Rustle, rustle.

Someone was brushing my hair back.

I slowly opened my eyes.

At dawn, after I confessed the truth to Grandpa and insisted that I had to go south, maybe my tension had finally snapped, because my condition had taken a sharp turn for the worse.

In the end, it seemed I had taken the strong medicine Borbel made and fallen asleep.

So I can still sleep, even in a situation like this.

Thinking that was a little absurd, I looked through the darkness at the figure sitting beside my bed.

“......Mom?”

Her hand froze.

“Oh my. You’re awake? What do I do? Borbel warned me over and over not to wake you.”

When I tried to sit up, Mom pulled the blanket higher, as if telling me to stay lying down.

“When did you get here?”

“A little while ago. This morning.”

There was a bandage wrapped around the fingertips that touched my forehead. I fiddled with it.

“Did you hurt your hand? But....... Why is the room so dark? Is it afternoon?”

Then something soft settled against my forehead.

“Yes. I told them not to draw the curtains. Our Ruby needs to sleep deeply. Otherwise, Borbel looked like he might kill me.”

“Huh. That blowhard miracle doctor Borbel.......”

“Exactly.”

Mom seemed to laugh faintly. A gentle hand patted the thick blanket, pat, pat.

“Go back to sleep now.”

“Mom....... More importantly, I have something to tell you.”

I swallowed against my dry throat and tried to raise myself a little. But she stopped me again.

“Mmm, no. Not now. Later.”

“No, this is really important.......”

“Oh, this won’t do. I’ll have to put you back to sleep. My daughter’s eyes have gone wide awake.”

I could not see Mom’s face at all, but she spoke as if she could see mine perfectly.

The blanket was suddenly lifted, and as Mom slipped in beside me, a strange smell of soil came from her body.

“You said you were all grown up, but you’re still nothing but a baby.”

Her hands patted my whole body.

“Then again. To Mom, Ruby will always be a little girl.”

“.......”

“What happened to you? Look how much weight you’ve lost. If you weren’t feeling well, you shouldn’t have rushed. You’re nothing but bones.”

“Mom.......”

Buried in that warm, soft embrace, I rolled only my eyes. Mom’s heart, pressed against my cheek, was pounding like mad.

“Did you.......”

My voice cracked slightly. Because I had felt an odd sense of wrongness for a while now.

Why was Mom here?

How had she hurt her hand? And what was this smell of soil?

“Did you meet Princess Sebelena in the capital? Did the princess... tell you something?”

At that instant, Mom’s hand stopped completely, and a heavy silence fell.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“She told you.......”

Mom had sharp instincts. She must have checked the grave and come to find me.......

“First, I’ll explain everything I know up to now.......”

“Yes. But in a little while.”

Mom hugged me tightly.

“Right now, let’s just sleep a little.”

Along with her weary voice, the patting hand began again. The motion was as if she were soothing a baby in her arms.......

I started to say something more, but in the end I just clutched Mom’s clothes tightly and buried my face in her embrace.

Mom drew in a deep breath and let it out.

“Ruby, my baby.......”

“.......”

“I’m sorry.”

Her voice came out threaded with tears.

“I’m sorry Mom lost you.......”

A familiar scent surrounded me. The scent I had always wanted to return to, the nostalgic scent of the arms that held me.

I called out to her aloud.

Mom.

Then a choked answer came back.

And once I realized Mom was there, I finally burst into tears.

*****

That evening.

I.......

Maybe I actually had nerves of steel.

“Wow.”

When I looked outside, where darkness had already fallen, a hollow breath slipped out of me.

I slept again.

On top of that, when I woke up, I was even hungry, so I emptied an entire bowl of soup.

So food still goes down, even when something like this happens.

Or maybe once I accepted it, my head had cleared a little.

“Of course. No matter what happens, eating well and sleeping well are important. It makes your thoughts clearer.”

“Oh, did I...... say that out loud?”

“We are now completely connected, daughter.”

Mom lightly tapped my nose.

“It’s written all over your face.”

Mom laughed lightly, but all the tiny blood vessels in her eyes had burst, staining them red.

The storm of truth had passed, and it had left truly enormous marks behind.

But after a storm, silence inevitably came. There was no pain that lasted forever, and what remained was how to deal with the traces left behind.

As if she knew that fact better than anyone, Mom briskly shook herself off and stood up.

Good.

I followed Mom’s lead and braced my heart briskly too.

Mom is right about everything.

