Meanwhile, Karl’s gaze had settled on Dian, who was pressed flat against the floor.
Disheveled blond hair scattered across the ground, a small, slender back, a trembling voice.
Karl slowly lifted his eyes and looked at the Empress seated in her chair.
“Empress, what do you think you’re doing right now?”
In his low voice seeped a heavy anger and darkness, and in his sunken violet eyes it seemed as though flames were rising.
Adel slowly rose from her seat under the Emperor’s gaze. She alternated her eyes between Dian, who was still kneeling and crying, and the enraged Emperor.
“Get up, young lady of Poitiers!! You were speaking with me just fine until now—what do you think you’re doing?!”
“Empress!!”
“And what do you think you’re doing, Your Majesty?!”
As the Empress shot back without backing down, the Emperor strode toward her like an enraged beast. A hint of madness even flickered across his face.
Lorraine hurriedly helped Dian, who was lying face-down on the floor, to her feet. Her pale face was soaked with tear tracks, her eyes swollen red.
“Your Majesty, I will apologize to Her Majesty the Empress—”
A frail voice that sounded as though it might break at any moment. Karl clenched his teeth, stared at Dian for a moment, then turned to the Empress.
“Take Dian to the Ivory Palace.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Lorraine supported Dian, who staggered as if she might collapse at any moment, and Dian, limp like someone half-unconscious, left the reception room.
The air in the room froze like thin ice that could crack at any moment.
“Everyone out. I will speak with the Empress alone.”
At the Emperor’s order, the maids who had been standing along the walls filed out as if they had been waiting for it. Only Madame Giggs remained, looking at Adel with a worried expression.
“It has been a long time.”
At the Emperor’s cold greeting, Madame Giggs bowed deeply and replied.
“It has been a long time, Your Majesty.”
“You are the same as ever.”
“……”
“Unchanging. Standing at the Empress’s side, merely watching as those weaker than yourself are trampled underfoot. Is it amusing?”
“Leave us.”
When Adel sharply ordered her, having heard enough, the Emperor raised his voice.
“Is it amusing to you?!”
“Leave us, Madame Giggs!!”
Adel shouted back without yielding. The Emperor glared at Adel with a murderous look, and she met his gaze as if she would shatter him, clenching her jaw.
The furrows of wrinkles on Madame Giggs’s face deepened. Steadying her trembling breath, she bowed politely to the two of them, then turned and left the reception room.
Thud. As the door closed, only the Emperor and the Empress remained in the wide, lavish reception room. Neither of them made any move to sit.
“What do you think you’re doing right now, Empress?”
“And what do you think you’re doing, Your Majesty?”
“Is it fun? Grabbing the throat of someone weaker than yourself by any means, twisting it until they beg for their life. What a truly vile taste.”
“I have never done such a thing.”
“I saw the scene with my own eyes, and you still make excuses like that.”
“She prostrated herself the moment the door opened. And she began begging me. At the exact moment you arrived, Your Majesty.”
“What an extraordinary coincidence.”
The Emperor sneered and mocked her. Adel exhaled her boiling resentment in a sigh and roughly ran a hand through her hair.
In that moment, the Emperor picked up something from the table with one hand. It was the Ivory Palace budget report.
“Do you covet it?”
“…….”
“What Dian has—do you covet it?”
“The one who is crossing the line is not her, but you, Your Majesty. Have you looked at the Empress Palace’s budget proposal? At how the supplementary budget turned out, that is.”
“…….”
“You don’t know, do you? You entrusted even that to the Ivory Palace. An Empress who takes money from the Emperor’s mistress—was that what you wanted?!”
Adel laughed bitterly and continued speaking in a rapid-fire manner. Then, with a rough motion, she pulled the supplementary budget document she had retrieved from the trash and slapped it down on the table.
“This is the Empress Palace’s supplementary budget proposal. Take a look! I doubt it’s even worth the price of a single warhorse. Should the Empress Palace’s supplementary budget be poorer than dividing up a common household’s living expenses?”
The Emperor narrowed his eyes and stared at the budget Adel had placed on the table. As she said, the supplementary budget amounted to little more than the price of a single warhorse.
For a moment, silence hovered between the two. Karl drew in a long breath and closed his eyes. But the moment he did, the scene surfaced again. The deep, black sea showed no sign of calming.
“……So that’s why you summoned Dian?”
“I told her to bring it again, and she came in person.”
