I Will Call Your Name (7/7)

"You filthy slave!"

Now that Mirva was locked in the dungeon, no one else was willing to wait on her, so the duty had naturally fallen to the slave, Giscard. Confined in her cell, she spat and raged like something feral.

Giscard set a bowl of water before her, and she gulped it down in great swallows—meals came only once a day, after all. It was just as he moved to set down the bowl of stew that he spoke.

"Please eat."

"Diana! Bring that bitch here!"

Giscard went still for a heartbeat—then upended the bowl he was holding straight onto the floor. The liquid gushed out in a rush, and the chunks of meat and vegetable slapped down onto the stone after it.

"Hey!"

Mirva exploded.

"You—you dare! Are you trying to starve me?!"

Standing where he was, Giscard ground the largest chunk of meat into the floor beneath his heel. Disgust was written plain across his face—the look of a man watching a worm writhe.

"It's strange."

"What?!"

"Even a prisoner gets fed this well. So why did you let the young lady of this house starve the way you did?"

"Bring me a proper meal this instant! Do you want to be scolded again?!"

"The way you scolded me back then?"

Giscard said it while watching Mirva scream at him, eyes bulging for her food.

"You're surprisingly fair-minded, for someone like you. Me and the young lady both—you scolded us just the same."

He kept crushing the pieces underfoot, making it clear he would never tolerate Mirva scraping a single thing off the floor. Mirva let out a furious howl.

Mirva had gone about five days without bringing Diana a single meal. The family all took their meals at different hours. At first Diana had asked politely to be fed, and been ignored. Worse, Mirva had made a show of serving Giscard's food right in front of her. Even Giscard could see it was deliberate.

The Duke was away from the estate, and Emil couldn't have cared less whether his little sister ate or starved. Alexa was no different. Rather than wonder why her older sister wouldn't play with her, or why she had no energy, Alexa's own aches and her complaints about being neglected came first.

"It really is strange. How did you keep your backbone through that?"

The maids said Diana's faint smile at Mirva meant she had finally been broken. Was that really what it was? From the next day on, Diana didn't even come down to the dining hall. She simply starved. Starved—that was all she did.

"You're the strange one! To think a slave could be so devoted to his master!"

She sneered, sharp and bitter. Setting aside the thought of Diana growing gaunt, Giscard focused on the woman before him.

"If you ever thought of Herya, you wouldn't be able to do it!"

At that, Giscard's face froze over, cold as a winter lake. Killing intent began to boil in his eyes. Should he wring her neck here and now? Mirva laughed—hah, hah—straight into that frozen face.

"Do you know why she ended up the way she did?"

"……"

"Because our lord the Duke is trash, that's why."

"……"

"Our Duke turns anyone into trash the moment they stop being meek and obedient. He's so sly and scheming it would almost be cute, if I didn't know better. Look at yourself—that's exactly what you are now."

"……"

"Then what about that trash's spawn? I know that boy. He looks down on every living soul. Even the mercy he shows you is the charity a master throws his 'inferiors.'"

"……"

"Better yet, why don't you just kill me? You have no idea how much that boy despises people. The only reason she ruined me is that I'm a fallen noble. Said I got above my station."

Mirva cackled. It never once crossed her mind that Giscard couldn't kill her—the Slave Restraint Collar around his neck, tight as a dog's collar, saw to that. All she wanted, either way, was for Diana to be broken.

It was obvious. Precisely because it was obvious, Giscard turned his back and walked away. Mirva snickered after him—then soon enough shrieked in cold fury,

"You dog! Bring my food back!"

Mirva spewed curses. She tried to scrape up whatever she could, but Giscard had crushed everything to pulp; there was nothing left to eat. Only the savory smell of the food goaded her empty stomach. She was hungry. Gritting her teeth, she hammered on the iron bars.

Then came the sound of footsteps. Torchlight caught the hem of a white apron. A fresh venom kindled in Mirva's eyes.

"You dog! You demon!"

Just as she'd expected, Mirva hurled her abuse at Diana.

"Giscard! Giscard! Kill this woman!"

Mirva screamed. But Giscard did not answer—and that, too, was only natural. Diana and Giscard had occupied the same space without ever meeting. They had entered through different passages, and so their eyes had never once crossed.