After sleeping and waking up, I really did feel much better.

Now that my head was clear, I could see all over again just how badly I had been panicking.

Of course, there was still something pressing heavily on my heart.

Dad.......

Because I had to tell Dad this truth too.

As I hesitated, wondering whether to put my hand to my earlobe, Mom gently held my hand.

She must have been thinking something similar.

“Ruby, let’s take this step by step first. As for Leviathan....... I think it would be better for Mom and you to talk to him in person after we organize the situation a little.”

I nodded.

Because I thought I knew the hidden meaning behind her words that we should talk to him in person.

If Dad hears this, there’s no telling what he’ll do alone.......

In his rage, he might cross the sea all by himself. Right now, Dad was the one closest to the Magic Kingdom. Even for Dad, that would be extremely dangerous.

Besides, right now, discussing the situation with the family here came first.

Right. One thing at a time.

I washed up lightly and went down to the drawing room.

In the warmly heated drawing room were Grandpa and Boyd, both wearing stiff expressions.

I hugged them in turn, then sat down.

And slowly, I explained everything, from my meeting with Princess Sebelena to what had happened in the lake.

Of course, I also heard about what had happened afterward at the Imperial Palace while I was asleep.

Licht.......

They said the Fourth Prince had become a completely different person.

Even while vomiting blood over and over from the poison’s aftereffects, he was storming through the entire Imperial Palace, utterly determined to send the First Prince not to a place of exile, but to the executioner’s block.

The prince’s momentum was like a blizzard, enough to silence the nobles who had defended the First Prince and even make the Emperor click his tongue.

Unless it’s treason, killing a member of the Imperial family won’t be easy.

I was a little worried about Licht.

But there was nothing I could do right now....... In any case, I had to focus on what was in front of me.

“Ruby, will you tell us your theory?”

As if breaking through my thoughts, Mom spoke.

“How the Mage King could have... dug up that grave.”

I set down the warm mug in my hands.

“Until now, I didn’t know what the scar on my side was.”

“.......”

“But if, like this incident in the south, the Mage King deliberately released magical beasts, and if I got this scar while he was stealing my body in the middle of the chaos.......”

“Hoooo. Wounds from magical beasts...... don’t heal easily...... no.”

Grandpa, who had been trembling, spat the words out as if chewing them apart.

Then Boyd roughly wiped around his eyes and cautiously cut in.

“But, Ruby. You know this too.”

“Yeah.”

“Magical beasts can’t be controlled by human will. Unless they’re dark creatures controlled by dark magic.......”

Thinking that this was exactly the sort of thing Liam would have said if he were here, I nodded.

“I know. But...... there is magic that controls familiars.”

“Familiar-binding magic?”

“Yeah. Of course, generally, it only holds an animal’s soul temporarily.”

“You’re saying... that magic can be used on magical beasts too?”

It was Mom who asked.

I picked at the tips of my fingers and nodded.

“Yes. But I heard that if someone did that, their magic would be contaminated. They’d have to suffer eternal pain, as if cursed....... If it went wrong, they might end up carrying the magical beast’s magic and get devoured by magical beasts instead.”

“I’ve heard this before.”

Boyd spoke.

Because our family had ended up raising not one but two little mages, the people in our house were fairly knowledgeable about magic for citizens of the Empire.

“Isn’t that the magic Khal uses? If Khal was involved in that incident.......”

“It wasn’t Khal.”

I cut him off flatly.

“Khal would have practically been a child then too. Common sense says it’s impossible.”

Unless Khal had some other secret I did not know about.

“Ah....... Right.”

I drank the warmed milk in my mug and opened my mouth again.

“There are empty numbers among the Mage King’s children.”

“Empty...... numbers?”

“The first, the second, the fourth, and me. The seventh.”

My fingers folded down one by one.

At the part where I said “the seventh,” {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} Mom and Grandpa squeezed their eyes shut.

“I don’t know about the other numbers, but the positions of the third and the fifth were empty.”

“......Which means.”

“There’s a high chance that eighteen years ago, he made them cast magic to bind magical beasts, then killed them once they carried contaminated magic.”

Back then, the Mage King had still been pretending to be good.

That was when he was pretending to be a gentle person, practically rubbing his palms like a sycophant before the whole continent.......

He would not have left evidence of corrupt magic behind.

This time, I turned my body toward Mom.

“Mom, tell me about the carriage accident again. In detail.”

Mom nodded and began to speak.