“That is summoning her.”
“Is it?”
At Adel’s incredulous tone, Karl’s eyes flashed threateningly. He took one step toward her. As they had the night before, the two glared at each other across a perilously narrow distance.
“So the Dowager Empress of Gotthorp, your mother, lied to me.”
“…….”
“She said you were an obedient, devoted daughter. After being driven out of your homeland, have you learned nothing?”
“You speak recklessly, Your Majesty, without even properly knowing the reason I had no choice but to leave Gotthorp.”
“Listen carefully, Empress.”
Karl grabbed Adel’s shoulder as though he would crush it. Then, in a voice like a whisper, he warned her.
“Like a feather attached to a quill. Like a flower placed in a vase.”
Simply existing.
A mechanical answer to the question of who the Empress of Ehmondt is.
“……Live like that.”
The instant she heard those words, a shiver that began at the crown of her head raced through Adel’s entire body and brushed past her toes. The Emperor, who had been gripping her shoulder, was startled by the electricity he felt through his hand and released her, staring into Adel’s golden eyes.
It was at that moment—
KWA-KWA-KWA-BOOM!!
With a thunderous roar that shook heaven and earth, a flash of light burst forth.
The light was so intense that the whole world seemed to turn white for an instant. Karl reflexively squeezed his eyes shut, but Adel swiftly turned and ran out onto the terrace.
The terrace’s glass doors rattled violently under the fierce wind blowing from outside. The moment she grabbed and turned the handle, the door flew open as if it had been waiting, and the wind slammed into her entire body. Adel clutched the terrace railing and lifted her head toward the sky.
“Kyaaaaaaah!!!”
Piercing screams and the chaos of people running about in panic were shaking the entire imperial palace.
“The sky—the sky!!!”
The clear sky that had been radiant with late-summer sunlight looked as though someone had poured dark red paint across it. A sky staining red as if blood were spreading, and—
“Th-the tower!!!!!!”
“The tower is descending!!!!!”
A black calamity that was death itself was charging rapidly, straight toward the imperial palace of Ehmondt.
“Like a feather attached to a quill, like a flower placed in a vase. Live like that?”
Staring unflinchingly at the black calamity, Adel slowly repeated the words she had just heard.
The palace was chaos itself. Once more, thunder shook heaven and earth. When the Emperor grasped the situation and hurriedly burst out of the reception room, Madame Giggs rushed in with a startled face and shouted.
“Your Majesty the Empress, are you all right? They say the tower is descending, Your Majesty. You must take shelter at once.”
Madame Giggs wrapped a shawl around Adel’s shoulders and tried to lead her away, but the Empress refused and spoke in a cold voice.
“No. That won’t be necessary.”
Adel looked up at the reddening sky and flicked open, one by one, the buttons that tightly bound her sleeves. A strange light gleamed in her golden eyes as she gazed upward.
“Your Majesty the Empress?”
Madame Giggs called to her in a bewildered voice at the Empress’s sudden behavior, but Adel did not answer.
For the first time, the blood-red sky and the horrific black calamity felt welcome.
Adel sharply turned on her heel and headed for her chambers.
There was something she had to do.
＊ ＊ ＊
An emergency decree was issued in the capital. It would be a grave problem even if a tower descended near the capital—but for it to be descending toward the imperial palace itself! The palace was like a stirred-up beehive. Evacuation orders were issued first for the imperial family and the officials and high ministers who had been working in the palace, and the servants began evacuating in turn.
At the very moment everyone was leaving the palace, Lionel Valdur, Minister of Defense and commander of the knights, ran toward the point where the tower was descending. Elite knights of the 1st and 2nd Imperial Guard divisions under Lionel Valdur’s command were gathering by platoons one after another. They were, in name and reality, the finest elite force in the Empire—men who had the record of holding off the monsters of a second-grade tower for a full month even without the support of mages.
Lionel gauged the diameter of the descending tower.
“……It looks to be around grade four, or perhaps five.”
At the deputy commander’s words as they looked up together at the massive tower hurtling downward, Lionel nodded.
“It’s fortunate it’s coming down in the garden. If it were descending onto a building, it would be far harder to stop.”
Though it meant the palace’s pride, the rose garden, would be utterly ruined.
KWA-KWA-KWA-BOOM!!!!
A striking flash and a deafening roar, as though the sky itself were tearing apart, shook the earth.
