POWDERED snow whipped around in the gale that struck the young woman's face, blowing back the blood and hair sticking to her cheek on that freezing night.
This young woman, Jill, had somehow managed to ascend the stairs and had finally reached the castle rampart. She got down on one knee. When she glanced over to the other side of the rampart, all she could see was a thick darkness that completely concealed the ground.
Jill pressed down on her injured right shoulder, but the blood spilled right through her fingers. She tried using magic to heal the wound, but it was a useless effort. Someone was interfering, but it didn't seem like she would have time to identify the source.
Besides, Jill's magic was running out after fleeing this far all on her own. There was almost no way she could survive jumping off in this state.
"There she is! Jill Cervel!"
And yet, when Jill heard the enemy's voice, her body moved as if by reflex. After many years of fighting on the battlefield for her first love, the reflex had been drilled into her.
The soldiers pursuing her recoiled when Jill drew the longsword hanging at her waist and launched herself off the stone paving at them. She lunged forward, swung, and then turned her body, sweeping across their ranks. She slashed at the soldiers, her lithe movements like a dance, trying to clear a path to escape. Some of the soldiers quailed before her and fell back, but more took their place.
Eventually, Jill found herself surrounded and cornered.
She didn't want to be fighting these people. Until the day before, they had been her comrades—the countrymen she'd been obligated to protect. The confusion plaguing her mind, aided by the blood loss, dulled her sword hand.
Finally, Jill fell onto her backside, surrounded by the tips of the soldiers' spears and swords.
"That's enough, Jill."
But that cold voice made Jill tremble more than anything else.
A young man emerged from behind the sea of soldiers, wearing an outfit unsuited for a man standing on a castle rampart. His cloak fluttered in the violent, snowy gales. It was ultramarine—the forbidden color of the Goddess, reserved only for the royal family of the Kratos Kingdom.
"…Gerald," she hissed.
The kingdom's crown prince casually lifted the nosepiece of the glasses he wore to control his magic. "The woman who ought to have been my consort, running away without admitting her wrongdoing… Shame on you. When I think of how heartbroken Faris is feeling, it hurts me as well—"
"Always thinking of your little sister, aren't you?"
Jill shouldn't have mouthed off on the battlefield, but the snide comment had slipped out without a second thought.
Gerald looked back at her calmly. "Of course. Nothing in this world can compare to my dear little sister."
Shut up, you nasty sister-lover!
But Jill didn't shout that at him, not because she was afraid of being punished for the crime of insulting the future king—she was simply too disgusted.
Even if they added that to her list of crimes, she was sentenced to be executed anyway. To make matters worse, they were all false charges—well, actually, there was one crime Jill had been guilty of. Gerald would call it: "The crime of not understanding the relationship between my little sister, the cutest girl in the world, and I." Jill would certainly have called it a "Crime of incomprehension."
The blonde prince standing leisurely in the blizzard was Jill's fiancé. When Jill was ten years old, she visited the royal capital for the first time and attended the fifteenth birthday party of the first-born prince, Gerald der Kratos. That day, during their first meeting, he had proposed to her, and they'd become engaged.
Jill's hometown, Cervel, was a frontier territory that bordered the Rave Empire, an empire with which the Kratos Kingdom had been in—one way or another—a constant state of conflict since mythical times. Gerald might have proposed to her for political reasons—an attempt to win over Jill's relatives in anticipation of an upcoming conflict with the Rave Empire. Jill had understood that much. But Gerald was also strict with others and himself; he was earnest, responsible, and respectable.
Above all else, he had approved of Jill's monstrous magic power and told her it was indispensable.
That was why Jill had never been concerned about openly using her magic and running out onto the battlefield. Even though her adolescence had been different from that of other girls, and even though people had often ridiculed her—saying that she was a monster, that she only ever smiled on the battlefield, that she was coldblooded, and that she was mannish—when she remembered that she had Prince Gerald all to herself, she never felt inferior.
When Jill turned sixteen, others had called her the god of war's daughter for her feats in battle, and she started receiving more love letters from girls than the boys her age, but she didn't pay it any mind.
The real Gerald, however, was a pervert who was too preoccupied with the taboo love he felt towards his little sister.
Gerald's beloved little sister, Princess Faris der Kratos, was a sickly girl who had spent nearly her entire life bedridden. She rarely ventured outside, and Jill could count the number of times they had met on one hand.
But Faris looked like an angel and charmed everyone at first sight. Even Gerald's infatuation with her was understandable. If Gerald ever heard his little sister was feeling unwell, he would stand Jill up, even on her birthday or their engagement anniversary. If Jill ever let it slip that she was dissatisfied about this arrangement, even as a joke, the whole castle would scowl at her with cold eyes, and Gerald would bitterly denounce her for her comment and send her out to the frontlines without even giving her a chance to say her farewells. She would then be consoled by her kind subordinates and reflect on her own pettiness.
