Chapter 03
“A long exhale clears the sight, and the time it takes to smoke a single cigarette cools the mind.”
At Ariella’s words, the Emperor, who only moments ago had been raging, showed a flicker of puzzlement in his eyes.
“And so, imagine how many lives might be spared in the time it takes to drink a single cup of tea.”
It was none other than Emperor Frederic himself who had once said this.
The line was taken from his autobiography, written to mark the tenth year of his reign.
Time crawled endlessly in the tower.
Ariella’s days were filled with nothing but embroidery or reading.
The books granted to her were few, yet she read them so often she could nearly recite them word for word.
Anything anything to keep from going mad.
“…How… do you know this?”
The Emperor’s voice, once sharp, softened.
The bustling hall quieted at once.
“I read and reread Your Majesty’s precious writings.
I took those words to mean that a ruler must not, in a moment of passion, discard those who might prove to be of great worth.
Was my understanding correct?”
Her heart hammered so violently she thought it might burst, and her chest ached from forcing her voice to rise above the silence.
The Emperor held her in a long silence.
“…So it is.”
At last, affirmation.
Ariella bent deeply at the waist, bowing in reverence.
“In that case, Your Majesty, before you sever their heads, grant them at least the time it takes to smoke a single cigarette.”
Even from a distance, she could feel his displeasure bristling like a storm.
But retreat was impossible now.
She hurried to press on.
“If you do, you will see their true hearts laid bare.”
“Their true hearts…”
“How could devotion be mistaken for deceit, Your Majesty?”
Ariella met his gaze carefully, wary not to appear defiant.
Something sharp and strange flickered in his eyes.
“How can loyalty be what clouds my vision?”
“When the court painter worked on the portrait, there was one command the steward repeated more than any other.”
Again, silence swallowed the hall whole.
The air was so taut she could almost hear the ghostly burn of an unseen cigarette.
“And what was that command?”
“Before I answer, allow me one more question.
If the portrait had resembled me more closely… would Your Majesty truly have annulled the betrothal?”
“…”
“No, I think not.
You would have summoned me in person and judged with your own eyes before deciding the matter.”
“And therefore?”
“During his stay in the Florenze palace, the steward’s most oft-repeated words were these: ‘Not so much that His Majesty would be troubled.
Only enough that His Majesty would not be displeased.’”
At that, Ariella sank gracefully to one knee, lowering herself as though in prayer before a god whose mercy she sought.
“From that day until this very moment, I have waited long for the chance to stand before Your Majesty.”
“And… why is that?”
“Only… I could not help but wonder.
What manner of man must His Majesty be?
Just how great must you stand, that even when unseen, your vassals whisper of nothing but their admiration, their devotion for you?”
At those words, the Crown Prince’s expression shifted ever so slightly behind the Emperor.
One brow arched, as if to say, Well now, isn’t this interesting…
Ariella forced herself not to look.
It was not the prince who held her fate, but the Emperor before her.
“They sought only to spare Your Majesty even the smallest shadow of worry, if only for one more day.
If that is not loyalty, then what else could it be?
And so, I beg Your Majesty to weigh their pitiful hearts with mercy.”
Once more, Ariella bent low, her form bowing so deeply that her shadow spilt and warped across the steps before her.
Thump, thump her heart pounded as though it would leap from her chest.
Each passing second of the Emperor’s silence stretched into eternity.
If the end comes as it once did, then I will bite down on my tongue and die here, now.
Even as she steeled her resolve, her shadow stretched longer still upon the stairs.
At last, the Emperor cleared his throat.
A sharp, deliberate sound.
Seizing the moment, Ariella straightened, placing her palm firmly over her chest.
Then, with a sweep as bold as any orator, she extended her arm forward.
“Ever since they returned to their homeland, I have dreamed, day after day, of this moment of beholding with my own eyes the Emperor who rules Triphina with such splendour and abundance.”
In the tower, she had spoken with only two souls.
One was Sabrina, the maid who brought her meals each day.
The other was Gerald, one of the knights who stood guard at her door in shifts.
Sometimes a different maid would come, sometimes a different knight would stand watch, but only those two ever offered her a kind word.
They fed her scraps of the world outside, like swallows bringing morsels to a starving fledgling.
It was Gerald, one night through the door, who told her the Emperor bore a nickname.
“And so, sleepless though I was, I hurried here on weary feet.
To stand before Your Majesty at last I feel as though I have exhausted every blessing of my life.”
That nickname was the Flattery King.
A cruel jest, born from the resemblance between his name, Frederic, and the sound of the word flattery.
“…Is that so?”
The Flattery King’s voice softened, silken now, almost indulgent.
Ariella nodded vigorously, then darted a glance downward.
