A strange atmosphere hung in Prince Elliott’s office. When he’d finally emerged from secluding himself in his room, he’d done so with the vicious aura of a chihuahua backed into a corner. He’d immediately ordered all his followers to gather in his office, and they’d quickly complied. This was an Elliott none of them had ever seen before.
“Gentlemen, tomorrow is the day my parents return from their royal inspection,” Elliott informed them. “They stayed in the town of Tyrell last night, and we’ve received word suggesting they will arrive tomorrow morning.”
“Ohh, at long last...”
“This inspection took a lot longer than most...”
“I hear His Majesty fell ill during the trip.”
Holding up a hand to silence their excited whispers, Elliott added, “The initial plan was to make Rachel confess her crimes, drag her before my father, and let him formally recognize the end of my engagement to her and the start of a new one with Margaret. However...!”
Elliott thrust his fists into the air, then slammed them down on the desk.
“That unspeakable witch shows no fear of justice, instead doing as she pleases down in the dungeon! I was never counting on her feeling genuinely contrite, but she’s having more fun now than she did on the outside! That’s crazy, isn’t it?!”
His followers looked at one another. It was just as Elliott said, and they were as painfully aware of it as he was, so what was the point of rounding them all up to tell them what they already knew? Confused, they all cocked their heads to the side.
“That’s not all,” Elliott continued. “Because the royal inspections dragged on, Rachel’s people have been able to act behind the scenes. Every one of the incidents she’s been involved in have worked out in her favor. Now we’re at the point where people in the palace openly voice their support for her within earshot of us!”
To be more accurate, they were saying things like, “The prince is unreliable,” and, “It was a mistake to punish Rachel.” They weren’t directly supporting Rachel. In fact, if Elliott had carried this off without a hitch, none of that would’ve been said, but Elliott and his people couldn’t tell the difference...because poor little Ellie was a nitwit.
“If my father comes back with things as they are, he might very well write everything off as a misunderstanding on our part. Don’t make me laugh! If I let that happen, what were these three months of struggle and hardship for?!”
His position was considerably worse than he’d just said, but that was how Elliott saw it.
“So, here’s the plan.”
Elliott finally moved on to his main point. His followers waited with bated breath.
“I’ve held back long enough. We assassinate Rachel tonight!”
His followers wanted to say, “But you’ve never held back.” However, no one had the guts to say anything in this situation.
All of Elliott’s followers tensed. This was different from his usual outbursts. The cornered look in his eyes, touched by madness, told them that Elliott was deadly serious. He had the reckless bloodlust of a long-haired chihuahua ready to try and tear out the throat of a mastiff.
Elliott pointed at the son of a count. “You, prepare weapons. Rachel has a crossbow. We’ll need at least three shields, three crossbows, and, if possible, three long spears to finish the job. Bring three men, and get them ready at once!”
“Yes, sir!” the count’s son replied.
The prince looked at the second son of a viscount who was seated across from him. “You get two guys to ensure no one enters the dungeon. My father will return tomorrow, and Rachel may have her own people coming to see her, not just the ordinary guests.”
“Yes, sir!”
“We’ll act after the prison guard leaves in order to prevent anyone from discovering her before morning.”
“He barely works nights, despite being a prison guard,” noted a hanger-on.
“That’s not important now. Anyway, let’s go!”
The boys moved into action, rushing out of the office to carry out Elliott’s orders.
A little while after, the maid who’d been preparing tea put the cups away and left the room. The moment she entered the halls the servants used, she abandoned the tea cart and took off running.
Even as the count’s son hurried around with his comrades, he couldn’t help but complain.
“Firm action is fine and all, but His Highness could have said something about it sooner.”
It was evening now, and they were preparing to strike. The prison guard would be going home any time now. If the lights in the dungeon were on in the middle of the night, it would likely attract the suspicion of passing knights on patrol, so if they were going to storm the prison, it had to be soon.
“It didn’t have to be yesterday, but if he could have told us before noon, at least, I’d have brought weapons from home.”
They’d yet to consider whether the guards at the gate would let them through carrying spears and crossbows. They were Elliott’s idiots, after all.
The count’s son had no clue where to acquire them, no place he could go, and no idea what to do, so he led his comrades in circles around the palace.
“Can we steal them from the knights’ armory? It’s guarded, though...” he wondered aloud.
As the count’s complacent son struggled with the greatest worry of his pampered life, one of the boys who’d come with him, the third son of a baron, tapped him on the shoulder.
“There! Look at that!”
“Hm?”
