When the recess drew to a close and everyone returned, they each wore entirely different expressions as their gazes fell upon the treaty placed between Prince Collins and me. Senior Pello stared fixedly at the prince’s signature, Korkel and Trichel froze in place, and Celine nearly tripped the moment she stepped inside. Watching her eyes round into huge saucers, I turned to Prince Collins and spoke in a sweet, gentle tone.
“With this, may the alliance between Sierra and Winchester endure forever.”
Naturally, it would. Sierra was surrendering its military authority, its trade privileges, and an enormous indemnity. Sierra in name only; in truth, it was brought completely under Winchester’s subjugation. My words held not a shred of untruth.
Stepping back into the room, Duke Prodiad’s face was even more set in stone than when he had stepped out. I assumed on my own that he must have overheard my exchange with Prince Collins.
I had met countless knights in my time, and their senses were far keener than those of ordinary men. Perhaps he—
Regardless, I was so thoroughly delighted that I pulled out a pen from my breast pocket, penned my name, and pressed down my seal imbued with the Contract Validity Confirmation spell.
The moment my seal struck the parchment, Grand Duke Closer looked at us as though he might faint on the spot, but I drank in even that expression with unadulterated glee. As if proclaiming the treaty took immediate effect, a faint light glimmered from the imprint before dimming into quiet stillness. Now, even if they wished to overturn it, there was no going back.
And so, before everyone’s eyes, the negotiation—no, the extortion—reached its conclusion.
After Grand Duke Closer stalked out of the room with a face that looked as though someone had crammed garbage into his mouth, silence lingered in the air. Then Celine, who was leaning on Korkel for support, trembled as she opened her mouth.
“Did… did we really just sign that?”
Moisture welled in her pink eyes. Having toiled for nearly a month, it was only natural for her to be overwhelmed. In response to her question, I—
“Everything we wanted?”
“Even the two million gold?”
“Of course. Though it is in installments.”
“Waaaah… u-uuugh… sniff… waaah!”
At my confirmation, Celine, who had been trembling while staring blankly at the treaty, burst into a sudden, bawling fit of tears and running snot. Yet for all her loud wailing, her eyes were crinkling in delight, leading Senior Pello and Senior Trichel to watch her fondly as if enjoying the antics of a child. As Korkel chuckled and handed her a handkerchief, Celine sniffled and pushed through her tears.
“Hic… sniff. I thought it was hopeless… What if we failed? If we failed… waaah… I felt so guilty toward the country… hic.”
“Goodness, even if we failed, Scarlett would have taken the blame. No one was going to scold you.”
“T-That’s just it… waaah! Lady Scarlett put me in that seat, even though people said, hic, that they shouldn’t put me there… waaah, but she put me there anyway…”
“There, there. Our youngest had a hard time, didn’t she?”
“It’s fine. You did wonderfully. Didn’t you see Grand Duke Closer storm out with his face in knots? You glared at him so fiercely. If glares were daggers, Grand Duke Closer would be dead by now.”
“Waaah—thank you, Lady Scarlett!” As Celine let out another chorus of gratitude and looked up at me, I cracked a smirk, finding her both admirable and deeply amusing.
Celine was barely twenty. The memory of when she was assigned under me right after graduating from the Academy remained vivid in my mind. Even then, she had never once cried, diligently following every instruction. Even when tears pooled in her eyes, she would bite down on her lip and listen to my words to the very end.
She was lovely. Celine truly was lovely in that way.
I liked her tenacity. I loved seeing her follow closely on my heels, peppering me with questions. Perhaps I saw a reflection of myself in Celine.
Watching Celine gradually calm down, I turned my head. Duke Prodiad was standing quietly behind me. I began to smile at him, only to freeze. Huh? What was this?
Over the past few days conversing with him, while I had not grown fond of him, he had ceased to make me feel uncomfortable. Having reached the point where seeing him no longer reminded me of Isabel, looking at him had become trivial. Yet the way he looked right now was identical to the stare he had given me the very first day we met, leaving me blinking in an awkward daze.
