COARV Chapter 39

Even just being indoors, I could feel my reddened, frozen cheeks slowly begin to thaw. I took off my cloak and ran to the stairs, reaching out to press my hand against the hardened demonic energy.

It really is being purified.

At this rate, though, it would probably take a thousand years. A humidity absorber would work faster than this.

Walking slowly through the mansion, I tried to recall the original novel. Lina hadn't gone around purifying the hardened demonic energy piece by piece like some kind of vacuum cleaner either. The hardened demonic energy had a source, and once Lina purified it with her saintly power, all that thick, sticky demonic energy had simply vanished along with it.

My power of purification was far weaker, but I was a Stern all the same, so I went looking for the source. At some point I noticed a faint but distinct strengthening in the demonic energy. It took nearly two hours, and by the end I was sweating profusely.

"This is..."

I blinked. It was the first-floor hall, the one you saw right after coming through the main entrance. Unlike usual, one of the enormous tapestries—taller than me—had been lifted up over the railing, and a black door stood wide open in the wall it revealed.

"Lady Seria? What are you doing?"

Linon appeared out of nowhere and spoke to me, startling me badly. I flinched backward, and at that same moment, Linon's whole body suddenly lifted clean off the ground.

"Aack! Miss Susan!"

Susan—that is, the seamstress of this green mansion. With just one hand, she'd grabbed Linon by the collar, hauled him clean off the floor, and set him down beside her. Wait, it wasn't even that Linon was short. How could she lift a grown man like that so effortlessly?

"You startled the young lady, Linon."

"Oh, come on! People treating the Grand Duchess like a doll made of sugar candy is some kind of ancient plague, honestly—! Aack!"

Linon didn't get to say anything more. He went limp. In Susan's hands.

"Did Linon just... faint?"

"You should speak to me plainly, Lady Seria."

"Did he faint?"

Formality vanished. Because Susan asking for informal speech was, frankly, terrifying. Susan smiled, but it wasn't the same warm, gentle smile Masha had. It was a bit sharper than that—the kind that, oddly enough, reminded me of Abigail.

"My lady, the sorcerers are here—would you like to go down and take a look? Ah, as for His Highness..."

Susan asked, sounding a touch wary.

"His Highness did give his permission, though."

"Then, well, the manor's quiet and dull enough, so I think you might as well go take a look. I'll escort you."

I'd never actually seen sorcerers up close before, so I was genuinely curious. I nodded at Susan's suggestion. She held out her hand to me, knight-like, and I took her escort down through the tapestry to the open black door below.

The basement's peculiar damp smell. Underneath it, lights shimmering in every color. A voice chanting something like an incantation. A formless force running on some track altogether different from holy power.

So that's what Nesla's sorcerers look like.

The problem was the strange smell. The smell of burning grass. I pulled out a handkerchief and covered my nose and mouth. This grassy odor was unmistakably brand-grass. A plant that acts, for anyone with holy power, essentially as a sleeping drug. In other words—it would knock you out cold. It wasn't a particularly strong scent, but if I kept breathing it in for long enough, I'd surely lose consciousness myself.

Not as much as I, a Stern, would—but Lesche too carried holy power in his body, being the head of one of the seventeen families of the Gleick Empire. I crossed my arms and stepped closer to the sorcerers.

"You can't be burning brand-grass with His Highness in the mansion."

The sorcerer holding what looked like a ritual text, standing apart from the rest, glanced my way. He was a thin man, about my own height, with strange symbols painted across his face and his hair shorn into some unusual shape.

"Gensha, we understand His Highness has temporarily left the mansion. There's no problem here. If anything, this is a procedure essential to driving out this ominous darkness."

The arrogant tone of his voice grated on my ears rather badly. These bastards would already be dead, if the real Seria had been the one standing here... When I didn't answer, he apparently mistook my silence for fear, because his voice grew a notch more arrogant still.

"And just who might you be, Gensha?"

"Hm."

"Gensha, if you'd answer—"

"Shut your mouth. Who do you think you are, insolently demanding an answer from me?"

I put on the expression the old Seria would have worn without a second thought. The sorcerer flinched instantly and shut his mouth. I let my gaze drift away from him, over to the unusual case sitting in the seat of highest honor in this basement. That case, striking for its gold trim, gleamed alone in the otherwise dim, gloomy room.

Is that the Case of the Azure Sea Linon mentioned this morning?

Inside sat a single lock of reddish-brown hair. No matter how I looked at it, that seemed to be the source of the demonic energy. Which was presumably why the sorcerers over here kept burning brand-grass and reciting their strange incantation.

I reached my hand toward the Case of the Azure Sea, and the sorcerers, looking as though they might faint outright, tried to strike my hand with a rod—only for Susan to catch it clean out of the air.

"Have you lost your mind? Raising a stick against—"

The menace in her growl was not something to be taken lightly. Susan's edge was fierce, but having been tempered by Abigail's edge, it barely fazed me at all. If anything, the sorcerers, apparently having no such immunity, backed down instantly. Meanwhile, having attempted the purification, I withdrew my hand.

