Chapter 23
23. His Majesty Alexanteri’s Tears
Insert a bookmark.
Her Majesty the Empress Dowager and Chancellor Kaietan were also attending the tea party.
They both seemed to want to sit at the same table with us.
“Is there an open seat? Emperor, please let Princess Lacey have tea with me.”
“I would also like to join.”
“Mother, uncle, Lacey will feel obliged. I want Lacey to enjoy her birthday.”
“Princess Lacey will soon be a consort. Shouldn’t she have the experience of official tea gatherings?”
“The Emperor can only protect her so much. It might be better to give the Princess Consort various opportunities to gain experience.”
“Lacey, it may be bothersome, but would you mind sitting with my mother and uncle?”
“I would be honored.”
Having the Empress Dowager and Chancellor Kaietan get to know me is probably one of my duties as a candidate for consort.
When I agreed and told His Majesty Alexanteri, he drew his brows together and sighed.
“If Lacey permits it, it can’t be helped. Mother, uncle, please respect Lacey.”
“We understand. It’s clear how very, very important Princess Lacey is to the Emperor.”
“She is the Emperor’s precious person. We will treat her with due respect.”
The Empress Dowager emphasized “very” twice, and Chancellor Kaietan said it with a warm smile.
Chancellor Kaietan’s crimson eyes resemble Emperor Alexanteri’s, which makes him likable, and the Empress Dowager, whose features also resemble the Emperor’s and is very beautiful, dazzled me—but I did not dislike her.
“Since the Princess Consort has come to the Imperial Palace, the Emperor’s expression has brightened. He’s been more motivated in his duties and is making time to spend with the Princess Consort.”
“Is that so?”
“Uncle, don’t say unnecessary things.”
I had never before seen Alexanteri make that displeased face, so I found myself watching him with curiosity. In front of me he always smiled gently and calmly.
“Before Lacey came… no, before he obtained that embroidered handkerchief at twenty-two, the Emperor was like a living corpse.”
“Mother!”
“He prioritized being Emperor above all, ate only because it was necessary to keep living, had no hobbies, no joy. He led a life with no emotion or expression.”
“Emperor Alexanteri…”
Alexanteri seemed reluctant to have his mother speak, but I wanted to hear it. I wanted to know how he had lived in the Imperial Palace.
“I was truly afraid he would end his own life. Then, when he was twenty-two, he obtained a handkerchief with an embroidered blue vine pattern, and from that day he changed. It was as if he had been reborn. He desperately searched for the origin of that handkerchief and arrived at the daughter of Viscount Dian… yes, Princess Lacey.”
“My embroidered handkerchief moved the Emperor’s heart?”
“Twenty-two years ago, during a coup the beloved previous Emperor—my husband—was assassinated, and the Emperor was smuggled out. When he returned, the Emperor was wearing clothes stained with blood and bearing an embroidery of blue vine patterns.”
A garment with blue vine-patterned embroidery.
When Alexanteri was six or so, twenty-two years ago.
In the border village, Cecil had sewn and embroidered a blue vine-patterned garment for Garne.
Everything felt like it was connecting.
Could Alexanteri be Garne?
And could I once have been the girl called Cecil?
“When the Emperor came to the debutante ball to see Princess Lacey and propose engagement, he discovered that Lacey already had a fiancé…”
“Mother, perhaps that’s enough. Lacey, shall we get a little fresh air outside?”
He cut the conversation off and led me out to the terrace.
“Excuse us.”
After greeting the Empress Dowager and Chancellor Kaietan, I stepped out onto the terrace with Alexanteri.
Large potted houseplants were set out there, and an autumn breeze blew coolly.
On Alexanteri’s chest, the lapel pin made from the artificial flowers of the floral crown from the engagement ceremony was displayed in the flower hole, and I wore a hair ornament made from the same flowers. We even wore matching thimbles, so perhaps we must have looked affectionately close.
“Emperor Alexanteri, is what the Empress Dowager said true?”
“It is true. Lacey, where did you learn to embroider that blue vine pattern? That motif wasn’t used in the Viscount Dian estate, was it?”
“That is…”
I decided to be honest with him.
“I keep dreaming that I am a girl who looks much like who I am now, living in a border village. My parents run an eatery there, but I want to be a seamstress, so I practiced embroidery and sewing constantly.”
“Is there anything else you remember from the dream?”
“In the dream I sketched the blue vine pattern I’d seen into a design, and I started sewing it from around age five. At first it didn’t take shape at all, but by seven I could sew it somewhat, and by twelve I entered a school in the capital and began selling them at shops there.”
“And I was the one who acquired it.”
Alexanteri nodded, and I asked him:
“Do you really believe such a fantastic dream story?”
“Lacey, did a child with silver hair and crimson eyes appear in that dream?”
“How do you know that? In my dream I protected that child and, not knowing his real name, called him ‘Garne’ and lived with him for over two months.”
Little, adorable Garne.
I don’t regret that I died protecting Garne in the dream, but afterwards I worried whether he had survived, and if he had, how shocked he must have been to see me die before him.
“I am that Garne.”
“Eh…?”
“I could not give my name as Crown Prince, so I kept silent, and that kind older sister who protected me named me ‘Garne.’ But I had wanted to be called by my real name—Alexanteri.”
Alexanteri was Garne. I had been the one who, in the dream, had helped young Alexanteri.
“But that’s just a dream,” I said.
Alexanteri took from his pocket the handkerchief with the blue vine embroidery and showed it to me. It was undeniably the handkerchief I had embroidered.
“I know that the ‘older sister’ I called and adored died. I was so filled with grief I could not even cry. Then I came across a book that said dead souls are reborn. At first I could not believe it, but somewhere in my heart I hoped she might be reborn.”
“I only saw her in a dream…”
“That might be a memory of a previous life. Even if not, Lacey has the memory of having saved ‘Garne.’ I have lived just to meet you. Even if it’s not reincarnation, Lacey is the light of my hope.”
His hand, offered timidly, came around my back. He held me as if I were fragile, and I pressed my cheek to his solid chest.
My pulse quickened; I could feel my face growing warm.
“Emperor Alexanteri…”
“After she protected me, I continued living in despair and hell for a long time, living only for the reason that I could not die. Everything I ate tasted like sand; every breath felt like swallowing glass—painful and agonizing.”
“I am not that ‘older sister.’”
“Even if that is so, you embroider the same blue vine motif and hold the memory of her. More than anything, you made me want to live again.”
I am not Cecil from the dream.
But if reincarnation does exist, perhaps my previous life was Cecil—I found myself thinking that possibility.
“Do you remember my name?”
“I remember it well.”
“The name I was called in my dream was…”
Cecil.
Our voices overlapped.
The moment our voices did, Alexanteri hugged me tightly and buried his face against my shoulder. It was not my imagination when warm tears fell onto my shoulder.
How much Alexanteri must have suffered since losing Cecil at age six, and how much he was saved by learning of my existence at twenty-two.
Those tears spoke more eloquently than any words.