That Diana had overheard their conversation at all was pure coincidence. Most of it had come through muffled and slurred. But the name Herya had carried, clear as a bell.

It was a familiar name. A name that snagged somewhere in her chest. But the memory behind it wouldn't come. So Diana decided she would simply ask outright.

"Who is Herya?"

Mirva spat. When the spittle struck her apron, Diana bit her lip. A civil conversation was, of course, out of the question.

"It was all your doing, all of it, yours! You conniving little wretch, you demon!"

Diana looked down at her coldly.

"If anyone here is a demon, it's someone like you."

"……"

"You—who carried on with my father in the open while my mother lay sick in bed."

"……"

"You—who dared to reach for my mother's place."

"Why?! A merchant's daughter can rise into the nobility, but I can't become your mother?! I have every right to!"

Mirva shrieked.

"You ruined everything! You took it upon yourself to—"

Diana looked down at Mirva, and Mirva looked up at her, face streaked with tears. No longer grand and gilded—just shabby and shrunken. And in that wreck of a woman, Diana saw her true end from her previous life.

The next time she'd seen Mirva, cast out of the estate just like this, was right after Diana had become Queen of Lodbrok. It wasn't as if Giscard hadn't known the history between Mirva and Diana. So why had he brought her? Surely because he had wanted to see her suffer.

But there was something even Giscard hadn't foreseen—whatever feelings the survivors of a fallen kingdom might come to hold for one another. Diana came to trust Mirva more than any of her other maids, and beside Diana, Mirva could be a little more human. It was in the third year of Mirva serving her queen once more that everything happened.

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty—no—Milady, save me, please! Lady Diana, please!"

That was how she'd begged, locked away in the Kingdom of Lodbrok. Mirva's crime was a simple one: she had been colluding with Farnborough's remnant forces. She had been plotting to spirit Diana away—the prince's betrothed. So that Diana could escape that hellish place.

"Let's run away together, Milady."

Why had it come to that? Was it because Diana had been half-mad to escape the Kingdom of Lodbrok? Because she had always, always ached for her life in Farnborough? Diana had refused when Mirva first whispered let's run—and Mirva had gone ahead and built the plan on her own.

The plot was discovered with almost insulting ease, and Diana's standing wavered, more precarious than ever. The knights took Mirva.

"Look. Don't look away."

"Please! Please!"

Giscard made Diana watch Mirva's end, every moment of it. Perhaps the blade had gone dull; Mirva did not die easily. Her death was, quite simply, horrific. Watching the woman die with her limbs hacked away from her body, Diana wept until it felt like tears of blood.

It was because of me. She died because of me. I should have refused her more firmly back then. Diana could still remember the feeble struggling of a body that had nothing left but breath—and the way they had all watched, coldly, or with faint amusement, like men watching livestock led to slaughter.

That was why she had always been weak when it came to Mirva.

"I'll speak to Father. I'll make sure you're allowed to walk out of here with nothing more than your own body."

"……!"

"Never set foot in this house again. Never show yourself before me."

"……"

"And never before Emil, either."

"What?"

"Emil is your son, isn't he?"

"H—how did you……"

Mirva stared at her, stunned. The truth was, Diana had simply thrown the words out to see what came back. She had seen Mirva's face in Emil's, in the way the boy cried when his feelings were hurt. Telling her father you mustn't do this to me would have sounded strange, too.

It was nothing more than a flash of instinct. The way Emil shielded Mirva; the way Mirva wept over Emil. She was not a little girl but a grown woman inside, and she could read that much.

"You—how! How did you know? Did Emil tell you?! How could you possibly know I bore him?!"

Mirva raged.

"I only poked at you to see what would happen. And you answered, just like that."

At Diana's words, Mirva's eyes flew wide—and then she ground her teeth in something like despair. She had never suspected a thing. The mother Diana remembered had never slighted Emil. Either some trick had been worked to make her believe he was her own flesh and blood, or she had simply raised him as if he were. One of the two, surely.

"You little—just like your mother—cunning little witch……"

Realizing she had been caught in a child's petty trick, Mirva gnashed her teeth.

"Did Mother know? That you and Father were involved like that? That Emil was yours?"

"Ha!"

