Of course, Whitney and Dylan were Delmir’s longtime friends. Naturally they would take her side.

“Miss Lucian’s words are true. Delmir interfered with Elise’s marriage…”

“Hey!”

Hm? Why was Whitney suddenly taking my side? Her answer left me bewildered too, but the one most shocked appeared to be Delmir herself. She cried out and shot to her feet.

“Have you lost your mind? When did I ever do that? When?”

“Order! Order!!”

Stripped of her composed mask by her friend’s betrayal, Delmir grew agitated, and her lawyer scrambled frantically to restrain her.

“Please. Calm down. If you cause a disturbance in the courtroom…”

“Let go of me. You useless people! You didn’t even verify the testimony in advance? You put someone on the stand as a defense witness when she’s going to tell outright lies like that?”

There was no way the defense attorney had failed to verify the testimony beforehand. The lawyer with the thick glasses who had been conducting the examination was visibly breaking into a cold sweat, which made it clear this was just as unexpected to him.

Dylan’s testimony was similar to Whitney’s. She was more cautious of Delmir’s reaction than Whitney had been, but she still confirmed that my words were true.

Why had the two of them suddenly decided to take my side? Surely it wasn’t because of the oath of truth they had sworn before taking the stand.

Delmir, who had been furious at first, let out a resigned sigh when Dylan turned on her as well, and she did nothing more than fix Dylan with a sharp glare.

The courtroom erupted. From commoners to nobles, everyone poured out harsh opinions about Delmir for having ruined someone’s marriage, and the noise grew loud enough that you had to strain to hear the person beside you.

At the defense’s request, the trial recessed briefly. The judge, apparently deciding it was best to let the heated atmosphere settle, ordered a one-hour break.

A rest room had been set aside for the occasion. The lawyers huddled together, absorbed in their preparations. With nothing in particular to do, I sat quietly and sorted through my tangled thoughts.

Delmir really is a difficult person to understand.

Why would a woman who has everything ruin herself over a single obsession? She could find a fine partner without Heliones. She could spend her whole life receiving nothing but love. Why?

Is the desire to possess something really that important? What does it matter if you don’t have it?

Letting go won’t kill you. Love? What is that trivial thing worth, that she would stake her reputation on it?

Her obsession, her jealousy, all of it was beyond my comprehension. What is a petty emotion worth, that it could drive someone to such lengths?

A fairy ought to live in a fairy tale, the way a fairy should.

The hour passed quickly and the trial resumed. The hollow testimonies from the defense witnesses concluded, and the plaintiff’s witnesses took the stand. After Elise and Nelia gave their testimonies, the medical staff followed.

“She was stabbed just below an artery. Had the position been even slightly off, she would have died instantly.”

“A blood vessel was torn, and we performed major surgery. Without Lord Roned, I cannot say with confidence that the surgery would have succeeded.”

Roned was the last of the medical staff to appear. In response to repeated questions, he answered the same as those before him.

“I understand you personally performed the surgery. Do you have any separate opinion as a physician?”

Unlike with the other medical staff, the lawyer asked Roned for his own assessment. Roned lifted his red eyes briefly toward Delmir. Delmir had apparently decided to treat Roned as though he did not exist, and she averted her gaze entirely.

“I cannot say whether Miss Delmir has any medical knowledge, but the wound was precise enough to have been the work of a trained assassin. She struck directly beside an artery with a pin that was not even particularly sharp. I believe there was sufficient intent to inflict a fatal injury, even if outright intent to kill cannot be established.”

At Roned’s testimony, Delmir let out a short, incredulous laugh.

The defense had also called a medical professional to the stand, but that person had not been present in the operating room and was only a general reference witness, so the testimony carried little weight.

As expected, the trial continued to turn against Delmir. The young lawyer appeared not to have prepared thoroughly, and even the defense witnesses contradicted one another.

Around the midpoint of the trial, Duke Balthar, who had been watching his daughter’s proceedings from a specially reserved spectator’s seat with an impassive face, rose and left.

