“I apologize for troubling you. To have Your Holiness personally handle the paperwork...”
“It was nearly time for supper, after all. We have our own schedule to keep, and I saw no need to accommodate outsiders’ timing.”
I had personally finalized the divorce proceedings. Yes, I was the pope, but it had caused me no hardship. Besides, I couldn’t wait to see Lady Robur with my own eyes. I’d never imagined she’d leap right into my hands like this.
What interested me was one half of the bloodlines that lady possessed. Although that family line was very much in evidence in her outward appearance, she possessed low magical power and couldn’t wield any significant magic. What a conveniently powerless girl.
“Have you found the lady?”
“No, I haven’t found her...” Nax, who’d immediately reported to me that the first prince had left the church, had left the divorce proceedings to me as I’d instructed and had been searching the church grounds alone.
A lady of noble birth had vanished without a trace. Yet Nax, who looked somewhat dazed, didn’t seem to question my inefficient order for him to search the church alone.
“The first prince seems to have left quietly. I’m sure the royal family feels no need to concern themselves with a talentless, incompetent lady of low magical power. Nax, you, too, should return to your quarters. Thank you for your efforts.”
I mixed the power of enchantment into my magic and released it all at once toward Nax, urging him to leave promptly.
“Yes...”
I watched his back as he quietly exited, then stopped releasing my magic. After a night’s sleep, he’d return to normal.
So. The son of that renowned couple, those famously fated lovers, was getting divorced. The thought of handling this procedure with my own hands had filled me with deep emotion.
For Soviesch Robur, the former princess’s former fiancé, it must have been a terrible disgrace.
Sharona Cherria, who’d loved sweet, playful nonsense that had brought nothing but harm to the princess. Now she was a Robur.
When she learned that the relationship between her son and her niece had been shattered, and that the protective magic the princess had cast had not only killed her niece’s body but would now force her to face an even more cruel reality, she would undoubtedly blame herself.
The royal family, the Four Dukes, and those destined lovers... Those who’d taken the princess from me. Not only in life, but even in death, they’d forced her to bear unjust sins alone, and still treated her with utter contempt. This country... It would be better if it simply perished.
Zap!
A sound like an electrical discharge snapped me back to my senses. “Ah, that won’t do,” I muttered to myself.
I suppressed the magic power that was threatening to run wild. This magic power had been heightened through forbidden arts and a pact with a demon. Perhaps that was why it tended to run amok when my emotions surged. Of course, I still had more magical control than a child would—and more that had been evident in the magic eruptions that had occurred frequently at the Academy not long ago.
It had happened after the princess had passed away; after Sriarde, one of the ones who drove the princess to her death, had attempted to revive the demon that should have vanished along with the princess.
It was I who had charmed my way into Sriarde’s favor and manipulated her into vanishing along with her soul.
Using a lock of hair Sriarde had cut from the princess while she had still lived, the consciousness of the demon, who had managed to avoid disappearing, had proposed a deal: It would return the princess to life. The demon had demanded payment up front, amplifying the mesmerizing powers I had always possessed.
Many years had passed since then.
The suffocating stares that my heightened allure drew were bothersome indeed. And yet it was thanks to that very skill that I’d charmed the previous pope—a man who made my skin crawl—and claimed the many forbidden arts slumbering within the church as my own. Of course, after the previous pope became useless, I made it look like he’d died of illness, buried him publicly, and then put him to good use.
He’d taken credit for the princess’s good deeds toward the refugees and plague victims as if they were his own. Worse still, he’d spread rumors about her—that she was a cowardly woman, afraid of disease, who never left the castle—all to discredit her. Seeing him only brought endless whining and depressing tedium, yet no matter how many times I killed him, it was never enough.
“Soon, Princess.” The final piece was in place. Even if she didn’t possess the same golden ring around her pupils as the princess did, the indigo hue of their eyes was identical.
I still recalled the day indigo had colored my usually black-and-white world.
That day had been her entrance ceremony, and I had been invited as a guest of honor. Though I found it a bother every year, the thought of the granddaughter rumored to resemble Sharona Robur entering the Academy lightened my step.
Her peach-gold hair color aside, her blue eyes and her features were said to resemble her grandmother in her youth. At the time, I’d regretted my inability to distinguish colors, yet somewhere deep down, I’d harbored hope.
