APIBAGS Chapter 79

"Oh—!"

A maid clearing the floor let out a small cry. Startled by her own outburst, she clapped a hand over her mouth and glanced around nervously—clearly worried that making a scene in the middle of her duties would earn her a reprimand.

"Did you cut your hand?"

"What? No! I thought I had, but there's no wound—I think it was just a poke."

The bead forming at her fingertip wasn't a drop of blood but a drop of wine. When the maid wiped her hand on her skirt, her finger came away clean, just as she'd claimed. That's a relief.

"I'm sorry for making more work for you."

"No, please, my lady—don't apologize!"

The maid waved her hands in flustered protest. I'd been kind to her on purpose—if people nearby watched Evangeline treat a maid with courtesy, they might revise their opinion from the rumors. That was the target. I was aiming for it. I was using her. Sorry…. My conscience aches.

"You must have been badly startled, my lady. It might be best to rest somewhere quieter until Sir Gabriel returns."

It wasn't shock—my conscience was the thing that'd been pricked. But Lady Toten seemed to have concluded I was in shock—she took my arm and guided me toward a less crowded corner. As I drew closer, the few people still nearby drifted away. They'd been trying to approach me just moments ago, yet the moment it looked like the Duke had dismissed me, they tucked their tails and looked right through me.

"I had no idea Duke Hosaquin would be so severe. I'm sorry I wasn't more help to you."

"Please don't worry."

I was holding position just as I'd discussed with Gabriel—quietly, without drawing attention—when the maid who had asked after me earlier approached with shy deference and offered us fresh wine. She gets it. A shaken heart needs alcohol. Lady Toten and I each accepted a glass and clinked them together.

"This tastes different from what we had before..."

Lady Toten took a sip and murmured to herself, tilting her head. Was that really so remarkable? I tasted it too, and while it was richer than before—deeper, more concentrated, my palate wasn't refined enough to make anything of it. Probably just a more aged vintage. I drained my glass and set it down.

By the time the last drop disappeared, the evening's entertainment had begun in earnest. I was already exhausted and wanted nothing more than to go home. A newfound respect for the inhabitants of rofan washed over me all over again. I'd always known it, but right now I was feeling it—putting your whole self into society was no small thing.

"The banquet is beginning properly now."

The Crown Prince descended the dais hand in hand with one of his twin daughters. The Crown Prince was outweighed in presence not only by his son—the one spoken of as future Emperor—but even by his daughter, the one with no title to her name at all. The two came to a stop at the center of the hall.

"That's Princess Jeremia, my lady."

"Can you tell them apart, Lady Toten?"

Their gold hair and blue eyes were identical, and even their gowns and hairstyles were carbon copies of each other—how on earth did anyone manage?

"They look so perfectly alike that even the Crown Prince himself reportedly cannot tell them apart."

Shouldn't parents be able to tell their own children apart? And yet Lady Toten could, when their own father couldn't? How sharp are her eyes?

She smiled slightly and continued.

"In truth, once you know the answer, it becomes very simple. Their jewels are different colors."

Different colors?

"When the twin princesses were born, Her Imperial Majesty gifted each of them a necklace identical in every respect but the stone. Emerald for Princess Jeremia. Onyx for Princess Tenebrae."

I looked. She was right. The girl standing with the Crown Prince now wore a necklace of green emerald—Jeremia, then. The 'e' in emerald matched the 'e' in Jeremia; easy enough to remember.

Lady Toten added that neither princess ever removed her necklace—not even in the bath—so a glance at the throat was all it took. Knowing the key made it simple.

"My beloved daughter—will you honor your father with a dance, on his birthday?"

"Gladly."

As the Crown Prince and Jeremia took their positions, the orchestra came to life around them. Dozens of instruments moving for just two people—the sheer scale of it was hard to take in.

With each circuit the Crown Prince and Jeremia turned, tracing wide arcs across the floor, the lights began going out one by one as if choreographed, until the final revolution brought total darkness. Someone must have closed the windows as well—I couldn't see a hand in front of my face.

The people around me panicked, voices rising in confusion. Someone nearby stumbled with a startled cry, and I caught them before they fell. For my trouble, I ended up with wine down my front, seeping cold into the fabric. Gabriel... your noble sacrifice to keep me dry has come to nothing.

"Lady Rohanson, thank you."

The person thanked me before I could even ask if they were all right, and was gone. So—how long were they planning to keep us in this? The music hadn't stopped, so it wasn't an emergency—this had to be a planned event. But indoors, so not fireworks. Something was meant to appear, maybe? Whatever it was, the crowd's reaction had already made it a fairly obvious failure.

Without ceremony, the lights came back on.

And what they revealed was beyond imagination. The Crown Prince—who had been waltzing hand in hand with Jeremia just before the blackout—hung from the chandelier, an ornate dagger through his heart. There was a sword through his heart—and strangely, the handle looked familiar.

