"We shall now perform the verification ceremony of the signs," the presiding cardinal declared in a low voice.
The air in the audience hall was a degree colder than usual.
Rosalind stood at its center, facing him.
A delegation of high clergy dispatched from the Mother Church: three cardinals and twelve priests. These were people who normally never set foot in the Grand Duchy's castle, and now they stood in neat rows on the polished floor.
She wore not her usual working dress but a ceremonial overcoat of silver thread. Ornamentation kept to a minimum. Her silver hair, long enough to reach her waist, hung loose and unbound, exactly as the Church's procedural manual specified.
—I could have processed three pages of the tariff schedule in this time.
She let out a short sigh inside.
The ceremony proceeded without fuss.
"The First Sign—hair of silver, close to moonlight."
At the cardinal's signal, one of the priests raised a silver lamp. It was apparently a device that drew out only the wavelengths closest to moonlight.
The light, cast through a mirror, passed through Rosalind's hair.
The hall caught its breath. The light reflected back as a silken, silver radiance.
"...A match."
"The Second Sign—eyes the blue of the deep sea."
Another priest held a ball of indigo glass up to eye level. He peered through it.
"...A match."
"The Third Sign—correspondence of wavelength."
The final test was nothing more than placing a round crystal, called the Temple Stone, on Rosalind's palm.
The stone stayed silent for a long time.
"...A dud, then," someone began to murmur, sounding relieved.
—The next instant, the stone lit up from within, burning a bluish white.
The light flowed backward from her palm into the core of her arm.
In that moment, the edges of Rosalind's vision went quietly dark. Strength drained from her fingertips. It felt very much like the heaviness after an all-nighter.
—What is this...?
Within the light, there was a voice.
A voice very much like her own, yet not her own. From very far away—from the side of those nights of last trains and convenience-store bags.
Beyond the light stood a woman. Exhausted shoulders. Eyes that had forgotten even what it was to be called by her full name, and yet she was looking straight this way.
I know her, Rosalind thought. I know her better than anyone.
"...Who are you?"
The woman asked in a hoarse voice.
The answer spilled from Rosalind's lips on its own. You, she said. The woman living on after you.
The woman began to speak, haltingly.
"...Today, too, nobody called me by my name. Just 'the accounting person.' That's all."
"Even when I get home, the room's pitch dark. I don't even have the energy to turn on the light."
Rosalind couldn't say a thing. She knew the weight of those nights—leaning her head against the window of the last train, unable even to put it into words.
Her voice catching in her throat, the woman held out the question buried deepest of all.
"...Hey. Someday, will someone..."
"—ever find me?"
They talked for a little while. Then a wave of exhaustion, like the morning after an all-nighter in her corporate-slave days, came crashing over her, and the stone's light abruptly thinned. The voice broke off, and all that remained in her palm was a heavy weariness.
—What was that just now?
She tried to ask again, but every clue slipped away through her fingers.
—...I can think about it later.
She shelved it, rationally. Right now, she was in the middle of a ceremony.
The sound of a gauge needle slamming past its limit. One of the priests dropped his instrument and fell to both knees.
"...Isn't the gauge broken?" "No, the wavelength records are normal." "They're normal, and this is the output."
"—All three signs have matched."
The presiding cardinal slowly knelt.
"True Saint, Lady Rosalind."
The nobles in the hall, the ambassadors of every nation, the archivists, the attendants—every one of them held their breath and looked at Rosalind.
Rosalind handed back the Temple Stone.
The motion was so businesslike that the secretary standing by gave a small cough.
—Hm. Nothing happened the last time, though.
When she was little, she had been made to touch this stone once. A daughter of House Abel ought to be checked, just in case. The stone hadn't so much as flickered.
"The duke's daughter is not a Saint." The priest had written that, and that had been the end of it.
—Is it because Ritsuko's memories came back...?
Nothing was certain. What she didn't know, she could simply leave unknown.
"True Saint."
Still kneeling, the cardinal raised his face.
"We of the Mother Church offer our deepest apologies. That we overlooked the true signs and venerated a false Saint is a historic failure of the Church."
Rosalind made no reply.
The cardinal went on. His voice trembled slightly.
