HDBMTD 42

Chapter 42

“Ha… so Her Highness was under such a delusion…”

Willow exhaled sharply through his nose, his anger evident. Yet bound tightly to the chair, one eye swollen shut and his lips split and bleeding, he hardly appeared intimidating.

“And what did she say when you told her the truth? She must have been deeply shaken, wasn’t she?”

“…”

Nocturne remained silent.

Willow’s face paled as he read the truth from that silence.

“No… you didn’t actually leave her in the dark, did you? You allowed her to go on believing that was her name?”

“Shut your mouth.”

“Wait… it’s true, isn’t it? So even now she insists on being called by that name? Why? To mock her? To humiliate Her Highness?”

Thud.

The chair tilted violently backward as Nocturne, who had kept his foot loosely braced beneath the table, kicked it hard. Willow’s head slammed into the wall with a sickening crack.

“Gah—!”

The knight nearby rose at once, as though anticipating the outburst, and righted the chair. Nocturne didn’t so much as glance at Willow as he muttered to himself.

Why hadn’t he corrected her?

‘Yes, that is my name. It’s all I have left now.’

…Because she looked so pitiful.

To see her clutching that name, believing it her sole identity… it was unbearable.

To tell her that the only name she had left meant failure, a mark branding her as discarded waste to be remade…

He could not bring himself to say it.

“Damn it…”

Once, he would never have cared if a Cambiata creature was hurt or not. But now…

Nocturne recalled her flushed face, fevered yet desperately pouring out information with Ariadna’s visage.

He would have to tell her someday, but not now. Not when she was so unwell. It would be kinder to wait.

For now, he would set it aside and focus on the matter at hand.

“Now then.”

Nocturne’s icy gaze fixed on Willow. The man instinctively hunched his shoulders, gauging the duke’s intent.

“Do you remember the warning I gave before bringing you to this interrogation room?”

“That if I gave false testimony, my life would end here…”

“Exactly. Any last words?”

“W-wait—!”

Nocturne raised his hand as if ready to summon flame, and Willow panicked, blurting out,

“I wasn’t trying to deceive you! I truly believed Her Highness still had her Cambiata memories!”

“…”

“She couldn’t possibly have lost them all! Padva transferred Cambiata’s soul into Her Highness’s body!”

Willow stammered frantically,

“S-she even recognized the laboratories immediately when we wandered the facility, and knew what the unfamiliar vials were for at a glance!”

“So you weren’t lying, only ignorant.”

Nocturne’s eyes were as cold as steel as they bore down on Willow.

“You betrayed me, abducted Her Highness, and yet you hadn’t even assessed the state of her memory?”

Willow’s eyes darted.

“Well… was that really necessary…?”

Nocturne understood the unspoken words before they were uttered.

His expression hardened.

“You simply didn’t care.”

“…”

Willow had orchestrated the abduction with perfect precision, striking at the exact moment of Ariadna’s escape from the palace and even destroying the tracking device Nocturne had implanted.

And yet he hadn’t even bothered to determine whether the princess possessed Cambiata’s memories.

Because he simply hadn’t cared.

“You claimed you were only following Her Highness’s wishes…”

Nocturne’s lips curled bitterly. Willow had made the same excuse as he was beaten bloody outside the laboratory.

So Nocturne had assumed that betrayal had stemmed from grief for Ariadna, that his loyalty had been so profound he could not resist even the allure of a clone.

After all, Ariadna had been his benefactor.

But this…

“…Hah.”

Nocturne let out a hollow sigh.

“I was far too willing to believe you were the Eshafae Ariadna once sponsored… Roster’s younger brother.”

“…”

“Your loyalty to Ariadna seemed so unwavering…”

He looked down at Willow’s ravaged face.

“But I’m not sure that’s what I should call it anymore.”

Nocturne slowly clenched and released his fist. The faint surge of murderous intent prompted his aide to shake his head quickly.

