Surprisingly, stored inside those documents was a meticulous record detailing everything Elise thought about the three men, starting from the day Eshit gifted her this temple up until the present.
And the moment she saw the end of the document, she was left utterly speechless, as if dealt a heavy blow to the back of her head.
“Lady Elise, you must be so happy to receive love from the finest men in the Empire!” “Not at all. Everyone is just being kind and attentive, that’s all.” “Aww, come on, just be honest with me. Who do you like the most?” “Mm, honestly, I…”
In an instant, the conversations she had shared with Bell flashed across Elise’s mind.
“The gentle and sweet Sir Gelina is…”
At the end of the document, next to Leonhardt’s name, was a star marked in red ink.
To successfully lead the Saintess to her death at the stake, they needed a weapon to blind her eyes and ears, and one of the easiest ways to blind a woman’s eyes and ears was romance.
And Bell was merely Eshit’s tool to feel out and probe her heart.
“I…”
As someone hired by Eshit, she had naturally suspected Bell was connected to them.
However, she had expected Bell to merely know the truth at most; unfortunately, she too seemed to be a betrayer who had deceived her.
Seeing the document right before her eyes—where every conversation shared and every action taken had been compiled without omission—the shock was beyond words.
Her hands and feet trembled on their own as a feeling as if the world were crumbling and crushing down heavily upon her took hold.
“I, toward you, Bell…!”
The reason she had shared even the innermost stories of her heart without suspecting Bell until now was that, having spent two years together, she thought they had formed a family-like bond in their own way.
Having grown up as an orphan and treated worse than a beast, there always existed a vague longing and admiration for a family in one corner of her heart.
So when she met Leonhardt, and then Ian and Eshit, she had thought of them as reliable elder brothers she could lean on.
And Bell felt like a cute younger sister.
Because her cute chattering in every moment was adorable, she felt a considerable amount of affection, sharing various emotions at times like a friend, at times like family.
Yet it seemed Bell’s reaching out and chattering to her had only been for the sake of handing this document over to Eshit.
“L-Lady Elise!”
“I thought… if I had a younger sister, it would feel like this.”
“T-The same goes for me! I had no choice with this document! His Imperial Majesty gave the order, so how could I disobey that command!”
“Bell…”
At her continuing excuse, Elise merely closed her eyes painfully with a sad face before opening them again.
A single trail of tears trickled down her pale cheeks.
Her tear-filled gaze turned toward the mirror positioned behind Bell.
Reflected clearly in that mirror was Bell holding a dagger behind her back.
“If you had no choice, then why are you holding that dagger?”
“Gasp…!”
“Are you trying to kill me…?”
A sob leaked out against her will. The reality she had wanted to turn away from was approaching in an even more cruel fashion.
“…I won’t kill you.”
Giving up on spewing excuses, Bell readjusted her grip on the dagger, extending it forward.
“Things may have gone awry, but it can’t be helped. Lady Elise must die through a sacred ritual.”
Unable to hold it back any longer, she too burst into tears.
Yet her eyes were flashing intensely like a beast’s.
“A sacred ritual?”
Elise trailed off as if knowing nothing.
“To tell you the truth, my claim about having to support my family was a lie. My mother, father, and siblings were all killed by monsters.”
Tears streaming down her face, Bell began laying out her circumstances.
“By… monsters?”
“I was only ten years old. What could a girl who lost her parents and siblings and became an orphan possibly do…?”
The hand holding the dagger trembled violently.
Recalling her dreadful past, her teeth chattered repeatedly, yet she continued to speak:
“I hated the monsters… so much so that if I had the power, I’d want to kill them all…!”
Raising her voice uncontrollably in intense agitation, Bell eventually began to sob and laugh like a madwoman.
“But they said if only Lady Elise dies, then everything will be resolved… They said monsters will die just by touching the protective barrier…?”
Not content with letting out quiet, hollow chuckles, she was soon laughing to the point that her shoulders shook.
“Th-Then no one else has to die and everyone can live. All those cruel monsters will die!”
Madness subtly settled over Bell’s bloodshot pupils.
“You are the Saintess, aren’t you…?”
“And if I am the Saintess?”
“Since you possess the sole power on the continent, isn’t it obvious that you should sacrifice yourself for everyone…?”
Elise stared blankly at the girl smiling as if out of her mind.
Laughter was welling up in Elise as well.
“Until I turned eighteen, I had nothing. I never possessed a single thing. I was just busy living like an emotionless object… yet I thought I had finally gotten a few things… only now.”
Over her expression, which had sunk like lead, a discouraged smile formed.
“I truly still had nothing after all.”
Her slowly blinking eyes turned from the document held in her hand toward Bell.
“Neither a lover, nor elder brothers, nor a younger sister.”
However, ignorant of the fact that Elise’s circumstances were hardly different from her own, Bell merely held her blade upright in anxiety.
“What do you plan to do if I don’t want to sacrifice myself? If I want to hold onto this paltry life of mine and live on no matter what?”
“Then you must not be qualified to be the Saintess.”
Divine power manifested all of a sudden. It had been barely two years since she became the Saintess because of that power.
Yet to say she loses that qualification if she does not sacrifice herself?
“Ha…!”
It was an utterly ridiculous conclusion. A cold mockery escaped her lips against her will.
“In that case, wouldn’t it be better to quit being such a damn Saintess?”
Grinding her teeth tightly, Elise raised her voice.
“There is no one in this world who wants to die. Especially not by someone else’s force rather than their own will!”
“Then are you going to let everyone else die? You villainess no different from Demian…!”
At that, Bell’s attitude flipped completely like turning over her palm.
A villainess.
A chuckle actually spilled out at her status dropping from a Saintess to the abyss in a split second.
“A villainess. Rather than dying in an unwanted manner as a Saintess, that might actually be better.”
“You wicked…!”
The situation was turning out quite hilariously.
The very person who had been revered as a Saintess was, at this very moment, a villain in Bell’s eyes.
Ah, so I too, to someone…
“Die, Elise!”
…must have been a villain.
Then again, that was a title far better suited for her.
With a deep realization, a surge of deeper apology toward Demian welled up.
And right at the moment Bell’s dagger was about to strike Elise.
“H-Gasp…!”
At the swift and accurate grip on her wrist and the immense force holding it, Bell could no longer endure and dropped the dagger just like that.
With a sharp sound, the dagger fell to the floor.
Bell stared at Elise, unable to hide her wildly shaking pupils.
“Sorry, Bell.”
Though she might not possess the skill to beat Leonhardt, the Guard Captain…
“I grew up rough.”
Subduing a single woman smaller than herself was no problem at all for her.
Elise cracked her neck from side to side and clenched her fists tight.
In front of Bell, who was utterly terrified by the unexpected turn of events, the sound of bones popping echoed quietly like a final requiem.
