Ch#71
2023.11.10.
The young Blair stretched her neck from her seated position, gazing at the spot where Esmeralda had been.
Just moments ago, she had witnessed Esmeralda opening the floor and burying something there.
"What did you hide in the floor?"
"......You saw it all already?"
"Is it...... treasure hunt?"
Esmeralda burst into laughter at the conclusion Blair reached after pondering seriously for a moment.
"Well, sort of. It's very important to me."
"What is it?"
"It's a secret. A very important one."
Esmeralda placed a finger to her lips, making the gesture for secrecy.
"So, can you keep what you just saw a secret?"
"A secret?"
"Yes. Don't tell Mother, Father, or your brother. And of course, not anyone else. Not my maids or attendants either."
"So it's a secret only I know?"
"That's right, Blair. A secret only you know. Even Herdin doesn't know."
Blair's eyes sparkled at Esmeralda's words.
Sharing secrets meant growing even closer to that person.
It meant she had become someone special to Esmeralda.
"Can you keep the promise?"
"Of course! I'll keep the secret well. I haven't told anyone Anna's secret or Karen's secret either."
Esmeralda gazed at the confident Blair as if she were utterly adorable, then extended her hand.
Understanding the meaning, Blair hooked her pinky finger with Esmeralda's.
"Promise!"
"Yes, promise."
As Blair stamped their fingers and let go, Esmeralda chuckled softly and gently stroked Blair's hair. The touch was endlessly tender.
Receiving that gentle caress, her heavy eyelids slowly drooped. Independent of Blair's will.
The eyes gazing at her sleeping form with affection lingered beyond her closing eyelids, then vanished into complete darkness.
* * *
"Gasp......!"
Blair awoke with ragged breaths. Outside was still shrouded in darkness, an ambiguous hour one might barely call dawn.
Blair groped her two hands with trembling eyes.
Esmeralda's touch that had caressed her even now, those gazing eyes, that touch...... all felt vivid.
'How did I live forgetting this?'
Not even a memory from the incident, yet she had forgotten it completely.
The memory, forgotten for years, returning suddenly was likely thanks to the hypnosis. Nothing else could have triggered it.
Whatever the cause, the returned memory signified one thing.
'Her Majesty the Empress left something in the Empress Palace.'
Of course, it could be something truly precious to her, or emergency funds.
But an uncanny premonition arose.
A premonition that something decisive related to the fire incident that day lay in the Empress Palace floor.
There was no evidence. It was pure instinctual intuition.
'I must find it. What Her Majesty left behind.'
The Empress Palace Esmeralda had used was left abandoned after the fire incident.
Katrina, who became Empress after her, refused to use the building deeming it ominous, and with no owner, there was no immediate need for repairs.
Thus, going there would allow her to find what Esmeralda left.
'But if I go during the day, Mother will find out.'
Blair gazed at the still pitch-black window outside, then rose from bed with resolute eyes.
Dawn, when Katrina would be asleep.
This was her only chance.
* * *
At the hour when dawn twilight began to spread, the Delmark Ducal Family carriage carrying Blair stopped before the Imperial Palace.
The Imperial Palace guards, yawning and shaking off sleep, were startled to see Blair.
"What brings you at this hour, Madam?"
"I came urgently to see my mother."
The guards were puzzled at what could be so urgent to visit at this early hour, but there was no reason to block a daughter visiting her mother.
The carriage quickly passed through the Imperial Palace entrance. But the direction it headed was not the Retired Empress Palace, but the abandoned Empress Palace.
Descending from the carriage, Blair ordered the coachman to wait, then stood alone at the entrance.
The Empress Palace, revisited after a full ten years.
Time to vaguely confront the memories she had fled for a decade.
Blair gazed at the door for a moment, then finally resolved and opened the closed door, stepping into the Empress Palace.
Creeeak―
The interior of the building, long abandoned since the incident, still bore scorch marks.
Blair ascended the stairs to Esmeralda's bedroom, groping her faint childhood memories.
With each step up, the young Blair from that time overtook her with an excited expression, climbing ahead.