Still doesn't work, huh.

But it was certainly the root of the demonic energy—no question about that. The closer I brought my hand, the thicker the gloom grew. The sorcerer, gritting his teeth, gave a warning.

"Gensha, if you continue to disrupt the ritual any further..."

"I'm leaving."

Even in the middle of it, it was almost funny. Seria was a Stern too, so she knew a fair bit about rituals. It's not as if they were drawing a magic circle—a moment's interruption to speak wasn't going to unravel a purification ritual midway through.

Just the kind of act that's good for swindling people who don't know any better…

I left the basement behind with Susan, without a trace of lingering regret.

"My lady, were you frightened?"

"No, I'm fine. Thanks for coming with me."

Susan's eyes widened, just slightly, before settling into a smile. Perhaps it was because I sensed, coming off her, not the sharp edge of malice but a loyalty aimed at protecting someone. It was still just as sharp a smile as before, but it kept reminding me of Abigail all the same.

That evening, my table had a new placemat laid out on it, a single flower embroidered onto it. The tea cozy beside it was just as charming, knit stitch by stitch out of yarn. When I heard Susan had made it, I smiled. Sewing this well with hands every bit as calloused as Abigail's—quite something.

And I had to admit it.

I'd gotten tangled up in Laurel Manor. However I turned it over in my head, that was the plain truth. It seemed like I'd gotten tangled up more in the people inside it than in the green mansion itself… but even so, surely no one could dislike a place that offered this much genuine peace of mind.

No one's ever been this kind to Seria before—not once, not ever.

I swallowed a sigh, watching Masha, who'd fluffed up the blanket by warming it near the fire. Tonight I'd sleep alone in the Grand Duchess's bedroom and sort through all these tangled thoughts one by one—

Or so I'd meant to.

Why was I in Lesche's bedroom again?

Masha wore an apologetic expression.

"I'm sorry, my lady. It seems the shadow's spread as far as the Grand Duchess's bedroom now. Not much of it, but I couldn't very well have you sleeping somewhere with an entire wall gone black."

"..........."

I looked at Lesche. Unlike usual, he had a faintly tired look about him. Even for him, having spent the whole day walking the snow-covered boundary line alone, with no other knights, exhaustion made sense. He might well have hunted down some demonic beast alone on top of it, for all I knew.

I quietly held out the box of silver laurel branches that had been tucked away in the cart. There was no visible sign he'd been struck by demonic energy, but just in case.

"What's this for?"

"Have them on hand."

"There's a Stern right here beside me. Hardly necessary."

"I can't very well hold Your Highness in my arms and purify you the way I do with Linon."

"That's a bit strange, isn't it. Come to think of it, I'm your husband—shouldn't it be me you're holding in your arms, and not Linon?"

"Are you asking me to hold you? Hm... If it's not the bedroom, but the first-floor hall, I suppose that's fine. Shall we go out?"

"You're fine with it as long as it's the hall?"

Lesche burst into an amused laugh.

"You're sometimes naive, my lady."

"...........?"

Even as he said it, Lesche tossed the silver laurel branch up and caught it in his hand like a dagger, light as anything. I watched Lesche's back as he sat checking the fireplace. Male lead through and through—his shoulders and back were broad, his waist cut in sharply. His face was already handsome enough, honestly, but women would probably keep dropping for him one after another on his build alone.

Come to think of it, once winter ended, shouldn't we make a trip up to the capital? Lesche rarely showed his face in the capital's social circles, but the nobility of the Gleick Empire were required, once a year without fail, to request an audience with the Emperor at the palace.

Of course, not every noble actually got to see the Emperor's face. But whether they were granted the audience or not, requesting it was still an obligation for any noble. And Lesche, being the Grand Duke of House Berke, would surely have his request accepted every single time he made one.

Since I'm married to him now too, I suppose I ought to make an appearance in society.

"Your Highness, I went down to the basement today."

"And the sorcerers?"

"They got a bit cheeky, but Susan handled it for me."

I heard him let out a short laugh. I let my feet dangle idly. The slippers Masha herself had put on me that first day here swayed with the motion.

And that wasn't all.

On the nightstand beside the bed sat a cup of milk Masha had brought, still faintly steaming, and the vase that had been empty now held a fresh flower.

This flower, of course, was another gift from Susan. Not a real flower, obviously—things die too quickly here. A flower knit out of yarn instead, the kind of handcraft that clearly took an enormous amount of care. Even so, it held its own against any real flower. It really did.

"Listen, Susan. Tonight—"

I toyed idly with the soft yarn flower, thinking back on what I'd quietly asked Susan earlier.

No one else—Masha included—ever appears again in the original. Death seems certain only for Masha, from what I could tell. Were the others choosing to stay behind and die alongside her, rather than leave her alone in this mansion? It was a complicated thing to feel.