"The winds of change are coming."
A border garrison town of the Duchy of Vala.
Although the once-towering stone walls still stood firm under the volleys of black muskets, the souls of the soldiers stationed here seemed to have been shattered along with that earth-shaking, thunderous roar.
The King of Vala's head — eyes still bulging open in unwilling death — had, in accordance with Mason's post-battle processing logic, already been swiftly gathered up and placed in a stone casket.
As for the remaining six thousand-odd Vala prisoners of war, they knelt in great swaths on the grass stained with blood and gunpowder smoke, hands clasped over their heads, huddled like quails in an autumn wind.
Fear was a plague that spread faster than the lead rounds of the black muskets.
One Vala heavy infantryman, his eyes already drained of all life, was taking one last look at the bowl-sized hole punched through his own chest — the result of a single direct penetration by Irene's improved lead round.
Under the logic of the old age, this kind of foot-thick plate armor was the dignity of nobility, the very mark of invincibility on the battlefield.
Yet only moments ago, that dignity had proved more fragile than a sheet of waterlogged parchment in the face of those black tubes.
"Hey, did you see that?"
A Vala soldier with a broken arm lowered his voice, his teeth chattering uncontrollably as he whispered to the comrade beside him.
"That ball of fire... that little bottle that explodes.
I saw it with my own eyes — the Grand Duke's most prized Iron Pagoda formation didn't even have time to scream. Every single man burned away like a candle.
That's no weapon of mortals — that's the fire of hell!"
"What's even more terrifying are those people…"
His companion swallowed hard, sneaking a glance at the Mason soldiers cleaning up the battlefield.
"They killed this many of us, and yet there isn't a flicker of expression on any of their faces.
It's as if… as if what they just killed wasn't ten thousand men, but merely a field of wheat they'd harvested.
That silver-haired demon queen — she didn't even dismount, just sat there watching us, like she was looking at a pile of dead corpses."
This sort of utterly routine coldness dealt a second mental blow to the Vala prisoners of war.
In their eyes, a victory on this scale ought to be met with revelry, looting, even unhinged frenzy from the winning side.
Yet Mason's troops did none of that. Under Delilah's command, they were tallying spoils, burying corpses with precise uniformity — even the sound of their weapons sliding back into their sheaths was aligned in a manner so flawless it bordered on infuriating.
Just as the Vala prisoners of war were sinking into apocalyptic despair, several soldiers in the leather armor of the Mason Vanguard came over, carrying large buckets of cool water.
"Drink up. Don't lie here playing dead. Her Majesty has said it — dead men have a zero output-to-input ratio."
The lead Vanguard soldier spoke in a familiar tone, even carrying a faint, barely perceptible streak of arrogance.
A Vala field officer sitting in the very front row jerked his head up, eyes locked dead on the face before him, and rubbed them in disbelief.
"You… aren't you Hart, that Bone-Crusher from Yurilland?
The Vice-Commander of the Whitestone City garrison battalion?!"
The soldier called Hart let out a snicker, jerked a thumb at the Black Rose insignia stitched darkly into his chest, and spoke in an utterly natural tone:
"Bone-Crusher? That's all old history now.
These days I'm the squad leader of the Seventh Squad of the Third Battalion of the Mason Vanguard. I've accumulated thirty-two labor credits already. Two more achievements and I can swap myself an official identity card. If I pull off a major feat, I might even be able to trade for one for my wife."
The Vala field officer was utterly thunderstruck.
The arrogance of Yurilland soldiers was famous throughout the Northern border, and Hart in particular was one of those thorns in everyone's side — once, in a tavern, just because someone had said Yurilland was inferior to Olan, he'd snapped the man's spine right then and there.
Yet now, this once-unrepentantly-haughty fellow was cheerfully trailing along behind a Mason veteran, the two of them animatedly arguing about whose shot just now had been more accurate — and even debating whether today's meat broth would have an extra two spoonfuls of honey added.
"You… you actually surrendered?"
The Vala field officer's voice was trembling.
