COARV Chapter 35

A short, disbelieving laugh escaped him. Lesche raked a hand through his hair.

Truly—had Seria Stern actually given up the bed like that, as though it were rightfully his? Just what…. As he so often did, Lesche found himself unable to make sense of Seria this time as well. An ordinary couple, one with no intention of consummating the marriage, an ordinary pair like that would of course simply have switched places to sleep. Even the most overbearing of men would count that much consideration for his wife as basic manners.

She really did give up the strangest things. And she never even had that kind of temperament to begin with. Seria's peculiar habit of yielding drifted, unbidden, toward Kallis Haneton and the Saint. Perhaps it was because yielding and giving up felt like words from the same category. His mouth tasted bitter for no reason.

"Your Highness."

Just then, Ben, who had been standing by quietly and listening, spoke up with some care.

"Is that young lady truly—the Seria Stern? She seems entirely different from the one I heard about from Linon a few years back."

Linon deeply trusted this loyal, steadfast butler who had chosen, of his own will, to remain at the manor. So whenever he came to Laurel Manor, he'd relay every bit of outside news and society gossip in exhaustive detail. In this quietly dying green mansion, such stories were precious indeed.

Lesche's brow furrowed as he answered.

"Same person."

"Then she really has—changed a great deal from what I heard. Did something happen to her?"

"Not an incident, no."

Lesche said, watching the shadows shift slowly across the mansion.

"Went and fell for some fella."

Came back changed, just like that.

Masha and Ben exchanged a glance. Whatever 'some fella' Lesche meant, it was, no matter how you listened to it, certainly not their own master, the Grand Duke of Berke.

'Oh, dear….'

He was already a head taller than the average grown man, but to the people of this manor who had watched him since he was very small, Lesche still occasionally looked like nothing more than a boy. Right now, for instance.

"When are the sorcerers due to arrive?"

Ben answered at once.

"They were meant to arrive at midnight, but with the heavy snowfall, it seems they'll be delayed. Likely by morning."

"Seria might wake before then."

"I'll do my best to see she doesn't cross paths with them. It's not the sort of sight a lady raised delicately in the capital ought to have to see."

"If she wants to see it, let her see it. She isn't so weak-hearted."

If there was one thing about her that hadn't changed, it was that—right—that peculiar, stubborn resolve of hers. Once, of course, that resolve had expressed itself as venom, driving the household staff wherever she went to tears before she cast them out. Now it had, at least, turned into something that sent her out to that cold, merciless glacier every single day.

"Yes, Your Highness."

The firewood crackled and popped as it burned. Lesche checked the time, then lifted the red tapestry hanging on the innermost wall of the first-floor hall. Behind it lay a hidden space. As always, the door was locked.

Lesche pressed the ring on his finger—engraved with half of the Berke crest, split down the middle—firmly into the keyhole, all the way in.

Click.

An intricate sound rang out from within the door, like thousands of gears settling precisely into place, as clockwork does. Lesche waited a moment, then opened the door and stepped through.

The particular damp smell of a cellar rose up to meet him. Light flickered against Lesche's back as he descended, without hesitation, down the not-especially-long staircase leading below ground. It was Masha.

"Your Highness. It's very dark."

Lesche went on down the stairs without a word. Masha hesitated for a moment, then followed slowly after him.

Descending nearly twenty steps brought them into a wide underground chamber. Statues of angels and demons were carved in relief across the walls, and every single one of the carved figures held, in its hands, a large, vividly colored gemstone. Though thick dust had gathered over everything, anyone with even a slight eye for it would have known: every one of them was large and precious enough to have been set into a nation's own crown or royal orb.

Naturally, Lesche did not so much as glance in that direction. There was only one reason he'd come all the way down into this hidden underground vault of the green mansion in the first place.

Within any bounded space, which position was the most sacred? The Empire's crown, a High Priest's vestments, a princess's family heirloom, a hero's famed sword—they were nearly always kept in a similar position. Directly before the central wall.

Something similar was enshrined here too, before the central wall of this underground vault. A case made entirely of glass, strangely, almost eerily glossy on every surface. Set into its gold border, side by side in a row, were blue and green gemstones each the size of a quail's egg—enough that even someone with no knowledge at all would understand this was no ordinary treasure.

Precious gemstones often carried names, as it happened, and this glass case had been given a weighty one as well. The Case of the Azure Sea. A treasure that had been enshrined at Laurel Manor for a very long time. Had House Berke been a kingdom in its own right, rather than a Grand Duchy, the Case of the Azure Sea would likely have been registered as an unofficial national treasure. It was a treasure that could cast a powerful protective spell—but that power came at a price.

