“I think it is you who should be silent,” Westalia said, looking at Delphine. “Can you look at this and still call it a lie?” Westalia then presented two death certificates. One was the forgery that had been created on the orders of the former queen that said the cause of death was illness. The other was the official death certificate, which stated the real cause of death—poisoning.
The royal palace was overseen entirely by Delphine, so whenever there was a death in the royal court, she always looked over the death certificate and put her seal on it. In this case too, the death certificates had been signed by Alzett, the court physician, and stamped by Delphine. The fact that she had stamped both the forgery and the real certificate proved that she was complicit in the falsification.
“Here are five more death certificates falsified by the former queen. Five other people appear to have suffered the same fate as Tonio’s wife,” Westalia said.
Delphine remained silent.
“I don’t understand,” Westalia said, “how you can look at Tonio, who is clearly grieving, and think nothing of it. Do you not have a human heart?”
“You are trying to pin the crime of buying poison from the Devorah Trading Company on me, but it would’ve been impossible for me to do so. As you said at the beginning, I was isolated in the royal villa and under your watchful gaze the whole time,” Westalia continued.
Next to appear as witnesses were several men who had once served as Westalia’s guard. They testified that they constantly monitored her activities and reported back to Delphine at every turn. They had readily agreed to take the stand for Westalia when offered a large reward.
“Your Majesty, can you still say that you are innocent?” Westalia asked.
“Yes! I’m innocent! I’m... I’m...” Delphine was furious, but in her shock she fainted on the spot. The attendants dragged her out of the room.
Westalia stepped back and turned to Lily. The woman’s slender shoulders shook as Westalia’s look told her that she was about to be next.
“I didn’t want to confront you like this, Lily,” Westalia said.
“Hey, Wes... Let’s take a moment to calm down, okay? There’s something scary about you today. I know! There must be some misunderstanding. We’ll talk and work it all out! Because we’re best friends!” Lily said.
“Best friends, hmm? Wasn’t I the only one who thought that?” Westalia asked.
“What?!”
Westalia let out a small breath and informed the judges that she would begin questioning the defendant. She narrowed her eyes at Lily.
“From the very beginning, you never thought of me as your friend.”
“That’s not true!” Lily cried.
Westalia motioned to Paige, who stood just behind her, to get a bucket of water ready and then to dump it over her head.
The water rushed over Westalia’s body, cleansing the red dye from her hair and returning it to its natural silver color.
“You told me, when we first started getting to know each other, that silver hair was a symbol of old age in this country. And you recommended bright red dye to me because it would look good on me,” Westalia said.
Lily remained silent.
The truth was, however, that silver hair wasn’t a despised symbol of old age. No matter how isolated and naive she was, Westalia knew that. On the other hand, red hair was the object of scorn. It was considered to be reminiscent of blood and was sometimes called “the devil’s color.”
“I dyed my hair red because Lily recommended it to me because it looked good on me. It was the first time someone had done something for me, and it made me happy,” Westalia explained. She had thought that Lily had recommended red hair to her out of pure goodwill, not knowing what red hair meant. But she had probably been doing it out of meanness, to humiliate Westalia. Now, Westalia knew better.
Her eyes met Paige’s as the woman offered her a towel. Paige had wondered why Westalia had dyed her hair red again, and she had an indescribable expression on her face when she learned the truth.
“I kept my red hair, a token of our friendship, until you betrayed me and sent me to my death. What more proof do you need that I believed in you?” Westalia asked as she dried her hair with the towel. “But you don’t usually push red hair on someone you consider your best friend, knowing that they’ll be discriminated against. Now I realize I was the only one who got carried away with our friendship.”
Lily clamped her mouth shut and clenched her fists.
“And Lily, you just said that you never wanted to be queen, but you lied about that too,” Westalia continued.
“I didn’t lie! That at least was true! Trust me, Wes!”
By adding “at least” to that sentence, Lily was admitting that she had deliberately recommended the red hair to Westalia.
Westalia produced a book as the next piece of evidence. It was a thick book that was clearly showing its age. When Lily saw it, she somehow became even paler.
“Th-That’s...”
“This is the diary Lily kept. It contains her desire to become queen and her deepest hatred of me. Shall I read some of it aloud to you here?” Westalia asked.
“I don’t know anything about that. You have no proof that it is my diary, do you?”
“I do.”
Westalia gave another order to Paige, who produced two pieces of paper and held them up for all to see. The first was a letter, written on paper stamped with the royal coat of arms, to the people at the Founding Day Festival. The other was a handwriting analysis of the letter and the diary.
“This is the letter Lily wrote to the people at a previous Founding Day Festival. It was posted in town, so some of you here may have seen it. When we submitted it to a handwriting analysis, the results showed that Lily’s handwriting in this letter and the handwriting in the diary match with almost one hundred percent certainty,” Westalia explained.
“This is a mistake! Everyone cover your ears! Don’t listen!” Lily said, a sad expression on her face as she tried to appeal to the audience. Westalia could tell that her heart was actually in it that time and that it wasn’t an act.
“It says here ‘I must get rid of that woman as soon as possible, because I am the one who deserves to be queen.’”
“No, no, no, no, no! I didn’t write that!”
“‘Wes is so stupid! I tricked her into thinking I was her best friend. I hate you. Oh my God, I hope you die soon,’” Westalia continued reading from the diary.
“No, stop! That’s not me! It’s not me!!!”
“‘Everyone loves me, but that’s just too bad for them. I don’t think of them as anything other than stepping stones. They’re all incompetent.’”
“I said that’s not mine!” Lily screeched. She grabbed the handwriting analysis from Paige and tore it to shreds before throwing the pieces on the ground and stomping on them. “That’s all untrue!”
The king and queen, who had adored Lily, were shocked and appalled. The audience was also taken aback by the naked truth of the princess, whose image of purity was betrayed by the words in the diary.
Westalia approached Lily and looked down at her face, whispering to her in words that practically slithered across the ground—just like Lily had on the day of Westalia’s execution.
“You’re not a good person, Lily. React like that, and everyone will know that you’re the owner of the diary. You need to work on your acting after all.”
Lily was silent.
A long time ago, when the pair were still good friends, Lily had told Westalia she kept a diary, which was why Westalia had asked Felix to secretly confiscate it. However, Westalia hadn’t expected just how many of Lily’s secret thoughts would be scribbled across the pages.
“You’ve been playing the perfect princess your whole life, so this diary was the only place you could tell me the truth, wasn’t it?” Westalia asked.
Lily remained silent. She glared at Westalia and clenched her fists. “Yeah, so?!” she burst out. “I had to lie! Otherwise no one would like me! I was desperate too. You don’t know that’s like, Wes! You didn’t know that I was about to be married off to the barren land of Rezal!”
“Rezal? When did that happen?” Westalia asked. Covered in snow for most of the year, the Kingdom of Rezal hadn’t much in the way of crops and its people had been broken down by the ravages of war. The king of Rezal was said to be a fat, lustful man.
Lily explained that according to the king of Lhumzia’s plan, she was to be married off to Rezal for the sake of developing friendly relations with the country. In order to prevent that from happening, she had devised her scheme to become queen of Lhumzia. She had wanted to become a well-mannered princess, loved by all, so that she could be naturally installed as queen after Westalia was eliminated.
“I always hated you, Wes. I would have loved to have been able to live in the quiet royal villa and not have to worry about what everyone around me thought of me. I would have given it all up if I could have, and just lived a carefree, easygoing life!” Lily cried.
It was Westalia’s turn to remain silent.