sided from the very start. Thinking his heart matched hers—mistaking every meeting of their eyes, every shared laugh, for a meeting of souls—had been nothing but illusion.

Franz had told her, just like that night, that she was always special to him, that no one could take her place.

And she had truly believed it.

When he told her the marriage would be one of contract, she'd thought even that was said for her sake.

Right up until she learned of the Empress's pregnancy. Right up until she heard the news not from the Emperor himself, but from the mouths of soldiers sent from the palace, all the way out in Lanke.

Then Daisy understood, finally and completely. Whatever the Emperor felt for her was nothing more than camaraderie.

The same kind of bond she shared with Matheus.

The Emperor and Empress had met through an arranged marriage, but just as the palace maids whispered, they had surely, like something out of a fairy tale, slowly seeped into each other's hearts. The child growing between them was proof enough.

Daisy could not steady herself against that hard, plain fact. Her chest tore open with pain, then flared into fury, then sank into despair, and finally collapsed into numbness again.

But of all these feelings, the one that burned hottest was rage.

A seething fury aimed at no one in particular.

Why had he told her she was special? Why, after all those years together, would he choose another woman?

If only she could, she wanted to scream until her throat split open. Only that, she felt, might dilute this blazing agony even a little.

Unable to do so, her head had begun to throb.

Then someone knocked at her door.

"It's open."

The man who answered her call and stepped inside was Matheus.

"What happened to you?"

He crossed the room and perched at the foot of Daisy's bed, where she lay with her silver hair loose and tangled around her. With his golden hair and gleaming green eyes, Matheus was as tall as Franz, though unlike the Emperor he was a handsome man with gentle features.

"When did you get back?"

"Last night."

Matheus had been hunting monsters in Lanke alongside Daisy. When news of the Empress's pregnancy reached her, Daisy had returned ahead of schedule; Matheus had come back on the day they'd originally planned.

"Why are you like this? The sun's been up for hours. Have you eaten?" Matheus asked gently.

"I can't think about food."

Daisy turned over to face the wall.

"You may have no appetite, but there's still work to be done." Matheus nodded at the bandages wound around her hand. "The nobles have gathered in the assembly hall. Michael Amesis seems to have something to say. Are you really going to lie here abed, when you're the Emperor's knight?"

At the name Michael Amesis, something in her stirred—but Daisy still had no will to move. How could he have fallen in love with Michael Amesis's daughter? The daughter of that vile, cowardly, greedy creature?

"Get up. Sir Verdi sent me to fetch you. If you're His Majesty's knight, then act like it."

Matheus rose and held out his hand.

He was right. No matter how much her heart ached, Daisy had a duty to fulfill as a knight. She took his hand and rose from the bed.

Once she was up, Matheus went to the window and flung the curtains wide. Warm sunlight poured in.

"If that man had only sent the soldiers he promised when he was supposed to, you wouldn't be wrapped in bandages right now."

Matheus said it while watching her slowly gather her long hair and tie it up.

"It's nothing."

Daisy looked down at the bandages binding her fingers and spoke with bitter self-mockery. Then she buckled the sword that hung on the wall at her waist and looked at Matheus.

There was nothing in her eyes—no emotion, no will at all.

"How many soldiers would it take to wipe out the monsters, might I ask? This is not a question of manpower."

Michael Amesis was visibly agitated.

Franz sat in his chair and stared impassively at the nobles arrayed before him like a demonstration of force, and at Michael Amesis at their head, raising his voice and spraying spittle as he spoke.

Beside Franz stood Verdi and Andre Maxstein, the chancellor who managed the imperial treasury entire, and behind them, half-hidden from view, stood Daisy and Matheus.

"If it isn't a question of manpower, then what is it a question of?"

Franz asked placidly. Michael Amesis's agitation appeared to be of no concern to him whatsoever—and the calmer the Emperor remained, the more furious the Archduke became.

"The problem is that the monsters appear at all."

Michael Amesis was spouting pure nonsense. There was no one in the empire who didn't know that the monsters' incursions were the problem. A three-year-old child could have told you as much.

The Lowes Empire radiated out from its capital, Sayron: the fertile southern territory of Dafke, the fishing-rich eastern coast of Ayepol, the barren lands of Chafe above it, the western region of Karna where scholars made their homes, the desert expanse of Tatir beyond that, and finally the northern province of Lanke, where snow fell all year round.