But no one in their right mind would ever suspect it—that their fiancé was cheating on them with his own sister.
Although, technically, Jill was the other woman. Their engagement had always been a camouflage to conceal Gerald's forbidden love for his sister. Jill had been a total fool. Recently, she'd finally learned the truth, a truth that would snuff out even the most devoted love. At this point, she was past feeling angry or sad—all she could do was laugh.
I just thought he was a good older brother, devoted to his little sister… That he just went too far sometimes…
After Jill had found out about their incestuous relationship, however, Gerald became ruthless. First, he called off their engagement. She initially considered that act to be a blessing, but he was just getting started.
The next day, Jill was confined for a crime she had nothing to do with. The day after that, she was thrown in jail. The day after that, her trial had concluded, and the day after that, they had sentenced her to be executed, which brings us to the present day. Her execution, incidentally, was to be held the following day.
It was a swift and impeccable silencing, all to protect the crown prince and his little sister's honor. The public, it seemed, believed that Jill had developed a shameful jealousy towards Princess Faris and had been planning to poison her.
Princess Faris had tearfully accused her of this scheme, apparently weaving an entire cover story with Jill as the antagonist. Whether she did this on Gerald's instruction or of her own accord, Jill didn't know.
Jill could only imagine that the two of them had long expected that this day would come and had prepared for it. She found herself strangely impressed by Gerald's brilliance. She was also impressed by Faris, whom she had always thought of as a delicate flower. Truthfully, Jill felt sorry that she had underestimated the cunning princess. Tearfully condemning an innocent person to their doom was a feat that Jill herself could not have pulled off with her lack of feminine wiles.
With all these measures taken so quickly, no one in Cervel nor Jill's own subordinates, who were away on a brief holiday, would have the time to rescue her. They might not even have heard that Jill had been sentenced to death. She didn't even know whether her hometown or subordinates were safe…
"But how did you get out of jail?" Gerald asked. "I thought we'd taken care of those mad dogs you keep."
Jill had been prepared for this, but it sounded as though they had already gotten their hands on her subordinates. Things were getting worse by the second.
"The Cervel family won't be able to act now, either…" Gerald continued his analysis, as if to push her further to the edge. "We just need to find the mole…"
"You don't need to worry, because there is no mole," she said. "I used my magic and busted out of there."
"…Unbelievable," he spat with disgust. "So typical of a member of the Cervel family."
The feeling of nostalgia Jill felt at his exasperated expression was anticlimactic.
"If you had made the wiser choice, I could have given you the honor of training the childre of the Kratos royal family at least, but…Well, maybe this was for the best. I don't think I could stand Faris's children being made into magically powerful meatheads."
Jill understood… If she had overlooked Gerald's relationship with his sister, that was the future she could have expected. But Jill's love for him had been pulverized into nothing. There was no way in hell he could crawl back into her good graces again, nor any need for her to force herself to accept him. She wanted to laugh mockingly at herself. She was grateful to be free of her feelings for him.
…I was so blind, even if I say so myself. How could I have thought a man like this was strong? How could I have ever respected him?
With a thud, Jill thrust her sword into a gap in the stone pavement and got to her feet. I have to survive, she thought.
People die so easily. Jill had learned that all too well on the battlefield. But even if she were to die, she would never rest unless she died in a way that would wipe the smile off this man's face.
"If you had just continued blindly believing me, you probably could have been happy—"
"Out of my way!"
Jill plunged the tip of her sword at Gerald, but he deflected it. That was just what she expected from her former fiancé, the self-proclaimed guardian of the royal capital.
His obsidian eyes glowed slightly behind his glasses, and the black spear in his hand flared with magic power. In a fight against the Sacred Spear of the Goddess, which was said to have been passed down in the Kratos royal family, Jill's weapon would not stand a chance in head-to-head combat.
But Jill's years of training had been unique. She was the god of war's daughter who had charged onto many a battlefield for this man.
Don't underestimate me!
Jill focused her magic on one point, flicking the prince's spear away. Gerald clicked his tongue and took a step back, and in that interval, she ran through the cleared path, climbed up the tallest wall of the rampart, and looked down.
Below Jill was darkness. It was a cliff, and she couldn't see the bottom. But she knew there ought to be an expansive forest packed with fir trees. It was also heavily snowing… If she were lucky, she might be able to survive the fall.
Even if she were to survive it, she might still freeze to death, but even so…
"Jill! What are you…?"