Then Duke Prodiad broke the silence.
“Lady Dirnant.”
“Y-Yes?”
Whoa, did I just stammer?
Whatever courage I had shown when cornering Prince Collins seemed to have vanished completely; I was terrified, like a mouse cornered by a cat. His exceedingly deep voice sounded lovely, yet there were times it was terrifying, and without a doubt, right now was the most terrifying of all.
“Might I request a moment of your time to speak?”
The instant I saw his chilling expression, I immediately deduced what he wanted to say. Had I known this would happen, I would have told him to stay a hundred meters away. Cursing the poorly soundproofed negotiation room and his razor-sharp hearing, I followed him out.
Stepping out of the negotiation hall, he walked a little ways before coming to a halt by a window bathed in warm sunlight. Looking blankly at the sunbeams glinting against his pitch-black hair, I snapped out of my daze when his familiar voice rang out. Wait, hold on. This isn't right. Aren’t I here to be scolded?
“My Lady.”
“Were you aware of the assassination plot?”
Whoa, coming straight at me without wasting a second.
There was no pleasant padding. Pushed on the defensive by his crisp, knightly straightforwardness, I bit my lip lightly. How should I answer? Play dumb? No, he had heard everything for that to work. I had babbled away about the Lord of Sorel and everything else, all on my own. Resigned, I replied.
“Well… roughly?”
“And yet you chose not to tell me.”
“Yes, because I thought I could handle it myself—”
Wait, why was I making excuses to him? Astonished by my uncharacteristic behavior, I shut my mouth. It was true that failing to inform him had been my mistake—a very deliberate one, of course.
Yet why did I need to make excuses? How much did he actually know? What on earth was I offering justifications for right now? Intimidated by his menacing aura, I had momentarily forgotten: I was the Lead Envoy of this delegation. That meant any measure taken to secure the negotiation, and any consequence that followed, were mine to decide and mine to shoulder.
And I had shouldered that outcome splendidly.
After hesitating, I shifted my gaze and looked straight into his eyes. Seeing my reflection in his reddish-brown pupils, I spoke in a quiet, composed voice.
“The Lord of Sorel betrayed us. I discovered it, and I anticipated an assassination attempt. Then I took advantage of it to win every term of this negotiation. That is all there is to it.”
Yes, I might as well admit it. Now that every objective had been secured, there was no reason to hide it. I calmly met his gaze.
Duke Prodiad’s expression was exceedingly strange. To such an extent that even I, adept as I was at reading faces, could not decipher what his expression meant; it brimmed with something incomprehensible—neither purely anger nor sorrow.
Wait, is he speaking to me?
“Because it was necessary.”
My answer was brief and matter-of-fact. Why else would I have done it? Because it was necessary.
In truth, when this negotiation was first set in motion, I was not the Lead Envoy. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was one of the royal court’s most scrutinized departments, simply because it was no exaggeration to say the kingdom’s greatest talents were gathered there; it was a veritable nest of geniuses.
The person originally chosen to lead this mission was not me, but Matilla Clark, who went by a collection of dazzling titles: Genius of Negotiation, Conqueror of the Table, Queen of Diplomacy, and more. She had rooted herself in the Ministry ten years before I ever joined, boasting a negotiating record so brilliant that comparing myself to her was downright embarrassing. It had been only natural for such a figure to be named Lead Envoy for a summit of this magnitude.
Yet upon learning she had been selected, she had recommended me to His Majesty the King.
“I assure you, Scarlett Dirnant will do far better than I.”
Hearing that I had received the backing of the Queen of Diplomacy—a woman who brushed her short hair back, always wore a black tailored suit with polished shoes—I nearly fainted from sheer shock. Why on earth? In terms of experience, I had only six years under my belt. The treaties I had concluded were not even a fraction of hers. So why?
“Dirnant, you are remarkable. Truly remarkable.”
No, I wasn’t.
Celine had cried out of fear that she might become an embarrassment to me, but when I took the post of Lead Envoy and assembled the assigned delegates for our first meeting, I realized it.