"Don't you Yurillanders say you'd rather die beneath the walls of Whitestone City than bow your head to anyone?"
"Bow my head?"
Hart let out a disdainful tsk and casually handed the water ladle over to the man.
"That kind of face is for dead men to show off.
Right now I'm lifting my head to see the road ahead.
Brother — Vala's done for, the Grand Duke's head's already in a box. What are you still guarding that piece of scrap steel for?
In Mason, not only can you eat your fill, you get to live like a human being — not as some head of livestock in the Grand Duke's household.
See that lit coil over there?
That's Miss Irene's invention. One whiff, and those damned venomous mosquitoes won't dare come bite you at night.
A handy little thing like that — you'd never see it in Vala in your whole lifetime.
Even if you did, it'd only be on the tables of kings and noble lords — and you'd only catch one glimpse of it on those occasions when you went in to deliver paperwork.
Want to actually enjoy something like this for yourself? Keep on dreaming."
Hart's words landed like a sledgehammer on the hearts of the surrounding Vala prisoners.
They watched those Yurillanders draping their arms over the shoulders of Mason veterans, watched the smiles on their faces — smiles welling up from the bottom of their hearts, no longer lost or uncertain.
This degree of integration — how could it possibly look like the result of being annexed only a month ago?
It was for all the world as if they'd been brothers-in-arms for decades.
The winds of this world really are about to change.
Before, I used to think that having one's territory occupied was annihilation, was enslavement.
Yet now, looking at Hart and his lot — why do they actually seem to live with more dignity than they did before?
Those black muskets, those fire bottles, even that miraculous incense capable of driving away mosquitoes and pests… what Mason has mastered is not military force at all, but another kind of civilization.
The steel tin cans we so prided ourselves on — in their eyes, those are probably nothing more than scrap iron that needs to be melted down again.
If by following this silver-haired queen, I really can earn that thing they call labor credits and exchange them for sweetened Black Bread, if my family really won't have to sit and wait to die in the mines…
Then this heavy iron armor I'm wearing for the sake of noble dignity — I can do without it just fine!
At one corner of the square, Willow was walking with elegant grace, holding a freshly drafted preliminary administration manual for the people of Vala.
"Your Majesty, six thousand two hundred and thirty-one prisoners of war — their emotional indices have officially entered the daze phase, which is also what the Third Princess refers to as the most fragile window for breaching the heart's defences.
Therefore, I would recommend that the Third Princess's second-stage indoctrination lecture begin in two hours."
Sophia still stood by the floor-to-ceiling window in the distance, her pale-golden pupils reflecting those soldiers who, stripped of their heavy steel armor, were gradually revealing dazed and bewildered expressions.
"Good."
Sophia swallowed the mouthful of meat broth she'd been holding, and then called Willow back.
"Send two men to protect Victoria. There may still be Vala men who only feigned surrender — don't let them stir up trouble in the chaos."
"Yes, Your Majesty. I shall be sure to send people to protect Her Highness the Third Princess."
Willow said with a smile.
It really did feel like Her Majesty's relationship with the Third Princess had grown much better than before.
Yet Willow felt no jealousy over this. She was simply glad for Her Majesty — glad that in this world, there was still someone of Her Majesty's own blood who could stay by her side.
Deep in the night on the Plains of Vala, the evening wind had at last blown away the stench of blood from the daytime, replaced now by the bitter tang of charred vegetation.
Distant campfires flickered like scattered stars; the five thousand Vanguard troops and the four thousand veterans were resting in orderly, rotating shifts.
As for those six thousand Vala prisoners of war stripped of their steel armor — after a full four-hour mental calibration session conducted by Victoria, they had sunk into a strange silence, blending breakdown with rebirth.
Within the royal tent, that coil of Black Rose Mosquito Repellent Coil was giving off its faint, cool fragrance.
As Victoria pushed aside the heavy curtain and stepped inside, her figure was swaying ever so slightly.