"Don't get the wrong idea, Your Highness. You didn't leave me…"
Having the chance at life, at least, was infinitely preferable to staying here.
"…I'm leaving you."
And so, in the high-heeled combat boots Jill had always worn to enhance her femininity, the style and quality she had been required to maintain as Gerald's fiancée, she dove off the rampart.
"Fire your arrows! Don't let her get away! What happened to the guns?!"
A storm of arrows came raining down.
An arrow grazed Jill's shoulder. She could tell it had been poisoned. Her eyebrows furrowed at the sensation of numbness in her fingertips, but she smiled. From the top of the rampart, bullets shot out from the muzzles of several guns. Jill repelled them all with the little magic she had left.
One thing was thrown from overhead, however, that broke through her wall of magic.
A black spear—the Sacred Spear of the Goddess. Gerald must have thrown it. Jill had no time to feel sad—she grabbed the spear, stopping it just before it pierced her chest. She smiled fearlessly.
I'm not going to be beaten by the likes of you.
Jill could smell her palms burning with magic. A blast swept across the area. The freezing wind, her magic, and her tears all vanished.
I'm not going to be beaten. I'm not going to be beaten. It's not going to end like this.
Jill clenched her teeth and tried to focus on what was in front of her, but she could tell her vision was blurring. Magic is known to be the spark of life, but that very spark was slowly dimming and fading from her.
Her strength slowly left her hands, and the point of the black spear inched towards her heart.
If only I'd never become that man's fiancée… she wished.
Oh no. This is my life flashing before my eyes. This isn't good…
But Jill couldn't stop it.
If he had never proposed to her at that party when she was ten years old, Jill might have fought on the battlefield in her homeland, but she probably wouldn't have been on the front lines. She might have fallen in love with a simple but kind and strong man and been able to experience life as a normal girl.
And she would have eaten lots of her favorite sweets and foods—well, that part might be a stretch. But on that day, at that point in time, if Jill hadn't accepted Gerald's proposal, her life would have been different.
I don't want my love to end in failure, though…
NEXT time. If only there was a next time… Things won't end with me being used.
"…JILL, what's wrong? Jill?"
"Huh?"
Jill's eyes snapped open. She blinked. There was no pitch-black sky, no white snow painted in blood. This scene was the total opposite.
"What is it? Are you nervous?"
"Even our Jill is losing her nerve! It is her first time at the royal capital, attending such a lively party… Even I feel a bit dazzled! It's like I'm living in a dream."
"It is Prince Gerald's fifteenth birthday celebration, after all. Plus, everyone's saying that he's going to choose a fiancée at this party! The king's probably putting a lot of effort into it."
Jill listened in amazement to the conversation raining down from overhead.
…It's Mom and Dad. They should be long dead… Why are they here?
But Jill's mother grabbed her hand with a little too much force for her to think this was all a dream.
"Maybe you'll get picked, hm, Jill?"
"Huh…? F-For…what?" Jill stammered.
"To be Prince Gerald's fiancée, silly! You may be lousy at embroidery, music, and cooking, but you are beautiful. And you still have more of an appetite for food than you have charm, but you're a nice, dependable girl."
Her parents laughed, undoubtedly joking.
That's right, they had laughed… Jill remembered.
"Well, let's go."
They moved forward and a pair of doors that almost reached the ceiling opened. A voice announced the arrival of Marquess and Marchioness Cervel and their daughter. Then, they were all led into…
…No way.
Several chandeliers hung from a vaulted ceiling; their twinkling lights reflected against a marble dance floor. Crisscrossing stairs to the second floor were covered in bright red velvet. An orchestra was playing up-tempo music. Silver tableware lined a stark white tablecloth, and colorful ripe fruit sat in bowls. Ladies looked like flowers, dancing around in dresses so brightly colored it rendered the lit candles in golden candelabras around them meaningless.
I've seen this magical scene before… It can't be.
Jill suddenly noticed a window off to the side. The meticulously polished glass reflected her appearance like a mirror.
Her appearance was one of a girl wearing a peach-colored dress, her blonde hair tied up with a large floral ornament. Her violet eyes were opened wide in perfect circles. She must have been around ten years old.
No, she was ten years old. This was when she was still just a normal girl.
"His Highness Prince Gerald der Kratos enters!"
Jill vividly remembered the scene—fanfare accompanying Gerald as he descended from the inner chamber with dignified steps.
She had stared at Gerald with intense concentration, the first real prince she had ever seen in her life…until his eyes had met hers from behind his glasses. But that had been Jill from the past—when she had been just ten years old. Jill suddenly jumped in shock.
Their eyes had met once again.
The Kratos castle clock tower, which had signaled the midnight hour just a short while before, chimed again.