Following the child Blair leading with light, bouncing footsteps led to a familiar hallway. But unlike the scenery in her memory, the hallway filled with black traces exuded a eerie atmosphere.
Walking the hallway now permeated with dawn twilight for a while, the young Blair stopped before a door, then vanished inside.
At the same time, Blair's footsteps, following the child, halted.
It was Esmeralda's room.
Opening the door and entering, a sight utterly different from the peaceful, tidy scene in her memory greeted her.
Everything in this room, scarred black everywhere, frozen on the day of the incident, felt strangely eerie as the only thing living through time.
Gazing blankly at the scene, Blair approached near Esmeralda's bed, recalling the dream from before coming to the Imperial Palace.
'It was around here.'
Considering the position where dream Blair lay, Esmeralda had buried something around here.
Blair tapped the spot with her shoe heel. Then, among the floor's marble tiles, one emitted a subtly different sound.
Groping the edge of that marble tile, Blair noticed the gap between tiles was slightly wider than elsewhere. Just enough to insert a lever.
Blair began gathering whatever she could grab in the room to use as a lever, scanning about.
Trying comb, mirror, candlestick in order wedged between the marble, she finally succeeded in lifting the tile.
Beneath it was an iron box with a keyhole.
"It really...... was here."
Relief at it remaining undiscovered just as in her memory was brief; Blair faced another problem.
She didn't know where the key to open the box was.
'Where did she put the key?'
Blair pondered from Esmeralda's perspective.
Esmeralda said only she knew of this secret box. Thus, she wouldn't have left the key where maids could find it.
Likely in a hidden place untouched by anyone, uncleaned even by maids.
Blair looked around the charred black room, then suddenly recalled the dream.
'Back then, Her Majesty approached immediately upon seeing me awake. But her stroking hand held nothing.'
There was a place between the bed and sofa to put the key.
'Could it be......'
After pondering briefly, Blair suddenly thought of something and reached under the bed frame, toward the ceiling side.
On the floor, cleaning maids would find it quickly, but attached to the bed frame, at least adults couldn't see it. Unless touching directly.
Groping the reachable spot, as expected, something was there. Blair peeled it off.
It was the key.
Taking a small deep breath, Blair inserted it into the iron box's keyhole. It was a bit stiff at first, but with force, the key clicked perfectly into the lock, opening the box.
And inside was a document.
Blair took it out.
With darkness not fully lifted, she couldn't read the text precisely, but the unique pattern on the first page was clear.
'A magic circle......?'
Beneath it, in the familiar handwriting of Esmeralda, one sentence was written.
[There is said to be Black Magic that reconnects the second condition of the long-severed contract with the divine beast. Perhaps......]
Illuminating the text with dawn light, Blair snapped her head up at the faint bell toll from afar.
It was the 6 o'clock bell.
'Dawn will break soon.'
Come morning, word of her visit here would reach Katrina. She had no time to linger.
Moreover, if related to the family power, Herdin would know better than her.
Blair decided to wrap up here and return to the ducal residence.
Unable to take the box, she closed it again, taking only the key and the document inside. Before leaving the room, she looked back at the desolate scene.
She had hoped visiting the incident site might recover memories, but nothing more surfaced. Thus, to Blair, this room still felt only like a place of memories.
Recalling Esmeralda's traces everywhere, Blair vowed.
'This time, I won't run away, Your Majesty.'
Turning, Blair exited the Empress Palace and boarded the carriage.
The coachman, who had rushed out early dawn to follow her, was dozing off with nods, then hurriedly started the carriage. It quickly left the Imperial Palace.
Blair unfolded the document in her hand again. She tried to read the back page, but the shaking carriage induced nausea, making it hard.
Eventually, Blair gave up reading and sank into thought.
'Why was she investigating the second condition of the divine beast contract?'
And why hide this document in secret?
To her, there seemed no connection between the Delmark divine beast contract and the fire incident.
Perhaps her intuition that this document related to that day's incident was wrong.
'Still, I should hand it over to Herdin first.'
The moment she thought that and tidied the document.
Bang!
With a massive jolt shaking the carriage, Blair's body slammed violently against the carriage wall.
In excruciating pain that made breathing difficult, Blair lost consciousness.
