RAMHM Chapter 143

The Next Sun Shines Bright on Ronteaux

"I don't accept this!"

In a space where silence and murmuring existed together, Doris threw everything she had into that scream.

The gazes of the people below the dais had shifted—goodwill gone, hostility flooding in to replace it. It was unbearable.

"Grand Prelate, Your Eminence! Can you truly stand before heaven without a single shred of shame? The prediction about my father's condition! The prophecy that monsters would appear in the north! Every last one of them came not from Your Eminence—but from the mouth of this Doris Castagna!"

Now the one who had gone pale—not the Emperor, not the nobles, but the Grand Prelate.

'How dare you betray me.'

Doris met the Grand Prelate's eyes directly and let a crooked smile pull at her lips, brazenly, uncaring of who watched.

The inside of her lower lip had been bitten raw, and thin blood was already welling, but she couldn't stop her mouth from pulling wide and upward.

'Not dying alone. Not like this. There's still a chance!'

"What? What's the truth here?"

"If Crown Princess Doris is the one who made the prophecy, then the saint isn't the Grand Duchess—it would be Her Highness the Crown Princess who——"

"Are you saying the oracle we just witnessed with our own eyes was a lie?"

"But a dead woman came back to life. Only the ancient Saint Marini ever raised the dead——"

The people grew more confused still, watching the Grand Prelate's face crumble into bewilderment.

'In the end, I'm the one who laughs last.'

Doris's body trembled of its own accord at a sight she couldn't believe even looking straight at it, but she didn't hide the desire boiling beneath a heart gone cold.

'I don't know what trick she used, but in the end I'll——'

And then.

"Stop lying now, Your Highness."

A voice that should not have been heard in this place cut through the noise.

It wasn't an especially loud voice. The words themselves were ordinary. But the sincere contempt inside that voice turned everything around it back to silence.

Doris's burning gaze followed the voice down from the dais.

"I no longer wish to be shamed before the gods and His Imperial Majesty. I hereby accuse Doris Castagna of deceiving the people with falsehoods!"

"Nora Giusetta!!"

Nora.

Nora Giusetta.

The woman who had served at Doris's side until she mounted the dais.

Nora Giusetta, who had been watching Doris with eyes gone black as charcoal—from some point no one could say when.

Her most foolish, most loyal lady-in-waiting began to weep, thick tears dropping one after another, her voice cracking open into a scream.

"Nora, what in the world are you——"

"Her Highness the Crown Princess! She deceived the Grand Prelate and delivered false prophecies! She instructed me to deliver poison disguised as incense to the collapsed Duke Castagna!"

"That's slander!"

"She ordered me to kill the loyal lady-in-waiting Bliea Acacia by the same method!"

The wrenching scream shook the dais.

There wasn't a single noble who didn't know how many years Nora Giusetta had served the Crown Princess. Even commoners with an interest in the imperial family knew it well enough.

Doris ground low curses through her teeth, her eyes streaked red, and forced her chin up in desperation.

"Nora! Stop speaking lies! I don't know whose orders you're following, but to say such things with no evidence whatsoever——"

"The death of the Grand Duchess, who has now been restored to life—that, too, was done at Her Highness's orders!"

"No!"

Having tried to perform helplessness for the crowd, Doris's eyes rolled back and she screamed.

"No!! Say something that makes sense!! Nora! Do you think you'll walk away unharmed after defaming the mistress you served? What kind of place do you think this is—spouting slander with not a single witness, not a single piece of evidence!!"

"The Viscountess Giusetta's words are the truth!"

An elderly but powerful voice split through the crowd once more.

Doris's furious gaze moved from Nora to a woman not far away.

"I am Sophie, Head Maid of the Trovika Grand Ducal Estate. The Crown Princess once ordered me to burn incense for the Grand Duchess, telling me it was good for her health! Had I known that incense was poison, I would never have done it!"

Head Maid Sophie—whom everyone had assumed disappeared after the failed assassination of Bliea Acacia—was now climbing the dais alongside Nora Giusetta.

