What's Best for Everyone
At those words, Siena, who had only just lowered her head back onto the pillow, went rigid. Her gaze lifted to her brother's face, where he sat leaning against the back of the sofa.
It was a face that had shed the last traces of the boy and was steeped in the air of a young man now. Four years at that age was a rather long time, wasn't it?
Time enough for one person to take a long journey just to savor his youth, for another to throw himself into business with grand ambitions, for a third to grind through the brutal machinery of politics and learn how the world worked.
"…"
And yet he was saying that if it was because of their mother, none of that had been necessary? He had clearly forgotten why he'd been exiled for four years in the first place.
Siena sat up again and answered in a voice like frost.
"That's easy for you to say. Do you have any idea what the capital is like right now?"
"…"
"You knew the mood well enough even after leaving it all to me."
"Siena."
"What."
"I didn't want you so far away."
"You think I enjoy leaving? You know this is the best option there is."
This is the best option.
Hassar Vice becomes Count Victe, and Siena Vice disappears from the Aldo Empire.
"I want you to be happy. That's all."
"I'm not unhappy, Hassar. Don't think about it any other way. I'm asking you."
Swallowing the word please, Siena let out a sigh and pressed a hand over her face, as if to hide how tangled her feelings had become.
The calm, peaceful air between them turned frigid in an instant. An uncomfortable silence settled over the space between brother and sister.
"Father said so, remember."
Hassar began slowly, speaking as if reaching back into the past.
"In the end, the only ones who could stop Mother were the two of us."
Hassar's enlistment had been decided abruptly.
It was the moment their mother's suggestive scheming finally surfaced. The night of the day their grandfather passed away and their uncle's coronation was held. That was the second time.
The first attempt had happened back then, when the whole family was suddenly summoned down to the territory.
The emperor who had adored his niece with an almost obsessive tenderness was nowhere to be found; in his place stood a father protecting his children's places, and it was he who drew the sword.
Hassar had not hesitated either. He had cast everything aside and thrown himself into the army.
Because if he were gone, there would be no one left for Perensa to place on the throne.
When Perensa heard the news, she collapsed.
It was Siena who rallied House Victe after it had so suddenly lost its head.
It had taken more than three years to bind the shattered count's household back together, piece by fraying piece, and barely hold the whole shape of it intact.
Siena had to hand that precarious house over to Hassar. And so she had been forced to swear twice over, before the emperor himself, that the family would endure.
So that her mother could never again chase a foolish dream.
"Four whole years, Hassar. I've held out just as long as you did."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. If you hadn't, there'd be no guarantee any of us would still be alive."
The emperor had turned his blade on his own nephew and niece without a flicker of hesitation. The edge of that sword, grazing just beneath Siena's chin as she was dragged down into the cellar in the middle of a banquet, remained vivid in her memory.
Hassar had burst in amid a violent commotion. She had never seen him so incensed. Shouting had filled the cellar—until the emperor's thunderous roar drowned everything out.
"Don't tell me you don't know what your mother is plotting! Gathering the nobles, claiming you hold the late Emperor's secret will—did you think I wouldn't find out?"
It was Hassar who had kept vigil at their grandfather's deathbed, closer than anyone.
In his final moments, the late emperor had pushed aside even his own son and called for his grandchildren.
Because of that, all manner of talk had circulated. Some said it was simply an old man's fondness, the wish to see his beloved grandchildren one last time. Others whispered that he must have promised something about the throne.
The implication being: why else would the late emperor, past seventy, have clung to his seat instead of ceding it to the crown prince, who was past forty?
Princess Perensa's only flaw had been her sex. And so the late emperor's attention and affection had settled, with particular weight, on her son—Hassar.
Those rumors, laced with impure intent, had grown flesh on the wind and spread across the entire empire.
And the result was this: the very man at the center of it all declaring his own defeat, severing his own hands and feet, cutting open his own belly.
Hassar Victe filled out a volunteer enlistment form on the spot and signed it in blood.
My life belongs to Your Majesty from this moment on. I offer it as collateral for the safety of House Victe and my family.
And after all, one could never know what might happen at the front lines.
"I thought it was the best choice… but in the end, it seems I only pushed you too hard."
Hassar's voice cracked slightly. At the sight of him berating himself, Siena scrambled up from her seat and came to stand before him.
Too hard on her? His choice had saved everyone in the end. It had buried its own architect socially—and in exchange, it had saved his family and his house.
Wasn't that precisely why the whole affair had ended with their mother confined to the Victe estate?
