Rose graciously accepted the bottle and popped the cork the same way she had earlier. The smell confirmed it—Rose gave a firm nod.
“It’s the same.”
Rose’s answer nearly caused Yašm to faint on the spot. His face was bluer than the sky and whiter than the clouds.
“Wh-Whatever is the matter, Brother?” Lulu rushed to his side, worried sick.
“Why…why would you make such a thing…?”
“It was so mesmerizing and delightful when I was shown the original…I just had to try replicating it myself…”
“I want to imitate what I like.” “I want to make what I like.” Those are ordinary feelings everyone has at some point in their life.
“Who… Who dared to show you something like the witches’ secret potions?!”
“Who, you ask? You must keep this a secret between us, all right? It was Big Sister Billaura.”
“…Did you say…Laura?!”
The unexpected name brought Yašm to his knees this time. He fell back on his butt and hung his head.
“Big Sister Laura showed me, saying it’s her magical charm, because she knows how much I love witches. I was thrilled…and I wanted to show it off after I succeeded in making a good imitation… All my friends said they wanted one when they saw.”
It was easy to guess what happened from there. The relatives of those girls who had received Lulu’s homemade “Witch’s Love Potion” in secret likely confiscated the bottle, mistaking it for the real thing, and then used it to bend others to their desires.
Rose didn’t think it was inappropriate for the group of young girls to keep the adorable bottle filled with their friend’s attempt at imitating the witch she so admired. The same couldn’t be said for the adults.
“This is no good. No good. No good. This is no good, Harij.” Yašm clutched at his head as he crouched on the floor.
“Yeah, it’s bad.”
“It’s bad, isn’t it?! Really, really bad, yeah? We can never let word get out that the royal family was responsible for this…”
“Just don’t get any bright ideas about pinning the crime on Rose. I will never forgive you if you do.”
“Hariiij!” Yašm moaned pathetically. From that, it was easy to tell he had every intention of framing Rose. She glared at him through narrowed eyes.
“What is troubling you, Brother?” Lulu asked, staring at her sibling as if his behavior baffled her.
Upon hearing the absolute innocence in her voice, Yašm held his tongue. But his silence lasted only a fleeting moment. Resigned to the fallout to come, he looked straight into those grass-green eyes and gave her the cold, hard truth.
“Lulu…the potion you made caused six people to fall ill.”
“…Oh no! That can’t be true…,” Lulu gasped. A dark cloud fell over her face, which had beamed with pure delight after reuniting with the Witch.
“Fortunately, everyone has recovered. There haven’t been any noted aftereffects to date, either.”
“What a relief… But I never meant to hurt anyone…”
The old maid standing behind Lulu rubbed the princess’s back. Lulu’s voice grew hoarse as she was struck with the gravity of the situation.
“…Witch.” Yašm rose to his feet, his eyebrows furrowed together, and his lips flattened into a straight line. Then he stood before Rose, his expression pained. “I apologize for the rudeness I have shown you… But how could this happen? It’s just a fake made by a child imitating the real thing… So why?”
In response to Yašm’s grief, Rose looked at the potion bottle.
“It certainly is strange.”
She held up the bottle toward the shaft of light streaming in through the window. Nothing seemed amiss even under the sunlight.
Indeed…this “Witch’s Love Potion” was practically the real thing.
“This potion…was made using magic.”
While the potion contained within was incomplete and unrefined, it was a witch’s secret potion through and through. It wasn’t just colored water imitating the smell and color of the real deal.
Lulu, who was still crushed by the truth, slowly raised her head at Rose’s remark.
Rose walked right up to the girl, who was leaning on her maid for support. The witch grabbed Lulu’s cheeks and pulled them violently to the right and left.
The center of Lulu’s grass-green eyes sparkled.
“What are you—”
“Princess.” Rose looked directly into Lulu’s eyes and firmly declared, “You are a witch.”
Silence dominated the room for a brief moment.
Yašm broke the silence first.
“Witch! Have you lost your mind?!”
“Please don’t shout.”
“On what grounds do you base your claim that Lulu is a witch?!”
“I cannot view her as anything other than a witch after she successfully created a real love potion by imitating one of the witches’ secret potions.”
It was hard to believe, but Rose was convinced Princess Lulu was a witch.
What startled Rose the most when she smelled this potion, which she thought was a fake but turned out to be genuine, was that it had the same exact scent as the love potion she gave Billaura.
Only a handful of people would be capable of getting a glimpse at the witch’s secret potion Billaura secretly had on her. It wouldn’t be strange for there to be only one person in the whole world she would show it to.
“Are you certain Princess Lulu is the queen’s daughter?”
“You are stepping out of line with that question, Witch!”
“If you don’t want the insight of a witch, you should have said so from the start. I will politely refrain from speaking further on the topic.”
Rose was the only person present who understood witches. If he wanted to know the truth about Lulu, he needed to answer her questions.
“…Lulu and I share the same mother. And I often hear Lulu looks just like my aunt did at her age. We undeniably share the same blood.”
“Then it must have been an ancestor. I can’t say how long ago it happened, but it’s safe to say the blood of a witch mixed into the lineage of either Marjan’s king or queen somewhere along the way.” Rose turned from Yašm to Lulu. “Princess, did your books explain how to make this potion?”
“N-No. They mostly only covered the ingredients…”
“You managed to make a potion of this quality with just that knowledge?”