Mirva laughed. Then her eyes opened, bleak and overcast, and she looked at Diana—or rather, at someone else entirely.

"She never knew. Not even in her dreams, that fool."

"……"

"She thought everything was hers by right. Even my son!"

"……"

"My son, my man! She believed my son was hers!"

"……"

"How could a woman who wasn't even proper nobility become a Duchess? Because the Duke had a bastard! She married him on the condition that he accept that bastard! You're no precious noble lady—you're the grandchild of lowborn merchants!"

"……If my blood was so lowly, Mirva, then why couldn't you become the Duchess?"

Diana gave a hollow little laugh.

"I was—I was there first!"

Mirva screamed it like a death rattle. Diana wasn't particularly surprised. She simply thought, with perfect calm,

"You bore Emil—so why did he marry my mother instead? Weren't you Mother's maid, from the time you were both girls?"

"That's……"

"You had a child by Father, and he wouldn't marry you—so he married my mother instead. Isn't that how it was?"

Mirva's eyes went wide. She had still been seeing Diana as a little girl; she had never imagined the child could see so much.

It was obvious. Back then, Father had been penniless, one step from ruin. It was the merchant blood that had bought its title—that is, his union with Mother—that dragged the house back from the edge.

Had Mother and Father's meeting truly been chance? Who had stood between them? The answer was plain.

"So you see, Mirva—none of this was my doing. You chose it."

"……"

"You're the one who made your life what it is."

"You miserable little—!"

Mirva shrieked. Diana knew the Mirva of her previous life, and so she could not be wholly, perfectly merciless. In that life, she and Mirva had years of shared history between them.

They had never loved each other. But as survivors of a fallen kingdom, they had leaned on one another all the same.

What Mirva had done to her back then had never crossed the line where it would truly disgrace the family—just enough trouble to make her miserable. So even after returning to the past, Diana had never moved against her first.

But when she learned that Mirva had betrayed her mother, Diana had had no choice but to mean it. And now Mirva had fallen this far—screaming before her eyes.

"But grant me this one thing: Emil will always be the older brother I love."

Diana turned for the door. She wanted this old knot of a bond severed for good. She was walking away with her back turned when she caught sight of a figure leaning against the wall. Giscard.

"You didn't leave?"

"I heard someone coming."

Giscard looked at her, unblinking.

"Why would you come down here alone, with no one at your side?"

There was something almost scolding in his voice, and Diana forgot her circumstances and laughed—a short, bright sound. The door back up to the surface came into view.

"I don't know. I came to trample her with my own words, but then I felt sorry for her again. I pity her, and pitying her makes me hate her, and hating her makes me pity her."

Trying not to think of the Mirva of her past life, Diana forced the words out.

"I never want to see that woman again."

"……"

"I just want it to end here—the whole connection, cut clean."

Giscard gave no answer at all. Even if Diana were one day to become his bride, just as destiny decreed, he would make no allowances for this. Wearing a bitter smile, Diana stopped short, as if something had just come to her, and looked back.

"Oh."

"……"

"Giscard. Who is Herya?"

Had Diana been a little more rational, she would have let some time pass before setting that name between her teeth. But the question had gnawed at her, and when no memory came, the frustration won out—and she asked him the way she had asked Mirva, blunt and unguarded.

"Where did you hear that name?"

"I overheard the two of you talking."

"……"

"Who is Herya?"

The moment she asked a second time, the air against her skin turned abruptly frigid. It felt as though her heart had dropped straight through her. Eyes wide, Diana watched Giscard become something else.

His face was as expressionless as ever. He hadn't so much as furrowed his brow. He had only looked at her—and still her heart hammered like a cornered animal's, as though she had stumbled upon a beast in the dark.

She knew. She knew the restraint collar bound him, that he could not lay a hand on his master's family.

And yet, for one instant—as the dungeon's darkness settled down over her—she thought she might simply vanish into it.

She thought he might take her neck in those iron hands and snap it. In that deep shadow, his eyes gleamed, distinct and clear, fixed on her with something heavy and chilling, like fingers closing around her throat.

I want to kill her.

It felt as if the darkness itself were whispering it. The moment naked killing intent showed in his face, the image burned through her mind—Giscard, drenched in blood, come to claim his demon's bride. That monster's face……

"I'm sorry……"

"……Pardon?"

