Hearing her answer, the prince gave her a troubled smile. “The way we summoned you was by placing the hidden stone of the Sacred Maiden on a summoning circle, and touching it with a magical crystal filled with mana made specially by the Academy. It wouldn’t be that simple.”
Eric, one of the Academy’s mages, furrowed his brows at His Highness’s explanation. “So that’s what it was used for... Mmm, which means, it’d take quite a few years to make another one, Sacred Maiden. And we don’t have enough mages at the Academy to make another one. Too many of us died in the dragon attack in Aquilani.”
“How long would it take?”
Eric answered, an apologetic expression on his face, “Uhh...just estimating, maybe seven years... No, probably ten. It’d take a bit less time if we got some powerful new mages. The magical crystal that was used to summon you took years to make.”
As Miss Maria’s face dropped, Lord Reynard put the final nail in the coffin.
“And even if we were to summon you in the future, unless there were multiple ‘Drops of the Cristallo Sacro,’ you would never be able to go back to your original world again. We would hate to put you in the same position as you are in now, and you would have no choice on the timing. It could end up being once you’ve gotten used to your original world and are living happily. It wouldn’t be right for us to selfishly call you back again...”
Miss Maria looked dejected after hearing Lord Reynard’s explanation, and Sir Gaius added another painful blow, “So it’d mean you’d either never come back here, or you’d only be going home for a few years before you’d get pulled back, never to see your world again. You’d have to choose.”
Miss Maria’s shoulders drooped at the Canalis brother’s words.
“Okay... So either way, that means I can’t hold off on deciding...?”
“Yes.”
“Yep.”
His Highness chimed in with an unexpected idea for the dejected Sacred Maiden, “There’s another option. If we could at least prepare a magical crystal, we could give it and the hidden stone to Maria when she leaves. Then maybe she could open the door from her side when she wants to come back.”
“Your Highness, the hidden stone is a royal treasure,” Sir Agliardi asserted. “The King would never allow it.”
“There would be no problem if I became the King before the crystal was ready, would there? But if Maria wanted to leave before then, of course we would let her.”
“But—”
The Commander shook his head as the prince quietly rejected his opinion, “Fernando, you know that my father isn’t long for this world. It’s getting too difficult for him to rule while ill. I’ll be ascending the throne within a few years.”
There was no emotion in his voice. He was only saying what the plans were. But I didn’t know that the King was sick. Thinking back, he didn’t look very well when I saw him.
“Still... There’s no proof that she’d be able to return here that way,” Sir Celes spoke up from beside me.
His Highness nodded, as if he had already thought of that. “Yes. It would be a gamble, unfortunately, for Maria.”
“But, Ed, isn’t that hidden stone thing really important? I shouldn’t bring something like that back...”
The prince smiled at Miss Maria as she worried, before turning his emerald eyes onto me. “That’s fine. Our country won’t ever need to summon a Sacred Maiden from another world again. This world needs to make do with its own residents. And...our world has its own Sacred Maiden.”
His gaze shot right through me, and for a moment, I didn’t understand what he was saying.
“Maria doesn’t need a crystal to use her magic. The same goes for Lucia, doesn’t it? It’s a special kind, not using the Cristallo Sacro as a catalyst like other magic. And its effect is ‘cleansing.’ Kyriest’s tree was purified with your power alone. If Maria is ‘another world’s Sacred Maiden,’ then you must be ‘our world’s Sacred Maiden.’”
His Highness explained his opinion, but I couldn’t be a Sacred Maiden. With Miss Maria, she was strong, beautiful — just as you’d imagine a Sacred Maiden being. But I was just an ordinary person. We weren’t comparable. I shouldn’t try. It would be absurd for me to call myself one!
But part of me agreed...
I myself may have been too ordinary to be called a ‘Sacred Maiden,’ but my power was too abnormal to be called ‘ordinary.’ It could clear away things from stains on clothes to even miasma, and I didn’t need a crystal to cast it. I hadn’t considered it when I only thought it made soap bubbles, but my power being able to cleanse even the Cristallo Sacro was...extraordinary.
“We had only thought of the Sacred Maiden being Maria, from another world, but maybe our world’s Sacred Maiden had been Lucia all along. The purification of the trees was something we should have done by ourselves, and that’s why Lucia has her power. It’s possible that sixteen hundred years ago, there was someone else who had your exact power somewhere in the world. They might have just not found them, and by chance, another world’s Sacred Maiden managed to purify the trees. That must have been why we were convinced that we needed to summon a Sacred Maiden from another world.”
His Highness grasped Miss Maria’s hand comfortingly as she sat still. When he touched her, she gave him a flat look and said, “So you’re saying I was just a spare Sacred Maiden?”
“No, you’re not anyone’s spare. You’re undoubtedly a Sacred Maiden with the power to purify — you just aren’t our world’s Sacred Maiden. Of course, this is all just my guess, but I don’t think I’m far off. We should have worked harder on our own. Instead of going the easy way of summoning a Sacred Maiden, we should have done all we could to try to do it ourselves. So...I’m sorry, Maria. We did something terrible to you. If you’d ever forgive me for my selfishness, I... I want to give thanks that I met you.”
“You really are selfish,” she said bluntly.
“I realize that. But that’s love, isn’t it?”
“I dunno. Why don’t you ask one of the lovebirds?”
“You aren’t in love?”
Miss Maria was back to her usual self, giving His Highness a look before bursting out in a tingling laugh. The prince was smiling beside her, too.
“What? You’re really gonna flirt now?” Eric groaned.
“You’re gonna get charged with treason, kid.”
“Huh, but weren’t we having a really serious conversation? Did I miss something?”
While I was hearing Eric and Sir Gaius speak, my mind was in mayhem. I didn’t want to be treated as a Sacred Maiden all of a sudden. What should I do now? If he’s talking about it here, does that mean he wants something from me?
We’d been talking about the incident in Fatna. Then, His Highness had asked Miss Maria about what she wanted to do...because he wanted her to stay with him. And after that, he’d talked about giving her the hidden stone as atonement, and that had led into him calling me a Sacred Maiden. Hm? Did that mean he didn’t actually want me to do anything? It was just how the conversation turned out?
While I worried about what to conclude from His Highness’s words, Sir Celes softly took my hand. Looking up, he had a horribly grim look on his face. We might have been holding hands, but it definitely wasn’t romantic.
“Sir Celes?”
“Ah...no, it’s nothing.” His attractive face grimaced awkwardly. It looked like he was trying, and failing, to smile, and I got worried.
“What’s wrong?”
He wouldn’t answer me. He just held my hand a little tighter.
I couldn’t get rid of the worried feeling I had. All I could do was hold his hand back.