***
Panting heavily, Diana burst out of the Great Hall and hurried down the corridor with ragged breaths.
Her face was still deathly pale, but unlike in the Great Hall, she didn’t look weak enough to collapse.
As if being chased by something, Diana rushed into the lounge.
Even though she had only moved a short distance, her entire body was drenched in cold sweat.
Thud. After closing the door, she sharply scanned her surroundings to see if anyone was there.
There was a sharp edge to her gaze, so chilling that anyone who saw it would have found it difficult to speak to her.
Click. After locking the door, Diana covered her mouth and slowly sank down onto the floor.
Cough, cough. Coughing as if she were coughing up blood, Diana stared down at her violently trembling hands with frightened eyes and muttered,
“Why… why isn’t it working…?”
Her breathing grew rough.
As if she were short of breath, Diana lifted her chin high and drew a deep breath into her lungs.
As she exhaled again, hoo, the end of her breath trembled uncontrollably.
“No. Calm down. You can do this. Diana, you’ve done well so far.”
Diana recalled the moment she had held Liselotte’s hand.
The warm hand, the faint but spreading flow of divine authority.
Everything had been the same as usual.
It should have been, if only the divine authority had not been repelled.
The divine authority that had flowed out returned to Diana’s body.
At the same time, the sudden intrusion of divine authority caused her body to suffer a mild seizure.
Though it was an ability bound to her, the moment she used it externally, her body rejected it as if it were someone else’s power.
As she held her breath, hurried footsteps sounded outside.
Bang, bang, bang. At the sound of someone pounding on the door, Diana covered her mouth.
“Diana, it’s me. You’re fine, so open the door!”
It seemed her father had come after her belatedly.
Diana hurriedly opened the door she had latched at the sound of the familiar voice.
Opening it only as much as necessary, he slipped inside quickly, then locked the door again.
He then crouched down and firmly grasped Diana’s shoulders with both hands.
“What happened? Why are you like this again all of a sudden?!”
Anix’s gaze, scanning her from head to toe, was urgent.
With a face twisted in distress, Diana clutched his jacket until it wrinkled.
A faint golden light flowed from her hand and wrapped around Anix’s entire body.
Startled by the healing power that surged without warning, he shook Diana by the shoulders.
“What are you trying to do, using your power all of a sudden?! Your body? Is your body all right?”
As Diana looked up at him, perfectly fine, her face crumpled.
Her bloodshot eyes wavered aimlessly.
“M-my power doesn’t work on L-Liselotte.”
“What?”
“My divine authority doesn’t work on the Grand Duchess…!”
“Shh, shh. What if someone hears you saying that? This is the Imperial Palace.”
Anix forcibly covered her mouth.
Only after Diana nodded, showing that she understood, did he lower the hand that had been covering her mouth and ask.
“Your divine authority doesn’t work? Does that mean she was injured so badly that she can’t be treated?”
Having calmed down a little, Diana swallowed her ragged breathing and shook her head.
“I mean it literally. My power can’t enter Liselotte’s body. It just lingers on the outside and, unable to stay, disperses.”
“That can’t be. It’s healing power—there’s no reason it wouldn’t work.”
Anix had clearly felt that healing power himself.
Even if she couldn’t use it freely because of her frail body, it wasn’t so weak that it couldn’t heal a single twisted ankle.
This had never happened before.
Unable to find an answer no matter how much he thought about it, Anix frowned and asked,
“Could it be that the Grand Duke used the Word of Command to prevent the healing itself?”
“…I don’t know. But if that were the case, wouldn’t a priest’s divine power fail as well?”
Divine authority and divine power were separated by only a thin line.
Even setting aside Diana, who had exceptionally acquired her ability, the fact that all members of the Imperial Family received divine authority from the temple pointed to that.
After thinking for a moment, she shook her head.
“The Grand Duke said they should go to a priest as soon as the Grand Duchess was injured. If that were the case, he wouldn’t have said that.”
“True. It’s not poison or anything like that—there’s no reason to reject healing power.”
It was uncertain whether the Word of Command could be used with that level of delicacy in the first place.
Anix’s expression hardened.
“Other than the Princess?”
“It seems to work properly on everyone else.”
Diana, who had sometimes acted arrogantly, answered him meekly.
The sight made her look almost like a guilty person.
“We’ll need to keep an eye on the Princess’ movements for the time being.”
At his cold voice, Diana flinched and her shoulders trembled.
The lavish Imperial Palace lounge.
Like the dark night visible beyond the windows, a heavy silence settled over the room.
***
Not long after Diana left, even Duke Gloria rushed out after hearing the news, throwing the atmosphere of the banquet hall into disarray.
On top of that, even Valen, the host, clearly had no desire to stay, leaving the guests with no choice but to read the room amid the awkward mood.
Worse still, ever since he had stepped in front of Liselotte, he had not budged an inch.
‘Just go already. There are plenty of people looking for you.’
They weren’t on good terms, and it wasn’t as if they were even having a conversation.
Valen was lost in thought on his own, and Liselotte had no choice but to stand there awkwardly while being supported by Eren.
‘Should I just go see a priest?’
Just as she was seriously considering a plan to kill time in an empty waiting room under the pretense of being injured and then leave—
“You must have been quite startled, Princess Liselotte.”
A young lady she had never seen before approached with a friendly smile.
Wearing a sympathetic look that settled on Liselotte’s ankle, barely visible beneath her dress, she continued speaking as if troubled.
“It seems Lady Gloria’s health is quite poor.”
At the same time, both Liselotte and Valen quietly looked at the young lady.
Perhaps finding the lack of response awkward, she slightly lifted the hem of her dress with one hand and offered a greeting.
“I’m Rula Ochella. My family is from the East.”
Still not quite grasping the situation, Liselotte heard Eren whisper softly beside her.
“One of the families in the East with close ties to House Gloria.”
Why would a young lady from a family close to the East go out of her way to greet her?
When Liselotte looked at her with even greater confusion, Rula smiled demurely.
“I heard she recently came to the Capital, so I thought we might at least share a light tea time at their residence. Her health was so poor that I ended up waiting for two whole hours.”
Was it just her imagination?
Eren had said she was from a family with close ties to House Gloria, yet it somehow sounded reproachful.
‘So she was annoyed about waiting for two hours?’
Her expression and tone were gentle and kind, yet the impression she received was oddly ambiguous.
Hearing that, Valen’s eyes wavered for a moment.
Wearing a bitter smile full of pity, he muttered as if to himself,
“Come to think of it, she also left early on the first day of the banquet. Has her condition worsened recently?”
Valen looked utterly thoughtless.
…He was definitely an idiot.
Unless he had given all his sense away to monsters as toys in the snowy mountains of the North, there was no way he could come up with a response like that.
It was much like the feeling Liselotte had had toward Diana when she first visited the East.
They said people grew alike when they loved each other, and in this regard, they were exactly the same.
The urge to retort surged up from deep within her, but she forced it down as if pinching her own thigh.
‘Or is that also some highly refined tactic of pretending to be oblivious?’
Yes. That was more likely.
There was no way someone who would go on to conduct politics in the Empire, with the seasoned Four Great Houses at the core, would be so naively straightforward.
‘Yes. Of course. That must be it.’
Facing this, Rula was exceedingly skilled.
It was as if she were accustomed to a way of speaking that neither outright criticized nor praised, but hovered delicately along an ambiguous line.
“His Highness the Crown Prince truly seems to have a very warm heart. To think he would care for the fragile Lady Gloria with such devotion.”
Taken literally, it meant that Lady Gloria was frail and that he treated her with pity.
