“Then don’t think of it as me helping you; think of it as me using you,” Westalia said.
“Why would you do that? You have no idea how I feel, so don’t act like you’re a nice person,” Elizabeth replied.
“I’m not you, so of course I don’t know how you feel. I just know how painful things can be,” Westalia said. She put her hand to her chest and kept her eyes pointed downward as she remembered the night of the party and Elizabeth begging for her help.
“My heart has been wounded so much that it broke a long time ago. I’m dragging my broken heart around with me, just following my father’s lead,” Elizabeth muttered to herself in a self-deprecating tone. Tears welled up in her eyes and dripped onto the plate of apple slices. “My father never respects my feelings. Whenever I don’t act the way he wants me to, he punishes me like this and curses me for being useless. I’m just a puppet...”
Elizabeth covered her face with her hands and sobbed. Paige gently rubbed her back.
“If you don’t like it, then you’ll have to work hard to change. Are you just going to keep being a meek, obedient servant of your father’s?” Westalia asked Elizabeth.
“I am not like you! No one’s as strong as you are. There’s no way I can change. What on earth could such a weak and pitiful creature like me do?” Elizabeth cried.
“You could do anything.” Even Westalia wasn’t all that strong. Still, there was a world that she hoped to see, so she kept running, pushing herself to keep going. It was scary to try and change. Still, if one didn’t have the courage to take the first step, they would never be able to see what lay ahead. Rather than giving up from the beginning and staying in one’s shell, Westalia thought it was better to break out and make an effort to move forward, even if that meant failures and setbacks, even if the results weren’t always as she hoped. She believed that those who never stopped moving toward their goals would surely be rewarded.
Westalia smiled graciously as she picked up her teacup. “I was locked up in a royal villa, I was poisoned to death because I wouldn’t give in to the absurdity of it all, and yet, despite it all, I have managed to become one of the final candidates for empress of a great country. You can absolutely take revenge on your horrible father. You can argue him into submission!”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened and glistened.
Westalia extended a hand to her. “I hate you. But I will never give up on you if you can find it in yourself to move forward.”
Elizabeth wiped the tears from her cheeks in one smooth moment, took Westalia’s proffered hand, and stood up. “I hate you too. You’re proud and impudent. I’m the one who will be empress and stand at Leonardo’s side. But...thank you.”
She slowly approached and buried her face in Westalia’s shoulder. Westalia wrapped her arms around the woman and gently patted her head.
“I want to change. I don’t want to stay weak. Please...help me,” Elizabeth said, in a voice so weak it sounded as if she would fade away at any moment.
“Yes, of course,” Westalia replied.
After Elizabeth had cried for a while and regained her composure, Westalia abruptly took out a glass vial from her pocket. She held it up in front of Elizabeth’s face, and the woman looked at it in confusion.
“Now then, let me use this to collect your urine,” Westalia said, a nonchalant look on her face.
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s of utmost importance, so please hurry.” Westalia forced the bottle into her hands as Elizabeth stood stunned. Westalia smiled affectionately at her as they stood in silence, staring at each other, for a few seconds.
Then Elizabeth, feeling unsafe, thrust the glass bottle back into Westalia’s chest. “Absolutely not! What in the world are you trying to do to a lady, you pervert?!”
Westalia frowned and grabbed Elizabeth. “Pervert? Fine then, just give it to me and stop complaining. I’d be happy to rip your clothes off if you want.”
“Gyeh?! Please don’t do that! Let go of me! Why should I give my urine to you? What are you going to use it for? You’re not going to drink—”
“I’m not going to drink it!!!” Just what sort of mental image did Elizabeth have of her? “I’m going to analyze it. I might be able to find out the cause of your health problems. Elizabeth, did your father tell you to keep quiet about the rash you get when you wear a dress dyed with Elizabeth Pink?”
“How did you know that? Yes. He said if it came out that I was allergic, I wouldn’t be able to remain the poster girl for it.”
Was that really all there was to it? Westalia sensed that Tiberio was stubbornly trying to hide Elizabeth’s rash for some reason other than simply that it wasn’t compatible with her skin. The day of the party, others who’d been wearing Elizabeth Pink had also fallen ill.
“I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think it’s because you’re allergic to it. I think it’s a symptom of poisoning. It’s not just something that happens to you but a reaction that could happen to a lot of people,” Westalia said.
Elizabeth looked stunned. Elizabeth Pink was a major business venture for the Rias Corporation, which was owned by the Reyn family. That was why Tiberio tried to hide its toxicity—for the sake of profit.
Elizabeth was being made to promote a dye containing poison without knowing anything about it. It feels as though there’s some irony here, Westalia thought.
After Westalia returned to her own quarters, she went into her laboratory. It was a place where Westalia could indulge her hobbies to their fullest extent. There were bookshelves, so large that they took up an entire wall, filled with books on poisons, and glass shelves neatly arranged with medical equipment. This created the perfect environment for researching medicines and manufacturing poison needles—Westalia’s hidden weapon of choice. When she was in the royal villa in Lhumzia, she had always been under the watchful eye of the former queen and couldn’t do anything that would raise suspicions, but here there was no one to criticize her for studying medicine.
Paige and the palace servants were skeptical of it all, but Westalia didn’t care. Often, she spent the whole night studying and showed up to breakfast still in her white lab coat.
A few hours after bringing Elizabeth’s urine into the laboratory, Westalia smiled wryly as she held up the test tube.
Just as I suspected.