“It isn’t your fault, Miss Elise.”

“?”

So now I had to confess. That I was not quite the blameless victim either.

“I knew. I knew that Delmir had ruined Miss Elise’s marriage.”

“?”

Elise lifted her green eyes, still brimming with tears, and looked at me.

“About three years ago, not long after Miss Elise’s engagement was broken off, I heard Delmir speaking at a social gathering held at her home. I felt sorry when I heard it, but that was all. I forgot about it soon after.”

Right. I remember how things grew chaotic not long after that, when Father passed away and the international situation turned urgent. I was exhausted from living day to day on a knife’s edge, unable to predict what tomorrow would bring.

But those were all my own circumstances. Nothing but excuses.

“Delmir was running a public opinion campaign, linking me to His Majesty the Emperor. I wanted to take revenge on Delmir without dirtying my own hands, and that was when I happened to meet Miss Elise. So I decided to use her.”

With my flat confession, the tears in Elise’s eyes gradually dried.

“That is the kind of person I am. Everything that happened to me was my own doing.”

Elise’s hand slipped away from mine.

My heart ached at the loss of that warmth, but I had no desire to show her my feelings and stir her sympathy. So I bowed my head as calmly as I could manage.

“I’m sorry. I should have spoken up about what I heard three years ago, but it’s too late now. I’m truly sorry for dragging Miss Elise into my selfish plans.”

Perhaps my stepmother had seen through to my true nature all along. It seems I really am someone who doesn’t deserve to be loved.

I am so ugly, so weak, so wicked. Of course everyone turns away from me.

I could not bring myself to raise my head, so I kept it bowed and waited for Elise’s response. Elise said nothing for a long while. All I could hear was her breathing, slightly uneven, as though she were steadying herself.

“Why did you change your mind? You said you didn’t want to dirty your own hands.”

After a long silence, Elise asked in a voice touched with sadness.

Why did I? Why had I changed my mind?

Right. Admiration. Even after everything she had been through, Elise had remained composed and steady in a way I could not match, and I had felt genuine admiration for her.

“Because I respect Miss Elise, and I like her.”

I did not want to lie, not even now. I laid my heart bare honestly.

“I see.”

After a brief pause, Elise continued in a voice slightly lighter than before.

“If the situation had been reversed three years ago, I would have acted the same way Miss Lucian did.”

“?”

“Every time you attended a social event, you heard insults without a single day’s reprieve. Especially after Rodencia’s situation grew unstable, there were many who openly looked down on you right to your face. Each time, I watched you turn your gaze away, resigned. I pitied your situation for a moment, stuck in the middle of enemy territory because of a political marriage, but that was all. I forgot about it quickly.”

Elise took a deep breath. She shook her head once, as though shaking everything off, then took my hand again.

“That’s just how it was. Back then I looked away from you, but if someone were to insult you that way right in front of me now, I wouldn’t stay quiet. Something like that.”

How could the humiliations I suffered as a princess of an enemy nation be compared to a broken engagement over a hairdresser?

These were not things that could be bundled together under something like that.

“But.”

Right, there had to be a but. I had tried to use Miss Elise. It couldn’t be the same.

“I wouldn’t risk my life over guilt that small. I’m not that selfless.”

My life? Was that something important? To someone like me, who wouldn’t mind dying at any moment, it wasn’t much of anything.

“I feel sorry toward Miss Lucian, and Miss Lucian feels sorry toward me, so let’s just let it go. Though I’m still the one who’s far more apologetic.”

Elise smiled brightly at me. The tears clinging to the corners of her eyes sparkled like clear morning dew on a flower petal. I felt wonder and unease at the same time, watching that fleeting beauty that would vanish the moment the sun rose.

Will she keep liking me? Does she still think of me as a friend?

The moisture at the corners of Elise’s eyes dried away before long. But the warmth wrapped around my hand lingered long after, warming my anxious heart.

A few days later, the trial began.

It was nothing more than an ordinary *ssault case, yet the courtroom was already packed with spectators. People who had not managed to get inside had even taken up spots near the courthouse to hear news in real time.

It felt like too much. Delmir’s actions were certainly excessive violence, but it was a simple *ssault born from a moment of anger. Honestly, if the parties involved had not been Delmir and me, the Emperor’s former wife, it would not have merited a single line in the newspaper.

The unexpected level of attention made me uneasy, and I did my best to keep a composed expression as I took my seat at the plaintiff’s stand, which had been specially fitted with a cushioned chair for my condition as a patient.

This is too much, too. It’s not as though she stabbed me in the backside.

‘Is that woman His Majesty’s former wife? She’s far more striking than her portrait.’

‘She’s Rodencian royalty. They’re famously beautiful and famously unhinged, aren’t they?’

‘Generations of inbreeding, they say. Plenty of madness comes out of that.’

Once I sat down, whispers from behind began reaching my ears one by one.

I had no idea whether I was particularly striking, but it was true that inbreeding had been common among Rodencian royalty, and neither Father nor Lewian could be called entirely sound of mind, so the words were not entirely wrong. I simply bore my share of gossip in silence.

‘Looks aren’t everything, I suppose? Look at that young lady over there. She has the face of someone who couldn’t hurt a fly.’

‘Exactly. They say she’s usually well-mannered and cheerful, and she stabbed someone with a brooch?’

‘It’s no secret the young lady was infatuated with His Majesty. Jealous of the ex-wife, apparently.’

Mixed in among the whispers were comments about Delmir, the defendant who had caused all of this. The nobles kept their words guarded, but ordinary people with nothing to lose were expressing blunt curiosity about the young noblewoman who had drawn blood with such a pretty face.

I slipped my gaze in among the passing glances and stole a look at Delmir.

The whispers must have reached her ears too, but she sat with a composure that surprised me. Her long hair fell neatly down, her clothes were plain, her face bare of makeup, and her expression carried a faint air of sorrow.

Plain as her appearance was, her natural beauty still made her the most striking person in the courtroom, and that forlorn look made her seem less like the defendant and more like the plaintiff.

She certainly knows how to use her looks. It just didn’t work on Heliones.

“The trial for the *ssault committed by defendant Lady Delmir… will now begin.”

Once the observer, Emperor Heliones, had taken his seat, the judge announced the start of proceedings. Heliones, dressed in a simple dark navy frock coat, sat at the head of the room with an expressionless face, looking down on everyone in the courtroom with equal impartiality. He had helped diligently with the trial preparations, but that blank expression told me he was attending strictly in his role as observer.

Right. Even for a case like this, especially one involving his former wife, it wouldn’t do for the Emperor to be too forward. That would not play well with public opinion.

The testimonies of those who had attended the ball came first.

With so many eyewitnesses, even the defense attorney conceded the basic fact that Delmir had attacked me unprovoked.

The key witness testimonies followed. Whitney and Dylan appeared as witnesses for Delmir’s side.

“It has been claimed that the plaintiff first made provocative remarks that damaged your client’s honor. Did you hear anything to that effect?”

At the lawyer’s question, Whitney glanced briefly at Delmir and nodded.

“Yes. There was an argument.”

“What was the argument about?”

“Miss Lucian said she would stake her life on the claim that Delmir had interfered with Miss Elise’s marriage three years ago.”

“Then are you saying Miss Lucian fabricated a false story to damage Miss Delmir’s honor first?”

There it was. Elise’s name. I had known it would come up at some point during the trial, but hearing her name spoken aloud made my stomach drop.

If Whitney and Dylan, who had both been present during the exchange with Delmir, testified from the witness stand that everything I said was a lie, my credibility would take a serious blow.

And if that happened, it would be no help to Elise either, whose name kept coming up.