Her exquisite court gown was looking somewhat rumpled after the continuous campaigning and lecturing, and her long silver hair clung in slightly dishevelled strands to the side of her neck.
In order to completely break down the psychological defences of the Vala prisoners in the shortest possible time, she had all but utterly drained her reserves of energy.
That kind of high-intensity verbal gamesmanship and emotional incitement was far more taxing on the mind than personally wielding a sword and charging into battle.
Right now, her face was so pale it was almost translucent, and even her fingertips were trembling faintly.
"Your Majesty…"
Victoria opened her mouth — and the heart-wrenching hoarseness of her voice, that sweet and seductive tone she usually carried, was now reduced to a frailty like the rasping of dried leaves.
Seated behind the long desk, leafing through a reply letter from the Royal City, Sophia looked up. Her pale-golden pupils glimmered with a cool, clear light in the lamplight.
"Your breathing rhythm has completely fallen out of order, and your complexion has gone as bad as a sheet of paper held up to the light."
Sophia set down the parchment, her voice as level as if she were merely stating an established fact.
"Third Sister, in Mason's logic, allowing core leadership to drain their own vitality like this counts as a deeply uneconomical form of consumption."
She had already sent someone two hours earlier to make Victoria rest, but Victoria had been in the thick of her lecturing high at the time, and had voluntarily put herself on overtime.
Hearing that familiar, utterly flat assessment, Victoria managed to tug the corners of her lips up into a self-mocking arc.
She wanted to walk closer, but the carpet beneath her feet felt as though it had turned into floating tufts of cotton.
A sudden surge of dizziness rushed over her like a tide. Her vision blackened, the ivory fan in her hand slipped from her nerveless fingers, and she pitched forward in a straight line.
There was no expected impact with the cold floor.
A pair of slightly cool yet remarkably supportive arms had precisely caught her around her slender waist.
At some point Sophia had risen from her seat, her long silver hair falling like a waterfall and brushing against Victoria's chilled cheek.
Victoria let herself lean against that slim yet unexpectedly tough body, the tip of her nose filling with the unique, cold and clear fragrance Sophia carried — like the first snowfall of winter.
"Don't move."
Sophia's tone was as cool and clear as ever, but spoken now right against Victoria's ear, it carried a magnetic edge enough to make one's very soul tremble.
"It seems Third Sister is so tired that her brain can no longer control her body."
This feeling really was awful — and yet so good it drove her to despair.
And of all moments to be called 'sister' by her, it had to happen now.
Out there I play the witch who seduces hearts, on the battlefield I reshape the souls of these thousands of men.
Yet the moment I'm by her side, the moment those pale-golden eyes are upon me, I feel as though I'm a transparent figure being taken apart, scrutinized, and then reassembled by her.
This sensation of being utterly controlled by you, of having even my breathing forced to align with your rhythm… it's so strange.
Victoria considered herself clever. From a young age, she had known how to seek advantages and avoid harm, and how to please Royal Father upon the throne.
She knew her father held the greatest authority in the Kingdom, and so her childhood had passed by reasonably well.
Because she had a pretty face, a gentle disposition, and quick wits, the Old King had groomed her as a very promising piece for political marriage.
The Old King's ambitions had been enormous — and it was precisely because of those ambitions that the greedy old fellow had sent both her and Sophia off to study at the Noble Academy in the Imperial Capital.
A clever and beautiful daughter, more learned in worldly matters, would naturally draw the favour of the great personages of the Imperial Capital all the more.
So everything had been within Victoria's control.
But it seemed that the moment anything involving Sophia came into play, things would reach a point she could no longer control.
To the extent that, at times, Victoria simply couldn't read what mood Sophia was in.
One second she'd be all gentle smiles, and the next she'd be smashing whatever Victoria had given her into the ground.
Holding Victoria with one arm, Sophia steadily helped her over to the soft couch at the side and set her down.
She extended her right hand, the slender fingertips lightly pressing against Victoria's forehead.
This gesture, on its surface a simple check of her temperature, took on a particularly ambiguous edge given the breath of distance between the two of them at this moment.