Watching her father leave the courtroom, Delmir wore an expression of deeper despair than she had shown when Whitney and Dylan testified against her, but she bit her lip and turned away.

The trial was drawing to a close without any particular reversal. The defense attorney appealed for leniency, arguing the incident had been an impulsive reaction to my having insulted Delmir, but the mood in the courtroom had already tilted too far to overturn.

Finally, Delmir and I were each given time to speak in our own defense.

“Miss Lucian damaged my honor by claiming I did something I never did, and she corrupted my witnesses, desecrating the sanctity of this court. My emotional conduct is certainly inexcusable, but I ask that you also consider how it felt to be held in contempt by the princess of an enemy nation.”

Delmir made her appeal with the most pitiable expression imaginable, but the spectators’ response was cold. She seemed hurt by that reaction and let out a faint sigh, but she quickly returned to a composed face and fixed me with a steady gaze, slowly parting her lips.

At that moment, an unidentifiable malice swelled in Delmir’s blue eyes, and I felt a chill run through me, the kind that comes from being doused with ice water.

“The former king of Rodencia, the mad king who burned Frianc soldiers like weeds, is currently in Rodencia. Yes. Lewian is alive! Do you all wish to watch me, a daughter of Frianc, be made a fool of yet again by royalty from the nation that already destroyed the Frianc Empire once before?”

Ah. So that was why she had seemed strangely calm even as the trial turned against her.

Delmir had kept her final card hidden until the very last moment and played it at the decisive instant.

The bombshell declaration that Lewian was alive threw the courtroom into chaos in an instant. The scattered looks of sympathy that had been directed at me swiftly transformed into open wariness and hostility.

Father had been a cruel ruler. One who wielded a powerful ability that had not emerged in the bloodline for generations, using it to invade neighboring nations and delight in placing their rulers beneath his feet.

Lewian, who succeeded him as emperor, inherited Father’s nature and carried on his brutal tyranny. But he lacked Father’s ability. He lacked Father’s charisma as well. He was nothing more than a petty child who happened to be born into the royal family.

When the tide of battle turned against him, Lewian reportedly used his own men as shields and fled the battlefield. I was not particularly surprised to hear it. Lewian was a child who grew boundlessly strong before the weak and who genuinely believed his own desires outweighed the rights of others.

Lewian. The only family I have left, and at the same time my enemy.

Because of you, because of your cruelty, I became a hardened realist who trusts no one. I am no longer the child who trembled and wept under your t*rture and threats.

To tell the truth, even now, simply hearing that name makes my blood run cold. But I have a reason not to crumble so easily anymore. My honor is directly tied to Elise’s honor.

In the completely reversed atmosphere, Delmir lifted her blue eyes and looked at me with an unhurried smile. I had always thought her eyes were beautiful. I had thought those clear glass-marble eyes, crafted with the precision of a master artisan, suited her porcelain-doll perfection wonderfully.

But now I know. How much vicious malice those pretty eyes hold.

I know the deep blue hostility in them that wants to shatter me to pieces on the spot, going far beyond merely stabbing me with a brooch.

Delmir is no fairy. Right. You were always like this. You were a person with feelings, someone capable of wanting, envying, and hating.

It was only because I could not understand such emotions that your reactions seemed strange to me. You were simply an ordinary person who had loved Heliones to the point of obsession and then turned that love into hatred.

A sudden wave of goosebumps rose across my entire body.

I do not know that kind of desperate emotion. If I had feelings, if I had possessed something like that, I would have ended my own life long ago. Feeling nothing, expecting nothing, living like the dead was how I survived.

Ah. People are such emotional creatures. Creatures capable of feeling not just the screams of pain or the sobs of suffering, but real emotions too.

Creatures who can love someone so deeply that they come to hate that same person this fiercely.

The voices denouncing me were growing louder, but none of it reached my ears.

At that moment, my whole body trembled, the way it might upon discovering some truth I had long forgotten.