There, still trembling, the court painter lay prostrate, his forehead striking the floor again and again with dull, pitiful thuds.
“Come now, you speak.
Am I wrong?”
At her prompt, the chamberlain and the painter both bobbed their heads in frantic unison.
“Of—of course not, Your Majesty!
Never doubt my loyalty!”
In the west, the setting sun spilt its last fire across the sky, staining everything in shades of crimson.
The air thickened, ripe as though on the edge of ripening into fate.
And then—drip, drip—tears spilt from Ariella’s eyes.
They were, in truth, deliberate, calculated tears.
Yet at the same time, they flowed naturally, born of despair at her wretched circumstances.
Her life hung by a thread how could she possibly afford the luxury of shame?
“One thing, Your Majesty,” she said softly, her voice trembling, “it is all meaningless now.”
“Hm?”
The Emperor’s eyes narrowed.
“And what do you mean by that?”
“My lowliness is an affront to Your Majesty’s dignity.
I can hardly expect to be granted even the chance to serve as your loyal subject, can I?”
Ariella wiped her tears with the sleeve of her gown.
The hopelessness in her gesture was genuine, but it was also carefully placed, like a final card thrown in desperation.
Her shoulders sagged under the weight of it all.
She cast a glance at the ranks of armoured knights surrounding her, bracing herself for the command to drag her back into the tower.
If she so much as snatched a sword from the scabbard of the knight at the end of the line and ran toward the stairs, her life would be over in an instant.
It was in that fleeting moment of fatal resignation that the Emperor spoke again.
“Yes… so it must have seemed.
I had not realised the depth of your loyalty.”
A soft, incredulous breath escaped her lips.
With a voice shockingly tender, Frederick ordered the royal guard to stand down.
The sudden command sent murmurs rippling through the hall, a swell of uneasy voices breaking the silence.
Taking advantage of the commotion, Ariella’s eyes drifted toward the tower.
Its massive, looming shadow stretched long and dark, swallowing her whole.
Only her own fate remained to be decided now.
The Emperor stroked his chin, his gaze fixed upon the tower, as though replaying his plans in his mind.
Ariella felt the blood drain from her cheeks.
A cough just a brief, passing sound, but it snapped the air taut as a bowstring.
That single heartbeat seemed to drain the very blood from her veins.
Her heart thudded so violently she thought it might leap straight from her throat.
“Ariella of Forenze…”
The world stilled at his words.
Even the rustle of an insect’s wings would have been deafening in that silence.
“For now, go to the quarters prepared for you.
In due time, I will decide what shall be done.”
With a swirl of his robes, the Emperor turned away.
Alive.
She had survived.
A ragged breath tore free from her chest.
Relief washed over her until her gaze locked with another’s.
The Crown Prince.
His eyes, black as pitch, fixed upon her.
In five years, he would murder his father with brutal cruelty and crown himself Emperor.
Her body trembled from head to toe beneath the weight of that stare, yet she could not look away.
A strange expression flickered across his face, his inscrutable eyes impossible to read.
Surely not… was he smiling?
The twisted curl of his lips made her blood boil.
Rage coiled inside her, impossible to suppress.
The final moment on the guillotine flashed before her eyes.
Longer lashes than most women’s, and eyes so delicate they seemed carved for them one after another, those features came back to life in her memory.
Just like now, at this very distance, he had smiled.
Even as he bore witness to her wretched, meaningless death.
For a while, Dmitri only gazed down at her in silence, saying nothing, before disappearing inside.
Ariella collapsed to the ground where she stood.
“Princess!”
From far off, Reina’s figure rushed toward her, but Ariella’s vision kept pulling away, stretching her friend into something unreachable, as though from the other end of a dream.
Not long after, Ariella was led away by attendants to a secluded palace behind the main keep.
To reach it, one had to pass by the West Tower.
She had heard with her own ears the Emperor’s command not to imprison her there, and yet just walking past its shadow left her trembling, breath catching in her throat until she thought she might collapse dead on the spot.
“How could a place like this…”
When she finally saw the residence that had been given to her, Ariella wanted to scream with joy inside.
A victorious cry, wild and unrestrained.
But beside her, Reina wept as though the sky itself were falling.
“To think they would… give you a palace like this.”
While Ariella savoured the thrill of survival and triumph, Reina broke down in earnest, sobbing uncontrollably.
She had entered the palace of Forenze as a child servant.
Growing up at Ariella’s side, she was more sister than handmaid.
It was only natural that she became Ariella’s dedicated lady
-in-waiting.
Born the second daughter of a baron’s household, she had taken pride in her role, in serving her princess, and she had cherished Forenze as the greatest of homelands loving it with her whole heart.
And so, to see her princess treated with such indignity by the Empire… it tore Reina apart.