As the lamplight wavered, Sophia's face — flawlessly delicate and impeccable in every detail — was right before Victoria.
Those golden pupils reflected the bedraggled yet feverishly intense Victoria of this moment, and this still, locked gaze gave rise, in that instant, to an atmosphere both viscous and clinging.
"Your temperature's a bit high, and your pulse is irregular and racing.
The dessert Willow prepared is in the ice chest in the side compartment — go and eat it. If you don't fancy something sweet, I'll have someone bring you hot porridge or hot soup."
Sophia withdrew her hand, only for Victoria to catch it back by the wrist.
Victoria's palm was tinged with a feverish dampness from exhaustion, while Sophia's wrist was as cool as jade.
This collision of ice and fire stirred a silent ripple through the dim royal tent.
"Sophia…"
Victoria tilted her head back slightly, those golden eyes shining in their haze with a subtle, almost provocative attachment.
"In your world, does this emotion called heartache really not exist?
Or is this just one routine maintenance procedure you perform on a high-value piece of labour?
I still hold some value for you right now, don't I?"
Sophia was silent for a moment.
Had Victoria fried her brain from the fever?
This didn't sound like the things she'd usually say…
Tsk, no, that's not it.
Oh no, surely she hasn't been transmigrated into?!
Sophia took hold of Victoria's face, examined it left and right, and felt that nothing seemed obviously wrong.
"Who are you?"
Faced with Sophia's cold, detached question, Victoria froze.
Then she let out a bitter laugh.
"I know. I know what you mean."
"I'm Victoria — Mason's Third Princess. My life is now in your hands, and I know exactly what I ought to do."
It looked like she hadn't been transmigrated into — she'd probably just fried her brain.
Sophia did not push Victoria's hand away. Instead, she leaned down with the motion, her silver hair falling across Victoria's shoulder and stirring up a fine, tickling sensation.
"Heartache is an extremely inefficient emotional fluctuation — it produces no actual gain in combat strength."
Sophia stopped a mere few centimetres from the tip of Victoria's nose, her tone gentle yet carrying an undeniable, sovereign authority.
"But I cannot watch you fall ill and still be forced into overtime. For the next several hours, the Third Princess's command authority is temporarily suspended.
Your sole duty is to remain within my field of view and undergo enforced rest.
Daphne is currently treating several injured children. In a little while, I'll call Daphne over to treat you."
Sophia rose to her feet, picked up the heavy Black Rose cloak from one side, and tucked it snugly, fully around Victoria.
That sensation of being thoroughly enveloped by the Queen's own aura drew a soft, satisfied sigh from Victoria.
She watched Sophia sit back down at the desk, picking up the family letter that had come from the Royal City. The profile of her face in the candlelight looked sacred and inviolable.
What a wicked-hearted little sister she is.
You stripped my weariness from me in the coldest tone, and bestowed upon me the most extravagant peace this battlefield could offer.
For some reason she couldn't explain, Victoria was suddenly seized by an urge — to pull Sophia down with her, into the dust of the mortal world.
Outside the tent, the footsteps of the patrolling guards faded farther and farther away.
Within the tent, the coil of Black Rose Mosquito Repellent Coil continued to burn slowly, fine threads of green smoke spiralling in mid-air.
Victoria was sunk deep into the heavy Black Rose cloak, wrapped tightly in Sophia's cold, sweet scent.
The high fever had blurred her consciousness, but it had also been like a heavy, blunt hammer — shattering that elegant outer shell she usually wore as a disguise.
She tilted her head, her gaze tracing Sophia's silhouette in the lamplight with a greed and complexity all tangled together.
This was the King of Mason, the agent of Divine Miracles, and also… her own blood-kin sister, whom she had never truly seen through.
"Sophia."
Victoria spoke up suddenly, her voice fragmented by weakness, but in the silence of the tent it was clearly audible.
The hand in which Sophia held her quill paused ever so slightly. She did not turn around, simply gave a level acknowledgment:
"Go ahead."
