RAMHM Chapter 153

The Castagna Family's End (1)

"Where did you get this counterfeit garbage?!"

Doris flung the crumpled newspaper onto the mold-spotted bread plate. The chipped dish couldn't survive even that much force—it shattered with a dull thunk.

"Is anyone out there? You! You there! I told you to bring me the Second Prince Rhodness!"

"Please don't make a scene."

"How dare you tell me to shut my mouth?"

Today was Doris's trial.

It had been quite a while since Doris had received word, smuggled in by her mother the Duchess of Castagna, that the west was doing everything in its power to save her.

What this prison cell did to her image was of no concern to Doris—not when she'd be out of it soon enough.

"Bring me real news instead of this counterfeit filth! Let me see Rhodness! People are being deceived right now! The dead can't possibly come back to life! Bring me Bliea Acacia! However that idiot dreamed up this scheme, my eyes won't be fooled!"

Her body, barely fed, had nothing left but spite.

The two guards stationed at the cell door, having plugged their ears against Doris's daily tirade, finally couldn't take it anymore and fled their posts.

Doris glared at the guard's retreating back as he shook his head and disappeared, then screamed after him.

"Bring Rhodness here! Bring Rhodness here!! Bring Bliea Acacia! And my ladies-in-waiting!"

Days of shrieking had brought blood to the edge of her throat.

A chill ran through her body, but all things considered, this was decent treatment. She wasn't yet officially convicted, so even though her meals came on chipped plates and weren't fresh, she'd still been kept in a reasonably clean room.

"Nora Giusetta... that ungrateful bitch... just wait until I get out. I'll deal with her and Bliea Acacia together."

"Whoever said you would?"

"—!"

Doris, who had been sitting on the edge of her bed chewing over her humiliation, snapped her head up. Two women in lavish dress stood outside the iron bars.

"Nora Giusetta!!"

It was Nora and Irene.

"How dare you bite the hand that fed you, and show your face here!"

"Who's, your hand?"

Nora snorted.

It was the thief scolding the homeowner.

Unable to control her racing heart, Doris jumped to her feet and approached the bars. Behind Nora, unusually elaborate today, Irene stood with her hand pressed to her mouth, on the verge of tears.

"I have no master, you wretch. I resent every minute I spent letting you push me around. Today's trial—you can look forward to it."

At the savagery in her voice, Doris's eyes bulged as she glared at Nora.

With the same gaze that had once ruled the social circles, Nora met her stare without flinching.

This was what she'd always been. Doris, struggling against the pressure threatening to overtake her, widened her own eyes further. Nora only scoffed at the sight.

"The west has already abandoned you. No matter how many times you try to dangle Raphaélla Castagna in front of Prince Epero, it won't take this time. Her Majesty the Empress has learned of the atrocities your father committed, and she is furious."

Doris's brow twisted violently.

"How dare you—"

"The assassinations your husband instigated and your father carried out. It's all been exposed already, and tomorrow the newspapers will have nothing else to talk about. I'll tell everyone, myself, what you did to ruin my husband. You can look forward to that, too."

Doris, brimming with fury, faltered for a moment.

"Nora... how could you possibly know that—"

"Forgotten, have you? I was your lady-in-waiting. Do you really think I'm too dim to notice that much? I remember perfectly well how disgustingly you smiled every time Her Majesty collapsed from nervous exhaustion. I remember that fake-merciful expression you wore handing out cheap medicine while pretending to worry about my husband."

Faced with this continuing insolence, Doris finally lost control and screamed.

"Castagna will not abandon me! Don't run your mouth, you dog who bit her own master! Just wait until this trial is over! I will cut your throat first, I swear it!"

"Doris Castagna."

Nora Giusetta brought her face close to the iron bars and bit the words out.

"My name isn't Nora. It's Noura. You stupid woman."

"—!"

"Can't even get her own dog's name right, and she plays the master..."

The contempt in her eyes drew away.

Doris screamed loudly enough to make the prison ring, then ground her teeth and turned her glare to Irene, who remained.

"Irene! Irene! How is Count Syscamythn doing? Surely his house and I, together—"

"I'm truly disappointed, Your Highness."

Irene finally let fall an even heavier round of tears than before.

"I thought you were a genuinely kind person, Your Highness. I begged my father over and over to save you. I believed completely in the warmth you showed me!"

"Irene!"

"And what is this? What about what you showed everyone at the saint's investiture? Your Highness betrayed me—I was the one who followed you, who fought my own father to protect you to the very end! You sent poison to Lady Bliea... and now she's truly become the saint!"

"Irene, just listen to me!"

"No. I won't help Your Highness anymore. I don't want to be your 'dog' either. And who knows?"

Irene pressed her wet cheeks dry with her hand, glaring resentfully at Doris.

"Maybe Your Highness would order someone to kill my father too, or send that same poison to me."

"Irene! Irene!"

The wounded young lady flung her tears wide and turned away. It couldn't be helped that her secret had been exposed to Nora Giusetta, but Count Syscamythn—Doris's strongest remaining support—turning his back was a serious problem.

Doris gripped the iron bars and shook them violently.

"Let me out! Let me out!! Irene! Irene!!"

Irene, who had been so devoted to her, left the space without ever looking back. Doris stood frozen, momentarily speechless beneath the creeping dread.

That was when it happened.