"You will recall that there was an incident in which Countess Bliea Acacia was abducted after a carriage accident? That, too, was something Her Highness ordered me to carry out. I take this occasion to beg forgiveness for my crimes, and to formally accuse Doris Castagna of attempting to pass herself off as a saint!"

Doris Castagna.

No—Doris Ronteaux.

One of the most highborn names in all of Ronteaux.

A woman whom no one had doubted would become a compassionate Empress as the wife of the 'saintly' Bardenaldo Ronteaux—a woman everyone had fervently believed might herself be the oracle's foretold saint.

The people could find no answer between the image they had held of Doris Ronteaux and this cascade of revelations.

Naturally.

The gazes of people who wanted answers moved toward the high seat.

The Emperor, who looked on the verge of collapse, his face drained white. The frail Empress. The Second Prince, gone rigid. One after another, the gazes wound their way there—until at last they came to rest on the woman standing at the center of the dais, eyes bright, the Grand Duchess restored from death.

There was no confusion left in the resurrected Grand Duchess's face. It was gone entirely.

"The god told me this in Abadhelia."

A voice like a slow exhale slipped out between lazily lifted eyes and curved lips.

"That if there were one who would claim to be a saint—while I, who died unjustly, rose again——"

Doris's gaze, her face on the verge of bursting, landed on the cheek of the restored Grand Duchess.

Unlike Doris's eyes, which had lost all reason, the Grand Duchess's face was completely composed—and for just one instant, a wicked smile passed across it.

"Deserves to die like a demon."

"You insane—!"

The unfiltered profanity ripped out and everyone drew a sharp breath.

Among the noblewomen who had known only the Crown Princess's gentle, gracious manner, there were some who clapped both hands over their mouths to swallow their screams.

"She is a demon—that woman is exactly what she said!"

Nora Giusetta felt the atmosphere flip in an instant and cried out, her voice surging with it.

"That woman—that woman is no saint! That woman is a demon—exactly what she said!"

Nora squared her gaze directly against Doris's, past the edge of Doris's fury, and laughed through her tears.

"Doris Castagna killed Grand Duchess Adrienne. Doris Castagna clearly killed Crown Prince Bardenaldo as well! I am a witness!"

Unlike the western contingent, which had fallen into a collective groan at the cascade of revelations—

the eastern cluster was suffused with a strange, heightened energy.

Duke Pirreta, who had been watching Doris's scene and the western nobles' reactions, felt his eyes begin to glisten with a wet, greedy shine.

"Father. Father, did you see?"

Yes. He'd seen.

"Our Rienne is alive!"

Gregory's voice, thick with overwhelmed joy, nearly carried him bodily toward the dais.

The Duke, meanwhile—who had been locked eyes with Bliea for some time now—sat in a silence so charged his hands had begun to shake.

From the instant Bliea, dressed in a priestess's robes, had lifted her eyes to his while standing at the Grand Prelate's side, a prickling thrill had been running up his spine, sharp enough to sting.

'A different child from the weak Adrienne.'

Whether Adrienne's resurrection was truth or trick, he'd seen more than enough to know it—that Bliea had already succeeded in seducing the Second Prince, and done it well.

Because Rhodness's eyes hadn't left her once. He was watching it happen right now.

"Ro-, the new sun of Ronteaux……"

The Grand Prelate was muttering the oracle like a man who'd lost his mind.

Doris behind him was making a scene for the western crowd.

And Bliea—looking directly at the Duke himself, precisely—asked outright.

"What are you waiting for?"

"!"

"Keep your promise."

There was no way to hear it from here, but the shape of those familiar lips lodged in his eyes like a blade twisting in.

I saw the hunger rise in my father's eyes—the father who believes I am Bliea.

I saw it clearly.

Leaving the Grand Prelate behind, murmuring the oracle like a man gone mad.

Leaving Doris behind, making her spectacle for the western crowd.

And from the mouths of people still tangled in confusion, his name began to spill—Rhodness's.

"The Second Prince, His Highness the Second Prince……"

"His Highness the Second Prince will be Crown Prince."

