But that too was only a temporary measure.

“Ptuh.”

Iberis spat out a mouthful of dark red blood, swept back her disheveled hair, and flopped down onto the bed sheet covered in cold frost.

“I will change the sheets, Your Majesty.”

“Never mind. It will only end up like this again, so why go to the trouble. More importantly, how is the search for the second subject of the Oracle coming along?”

“About that……”

“What. Don’t tell me there is still no progress.”

“I apologize.”

Maria’s face clouded deeply. She looked somewhat as though her pride had been wounded. At the sight of it, Iberis, who had been sprawled out, pulled one corner of her lips up in amusement.

More interesting than the pain was the matter of the Oracle’s subjects.

Daring to evade the eyes of the imperial household?

“This is quite amusing. I am dying of curiosity as to who dares hide themselves from the intelligence of the imperial household.”

“This is no time for jokes. If we fail to find the second man of the Oracle within the allotted time……”

“Then that too is fate.”

“Your Majesty!”

Despite her words, Iberis’s heart was anxious as well. If it came to that, something truly dreadful would unfold. She might not know the details, but surely there was good reason the Oracle had given a week’s time for each person and told her to find them.

“There is no time.”

She had prepared a contract that would silence whoever the person was and secure their cooperation, just as she had done with the Grand Duke.

Iberis wiped roughly at her bloodstained lips and rose from her seat.

The floor kept freezing over and getting in the way, so she kicked off her shoes, and the sound of bare feet padding against the floor followed her in soft steps.

“Maria.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Command me.”

“I have been thinking of the Grand Duke’s case and have come up with a hypothesis.”

“Yes. What is it?”

“The conditions for the subjects.”

The Oracle. And the curse.

Why, out of so many others, had the Grand Duke been the first person capable of resolving this curse that no method had been able to fix?

Because he was a high-ranking noble who had inherited a powerful bloodline? Or because he was someone who could not let go of his desire to kill Iberis, and thought of her intensely any number of times a day?

Or perhaps.

“You know it too, don’t you? That there are not many who have been of great help in preserving this damned life of mine. No, very few.”

“That is……”

Maria looked as though she did not know what expression to make and seemed at a loss, but she did not deny what Iberis had said.

“Curses by nature require a strong feeling to accompany them. Whether that be affection or hatred. What if such an emotion is also necessary for the remedy.”

Iberis’s life had been that impoverished in that regard.

“If the Oracle has connected those few threads.”

“Then that would mean.”

“There are a handful of people, are there not?”

Born a princess, yet she had not been loved, and had not lived in comfort despite her high station. There had been happy times, of course, but those memories felt distant and hazy, because the time after the Empress Dowager appeared in the imperial household had been so dreadful.

“They say I gained great power and my life turned around, but before that, was it not that miserable. And there were those who extended a hand to me in times like those.”

Iberis clenched her pale hand. Even now she could freeze the entire imperial capital if she set her mind to it.

“If the remedy is connected to people like that, then what? Would the scope of the search not narrow considerably?”

“But, Your Majesty.”

“I know. It is only a hypothesis.”

It was after she had confirmed the wretched submission and loyalty that came in return for great power, yet her chest was hollow. Iberis called to mind the faces that drifted through her thoughts.

Elizabeth, who had died because of her.

Her teacher Behil, who had once helped her with everything he had, but afterward had to lose half his divine power as punishment for becoming too deeply entangled in worldly affairs.

The Grand Duke, who had spared the princess out of a passing young infatuation, only to lose his younger sister.

And who else was there?

Yes, there had been a time she had nearly died from poison. There was another person she remembered as vividly as a single painting, because the appearance of the one who had saved her while she hovered at death’s door had been so distinctly unusual.

The Oracle’s conditions. The subjects.

Those who had to hold Iberis.

Her red lips twisted.

‘If my guess is correct.’

Those silver eyes, like ice, gleamed coldly. It was not a particularly pleasant feeling. It was something like the feeling of having her not-so-short life dug up and laid bare by a god. Did it think that because she had received grace from such people, spreading her legs for them would be easier?

“The god has done a rather wicked thing. I always thought so, even when I was being driven out miserably. Quite cruel. I still don’t like it.”

“…… Your Majesty.”

