She could no longer hear the voice from the crown. Neither could she feel any headache.
“Oh, it feels so good…”
She had never imagined that having no pain could be this amazing. Even though she was in a dream, she became tired and slept. Despite being on the hard floor, she was able to sleep comfortably for the first time in a long while.
Eventually, Kriemhild opened her eyes.
She didn’t want to wake up—since if she awoke, she would see the ceiling of the royal castle that she so didn’t want to see. Then she would again be tormented by the voice and the headache.
But she couldn’t pretend to be asleep forever, so she was forced to open her eyes.
Yet it was not the castle ceiling that filled her view now.
It was the great hall, torn into pieces. There were signs of it having been burned all over the place.
Scattered corpses, corpses, corpses. They belonged to servants and soldiers.
Kriemhild’s heart clenched. “It…can’t be…”
She looked down at her hands. They were dirty with dried blood.
Her hands began to tremble. “Sister… No…ahh!”
So it wasn’t a dream?
Like a sleepwalker, she had killed her own servants and burned up the royal villa…
…and then killed her sister?
“Hn…hnnnnnnnnnnk!”
Kriemhild tore at her head.
She couldn’t bear it. There was no way she could have killed the sister who had been so concerned about her.
Just who was it who had said she wanted to cure her sister’s corrosion once she became queen?
Kriemhild’s heart was already in tatters to begin with, and now the fact that she’d killed her sister was the final blow.
The orders of the crown echoed through the body that had lost its mind.
Offer yourself to the kingdom.
With some plain clothes in hand, Bernstein came to where Brunhild waited in the forest. He had gotten them for her.
“Did you steal them?”
“Basically.”
She chose not to press him any further. She felt badly for whoever had had their clothes stolen, but this was an emergency.
They got changed. Bernstein now looked like a village man, while Brunhild was a village girl.
Bernstein gave the village girl Brunhild a disparaging look.
“What are you staring at me for?” she asked.
“Mm. There’s something rather tempting about an aristocrat disguised as a village girl. How about it—why not become my wife now, and we’ll live as village people?”
Brunhild said morosely, “If not for my sister, I could have considered that.”
“That’s too bad,” Bernstein said with a smile.
“Bernstein—I think it’s best you not make such jokes. When you one day have a woman you truly love, you’ll be completely unable to speak seriously.”
“I don’t mean this in jest. I’ve been charmed by your beauty since the moment I first saw you. Most of all…”
“Most of all?”
“I don’t want to see you sticking your nose into trouble. You already had an unfortunate upbringing to begin with. I want you to spend the rest of your life like anyone else, at least.”
Even Brunhild had to feel something after hearing all that. She realized even him saying to become his wife was not entirely a joke.
“W-well, I accept your affections.” Her heart was pounding a little, but she told it to settle down. “At any rate…I must save Kriemhild.”
She thought back on her face-off with Kriemhild in the royal villa. There was that crown that had sparkled uncannily over her head.
“That crown…is not good at all.”
Brunhild’s eyes could see the future, though only dimly. But that was no more than a bonus on top of their fundamental ability. Her eyes could see the true nature of things. When she penetrated something with her vision, she could make abstract estimations about the future it would bring.
And to these eyes of hers, the crown had looked terribly evil. It had been as if a black darkness were clinging to it.
“I want to look into that crown,” said Brunhild. “There must be a secret to it. I think the reason Kriemhild became like that is due to the crown.”
“Research? So then should we go to the Academy?”
“No. I doubt the answer will be in the documents of the Academy, since that crown has been handed down for generations in the Siegfried family. I figure the answer will only be in the royal castle. I believe threatening a chief vassal, a close associate of the queen, will be the fastest and most certain.”
“You can’t propose such a difficult matter so casually. How will we approach that vassal? Will we sneak into the castle and kidnap them? I don’t believe that’s impossible, but the risks are too high. We don’t even know if we could safely escape…”
“There’s no need for us to sneak into the castle. We’ll have the vassals come out for us.”
“How?”
Brunhild smiled boldly. “Today is the First Queen’s birthday.”
Brunhild and Bernstein concealed themselves alongside a certain mountain path. It was the road the carriages would pass down when heading from the royal castle to the First Queen’s anniversary party. It was also the place where the young Brunhild and Kriemhild had been attacked by assailants.
The carriages passed on by. They deliberately let a number of them pass. Brunhild got a general grasp on the rank of the people in the carriages by the coats and statures of the horses and the decorations on the carriages themselves.
When a particularly high-status carriage went by, Brunhild fired her Thunder.
The Thunder shot through the wheels of the carriage, destroying them. When the carriage came to a halt, Bernstein, as a dragon, leaned on it to tip it over. The coachman saw the dragon and fled. There were two knight guards on the carriage, and they very briefly made to fight, but the dragon was so imposing, they immediately broke and followed after the coachman.
Bernstein dragged two old men out from the carriage.
“Yeep, help…”
“Princess Brunhild…I never thought you’d still live.”
Brunhild recognized those faces. They were without question senior vassals from the castle.
When the two senior vassals saw Brunhild, they shrieked quietly and apologized.
“No! It wasn’t us.”
“It was Warren. Warren is the one who said he would try to kill you.”
While stroking the amber dragon’s snout, Brunhild said, “To think they would be this frightened. It seems they will speak honestly.”
The amber dragon growled at the old men. The two of them sank to the ground in fear.