Looking at something so precious, Lesche's face showed no particular feeling. Not only that—Lesche closed his fist and struck the glossy glass, hard. Once. Twice. Three times. Even as red blood began to well up on Lesche's knuckles, not a single crack appeared on the Case of the Azure Sea.

As always.

A dense sense of helplessness flickered across Lesche's face for a moment. From his childhood right up to now. He had struck this Case of the Azure Sea hundreds upon hundreds of times, but the only thing that had ever broken was Lesche Berke's own hand. Even swinging a sword forged from cut diamond left no mark on the Case of the Azure Sea whatsoever. Some goddamn brutal spell laid on the Grand Duchess's case.

Laurel Manor had, at last, reached its limit. Once this season passed, the land would collapse—and whatever life remained bound to this place would collapse along with it.

As Lesche let his blood-dripping fist drop, out of long habit, Masha called "Your Highness" sharply and drew a bandage from within her clothes.

"You mustn't leave it bleeding like that. You are aware you're the Grand Duke of Berke, aren't you?"

"I'm aware. That's why I stopped there."

"Good thing I brought the bandage, then."

"So you didn't come just to bring the light."

"A bit of both, I suppose."

Masha's hand, wrapping the bandage, was skilled as ever. She finished tending to it in no time, and as she stepped back, she let out a soft, unexpected laugh.

Masha smiled warmly often enough, ordinarily, but this was the first time in Lesche's life he'd seen her laugh down here, in this underground vault. He looked at her, a little surprised, and she spoke on, still smiling.

"If the young lady Seria were here right now, I imagine she'd have said, 'Your Highness, have you lost your mind?'—with those bright blue eyes of hers wide open."

"You haven't even seen her for a full day yet. How would you know that?"

"Do you think she'd react any differently?"

"……Probably about the same."

It seemed Masha's peculiarly precise instinct, wherever the "Grand Duchess of Berke" was concerned, held true once again this time. An instinct he'd missed, just a little, and one he never wanted to see again, either. Masha spoke gently, as if she'd read straight through him.

"You ought to go back and sleep now, Your Highness."

"Right."

Before leaving the underground vault, Lesche looked slowly over the Case of the Azure Sea once more. Within the glass case, spelled to nullify any attack whatsoever, lay a lock of reddish-brown hair, roughly a hand's span long. Hair that had once been soaked entirely through with bright red blood.

"My hair is still kept safe in there, Your Highness."

Masha's gentle words. Lesche's expression settled, grave.

He thought of Elliot as a boy, tears streaming down his face. He remembered the mockery of his half-brother, daring Elliot to cut off that celebrated loyalty of his and put it inside the case. Placing a lock of hair into the Case of the Azure Sea wasn't simply a proof of loyalty. To become the case's guardian meant devoting the rest of one's life to House Berke.

Trapped in this green mansion, forever.

"If you're truly a knight for House Berke, then cut your hair and put it in."

Under the former Grand Duke's assenting sneer and the silence that followed it, Elliot's hand had trembled violently. Masha had pushed past Elliot and knelt down on one knee.

"I'll cut mine instead."

What expression Masha had worn as she said that, Lesche couldn't clearly recall. He only remembered that the former Grand Duke, faced with the resolute reaction of Masha—the previous Grand Duchess's own trusted confidante—had simply laughed like a madman. No—he had, in fact, actually been mad. By that point.

"You went through a great deal, thanks to my mad father."

"Your Highness. To call the late Grand Duke of Berke mad—"

"That's putting it gently."

Masha only offered up that same courteous smile once more. In truth, Lesche sometimes—no, often—couldn't make sense of it.

"Isn't it about time you let go of your loyalty to Berke?"

"It isn't loyalty to Berke, Your Highness. It's loyalty to the Grand Duchess of Berke."

"That's exactly the part I don't understand either, when I say that."

Masha only smiled again, without answering. What Masha had been thinking, watching with her own eyes as the previous Grand Duchess slipped further from her senses day by day, Lesche had no way of knowing. He turned his body.

"I ought to go up."

"Sleep well, Your Highness."

Just then, Ben came walking over quickly. In his hands, he carried a simple set of bedding.

"What's that, now?"

"If the young lady is sleeping in the bed, Your Highness will need something to cover yourself with as well, won't you? Allow me to bring it up."

"Don't bother. What, you think I've got no hands?"

"But—"

Lesche took the bedding from Ben and strode off toward the stairs. Stepping through the door into the Grand Duke's private bedroom, Lesche made his way inward. His hair, half-wet not long before, had by now dried fully. There was nothing to trouble him—he could simply lie down on the sofa and go to sleep.

There was one thing, very irritating.

Whether 'irritating' was even the right word for it, he couldn't say—but in any case, there was one thing he couldn't just ignore and sleep.