Deep in thought, Ella looked to her side.

Molly, meeting her eyes, clasped both hands together as if in prayer and waited for Ella to speak.

Watching the reverence in Molly’s eyes, Ella took her hands.

“Molly. Everything I’m about to tell you is the will of Solea.”

“Yes. As Solea wills it.”

“But it must not be spoken of to anyone. Can you keep the secret…… can you do that?”

Ella intended to use Molly’s faith.

She had decided to use whatever means necessary to make her a trusted ally, and exploiting a little faith was nothing to Ella.

“You may even need to risk your life.”

“……Yes. Miss Mariella!”

Molly nodded with the solemn expression of a knight about to ride into battle.

“Tonight, I must go to the Hooly Forest. I have received the chief god’s calling.”

“Oh, Solea.”

Molly made the sign of blessing and pressed her clasped hands to her lips.

“But no one must know of this. Not even the High Priest. Solea has commanded it so, and even I do not yet know the reason, not until the divine oracle is received.”

“Tell me. Even if a blade were at my throat, I would not speak a word.”

Ella drew close to her.

“What I need you to do is……”

***

Two hours later, Ella faced Capuasia in the high priest’s office.

He stood before a platinum statue of the chief god Solea, wearing a benevolent smile.

“Miss Mariella.”

“High Priest.”

His long white hair fell loose around him, and his face was young and beautiful. His holy power was strong enough to slow his aging, so he looked no older than a man just past thirty. No one knew his exact age.

“So I hear you attended the Orpen duchy banquet today.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

The Grand Temple that had turned a cold shoulder every time Marian reached out for help. The temple that had built its reputation on her holy power and yet looked the other way through all of Marian’s suffering.

On top of that, this was the very man who had tried to strip Marian of her remaining holy power before her execution. Ella despised him as much as she despised anyone in the imperial family.

Capuasia steeped tea leaves in a milky white teapot and spoke.

“How was the banquet?”

“I was a little nervous, since it was my first time attending.”

“My, is that so. Come to think of it, your color does look poor.”

“Ah…… well……”

Before coming here, Ella had soaked in a bath infused with herbs.

It was an herb that Molly, as a novice priest, could easily obtain from the medicine room.

Liliyasto leaves.

This was a forbidden herb that senior priests were required to avoid.

Called the ‘god’s tear flower,’ when the dried and powdered leaves were used as a bath additive, they helped lower-ranking priests and clergy strengthen their holy power.

For that reason, they were commonly found in the novice clergy’s bathrooms.

But for senior priests, they caused side effects that disrupted the purification of holy power within the body.

Not even sacred healing ability could remedy it.

The only cure was to soak in the ‘Purification Spring’ within the Hooly Forest for a set period of time.

“It seems the novice priest who attended me in place of Priestess Doris made a small mistake.”

“A mistake?”

Ella tightened the hand she had curled into a fist.

She measured her breathing carefully so that nothing worse would slip out.

“She confused the Liliyasto leaves with another herb and dissolved them into my bath. I didn’t know, so I was in the water for well over an hour.”

Capuasia paused mid-motion, teacup halfway to his lips.

“What is this novice priest’s name? This is not a mistake that can simply be overlooked.”

“Priestess Molly. I’m told she has already entered the Chamber of Silence on her own accord.”

Ella had already sent her there herself.

It was the place priests and clergy entered when they had committed a fault or wished to punish themselves, no different from a prison cell. They were confined there for anywhere from a full day to two weeks, in a room where no light entered, permitted only to pray.

No eating freely, no sleeping freely, no seeing anyone.

Still, it was considered one of the lighter punishments.

The Bailia Grand Temple’s punishment room, with its strict rules, was located underground, and the cruelties carried out there were hard to believe for a place that claimed to spread the love of the divine.

She couldn’t send Molly there.

This was the best Ella could do. It was the only way to shield her from Capuasia’s punishment.