The moment I placed the déjà vu, my hand flew to my mouth.

That—that isn't the dagger I brought, is it?

I wasn't the only one who recognized it. Someone screamed it out for the room to hear.

"Lady Rohanson has murdered His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince!"

What the—what?! NO it wasn't!

The first waltz had begun to the sound of the orchestra. With the Crown Princess's seat empty, the Crown Prince's partner was one of his twin daughters. In practice, it had always been the same one. At official functions, the Crown Prince invariably summoned Jeremia, and this evening was no exception: he extended his hand to the daughter who wore the green stone.

The girl with the onyx necklace watched her father and her twin dance with an expression of supreme indifference.

Father and daughter were a study in resemblance—the same striking features, the same blue eyes—moving in elegant unison across the floor. Layers of skirt billowed and settled with each turn. Young unmarried noblemen gazed at the sweeping hem with expressions approaching rapture.

"Princess Jeremia is so beautiful."

"She looks exactly like Princess Tenebrae."

"Ah, but that's rather the point, isn't it—the inner quality differs so. Same face entirely, yet there's something dark about Princess Tenebrae."

In outward appearance the twins had been cast from the same mold, yet their temperaments were opposites. Jeremia was bright, warm, and beloved. Tenebrae was somber, unable to conceal the habitual shadow in her expression.

Hence, no doubt, the Crown Prince's preferential treatment. The old superstition that twins were an ill omen should have applied to both—yet somehow the warning had always seemed aimed specifically at Tenebrae. There was a story, passed quietly in certain circles, that the Crown Prince had attempted to kill Tenebrae himself at the moment of birth, the instant the prophecy came to him.

The music settled into familiar passages. Guests who recognized the approaching end of the first dance began preparing for the second, drawing their partners close. As the orchestra built toward its climax, the chandelier's blazing lights began to wink out one by one.

"The windows haven't opened—why are the lights going out?"

The illumination concentrated itself at last on the pair standing at the hall's center before fading entirely. The magnificent ballroom was swallowed in darkness. Total blackout. Even the closest objects were impossible to distinguish.

"What's happening...?"

"Who is that?! Move—stop pushing!"

A shriek— "Someone stepped on my foot!"

"I can't see—I can't, I have to get out of here!"

Chaos of this magnitude should have stopped the music, but the orchestra, terrified of being held responsible for abandoning the performance mid-measure, pressed on through the soaring passage they had just reached. A cellist who had snapped a string at one of the Emperor's banquets had been beheaded for it—his head mounted at the gate as an example.

The crowd's fear—just beginning to sprout, not yet fully grown—tangled with the orchestra's sweet accompaniment into a strange chord. It was almost comical. Like a scene being reproduced from a well-rehearsed play.

Before the confusion could fully ignite, the lights mercifully returned. Chandeliers that had gone dark blazed back to life all at once, and guests still blinking back to awareness squinted and grimaced as their eyes adjusted.

"What on earth..."

One by one, as the brilliance returned and the hall's splendor came back into focus, hands flew to mouths.

Before the darkness had taken their sight, the last thing the assembled guests had seen was a father and daughter standing at the center of the hall. When the light returned, it was only natural to look there first.

But where the waltzing pair had been, there was now only a solitary figure—the girl with the green necklace—standing motionless beneath a descending rain of red, gazing blankly upward at the ceiling. Those who followed her gaze saw what was there.

Someone screamed. Someone else lost their voice entirely. People sank to the floor; others retched. Perhaps the darkness would have been kinder.

The music sagged.

The orchestra, too absorbed to register the rising sounds, played on—until one by one musicians looked up and understood, and notes began to drop away. The last piano carried on alone through the majestic final passage, until the strings, pushed past endurance, snapped—a dying cry—and all sound stopped.

Only rhythmic beating remained. Steady, unchanged. Flowing from a stopped heart, blood drops pooled at the Crown Prince’s fingertips and fell in metronomic cadence. Each drop struck the small pool gathering on the floor below, distinct and clear.

The Crown Prince hung from the chandelier, an ornate dagger through his heart. The chandelier, tilted by the weight, let out a long metallic creak as it swayed. The crystal pieces knocked together with a soft, irregular rattle. A sound small enough to unnerve hair, crawl skin.

"Father!"

One of the Crown Prince's twin daughters screamed. She wore the onyx necklace—Tenebrae. Someone else's gaze had already found the dagger's hilt, and that person raised their voice.

"Th—that's the sword—the sword Lady Rohanson presented to His Highness!"

Eyes moved to the hilt. A considerable number of guests had witnessed Evangeline Rohanson present the decorative dagger to the Crown Prince upon her arrival—had seen the moment and remembered it. Gazes that recognized the identical handle swung, all at once, in the same direction.

"Lady Rohanson has assassinated His Highness the Crown Prince!"