“Maria. Starting now, use the information I give you to find a man. And whether that information matches the subject of the Oracle…… confirm that first and foremost.”

If it was a match.

‘It will be a wretched reunion.’

Haa. With a deep breath, those lips, vivid red as flower petals even in the cold, parted softly.

* * *

“Quite the difficult person to catch a glimpse of……”

Kaian leaned his back against a plush chair, feeling somehow isolated and adrift in the silent manor. His reason for going around digging up information about the imperial household was not for any other purpose.

“An old lingering attachment.”

Truly a lingering attachment. The other party didn’t know and didn’t remember, yet here he was, clinging to what could only be called a thread of hope.

In truth, given his circumstances, there was no real reason to go out of his way to worry about someone who had become the great emperor, but she.

No, that girl.

‘The only person I let live without killing.’

That was the extent of their connection. But to Kaian it held great meaning.

Because his two hands were so thoroughly stained and filthy with clinging blood and the deaths of others.

Who could have known that one memory, that one act of deviation, would become the hope that kept him going?

He did have to worry about assassination and poisoning, but that was why he would check in on the emperor from time to time, surrounded as she was by countless attendants.

The Snow Princess.

Because back when she was young and vulnerable, Kaian, who was nothing more than an assassin, had once spared that noble girl’s life.

“Not even funny.”

The man who had cast aside the smiling expression he had worn at the daytime banquet was still beautiful, but gave off an entirely different air.

Something like a single blade honed sharp and bleak, with the faint smell of blood about it.

“Ha.”

The man who had closed his eyes as though about to fall asleep furrowed his brow roughly. The familiar pain was coming again. Once a month, the shackle of a frame he could not escape without accepting a commission.

If he did not drink the temporary remedy passed down only when he had succeeded in a kill within the assassin’s guild he belonged to, from the moment the seizure began until it stopped, he had to endure the continuous pain of living flesh being torn apart.

And that was not the end of it. If the seizures exceeded five times, he would bleed from every opening in his body and die. How many comrades had he lost that way.

“I’m sick of it.”

There had been a time when he had wanted to live by any means necessary. Survival had been the only thing driving him.

Kaian had been kidnapped as a child due to the manifestation of a special bloodline. Separated from his parents overnight, he had endured by sheer stubbornness through being thrown around inside the assassination guild until he survived.

But when he later found his parents, he learned that the assassination guild had killed them to silence them. Regret and grief, and endless thirst for revenge.

What followed was a wretched time. Even as his freedom was suppressed and he was dragged around on a leash, he had vowed that one day he would have his revenge. That he would rise to the highest position, cut off the head of the guild master, and win his freedom.

But even having become the finest assassin, he was still a dog caught by the guild. He had not cut off the guild master’s head.

By day he showed his face at noble banquets as the adopted son of a marquis who played the role of a kind father, and by night he carried out brutal killings on that man’s orders.

Even that had reached its limit, and he had taken a year of rest, but in the end the order to return had come down.

Something about the atmosphere in the imperial household being unusual.

And yet, there had been one moment when that blood-soaked assassin living that kind of life had committed the only act of deviation in his existence.

Because of the Snow Princess.

‘Poison the princess.’

He had received an assassination commission as usual. A fairly easy one. Poison the runaway member of the imperial household, the princess.

An awakened member of the imperial bloodline was one thing, but poisoning a princess who had not yet awakened her power was nothing. One dart, or approach in disguise and feed her poisoned food. Done.

And so he had used the latter method.

Since he found it distasteful to get blood directly on his hands, he put poison in an apple, and after the hungry princess and her companions, who had been driven out and were starving, ate it in a rush and collapsed, he waited in the darkness.

When the princess and the young knight who had been persistently following and protecting her had both collapsed, he revealed himself.

‘…… Don’t resent me for this.’

It was a small back. He raised his sword over that back with a flash. But when she stirred with a faint groan and turned, and he saw the face that was revealed. He flinched.

‘…… D*mn it.’

Kaian could not kill the girl.

Because it was a face he knew.

‘Why is it you?’

Fate was truly capricious. A hollow laugh escaped him. Of all people, it was that girl. The girl who had saved him on a day when a clumsy assassination attempt had nearly gotten him killed and driven out instead.