"The legitimacy of Ronteaux rests with His Highness the Second Prince and his red eyes!"

"He is the one who will protect us with the most powerful mana……"

"We ask you to investigate all matters relating to the Crown Princess with the utmost severity!"

Those still anxious, left behind, while those seized by the miracle began to murmur—and then, like a wildfire catching, they burst into cheers.

"Oh, good God. Good God, my lady……your prophecy……"

And that thunderclap of cheering, that murmur that the Second Prince would become Crown Prince, swept away every last doubt from Grand Prelate Telrn's mind.

No—from the moment Bliea came back to life, his eyes, already captivated by the miracle, had been moving back and forth between me and Rhodness, bright with awe.

If he knew we'd borrowed the will of the gods to serve our greater purpose, he might have fainted on the spot.

"The East gives our full and fervent support to His Highness Second Prince Rhodness!"

Beginning with my father's passionate cry.

Like a melody placed atop the crowd's cheering.

The voices of the nobles below the dais erupted as if the whole world had gone mad.

"His Highness the Second Prince must rightfully become Crown Prince!"

"The only successor capable of managing this situation is His Highness the Second Prince——"

The western contingent, watching Doris begin to howl alongside them, had already gone white as chalk.

The outcome they had wanted—a saintly Doris, and Rhodness elevated on the halo of her standing—meant that throwing their support behind Rhodness unilaterally had a question mark written across every face.

I turned my head toward the gaze I could feel pressing into me, sharp as a needle, as the cheering and the sounds of fear filling the plaza grew louder.

Bliea was staring at me, eyes unreadable, distant.

And behind her—

Rhodness, who had already walked to the center of the dais, was staring back at me intently.

It was then.

"Breaking news! Breaking news!!"

Up onto the dais, Jimskehr—Count Raelon's son, Novian's former aide-de-camp—came running.

"Grand Duke Trovika, who escaped from custody and was being pursued, slipped and fell while fleeing and has died! The body has not been recovered, but certainly——"

The sobbing way he pushed out the words made the noise around us hit the ears like a blow.

Among the nobles gathered in support of Rhodness, Count Raelon's eyes shook violently.

'Novian kept his promise.'

My lips, which had been rigid waiting for Novian's news, finally drew a faint arc.

"Then now—Adrienne Swan Trovika, the Grand Duchess restored to life, in accordance with the wishes of the late Grand Duke and the wife inheritance law he himself created——"

The Grand Prelate and I, who had been pushed slightly from the center, began to walk.

One step. Another step.

Very slowly, toward the center.

"In accordance with the will of the late Grand Duke, through the wife inheritance law he himself enacted——"

At the same moment, I caught Bliea's eyes—she had been watching me with a look of so what will you do now—and smiled.

"You will become the Grand Duke Trovika."

"Good God!"

Someone's gasp followed.

At last.

In Bliea's restored eyes, a bright light began to gather.

"Grand Duke. Who is it that Your Grace supports?"

Bliea, who for a moment had been rubbing her arm while staring straight at me, stood frozen a long moment before her eyes curved up again, sly and pleased.

Just as my gaze was being stolen by that smooth smile, Bliea's eyes moved away from me—toward Rhodness, who was watching us both.

"I, Adrienne Swan Trovika, lord of the north and the sole Grand Duke of Ronteaux, will serve His Highness the Second Prince Rhodness, heir to the founding Emperor Kaldaeon, as the sun—as my liege."

A resolute voice wrapped around the entire plaza.

At the false prophecy finally fulfilled, Telrn burst into tears.

Rhodness's somewhat irritated face, which looked as if it could bear no more of this, turned toward me.

I didn't even bother faking an apologetic look.

"I made a promise."

In the thunder of cheering, in the downpour of flower petals, I only murmured quietly toward Rhodness.

"That I would kill Novian Trovika."

The eyes blazing so intensely at me went suddenly blank—

"That I would make you Emperor."

—and a crack ran through Rhodness's face, which had been set in taut agitation.