"Accordingly, we humbly ask that, with your power, True Saint, you uphold the authority of the Church, which has long been shaken—no, the very religious order of the continent itself—"
It was the moment his scheme bled through the edges of his words: to hoist onto the altar, the instant the stone glowed, the very girl they had once dismissed as "not a Saint."
The air in the hall twitched.
Rosalind didn't move. But the man standing diagonally behind her to the right—half a step back—stepped forward, as if to cut the cardinal's words short.
His footsteps made no sound. His black formal attire, embroidered with silver thread, simply slid into the space between Rosalind and the cardinal.
Lucas, Grand Duke Vernant.
"What becomes of the Saint's seat is hers to decide. Do not continue."
Short, low, and leaving no room for argument.
The cardinal closed his mouth. The priests wore the faces of men who had just remembered what they were standing before.
Behind their fans, the nobles exchanged looks.
"The Ice Grand Duke defied the Mother Church." "He shielded the True Saint—he stepped in as her shield first." The whispers passed through the head of everyone except Rosalind.
Rosalind glanced up sideways at Lucas.
—Has he arranged things so I can decline smoothly?
Taking it as a professional courtesy, she gave a quiet nod.
Lucas didn't turn around. He simply stood one step in front of Rosalind, watching the cardinals.
Only now did Rosalind realize she wasn't holding a pen, and she lightly flexed her fingertips.
She turned to the presiding cardinal.
"Your Eminence."
"Y-yes."
"I shall hear the rest of our discussion in a separate room."
One sentence to put a ceremonial face on it: this was not a matter to continue in public.
Her tone stayed level throughout. Whether the other party knelt or bowed, her voice did not waver.
The cardinal rose, and the priests bowed twice and withdrew.
The murmuring in the hall finally loosened, like a long-held breath let out.
The ambassadors were quietly dictating something to their secretaries.
"The True Saint is in the Grand Duchy of Vernant." By tomorrow morning, that single sentence would have flown to every major city on the continent. That much was already settled.
The short corridor leading out of the audience hall.
Lucas walked half a step diagonally behind Rosalind. The correct position for a ceremonial procession.
Then his stride slackened slightly, and he fell in beside her.
"Tired?"
"...Yes, to be honest. All I did was stand there, and yet. How strange."
A heavy fatigue in her very core, like the morning after an all-nighter. The only explanation she could think of was that one instant when the stone lit up. But she didn't yet have the means to put it into words.
For just a moment, Lucas let his gaze drop to her right palm. The hand that had held the Temple Stone.
—In the instant the stone lit up, from half a step behind, he had watched the color drain from her fingertips.
"Was it the stone?"
Rosalind faltered for a moment.
"...Who can say. I don't know myself."
What she didn't know, she would leave unknown. For now, that was the only answer she could give.
Lucas didn't ask anything further. He simply decided to remember it.
"I've moved the next discussion to the small east audience room. The windows are small."
Rosalind paused for a moment.
She reinterpreted it as a professional courtesy and gave a light nod.
"I'm grateful for your consideration."
"...Yeah."
Lucas turned his eyes forward again.
Only the attendant walking alongside them saw the corners of his mouth lift slightly, and he quickly looked away.
The small east audience room.
The cardinals took their seats once more. The windows were small, and the room was built so that voices did not carry outside.
"True Saint. Once again—regarding the ceremony of your investiture as True Saint—"
Rosalind returned her teacup to its proper place on the table.
"I have understood the purpose of this discussion."
The cup landed on its saucer without the slightest sound.
"You shall have my answer tomorrow. In writing."
"True Saint, this concerns the peace of the entire continent—"
"Which is precisely why it cannot be today."
She even smiled.
"Labor comes with compensation. I do not make verbal commitments."
The cardinals looked at one another.
Diagonally behind Rosalind, Lucas had lowered his eyes. No one saw the faint softening at the corners of his mouth.
After the discussion ended and they stepped out into the corridor, Lucas spoke quietly.
"Tomorrow morning, I'll leave baked sweets on your desk."
"...Is that part of the ceremony as well?"
"No. The whole continent will be reading that document. I'm preparing so that you can go in at full strength."
With that, Lucas turned the corner of the corridor and was gone.
Through the corridor window, she could see the snow.
Rosalind had already composed, in her head, the first words of the reply she would write tomorrow.
—Just ten characters.
She would write it after enjoying the baked sweets, she thought. To her, it was no more of a reply than that.