"There's something I've always wanted to ask you."
Victoria propped herself up, trying to sit up a little, but the weight of the cloak pressed her back down again.
She simply closed her eyes, letting that impulse run wild through her fever-addled brain.
"Many years ago… in the Palace garden.
I once made a pale blue glass vial with my own hands and gave it to you.
The materials were a gift from the Old King to me, and I spent many days grinding them."
Victoria let out a low, brief, self-mocking sound.
"But after you took it, you smashed it heavily on the ground, right in front of me — broke it into countless pieces.
You didn't even leave me a single word. You just turned and walked away."
"For a long time after, I kept thinking — just how arrogant must you be to feel that the gift this elder sister had made with her own hands was worth only being thrown into the mud and trampled?"
Victoria opened her eyes; in the candlelight, those golden eyes shone with a brightness that bordered on despair.
"From that moment on, I felt you were the most ruthless child in this world.
And I swore — I had to become smarter, more ruthless than you, if I was to survive in such a cruel place.
Even later, at the Imperial Capital, I went on duelling with you in that constant atmosphere of being disliked.
It is precisely because of all this that it never even occurred to me that I might still get to keep my life now that you've captured me."
A brief deathly silence fell over the tent.
At last Sophia turned around; an extraordinarily rare flicker of stunned hesitation passed through those pale-golden pupils.
She rapidly searched through the fragments of that distant memory in her mind.
The glass vial, the garden, Victoria…
When was this?
Those dust-sealed memories she had locked away in the past were now, under Victoria's questioning, being pulled out one piece at a time.
Ah, hold on.
Sophia remembered. It seemed there really had been such an incident.
"That glass vial…"
Sophia finally spoke up. Her tone still had no great ripple to it, but it made Victoria's heart give a sharp clench.
"If you're talking about that defective product with the crude craftsmanship — the one where even the mouth of the bottle wasn't properly sealed — yes, I remember it."
Victoria bit her lip, about to retort that it had been her heartfelt offering, when she heard Sophia continue:
"There were unsmoothed glass shards along the rim of that bottle's mouth.
The moment I took hold of it, those sharp fragments drove straight into my palm."
Sophia extended that palm of hers — pale as cold jade — and turned it over once in the lamplight, as though searching for a scar that had long since vanished.
"Because the glass was so fine, it had buried itself deep into the flesh, and at the time I had no way of removing the shards by ordinary means.
The sharp pain made me unable to react in any other way — my hand reflexively just let go of the bottle."
Sophia looked at Victoria, her tone cold and direct.
"And on top of that, because of those tiny fragments, my palm was swollen for a full five days.
Over those five days, I struggled even to hold a quill.
By my judgement, this had been an attack laden with malicious intent."
Sophia paused, then added, making no attempt to soften it:
"So at the time I drew the conclusion that this third elder sister was a vicious, cold-hearted person who liked using gifts as a disguise to hurt me — a wicked-hearted sister.
To cut my losses, I decided that from that point on, I would not engage with you in any further ineffective social interaction."
Victoria was utterly dumbfounded.
Her mouth fell open, and her pale face was filled with absurdity and disbelief.
She had imagined countless possibilities — that Sophia disdained her mediocrity, that Sophia had seen through her ingratiating ways, or that Sophia had been making a show of her own power…
But the one thing she had never imagined was that the fated grudge and prejudice that had tied her in knots for over a decade had its origin in nothing more than a poorly crafted bottle mouth pricking a hand.
"Pricked your hand… so you smashed it?"
Victoria murmured, and then suddenly burst out into a fragmented, almost manic burst of laughter.
"Because you thought it was my scheming, you decided I was the wicked-hearted sister?
Sophia — what on earth was running through that brain of yours back then?
Couldn't you have just cried out in pain? Couldn't you have just opened your mouth and asked?!"
"In the environment of the time, opening one's mouth to ask would have been categorised as exposing a weakness. And if you really had been a wicked-hearted sister, asking out loud might well have earned me your ridicule."