And in Lanke lay the Forest of Illusions—an evergreen wood, untouched by the snows, green in every season. It was from there that the monsters emerged to prey upon the people.

That was why Franz himself, back in his days as crown prince, had made a habit of riding to Lanke at every spare moment to hunt the beasts—so that the monsters could never cross beyond Lanke and harm the empire's people.

But their numbers had grown until Lanke's garrison alone could no longer hold the line, and so Franz had secured a promise from Michael Amesis: military support for the north, in exchange for making the Archduke's daughter Empress.

Everyone knew the story.

Yet here was Michael Amesis, dragging a horde of nobles along with him and spouting the strangest nonsense.

"That is precisely why I requested troops from you, my lord Duke. You may recall it clearly enough: when I promised to wed your daughter, you promised me soldiers in return. You have not sent so much as a quarter of a quarter of what you swore that day."

"But, Your Majesty. One cannot go on wasting manpower on a hopeless cause."

Michael Amesis thrust out his already ample belly and curled his oily, greasy face into a repulsive smile.

How could a face like that have produced someone like Arisa Amesis?

Daisy wondered at it briefly.

"So. You mean to say you will not keep your word?"

Franz's voice turned sharp.

"Rather than honoring a promise that has lost all meaning, would it not be the duty of a loyal subject to devise a more fundamental solution?"

At Michael Amesis's words, the nobles nodded along, one after another, as if in agreement.

"A fundamental solution?"

Irritation threaded through Franz's voice, and Michael Amesis raised a hand, pointing one short, stubby finger at some unseen point beyond the Emperor.

"Send a knight into the Forest of Illusions. Let but a single knight endure the 7 Nights, and the monsters will vanish as though they had never existed at all. There is no reason to sacrifice so many soldiers when one life will suffice."

And at the tip of Michael Amesis's finger stood Daisy.

The moment Verdi squeezed his eyes shut, Franz shot to his feet. With eyes gone cold as frost, he strode across the chamber and planted himself before Michael Amesis as though he meant to start something then and there.

Michael Amesis was a small man and Franz was exceptionally large, so the Emperor loomed over him from a considerable height. The Grand Duke of the Lowes Empire, terrified by the sheer pressure of the Emperor's presence, stumbled backward and nearly fell.

The crushing weight of his frame alone was formidable, but more than anything, it was the expression on the Emperor's face—an expression none of them had ever seen before. Was this how he had looked when he swept away the enemy ranks in the war against Yospanel?

All Michael Amesis could do was barely keep his trembling body upright.

"My lord Duke. What was it you just said?"

"Wh-why take the hard road when an easy one lies before us?"

Behind him stood the eyes of countless nobles. If he wished to keep their support, he could not retreat here, no matter how afraid he was. Besides—was he not the Emperor's own father-in-law?

So Michael Amesis steadied himself with the thought.

"Surely you are not so ignorant as to not know what the 7 Nights are."

But the killing intent pouring from the Emperor's eyes was far beyond anything a single man could withstand. The aura radiating off him made it a wonder his head was still on his shoulders.

"You mean the charming little tale that if one lone soul enters the Forest of Illusions—the very place the monsters come from—and survives seven days without dying, the monsters vanish for as long as that person lives?"

He pretended otherwise, but Michael Amesis's voice was shaking.

"Then I finally understand why I never entered the Forest of Illusions myself—why I bled and broke my body hunting those creatures instead."

The Emperor had abandoned all pretense of formal address now.

"…"

"The 7 Nights are a pretty fiction. The truth is that anyone who enters that forest never comes out alive. And you dare ask me to send my knight into such a place? The finest knight in the empire? You dare?"

Michael Amesis swallowed hard.

That was exactly why he had gathered the nobles and raised the matter of the 7 Nights, pointing his finger as he did.

"Yes, Your Majesty. I know full well how dangerous the Forest of Illusions is. That is precisely why your knight must be the one to go. Everyone here knows there is already a knight who survived the 7 Nights in that forest. Alpina Rainer—her very own grandmother!"

Every gaze in the assembly hall swung toward Daisy.

But Daisy simply went on staring, her face as blank as stone, at the finger pointing at her.