“He’s already weakened from the beating you gave him, Your Grace. Knock him unconscious again and the interrogation will only be delayed.”

Nocturne reluctantly nodded and instead resolved to test Willow’s credibility.

“According to Her Highness, she saw her own photograph in the research facility’s records.”

He pushed the bundle of documents toward Willow.

“Find her among these.”

At Nocturne’s signal, the knight untied Willow’s restraints.

Willow rubbed his sore wrists, then quickly leafed through the files.

And then his hand stopped.

“Here. This is her.”

He pointed at a brown-haired woman.

It was the same Cambiata executioner Nocturne already knew of, the same one Willow’s colleagues had identified.

But then why had Her Highness claimed her photograph was missing?

Was she trying to conceal something?

A flicker of doubt surfaced, but he quickly remembered her flushed, fevered state as she had painstakingly combed through the documents, offering every fragment of information she could.

No… she didn’t seem to be lying.

She had corrected numerous errors in the records, and each one had indeed proven false.

If she had intended to deceive him, she wouldn’t have given him accurate information.

“In this photo… is she very different from how she appeared at the laboratory?”

“Not really? The photos seem to be from around the same time… oh, except she was wearing glasses and had her hair tied back at the lab.”

At that, Nocturne was certain.

She had failed to recognize the woman simply because she had taken off her glasses.

Her observational skills… hopeless.

Nocturne recalled the time when he had been in a contractual relationship with her.

She had often stumbled during their outings, tripping over stones that lay blatantly in her path.

At first, he thought it a ploy for attention.

But after watching her when she was alone, he realized she truly couldn’t see well.

Come to think of it, Ariadna was the same…

She was so intelligent and skilled in diplomacy that no one had noticed, but Ariadna’s visual perception had been abysmal.

She would readily notice when someone changed their hairstyle or outfit, but that was not because she truly saw the change.

She simply read the desire for acknowledgment and offered the appropriate praise.

Her ability to identify faces in a photo or sketch was abysmal.

As a child, Ariadna had been so prone to falling that her legs were perpetually covered in bruises.

At first, they suspected optic nerve issues, but in truth, the cause was her exceptional mental-sensory abilities.

She had relied so heavily on the thoughts and perspectives of those around her that she had never developed the habit of truly using her own sight when alone.

This princess… she possesses Ariadna’s body and memories, but none of her abilities.

She had all of Ariadna’s weaknesses with none of the strengths to compensate, making her seem clumsier in every way.

Ariadna without her mental-sensory powers…

Nocturne felt a strange, distant chill.

Could such a being even be considered truly capable of survival?

“In any case… this settles it.”

He tapped the documents.

“That princess has almost no memories of her Cambiata days.”

She seemed to retain scraps of technical knowledge and a few names, but her sense of self was nonexistent.

She had mistaken this woman for herself simply because the name ‘Vis’—misinterpreted as her own—had been attached to the record.

When reviewing Cambiata files, she would often press a hand to her temple in confusion, then suddenly recall fragments of information.

It was as if her memories returned only in pieces when exposed to related stimuli… much like a form of amnesia.

“How… peculiar.”

A Cambiata who had committed crimes against humanity had lost her memories, yet now possessed Ariadna’s body and recollections, the heroine who had saved the empire.

Could such a person truly be punished?

And most baffling of all…

Why did she deliberately pretend to have Cambiata’s memories, casting herself as the villain?

Nocturne felt a dizzying disorientation.

All the certainties he had clung to were unraveling, and the interrogation room itself seemed to recede into a blur.

And in that suffocating haze, only the princess’s voice echoed in his ears.

‘This isn’t the imperial palace, and the prince isn’t here. There’s no point in continuing this pathetic charade, is there? You never believed it anyway, Duke.’

‘We were both laughing at the farce, weren’t we? Everyone already knew I wasn’t Ariadna. This isn’t even some kind of joke.’

Nocturne suddenly remembered—the faint tremor in her fingertips as she had spoken those words.