At the hour when the gloom of dawn began to break, the carriage of the ducal house of Delmark, with Blair on board, stopped in front of the Imperial Palace.
The palace guards, who were yawning away sleep, were surprised to see Blair.
"What brings you at this hour, madam?" However, she did not go to the palace of the Empress Dowager, but to the abandoned Palace of the Empress.
Blair, after getting out of the carriage, ordered the coachman to wait and stood alone at the entrance.
It was the first time in ten years that she had returned to the Palace of the Empress.
It was time to face, however vaguely, the memories from which she had fled for a decade.
Blair looked at the door for a moment and, finally, as if she had made a decision, the opened and entered the Empress's Palace.
Chiiirp!
The interior of the building, abandoned for a long time after the accident, still had traces of soot.
Blair, following the diffuse memories of her childhood, climbed the stairs that led to Esmeralda's bedroom.
As she climbed step by step, at her side, the little Blair of that time passed her with an expression overflowing with emotion, running up the stairs.
Following the little girl Blair, who was leading with light and playful steps, a familiar hallway appeared.
But unlike the landscape in her memories, the hallway, full of black footprints, emanated a gloomy atmosphere.
Little Blair, who had walked a long way down the hallway where the twilight of dawn was beginning to filter in, stopped in front of a door and then disappeared behind it.
At the same time, the steps of Blair, who had followed the girl, also stopped.
It was Esmeralda's room.
When she opened the door and entered, her eyes came across a landscape completely different from the calm and orderly one of his memories.
Everything in that room, dotted with traces of black burns, had stopped on the day of the accident; Only she seemed to live in the flow of time, which was strangely disturbing.
Blair, who was staring blankly at the room, remembered the dream she had had before coming to the Imperial Palace and approached Esmeralda's bed.
"It was this way." Considering the position where Blair in the dream was lying, Esmeralda had buried something here.
Blair tapped the spot with the heel of her shoe.
Then, among the marble floor tiles, there was one that produced a subtly different sound.
Blair, feeling the edge of that marble, noticed that the gap between the tiles was slightly wider than elsewhere.
Enough to insert a lever.
Blair looked around the room for something that could serve as a lever and began to grab everything she could find at hand.
After successively trying a comb, a mirror, a candelabra, inserting them between the marble tiles, Blair finally managed to lift and open the slab.
Beneath it was an iron box with a lock.
"Really...
it was here." The relief that it had remained there, undiscovered by anyone, just as in her memories, was brief; Blair faced another problem.
She didn't know the whereabouts of the key that opened the box.
"Where would she keep the key?" Blair reflected from Esmeralda's point of view.
Esmeralda had said that only she knew about the existence of this secret box.
In that case, he wouldn't have left the key somewhere the maids could find.
She would probably have kept it in a hidden place, where no one's hand could reach, an intimate place that not even the maids would clean.
Blair examined the room completely blackened by the fire and suddenly remembered the scene of the dream.
«At that moment, Her Majesty the Empress immediately approached when she saw me awake.
But in his hands, when he caressed me, there was nothing." Between the bed and the sofa, there was a place to keep the key.
"Maybe..." Blair, after hesitating for a moment, suddenly remembered something and extended her hand towards the underside of the body of the bed, towards the ceiling.
If it were on the floor, the cleaning maids would find it right away, but if it was attached to the body of the bed, at least it wouldn't be visible from an adult's angle of vision, unless it was felt directly with his hand.
As he felt the area that his hand could reach, as he expected, he touched something.
Blair plucked it.
It was a key.
After gently taking a deep breath, Blair inserted the key into the lock of the iron box.
At first it seemed a little stuck, but when I applied force, the key fit perfectly with the latch, turned and the box opened.
Inside was a document.
Blair took it out.
[It is said that there is a black magic that restores the second condition of the pact with the Divine Beast, broken long ago.
Maybe…].
Blair, trying to decipher the letters in the dawn light, snapped her head up when she heard the faint sound of a bell in the distance.
It was the bell that announced six o'clock.
"It will soon be dawn." When morning came, the news that she had been there would reach Katrina.
There was no time to waste entertaining himself.
Besides, if it was something related to the power of the clan, Herdin would know better than her.
Blair decided to collect everything for now and return to the ducal mansion.
Since she couldn't get the box out, she closed it again and took only the key and the document it contained.
Before leaving the room, he looked back at the desolate landscape.
He had hoped that visiting the accident site would bring back the memories, but nothing else came up.
So, to Blair, this room still felt like just a place of memories.
Blair, remembering Esmeralda's footprints that were still everywhere, promised herself.
"This time I won't run away, Your Majesty." Blair turned around, left the Empress's Palace, and climbed into the carriage.
The coachman, who had hurriedly followed her since dawn, was dozing and nodding off, and when he saw her, he started the carriage.
quickly The carriage quickly left the Imperial Palace.
Blair unfolded the document he was holding in his hand again.
He tried to read the later pages, but the clatter of the carriage made him dizzy and made it difficult to read.
Finally, Blair gave up reading the document and fell into his thoughts.
"Why would he be inquiring about the second condition of the pact with the Divine Beast?" And why would he have kept this document a secret?
From his point of view, there seemed to be no connection between the pact with the Divine Beast transmitted in Delmark and the fire incident.
His hunch that this document was related to the accident that day could be wrong.
"Still, I must hand it over to Herdin." Just at the moment when he thought that and put the document away.
BAM!
A huge impact shook the carriage, and his body crashed violently against the carriage wall.
Mired in pain that made it difficult to breathe, Blair lost consciousness.
⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅
Herdin woke up early in the morning.
Although he had fallen asleep and woken up at a similar time to his usual time, he strangely did not feel rested.
Had he had a nightmare that he did not remember?
Shaking off the feeling of uneasiness, Herdin got out of bed and started the day like any other.
He smoked a cigarette, went to the bathroom to shower, changed his clothes, and left the room.
As he headed down the stairs to the dining room, he saw the closed door to Blair's room.
Since he had stopped visiting her room, he hadn't seen her in the last few days.
He hadn't shown up for lunch either.
His silent rebellion seemed ridiculous to him, but he decided to let it be for the moment.
Lest if he provoked her further, that weak woman would faint in front of the fireplace like last time or fall ill.
Just as she passed Blair's room and went down to the first floor, she saw Mason talking to a maid with a serious expression.
Although it was a usual morning scene, Mason's expression was unusually serious.
It was not common to see him like this.
He had a bad feeling.
“Mason, what's wrong?” “Your Excellency.” Seeing Herdin, the maid hurriedly bowed her head and cautiously observed Mason and Herdin.
Mason hesitated for a moment before speaking.
“The lady hurriedly left for the Imperial Palace in the middle of the morning.
In the noble houses there were usually servants who stood guard in shifts even at night to respond to the call of the lords.
Herdin's eyebrow rose at the news.
“At that time?” What urgent matter could he have?
Apparently, Mason had not yet heard that part, for he made a sign to the maid, and she, hesitantly, opened her mouth.
"I tried to persuade her that it was very early and that it would be better to go when it was light, but she insisted that I must go right now." "There was no letter from the Imperial Palace yesterday?" Mason replied: "There was not."
…To be continued