“It was a young priest’s mistake. I intend to let it end here.”

At her conclusion, Capuasia offered no particular objection. He simply blew once on the steam rising from his teacup.

A brief silence fell, and Capuasia set his cup down with a slow, deliberate motion.

“If it was Liliyasto leaves, that would explain the instability I’m sensing in your holy power right now.”

As expected, he had been monitoring the saintess‘s condition closely.

Holy power in particular was the most sensitive matter to Capuasia. Given that he had gone so far as to shed his saintly mask before Marian’s death just to get his hands on it, he would only grow more relentless going forward.

‘I need to make a plan.’

On top of that, she needed to leave the Grand Temple as soon as possible.

Ella let a pained look show on her face and spoke.

“……So I believe I must go to the Hooly Forest.”

“You mean the Purification Spring.”

“Yes. My condition is not good, so I intend to leave now.”

Capuasia studied Ella with a worried expression and nodded.

“I understand. I sense it is serious as well, so that would be best.”

“Thank you.”

Ella dipped into a slight curtsy.

She was about to turn and leave when Capuasia’s voice caught her steps again.

“Going there alone at this hour of night would be too much……”

“……”

“I’ll assign someone to accompany you.”

Ella turned back around.

Capuasia’s eyes curved as they met hers.

“Please go with Sir Moore, the commander of the Holy Knight Order.”

***

Holy Knight Order commander Spern Moore followed behind Ella with two knights in tow.

Acting on Capuasia’s orders, Spern kept his distance but never fell more than three steps behind.

The closer they drew to the Purification Spring, the more anxious Ella became.

‘Haven wouldn’t have come out this far, would he?’

At this rate, Haven’s presence in the cave would be discovered.

At the entrance to the Purification Spring, Ella finally turned around.

“Wait here.”

“Miss Mariella, the High Priest has ordered close escort. You cannot go alone.”

Spern bowed respectfully and yet refused to follow her instruction.

‘He treated Marian the same way.’

Good-natured Marian would have simply accepted it. The thought made something surge with sudden fury inside her.

“We are within the chief god’s embrace. Is there anything here that could threaten me?”

Even though the saintess‘s word carried the same authority as the high priest’s, Spern was subtly dismissing her. Born a mid-ranking noble in the rigidly class-conscious Becarto Empire, he was one who found a saintess of common birth difficult to accept, however strong her holy power.

For the same reason as Priestess Doris, Spern had a duty to protect the saintess and yet consistently failed to fulfill it. He was nothing more than Capuasia’s dog, always watching for a chance to get his hands on Marian’s holy power.

‘Truly, everywhere I look, nothing but rotten people.’

Ella was sick to her core of this Becarto Empire.

“This is the matter of purifying myself at the Purification Spring.”

Ella lifted her chin slightly and looked down at him with cold eyes.

“However, the High Priest……”

“Sir Moore.”

Ella cut in sharply.

She held his gaze as he fell silent and continued.

“Saintess or not, I am also the crown princess designate. I am well aware that I should not expose my wet body carelessly.”

“……”

“As a man of noble birth, you would know better than anyone what charges might be brought against someone who laid eyes on the crown princess‘s wet body.”

“……”

There was no rebuttal to any of it.

The crime of insulting the imperial family was established the moment the imperial party in question felt humiliated, so what Ella had said applied here as well.

Spern clenched his jaw and bowed his head.

“I will guard the entrance. No further than that.”

Ella didn’t answer. She simply turned and began walking toward the spring.

She would need to make it sound like she had gone in.

‘I’ll make a brief show of it and then go to the cave.’

Spern wouldn’t follow her inside anyway.

***

Late at night, when the moonlight had faded.

Haven was standing outside the cave.

He was watching the darkness beyond the forest, waiting for Ella.

“It should be about time by now……”

Perhaps because he had been waiting with the thought of a final farewell in mind, his heart had been unsettled all day with feelings he couldn’t name.