Sophia analysed it calmly.
She really had thought of it that way at the time.
As Victoria kept laughing, tears slipped from the corners of her eyes down into the soft fur of the Black Rose cloak.
Just what is any of this supposed to mean?
Over that smashed vial, I locked horns with you in my heart for more than a decade.
I treated you as the most impregnable peak, treated you as a born cold-blooded Demon King.
And what was the truth?
In your world, I was just an accidental incident — someone who made a defective product and happened to wound you?
I thought you didn't like me, so I assumed you'd smashed my gift.
You thought I wanted to harm you, so you stopped paying me any attention.
The two of us, who fancied ourselves so clever — we wound up making such an enormous detour through this kind of low-level misunderstanding?
This feeling of being toyed with by fate… is honestly more dizzying than this very fever.
"You're laughing even more like a fool now."
Sophia stood up and walked over to the side of the couch.
Looking at Victoria caught somewhere between laughter and tears in her dishevelled state, Sophia reached out, and with movements that were a little awkward yet still steady, smoothed the dishevelled hair on Victoria's brow.
Sophia's voice was as even as ever, but to Victoria's ears, it carried a few degrees less of the previous detachment.
"You are Mason's Third Princess — currently the highest tier of management."
Feeling that faint coolness coming from Sophia's fingertips, Victoria felt the enormous boulder that had been pressing down on her chest for over a decade crumble entirely into powder at the sound of that crystalline voice.
"Sophia…"
Victoria took the moment to catch hold of Sophia's sleeve, those golden eyes carrying a softness like the relief of being unburdened.
"From now on… if I ever give you a gift again, I'll remember to grind down the rim a few more times."
"If that were the case, I might consider placing it in the Palace's permanent display section."
Sophia turned her head and looked at the night sky outside the tent, the corner of her mouth lifting in an extremely faint arc.
She really hadn't expected the whole thing to be a misunderstanding.
At the time, Sophia would have been about six or seven years old, but because she had been reborn carrying her memories, in her eyes Victoria back then had still just been some bratty kid of around the same age.
She'd genuinely thought this bratty kid had pulled some scheme on her, and so after pricking her hand, she had been quietly stewing in resentment about it.
Victoria had also frequently shown Sophia attention, which had only reinforced Sophia's impression of her as someone clever, good at reading the situation, occasionally kindly, but every so often inclined towards stupid little schemes.
Looked like the stupid little schemes part had been a misunderstanding.
However, when she turned back around to instruct Victoria to eat something sweet to take the edge off her hunger, the sight before her made her movements freeze for a moment.
The third elder sister who, only moments earlier, had been clinging to her sleeve trying to lay her heart bare in conversation, had now completely lost her ability to hold herself up.
With a muffled thud, Victoria — utterly drained of strength — pitched headfirst, like a radish yanked from the soil, straight off the couch, her forehead striking right onto the thick edge of the carpet.
"…"
Sophia was silent for one-tenth of a second, then swiftly bent down and scooped her up.
"Victoria?"
Sophia reached out and pressed her hand once more against Victoria's forehead. The sensation that came back through her fingertips made her knit her brows slightly.
If the temperature just now had only struck her as a bit off, then Victoria right now was like a piece of iron heated through and through in an alchemy furnace.
The face that had originally been pale as paper now showed a startling, heart-stopping crimson, with the flush spreading even to her neck.
Those golden eyes, that normally moved between calculation and elegance, were now squeezed shut, lashes trembling restlessly in the shadows of the lamplight.
Sophia supported Victoria's back with one hand and slipped the other beneath the crook of her knees, and though her movements were unpractised, she lifted the Third Princess up steadily in her arms in a princess carry.
Sophia drew in a deep breath and issued a cold-voiced order toward the outside of the tent:
"Someone! Summon Daphne, at once!"
The night-watch soldiers stationed outside the tent had never heard Her Majesty's voice carry such urgency. The tone was still as icy as ever, but its non-negotiable penetrating force made every one of them feel their spines tighten in an instant.