Up ahead, next to some sort of warehouse, were three shields, three spears, and three crossbows leaning against the wall. There were even full quivers of crossbow bolts with them. A piece of paper had been posted on the wall, saying, “Currently being aired out, do not touch! - The Royal Guard.”
The boys slapped one another on the shoulders with evident glee.
“It’s a sign from Heaven!”
“This is just what we need! If we bring these to His Highness, he won’t get mad at us!”
The four of them checked that the coast was clear before hurriedly making off with the weapons.
Why were they the exact number they needed? Why would the knights be airing out just these ones? Why were there no guards when they’d been left in plain view?
The boys never suspected a thing because they were Elliott’s idiots.
The warning to the prison had arrived after the viscount’s first son, as he had headed there directly after leaving the meeting in Elliott’s office.
The gardener, who’d heard the information from the maid in the prince’s office, stopped where he could see the prison from a distance and observed how Elliott’s men were watching the place. He circled around the building once to confirm, then tilted his head to the side.
“They’re only watching the door?”
Three pampered noblemen’s sons were watching the dungeon, just as he’d been told there would be. But the three of them were just standing there, looking in the direction of the door. They hadn’t even noticed the knight, who’d been posted there with the same task, staring at them in confusion from the bushes next to them. He suspected it could be a trap, but look as he might, there wasn’t one. The confused gardener was not familiar with the quality of Elliott’s idiots.
Whatever was going on, they weren’t going to get in his way, so the gardener circled around to the barred window in the back of the building. The knight on watch there was on the same side, so the gardener briefly explained his business and had the knight keep an eye out for trouble.
When the gardener crouched down next to the window and called out to Rachel, she answered him immediately.
“Is something the matter? No one has had to contact me directly with an urgent message before now.”
“Yes, ma’am! The truth is...”
Once Rachel heard what was happening, it took little time for her to come to a conclusion.
“Then we’re the ones providing their weapons, correct?”
“Yes. Our agents inside the knights have prepared some that will be of absolutely no use to them, just in case.”
“Let His Highness and his men attack, then. We have a mountain of circumstantial evidence against him. Now let’s let him do something so big that it will be impossible for him to excuse his way out of it.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Rachel had the gardener change places with the knight, then gave the knight orders to take back to the other knights.
“There’s no need to ensure that our people are the ones on night duty,” Rachel added. “However, see to it that this man is the officer on duty.”
“Do you want us to withdraw our watchers from around the prison? It seems His Highness has forgotten we’re monitoring you.”
“Things are fine as is. Once the incident happens, it might pose a problem if people asked why there was no one watching me tonight. In fact, I think we should let them take care of running to the knight station with word that His Highness forced his way in here.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
While Elliott’s idiots were getting excited about their new weapons, Rachel’s people were silently making preparations of their own.
Once the sky was shrouded in darkness...
“Go!”
Elliott gave the order, and his cronies stormed into the dungeon all at once. Their footsteps echoed heavily as they entered the front room—the shield-bearers first, followed by the crossbowmen—their weapons aimed toward the cell. Elliott was the last to enter, confidently addressing the prison’s resident. He looked calm, but his eyes were tinged with madness.
“Rachel, knowing you, you’ve no doubt heard that mother and father will be returning tomorrow. I expect your plan is to claim innocence and have my mother free you because she likes you so much, but...sadly, that won’t be happening. You’ll never see the dawn.”
He was saying it in a roundabout way, but Rachel knew what he meant.
As Elliott waited eagerly to hear her response, she let out an exasperated sigh. “I’d thought you’d have thought this through a little more...”
“Huh? What? Did you think I’d never resort to force? You underestimated me. I’m a man of action,” Elliott asserted.
“Well, a word of warning to the ‘man of action,’ then. You shouldn’t wait for your victim to take cover, you know?”
“What?!”
Hurrying to the front of the group, he saw Rachel behind a pile of boxes with her own crossbow leveled at them. In other words, her defenses were much better than those of his men, who only had shields to protect themselves.
“Why did you wait for her to get behind cover?!” Elliott bellowed.
“Well, we couldn’t just up and shoot her...”
“You could have managed a, ‘Don’t move!’”
“Oh, yeah, you’re right.”
As Elliott raged at his incompetent cronies, Rachel gave him a warning.
“This is happening because you don’t work out the fine details of your plans. If you don’t do something about your sloppiness, you’ll have a lot of trouble later, you know? But you’ve been lying to yourself about it for so long that you don’t even notice your pants are on fire, do you?”