"I'm sorry, it's my fault, I was wrong, Giscard!"

Diana looked up at the monster with eyes brimming over. Confusion stirred in Giscard's eyes, but she never saw it.

"If I made you angry, I'm sorry. That was never what I meant. So……"

So please—don't take me with you. Eyes squeezed shut, Diana flinched away from the hand Giscard extended toward her. She opened the door that led up to the surface.

Her whole body was drenched in cold sweat. She ran without looking back even once.

She had almost died. Almost? No—it didn't matter. It had only felt like dying. That was enough.

She stumbled into her room and stood there gasping. Be honest with yourself. A slave—that man? Impossible. Diana thought, eyes screwed shut.

Diana was afraid of Giscard.

I am afraid of that boy.

So afraid I cannot bear it.

I hate him—but I fear him.

That man was a destroyer who had gripped her destiny in his fist and shaken it—a ruthless, brutal slaughterer. He had done nothing but harden his expression once, and she had crumbled all on her own.

Eyes shut tight, Diana waited, forcing herself, for the trembling to subside.

Even after driving Mirva out, Diana did not quit her work as a maid. For one thing, working as a maid meant coin piling up in her own pocket.

She needed private property of her own. It wasn't that she lacked assets—far from it. Mirva might have sold off her mother's mementos, but the most valuable pieces, the truly precious few, were safe in Diana's hands.

Letting Mirva squander the rest had served its purpose, too: it was how she built her private fortune. At twelve, Diana had only just won the power to run the estate as she pleased—money for 'other purposes' she had none.

Diana had decided how she would free Giscard. For that she would need a great deal of money. She would have to go to the guild and sound out the right people, and……

And.

Diana let out a sigh.

She would have to find Giscard a new master. From what she'd heard, his skill had long since left his teacher behind.

Diana breathed a small sigh.

She had not laid eyes on Giscard since that day. It was true—Diana had been avoiding him on purpose. Standing before him made her feel stripped bare. She tried so hard to stay calm, and kept spilling over instead.

Giscard, for his part, seemed to want to speak with her. Even before, whenever their paths crossed, he had stared at her as if trying to see straight through her.

He's asking whether I mean to throw him away.

As if he hadn't wanted me dead, if only for a moment. Watching Ionia come pelting toward her, Diana wiped the thought away.

"Anne!"

"Yes?"

"Look at this. Isn't it pretty?"

Princess Ionia held out a round little ball. Round and spherical was cute, of course—except that this particular sphere had gleaming red eyes and a mouth split wide open. The shape of a monster. That was the problem.

"Um—isn't that, well… a monster?"

"Heavens, no! This is a manapet! How can you not know something this adorable!"

Had some mage with too much time on his hands shaped a pet out of mana? What bizarre taste.

"Brother Philip is going to love it. I just know it."

Would Philip love it…… Diana sighed. The whole royal palace was abuzz over Prince Philip's approaching birthday celebration.

Prince Philip was turning sixteen. With the first queen still hale and in power, Ferdinand was the crown prince in all but name—but the families that stood against the queen and her kin had backed Philip all the same.

That was probably what had killed him, in the end. Thankfully, this time Philip had lived to see his sixteenth birthday.

"Anne, what are you going to give Brother Philip for his birthday?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Are you going to give him something even more amazing than what you gave me for mine?"

Diana smiled awkwardly. As if that were possible. Whatever she gave would stay safely within the bounds of what her father provided.

And yet she ached for Philip. He had no mother, and the Count of Calcos—the border margrave, his late mother's family—would never come up to the capital, not while the frontier demanded guarding.

"I don't have that kind of money."

Even as she said it, Diana was drafting a list of gifts in her head. For Ferdinand, she had given the birthday present her father had 'prepared.'

But she wanted to give Philip something good.

She had become Ionia's maid, which meant she saw Philip often as well. He was forever keeping an eye out for Diana, pressing candy into her hands.

Candy given in pure, uncomplicated goodwill. It had piled up enough to fill the glass jar she kept just for it. Which meant his goodwill had piled up just as high.

She didn't know it then. That one day Diana would give Philip a gift far greater than anything she had ever given Princess Ionia.