"Yes, Your Majesty!"
Footsteps swiftly receded.
Meanwhile, not far away in the deputy tent, Willow — who was working by lamplight on the post-battle supply ledgers — abruptly shot up from her chair.
The hairband on her head slipped, in all the commotion, down to her chest, but she didn't even bother to adjust it; she just shoved open the door and rushed straight out.
"What's happened to Her Majesty?!"
There was a rare trace of panic in Willow's voice.
In her world, Her Majesty was the very centre of Mason's Order, and any medical signal involving Saint Daphne being called upon, in Willow's eyes, was equivalent to a Level-One alarm.
When Willow burst breathlessly into the royal tent, the sight that greeted her brought her up short on the spot.
Within the tent, the lamplight flickered in the cold wind.
Sophia was sitting on the edge of the bed, her arms steadily cradling the unconscious Victoria.
Silver hair intertwined with Victoria's loosened tresses — like moonlight and the setting sun, in this very moment, forcibly fused together.
Even in her unconscious state, Victoria still radiated a breathtaking beauty.
It was the kind of fragile yet vivid loveliness born of being overspent to the absolute limit.
Her ivory-smooth skin, set against the crimson flush, took on the look of a work of art that had been scorched and broken.
Even with her breathing ragged and disordered, her slightly swollen rosy lips still held an inexpressible allure.
"Your Majesty…"
Only when Willow saw Sophia was unharmed did the heart she'd had lodged in her throat slowly settle back down into her chest.
She quickly stepped forward and softly asked:
"What's happened to Her Highness the Third Princess?"
"She's probably just exhausted herself — she's running a high fever, and she's been talking a bit deliriously…"
Sophia explained still in that same toneless voice, but Willow could clearly see that the arms in which Her Majesty cradled Victoria had not loosened by even a fraction now that the other was out of immediate danger.
"Simply put — she's burned her brain out."
"Move aside, move aside, Your Majesty, I'm here!"
Daphne came rushing in, carrying her rose-emblazoned medicine box. She'd been running so fast that even the ribbon in her hair had slipped slightly askew.
The moment she saw the state Victoria was in, Daphne's expression turned grave at once.
"Heavens, how could she have come down with a fever this bad?
Even her meridians are a little blocked — we'll have to use magic to clear them."
Daphne extended her hand, and her palm shimmered with a gentle emerald light — the very highest tier of Holy Light healing arts.
As the warm, gentle magic seeped into Victoria's forehead, that ragged, urgent breathing finally began to even out.
Watching from the side, Willow couldn't help but lower her voice and say:
"Her Highness the Third Princess was just giving lectures for several hours on end, without a drop of water.
That level of energy expenditure really does exceed the limits of an ordinary person."
Even as Daphne cast her spell, she stole a glance at her own Queen.
Sophia was still sitting where she was, her gaze fixed on Victoria's slightly swollen lips.
Although Her Majesty spoke in such a chilly manner, the way she'd cradled Victoria personally the whole way through and refused to let go…
Through the perception of the Holy Light, Her Majesty's aura was, in fact, in an extremely stable protective mode.
Really, Her Majesty must be very worried for her elder sister, isn't she!
Sophia watched the flush on Victoria's face gradually subside, and only then did the pale-golden pupils at last return to their usual calm.
"Willow."
"This subject is here."
"Tell the people outside — for the next twelve hours, you are to act with full authority on all Vala affairs.
Of course, if you feel even the slightest bit unwell, you are to say so immediately.
Prepare the finest supplies for the Third Princess, and no one is to come in and disturb her."
Sophia rose to her feet and carefully settled Victoria down into the bedding.
Halfway between dream and waking, Victoria seemed to once more catch a whiff of that cold fragrance.
She unconsciously twitched her fingers, catching hold of a strand of the hair Sophia had just smoothed back for her, and the previously taut lines of worry between her brows at last completely dissolved away in that moment.
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