The ceremony had begun. Names were called from Class 1A, and new students stood. But even when Class B was called, then Class C, the lady’s name was never called.
I’d occasionally heard rumors that Lady Robur had little magical power, was untalented and incompetent, and fled from all responsibility. But I’d never imagined she’d be in Class D. More than that, I’d been shocked to find she wasn’t even present.
I’d encountered her only later, after the ceremony, when I’d been heading back to the carriage in private disappointment, accompanied by Nax and several other high priests. It had happened just beyond a deserted passageway where someone was making a commotion.
“Laviange Robur! How dare you walk around campus after skipping the entrance ceremony without permission!”
“Oh my. It’s been an age, Your Highness Second Prince Joshua. Heh heh heh, your voice sounds just as lively as it did when you were twelve! How reassuring.”
“Hah! Still the same as ever! You worthless, incompetent fool, utterly inferior to your adopted sister, Sienna! Do you dare mock me, a member of the royal family, once more?!”
As I listened, I realized the female student whose back was turned was the very young lady I’d been expecting.
Even now, I could picture the ugly spectacle: the second prince making a scene before Lady Robur, and behind him, the male student glaring at her silently but fiercely.
Was that boy the third son of the Asche family? I believed he aspired to be a knight. While it was unacceptable for him to glare at the girl without stopping the prince’s outburst, surely he would intervene if the prince threatened violence. Or perhaps it would be better if I stepped in to stop him, creating an opportunity for myself to speak with the young lady...
I’d sent the priests accompanying me ahead and remained behind, quietly. Just in case, I’d concealed my own magical presence and used illusions to make myself invisible.
“Ah, don’t you have any more of those condescending words for me?” Lady Robur remarked. “A bit disappointing, really.”
“What?! It’s because you burst out laughing!” The prince, a member of the royal family, shouting at a woman in such an unsightly manner... Truly, this was the grandson of that righteous crown prince.
“Oh my, don’t misunderstand! I was saying that your attitude at our first meeting was utterly charming, you know?”
“What about it was charming?!”
“Of course, that childishly adorable twelve-year-old charm is only forgivable for a limited time because of your age. Even now, thinking back, it’s so endearing... Ah, how nostalgic.” Unfazed by the mounting fury and angry shouts directed at her by one of the royal family—especially her fiancé—Lady Robur placed a hand on her cheek and let out a soft sigh. If she’d just enrolled, she couldn’t be more than fifteen years old. Yet there was a certain allure to her mannerisms...
“Huh? Cute...? What... Don’t make that face...”
The sudden change in the prince’s demeanor made me inwardly tilt my head in confusion. The face of the third son of the Asche family had also changed. Both men were blushing, now, and looked flustered?
“Enough already! Mihail was looking for you too! Go get scolded! Heinz, let’s go!”
“Hah... Ah, yes, sir.”
With that half-hearted excuse, the two hurriedly slipped past Lady Robur.
As she turned her gaze in my direction, following their departure, I gasped. It was surely just a trick of the light...and yet, there, in her eyes—a deep blue that seemed to hold a ring of gold.
As her entire form gradually began to radiate color, starting from those eyes, I saw the gentle smile the princess had occasionally reserved for one person alone.
Before I knew it, tears were overflowing from my eyes. I’d desperately wanted to speak with her, almost releasing the aura I’d been hiding. That was when...
“I was cleaning the secret room, and seeing the tools I left behind made me nostalgic. I ended up skipping the ceremony, but it was worth it, wasn’t it?”
As the lady spoke, my tears dried up at once, and my expression snapped back into place.
“They’re going through their rebellious phase, but those kids... Well, regardless of their personalities, they certainly have pretty faces. From normal school stories to outrageous forbidden tales... Ahh, how irresistible...”
As her words flowed, her expression grew unladylike, almost ecstatic. How long had it been since I’d felt such a faint chill run down my spine? It felt like if she found me, she’d devour me. I didn’t know what it was, but that thing was dangerous.
At the time, I’d been inwardly bewildered to realize I’d instinctively amplified my magic. But now, a year later, as I considered the ramblings about her personality in Nax’s report, that decision must have been the right one.
The only splash of color in my black-and-white world was the young lady’s face... It was strange... No, never mind.