This was not a position where one was allowed to cry.
Matilla Clark had sat alone in that seat for over a decade. I did not believe for a moment that she had handed me the role of Lead Envoy simply to shirk responsibility. To her, negotiation was second nature, her entire life, her very time.
Everyone hanging on my words, everyone assembling demands according to my instructions, everyone looking up to me—how terribly that weight had pressed down upon my shoulders. I would never be able to forget that moment.
“Because it was necessary.”
I whispered to Duke Prodiad again, as if reaffirming the truth to myself. Because it was necessary, and because I was the Lead Envoy, I had to bring this negotiation to success. Only then could the six years of war, the lives of Winchester cut down amidst it, and the suffering of those who had lost parents, children, and spouses find some measure of recompense. The sensation that every single word I uttered carried such immense weight was utterly foreign to me.
“An opportunity presented itself, so I seized it. And I used it.”
“You could have died! You gambled with your own life!”
Duke Prodiad shouted at the top of his voice. Catching the look in his eyes, I was so startled that words failed me. Heavens, was this truly the Duke? The very man I had dismissed as entirely devoid of passion?
His eyes held both anger and self-reproach. I could wager he was berating himself for not discovering the assassination plot before I did, drowning in self-blame for failing to stop me from throwing myself into the fire. I already knew he was an exceptional knight. But was this really something to become so furious over? Or was it something else?
Staring into his eyes, which were wholly steeped in emotion, I gathered my thoughts and called to him in a calm voice.
“Your Grace.”
“I do not know what you may think.”
“But to me, this negotiation was a battle worth staking my life on. You know it as well as I do, Your Grace. Just how many lives hung upon the outcome of this war.”
“That is why it had to succeed. It was worth risking my life for.”
Even had I failed, it would not have mattered. Senior Pello was more capable than I was. Without wavering, he would have used my death to threaten Sierra, leveraging my sacrifice to bring back terms far greater than the ones I had laid out. Senior Trichel and Korkel would surely have lent him immense support. That was what I believed.
Duke Prodiad looked at me, every trace of his earlier emotion completely washed away. Arbitrarily deciding his blank expression meant he understood, I offered him a smile.
“Regardless, I succeeded, did I not? Your Grace, I have secured a price commensurate with the blood your knights spilled across those years. Though no compensation on earth could ever console the lives that were lost.”
“Lady Dirnant.”
“Still, I—”
Catching my breath, I offered a bright, radiant smile. From the bottom of my heart.
With all sincerity.
My history professor once said I had no patriotism. Perhaps that was true. Though Winchester was constantly on my lips throughout the talks, in truth, Winchester did not exist to me.
What was Winchester, and what was a nation? Was it His Majesty the King, Her Majesty the Queen, or the countless nobles, myself included? Perhaps it was none of those, but rather the sea of lives beneath them.
Even knowing the history professor would fail me, I had defended the Sierra of that era on my exam paper to the very end. The sacrifice claimed by history was neither Winchester nor Sierra; what lay at stake were human lives. Those who risked death on the battlefield to protect their families, their friends, and their precious ones—did they truly think of an unfamiliar king, or did their thoughts turn to someone waiting for them back home?
“I protected Winchester’s pride.”
“Was it truly worth your life? Were you certain you would have no regrets?”
The quiet question Duke Prodiad asked me held a faint tremor. Yet his face remained cold, unyielding, as if refusing to concede a single point.
Pondering his inquiry for a brief moment, I parted my lips.
“To defend what is precious, I would not regret staking my life a hundred times over.”
Watching me enunciate each word with calm clarity, Duke Prodiad seemed momentarily lost for words. Realizing he could no longer convince me, he swallowed whatever he was about to say and glanced out the window, and then—
Huh?
Did I just see that right?
—he smiled.
Duke Prodiad smiled. It was a faint, fleeting smile. Before I could even wonder what thoughts or feelings lay behind it, I found myself staring at it as if under a spell. The moment his reddish-brown eyes settled on me, I unconsciously looked away, feeling as though something residing in that gaze was pulling me in.