"Better that than you working yourself to the bone. Besides, I'm not just some acting count—I'm a businesswoman now. Impressive, right?"
When she said it with deliberately exaggerated swagger, he burst out laughing, his face full of fond disbelief.
"So I heard. I knew you'd taken an interest in that side of things, but I didn't realize you'd gotten your hands on the shipping routes."
"Everyone sneers at it, but it's actually a promising trade. In the long run, marrying Agrio Falen will help expand the business and the family enterprise too."
At those words, Hassar's smile dimmed.
"I have no intention of making use of your marriage, Cici."
"It's killing two birds with one stone, that's all. Anyway, I'm starving. Where's the mess hall?"
Hassar watched for a moment as his sister fussed about being hungry and shrugged her coat back on.
That breezy change of subject, that composed deflection—it wasn't admirable at all. It was heartbreaking.
The Siena Vice he remembered had been an aristocrat's daughter, insufferably prim and impossibly haughty.
Then her father died, and her grandfather passed soon after, and everything changed.
He learned only later that there had been many who taunted her and made her life miserable.
He learned only later, too, that during the year of mourning—while he himself remained a candidate for the throne—Siena had been dragged about and treated like a scapegoat by their uncle.
There had been a time when everyone bared their teeth at House Victe.
It is one of life's plain truths, learned only with age: that kindness and goodwill from others are never owed to you.
But whenever Hassar thought of how Siena had been forced to learn that truth utterly alone, his heart grew heavy.
Why, of all moments, did she have to learn it at the exact instant she lost her grandfather and her father—and realized that the roof called Mother was thin as paper?
"Hassar, aren't you coming? I'm starving."
"Let's go. But no picking at your food, understood?"
"Do I really look childish enough to whine about side dishes? Honestly."
Bickering all the way, the siblings headed for the garrison mess hall—and word of their arrival spread like wildfire.
Forced to dodge the crowds that came out just to gawk at them, the two hastily finished their meal and whiled away the hours afterward at a dessert café in town.
"We should head back. Curfew's coming soon."
"Oh, right—no moving about after midnight?"
"Don't give me that sparkle in your eye. No wandering around outside. Go in, wash up, and get to bed early. I'll come for you in the morning."
Having firmly planted that warning in Siena's glittering, curiosity-bright eyes, Hassar dropped her at the hotel and left.
Even with the weather hovering near summer, the late-night air was undeniably chill. Siena pulled her thin coat tight around her, waved at the departing carriage, and made her way inside at a brisk half-jog.
She was halfway across the lobby when her gaze tilted, swerving toward the far end of the room.
In a quiet corner of the deserted lobby, a man stood talking with an officer.
Claude?
He looked as though he'd just returned from somewhere—dressed in a way that fit nothing about a resort town. Monochrome from head to toe, immaculate, jarringly out of place.
Siena's eyes drifted next to her wristwatch. It was already midnight. Not even the manager or any of the staff were visible in the lobby anymore.
He'll let himself in on his own, I suppose.
It was beyond her why Claude Marcel had come all the way to Gaverum in the first place, anyway.
"Oh, right—he said he bought this place."
Halfway up the stairs, Siena finally nodded with an air of understanding and continued climbing.
Her assigned room was on the third floor, at the very end of the hall. The corridor carried a cold draft—perhaps she had left the window open.
She was rubbing her shoulders and slipping a hand into her pocket to fish out her key when—
"Huh?"
Huh?
"Wh—huh?"
What.
Flustered, Siena's gaze wavered.
"Where is it?"
My key. Where's my key?
And then.
Click—
The corridor lights went out completely.
Frozen in the sudden darkness, Siena stood rooted to the spot, her mouth hanging open.
A vague memory flickered past—a notice she'd glimpsed somewhere. After midnight: no travel outdoors, full lights-out indoors.
Not that—forget that!
Jolting out of her daze, Siena thrust her hand back into her coat pocket and spun in a frantic circle on the spot.
"Where's my key!"
Nothing. The key was gone.
Just as her mind was going white at the sheer absurdity of the situation—
"Siena?"
A faint glow appeared, and someone approached. Siena whipped around, tensing at the sight of a man walking toward her with a lantern in hand—then relaxed as the familiar voice registered.
"What do you think you're doing? It's past lights-out. Go inside. Now."
"…It's gone."
"I beg your pardon?"
"My key. It's gone."
In the pale glow of the gaslight filtering through the window, his face wore an expression of utter exasperation.