MHHC Chapter 150

Intent

Ahem.

When Adelheid could not easily draw her gaze away from Father Padre, Donovan interjected with a discreet clearing of his throat.

Only then did she remember—belatedly, with some effort—how strangely she must appear to everyone else. She forced the corners of her mouth upward.

"...Thank you for your concern, Father Padre. Margaret is recovering smoothly from her injuries."

"I worried that Your Grace might have been deeply grieved by that incident. I'm glad to hear she is on the mend. Now then, shall we be on our way?"

"Before we do."

She opened her mouth too quickly and caught her tongue between her teeth. Tears threatened at the edges, but she swallowed against the pain and pressed on.

"Last time—at Nassau Castle. The conversation we had."

"At Nassau Castle? You say we had a conversation?"

Father Padre's eyes went wide with what appeared to be genuine surprise, and he tilted his head.

"Could you be confusing me with someone else? I had heard that Your Grace accompanied the army as a healer, but..."

"..."

"I have no memory of meeting Your Grace at that time. And I did not stay long at Nassau Castle to begin with."

No memory of it. A difficult explanation to believe—and yet something about it resisted easy dismissal. Something in the atmosphere she sensed from him, nothing she could have named aloud, made denouncing him as a liar feel premature.

Besides, she had no concrete evidence. Pressing the matter now would only put him on his guard, and she had nothing to show for it but her own suspicion.

Adelheid offered a smile before it was too late.

"I must have...been mistaken."

"These things happen. Now then, shall we move along? Your Grace as well—please accompany us to the front."

Even as she followed quietly behind Father Padre, Adelheid did not lower her guard.

Because it was only a matter of time. If he had been compelled by some necessity to reveal the "echo," he could not keep up this performance of ignorance indefinitely.

"This way."

Father Padre navigated the military camp with the ease of someone long accustomed to its labyrinthine arrangement, and finally slowed his steps before a massive tent.

The sentry standing guard recognized him and drew back the entrance.

Just as she moved to follow him inside, the sentry shifted to block her path.

More precisely—he extended his arm toward Donovan.

"An escort cannot accompany you. You must enter alone."

"What? But—"

"My instructions were for one person only."

The sentry's manner was immovable. Adelheid glanced uneasily toward the tent's interior—dim, strangely still.

Father Padre stood waiting inside, as though he had anticipated this exact turn, watching them both without expression.

Something felt distinctly wrong. She reached out and lightly caught the sleeve of Donovan's coat.

"...Wait here for me. If anything happens, I'll at least cry out."

"Yes. I'll stay right here."

Only after hearing that assurance did the nameless unease settle, if only fractionally.

As Donovan stepped back, the sentry's arm came down. Adelheid exhaled a taut breath and stepped through into the tent.

She noticed at once that the air inside was cooler than the air outside—a strange, sourceless chill, as though the space had been sealed against something other than weather.

"Please wait here just a moment."

Father Padre lit the candelabra, offered her a chair, and hurried away somewhere.

Rather than sit, Adelheid moved slowly through the space, taking in what surrounded her. Aside from that peculiar coldness, the scene was entirely unremarkable.

One large round table at the center. Chairs thrown into disarray as though a strategy session had only just concluded. A vast map spread wide, with game pieces scattered haphazardly across its surface.

She drifted toward the center of the tent and braced both hands against the edge of the table.

The strategy map rendered the northern terrain in spare, economical lines.

A straight route from Nassau Castle to the main force. The battlegrounds where fighting had already raged. A few locations scrawled over with tactical shorthand she couldn't fully read. And—the Watchtower.

'So this is it.'

She traced the characters with careful fingertips. The operational zone was contained within a radius of roughly 100 arc from the Watchtower at its center.

Which meant this was being treated as the most probable location where Valentin was being held.

'Not far from here.'

From the main force, no more than an hour's distance—less, perhaps.

Around the Watchtower, X marks had been scrawled densely in red ink, presumably indicating the monsters' strongholds as they'd been identified and mapped.

And beyond that...

Her gaze, trailing upward along the map, snagged without warning on a shadow at the far edge of the tent.

She startled and looked up. Across the round table, she found herself staring directly into Mikhail's eyes.

"..."

When had he entered? She had heard nothing—no footfall, no shift of air, no rustle of cloth against cloth.

It was Mikhail who broke the taut silence first, offering no greeting.