A woman's shadow fell across the corridor where the others' shadows had vanished.

It's Irene!

If she just coaxed soft-hearted Irene properly—

But the hope blooming on Doris's face hardened almost immediately.

"Heard you were looking for me? Came out to greet me, did you? Finally figured out your place?"

Bliea, whose figure alone still resembled a noblewoman's model, swaggered closer.

A loose, slouching swagger.

The way she chewed and spat out curses as easily as breathing made her look no different from a common street tough.

Doris, struck speechless by the sudden wave of wrongness, stared at Bliea. Her lips, ready to scream, only flapped pathetically.

"Look at that face. You haven't eaten anything? You look fucking lively. Insane."

She was supposed to curse the woman the instant she saw her—but no words came.

"Eyes down, you scrap of a woman, you runt's turd."

It was the terrifying killing intent pouring off this absurdly rude woman—every trace of her old vacant expression gone—that did it.

The step Doris had unconsciously begun retreating, stopped. No—it was stopped for her.

A pale hand, sliding between the bars without the slightest hesitation, seized Doris's collar and wrenched it toward her.

With a strangled grunt, her thin body slammed hard into the cold iron bars.

"You're the bitch who hurt my little sister, aren't you?"

Meeting those mischievously curving pale-green eyes head-on, Doris's legs began to shake.

"H—how dare you. How dare you... Bliea, how dare you—"

"I'm asking you, bitch. You're the one who tried to have my sister killed, aren't you?"

There wasn't even time to feel the suffocating tension.

"G-guard! Where did the guard go! Guar—"

No matter how she twisted, the grip she couldn't break free of surged mercilessly toward Doris's pale cheek.

The trial began very late in the afternoon.

It had been scheduled for noon, but Second Prince Rhodness was the reason for the delay.

Rhodness had ordered that the trial be held not in a courthouse, but in the central plaza where the saint's investiture ceremony had taken place.

The Emperor had agreed, and the Empress had supported it fully.

For a noblewoman—especially an imperial one—it amounted to a humiliation Doris would never live down.

The public trial grounds, decorated even more lavishly and grandly than the investiture ceremony, looked almost like a festival staged on purpose.

Doris, on hearing the words "public trial," had stomped her feet and refused to attend, but the guards had dragged her out regardless.

The cheek Bliea had struck still throbbed.

Unfortunately for the charge she wanted to press, Bliea had apparently already bribed the guards—no one would testify on Doris's behalf about the blow.

Her swollen cheek, after all the violent weeping she'd done just moments ago, only looked like a face puffed from crying.

Remembering the merciless grip that had pinched her flesh nearly off the bone, her legs trembled.

The Duke of Castagna's name and her own list of crimes, read aloud one after another in the trial grounds, felt as foreign as if they belonged to someone else.

Astonishingly, despite the fact that every accusation was true—things she and her father had actually done—Doris's chest burned with a sense of injustice.

"Rhodness...!"

No matter how desperately, how pitifully she looked up at Rhodness seated in the high seat, his expression did not change in the slightest.

Ah. That was who he'd always been.

A seductive devil who hid a blade behind his charming smile, who hid his true intent inside gestures performed to look gentlemanly.

She couldn't even manage a hollow laugh.

"That concludes the matter. All witness testimonies align and the evidence has been conclusively established. This court hereby renders the following sentence."

Rhodness's red gaze finally returned to her. Doris let her tears fall, gazing up at him with desperate hope.

If he didn't love her, then she wanted at least to use her position—as the wife of the elder brother he'd once loved so deeply—to wring out some pity.

"This court unanimously sentences Duke Castagna, who assassinated six imperial princes, to death. Furthermore, Doris Castagna—who stands suspected of assassinating Crown Prince Bardenaldo, who assassinated Her Grace the Grand Duchess of Trovika, and who attempted to murder her own lady-in-waiting Bliea Acacia—is likewise sentenced to death. Following this, the Castagna ducal house shall, as compensation to the imperial family—"

Following the magistrate's outrageous sentencing, Rhodness, seated in the high seat in the Emperor's stead, spoke coldly.

"—forfeit the entirety of its assets and exactly half of all Castagna ducal territory, which shall revert to the crown. The ducal title held by House Castagna is also hereby revoked."

The western nobles watching the trial fainted in succession. Only then did Rhodness turn toward Doris with a smile that would have been better left unworn.

It was a smile that held not one fragment of human affection—a hollow shell of an expression.

"Your Highness! Your Highness!!"

The Duke of Castagna, who had only just regained consciousness with Rotsy's help, let a rasping shriek tear from his throat.

Rhodness gave a light jerk of his chin instead of answering.

The magistrates withdrew in an instant, and the guillotine took their place. A crowd no smaller than the one at the saint's investiture surged toward the platform like storm clouds, eager to witness the devil's final moment.

The Duke of Castagna, barely awake from the poison his own daughter had sent, didn't even manage a proper scream before he was strapped to the guillotine.

"This can't happen! This can't happen!! It was all Doris's doing! Your Highness! Your Highness, I have done nothing wrong!!"

The more desperate his howling grew, the louder the crowd's cheering rose.

Empress Grace, seated beside Rhodness, quietly took in the moment with her eyes.

When the western king's head finally rolled across the floor, Epero gripped his mother's hand tightly.

Grace wept against her son's chest.