Chapter 85……………………………………..
“Do you think… that I can do it, Saintess?”
Her voice wasn’t loud, but it carried a desperate longing—almost as if she were begging me for certainty.
When I didn’t answer, she seemed to fall into deep thought for a moment.
The half-moon that had been illuminating us slipped behind the clouds, and in an instant her face fell into darkness.
Like someone who had already witnessed failure.
A soft melody—one that felt out of place for both her and me—drifted in through the crack of the door.
The crown princess glanced toward the door, her eyes trembling slightly.
Perhaps because the moonlight had been hidden by the clouds, or perhaps because she herself was trembling in fear, the black of her eyes had lost their usual brilliance.
Was she imagining a future she had never once dared to consider before?
Her tightly pursed lips parted, and a small voice slipped out.
“What if… I end up being accused of treason…?”
It seemed her thoughts had already reached their bleak conclusion.
If she said she wasn’t afraid, that would be a lie.
After all, when you try to change a life that you have always lived by simply following along, fear naturally follows.
Even I—who once seemed so confident—had been afraid. Even now, I still feared that my weakness might be exposed at any moment.
Hope is like a candle. Even the slightest wind can extinguish it.
And yet fear clings stubbornly to you, forcing you to fight against that emotion as well.
I had to hide my fear and fight to change the world I lived in.
Both she and I did.
Whether red blood might flow from me, or whether I would walk down a road stained red with blood—I could not know.
I closed my eyes for a moment.
How had it been in the past?
After Cardin died—during the first period when I spent a fairly long time as the Grand Duchess.
I never attended banquets.
Even when invitations arrived, no one criticized me, since I hadn’t attended often even when Cardin was alive.
The time I spent waiting for him had been long, yet it had also been short when it came to reorganizing and maintaining the grand ducal household that had lost its master.
I didn’t have the luxury of paying much attention to matters outside the North.
Occasionally, I would hear reports about the outside world from the butler.
Among those reports… was there something about the Bandola Empire?
When I had been the Saintess, the emperor of the Bandola Empire had changed once, but nothing really changed. The crown prince was the same kind of person as the emperor.
I frowned slightly as I tried to recall what happened afterward.
Ah.
My lips parted slightly.
“Is there something else I should know?”
“Hm. This matter isn’t related to our kingdom, but… have you heard of the Bandola Empire?”
“…Did something happen there?”
“There are rumors that the princess of the Bandola Empire has started a rebellion.”
What kind of expression had I worn back then?
I couldn’t remember, but the butler’s words remained faintly in my memory.
“Rebellion?”
“There’s also talk that the emperor deliberately framed her, since she’s the only royal who could aim for the throne.”
Back then, I had been trying to picture the vague image of the princess in my mind but stopped.
When I didn’t respond, the butler asked as he always did.
“Shall I look into it further?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Understood, my lady.”
And just as I always did, I chose not to hear any more about matters outside the North.
When I lifted my eyelids again, the first thing that came into view was her clenched hand.
The princess had her fist tightly closed, unable to keep her fingertips still.
I had returned to the past before hearing what happened to her after she was accused of treason, but now she seemed different to me.
Perhaps the crown prince who eventually became emperor had truly framed her.
But I was certain that she had genuinely tried to act.
The princess standing before me was filled with fear, imagining failure.
And yet… I could still feel her yearning.
Even if I hadn’t told her today to gain power, she probably would have tried to stop the unnecessary wars that her empire had continued for so long.
All my words had done was hasten the moment of her resolve.
That was where she differed from me.
Though if multiple regressions counted as time, perhaps we weren’t that different after all.
If I had known that I would end up facing her like this alone, I would have looked more deeply into the Bandola Empire in the past.
Then perhaps I could have helped her even a little.
“Princess.”
Lost in thought, she turned her head at the sound of my voice.
Leaving the faint melody behind us, I met the pair of eyes that seemed to be searching for hope in me.
“Does the Bandola Empire have a specific method for choosing its successor?”
“Pardon?”
“Is there a rule that a woman cannot ascend the throne?”
I asked simply because I didn’t know.
As the moon emerged from the clouds, its light illuminated her face.
Her eyes widened in surprise. Her lips parted slightly.
Her expression already gave me the answer.
It seemed there was no such restriction.
Perhaps she had simply lived her life as it was given to her, following the natural flow of things, and thus had never properly prepared herself back then.
“…How much do you know about the Bandola Empire, Saintess?”
“Well. That slavery still exists. That the nobles are drunk on superiority because of their status and consider looking down on others a virtue. That the imperial family starts wars out of nothing more than idle curiosity. And that unless you, Princess, take the throne, those terrible customs will never end.”
She fell silent for a moment.
It seemed she was recalling the things she wanted to change.
“How did you know there was no law like that?”
“I could tell from your expression.”
“….”
I smiled faintly at her silence.
“If there’s no special rule for choosing the crown prince, and no law saying a woman can’t become emperor… then couldn’t you become the crown princess?”
I hoped she would choose a different path this time instead of rebellion—one that required her to gamble her life.
At least, that was what I hoped.
We weren’t deeply connected, so it wasn’t really my place to interfere if she chose to risk her life to change this place. But still…
The eyes that had once looked at me with hostility reminded me of Raymond. And the situation she was in resembled my own.
I watched her quietly for a moment before shifting my gaze to the dark blue sky.
Her black eyes followed my gaze, and she asked,
“…But even so, how can I possibly build power now?”
At the end of her faint smile, there was bitterness again.
As if asking whether I hadn’t noticed the misery she had felt earlier—her frustration at herself for being powerless to stop the war.
As if asking whether I didn’t understand her current position in the Bandola Empire, how much she had to watch the emperor’s every move.
The princess knew the crown prince shouldn’t inherit the throne. She knew the emperor’s judgment was wrong and that the empire was not on the right path.
Being forced to simply watch that reality must have been unbearable.
But she probably didn’t yet realize that even knowing the truth about the present was already a blessing.
What I could offer her now was only my own experience, which wasn’t very old.
“You asked how one can build power.”
When I turned toward her, her black eyes looked at me almost as if pleading.
It wasn’t a prophecy or some extraordinary advice.
But I hoped it might help her, even a little.
Hoping she could move forward even just one step faster, I said,
“It turns out that in this world, there are always people who think the same way you do.”
I turned my head toward her again. She frowned slightly, waiting for my next words.
“Look for them close by. They won’t be that far away. Even within this empire, there will be people who will stand on your side.”
Just as I had Harold, Philip, and Alec.
The world tends to place such people beside us so that humanity doesn’t end up hating us entirely—and so that we can keep holding on to hope.
“So what you need to do right now, Princess, is find the person whose gaze is the same as yours.”
“Someone who thinks the same way…”
She looked as though the idea had never occurred to her before.
Perhaps she had assumed from the beginning that no such person could exist.
Even so, she quickly seemed to understand my words. With new light returning to her eyes, she left the balcony.
A little while later, someone knocked on the door—the person who had come to retrieve me after I had been away from the banquet hall for quite some time.