He raised one corner of his mouth into an unhurried, oblique smile and gestured for her to take a seat.

"Sit. You must be tired from the journey."

"I'm fine. More to the point, I assume there is a reason you sent for me urgently."

As though her wariness were a thing beneath his notice, Mikhail issued a short, dismissive laugh and asked, unhurried,

"A reason?"

"If it's regarding the search party, I have very little to offer. I volunteered as a healer, so I would respectfully suggest you speak with someone better suited to—"

"We're both tired. Let's dispense with the circling and get to the point."

Adelheid closed her mouth.

She could not begin to guess what his point would be, but she had no desire to speak carelessly.

"We can't send many people with the search party. The support troops weren't requested for the search to begin with—the main force needed reinforcement."

Today the Crown Prince could not conceal his exhaustion. He pressed his fingers briefly against the bridge of his nose, then let them fall.

"The monsters are growing fiercer by the day. They're probably resonating with his soul."

"Resonating..."

"You can travel with the central main force as far as the Watchtower's vicinity. What I can spare is five knights and one of you."

Adelheid blinked.

Five knights and herself alone. Far worse than she had prepared for.

She had long since anticipated that Mikhail would maneuver against her at some point—but this was nominally a search party organized for a missing Grand Duke. If the Emperor still held any genuine regard for Valentin, he would never have permitted something of this nature to be settled by the Crown Prince acting unilaterally.

She stood her ground.

"I cannot accept a deployment of that size. If His Majesty were to learn of this—"

Mikhail laughed, short and humorless, as though she had said something almost quaint.

"Are you trying to threaten me with a mere human?"

"...I apologize if it came across that way, but even so, I cannot find this acceptable—"

"Adding more people would only draw the monsters' attention for no purpose. And besides—the search itself is meaningless from the start."

Adelheid bit down hard on her trembling lip. It was plain.

Mikhail knew something. Was this, too, a trap? She understood perfectly well that wisdom lay in disregarding his words.

But right now, she was desperate enough to grasp at even the thinnest thread.

"...What did you do to him?"

"Nothing."

"You don't actually believe I'll accept that."

Mikhail laughed—brief, flat—as though her words had struck him as genuinely amusing.

"Whether you believe it or not, you don't have many options, do you?"

"How can you be so certain? If you didn't plan this situation, if you didn't orchestrate every part of it—then how could you possibly..."

"It was clearly written in the report. A sudden surge of monsters swept him and his knights away. I don't have the power to control monsters to that degree. All of this originated from him, from the very beginning."

"But if what you're saying is true, it would mean Valentin chose to isolate himself—that's impossible. He would never do that. It makes no sense. Why would Valentin suddenly, in that way..."

"Let go of himself?"

Mikhail asked, bluntly, with no attempt to soften the words. She faltered—then barely managed to nod.

"Who knows. Even I can't claim to grasp all of his complicated calculations. But one thing is certain: every part of this situation is exactly as he intended."

"Exactly as he intended."

At the tremor threading through Adelheid's voice, Mikhail's gaze—which had been drifting slowly across the surface of the map—rose slowly to meet her.

His green eyes gleamed with a cruel, unhurried pleasure.

"Don't you understand, Adele?"

As though in pity. As though in regret. Mikhail's voice scraped low along the shell of her ear, thick with a satisfaction that ran through it like buried iron.

"He intends to die."

"Did the conversation with His Imperial Highness go well... Your Grace?"

"Let's go. Donovan. Quickly."

The moment she left the command tent, Adelheid cut across the military camp at a swift, almost reckless pace.

At the sudden change in her bearing, Donovan looked bewildered—but kept faithful pace at her back.

"Has something gone wrong?"

"Nothing went wrong. Nothing—but..."

She was gnawing at her fingernails without realizing it.

The shock had been that great. Anxious thoughts kept churning through her, one tumbling over the last before it had finished forming.

'Calm down.'

She forced herself to work through the situation piece by piece.

A rescue party of five total. Travel with the army as far as the vicinity. No support whatsoever. And this situation had come about because Valentin had wished to die—

No. She refused to believe it. Not until she had heard every word directly from Valentin's own lips.

'The situation is more dangerous than you think.'

Ah. Adelheid swallowed a small, involuntary sound. His voice from some not-so-distant past rose with startling vividness through the wreckage of older memory, clear as a wound reopened.

'Unlike the past, when I could control the monsters to some degree, I am now losing everything, little by little...'