Chương 471: Chapter 466 - Old family

"Scarlett?" Evelyne asked, hesitating.

"Yes," the woman said.

"You're…" Evelyne studied her for a few seconds.

"What are you doing?" Scarlett arched a single brow, and the gesture almost managed to make Evelyne feel stupid for asking.

"I was in the middle of a conversation," Scarlett said.

"As you yourself saw. Not to mention interrupted." Evelyne glanced towards the bridge where the other noblewoman had disappeared.

"And who was that?"

"Marisse Langley, daughter of Baron Langley of Harthmere." Scarlett's gaze followed Evelyne's for a moment.

"Though her father lost a considerable portion of his holdings' revenue due to mismanagement during the drought that affected much of the southeastern regions two years back, so who can say how long he will retain his current standing. She is only barely someone worth remembering."

"That's…" The words Evelyne wanted to say caught somewhere in her chest, tangled in a familiar discomfort she hadn't felt in some time. That wasn't how Scarlett spoke about people anymore. She could still be blunt. Sharp as well, when she believed the situation warranted it. But this was different. Scarlett had only just been conversing with that woman with a perfectly pleasant smile, yet it had vanished so quickly, and there was a casualness to the dismissal that made the back of Evelyne's neck tighten.

It was as if she had just stepped into a room she had thought long abandoned, only to find the air inside completely unchanged. Scarlett watched her coolly. After a few seconds, traces of annoyance touched the woman's expression.

"If you have something to say, say it." Evelyne looked around, taking in the quiet terrace, the tree and statue shielding them from much of the garden's flow.

"Why are you standing here?" she asked.

"Away from everyone?"

"Because most of my immediate obligations have already been dealt with. The necessary conversations have been held, the relevant people have been acknowledged, and the tedious rituals expected of me have been performed." Scarlett's mouth curved faintly, but there wasn't any warmth to it.

"Now I have been left with the enviable duty of remaining just visible enough that people may admire the image of the dutiful baroness without requiring them to suffer too much of my company." Evelyne's attention caught on the phrasing. The tone itself was at least similar to how Scarlett often spoke when she was irritated. But the words made it sound as if she were describing instructions someone else had given her. Like a role that had been placed on her shoulders.

Evelyne's lips parted as she was about to ask about that, but then she stopped. She studied Scarlett again.

"Scarlett," she started slowly.

"What was it that we talked about in the carriage on the way here?" Scarlett's eyes stayed on her. Then she clicked her tongue softly and turned away, setting one hand on the balustrade as she leaned her weight against it.

"If you have already reached that conclusion, then you can take your leave." Evelyne didn't move. She stayed where she was, watching Scarlett's profile as something complicated twisted inside her. So this was that other Scarlett. The Anomalous version. The 'reflection' of what her sister had once been. Or maybe not a reflection. Evelyne had never fully understood what had happened back then, even if Scarlett had explained most of it. But she remembered the woman she had encountered. Cold. Proud. Sneeringly distant.

Exactly like the old Scarlett. And yet… standing in front of her now, Evelyne couldn't make herself see only that. Because this was also the current Scarlett she knew. Part of her, at least. Evelyne turned slightly again, glancing back over the other terraces, almost expecting to spot another head of crimson hair among the groups of nobles somewhere. Some familiar figure standing beside Lady Withersworth, or speaking with one of the priests in gold masks. Of course, there was no sign of her.

Evelyne looked back to the woman in front of her. Scarlett gazed out through the glass wall towards Rellaria Lake, her face unreadable. After a long moment, Evelyne swallowed past the tightness in her throat and stepped closer, stopping beside Scarlett. She could feel Scarlett's attention sharpen as she did, though the woman didn't look at her. Evelyne glanced around them one final time, making sure no one was close enough to overhear. Then she lowered her voice.

"Where is she?" Scarlett's eyes shifted to her. Evelyne had other questions. Too many of them. How she had gotten here. When they had switched. Why. Whether her sister had planned this from the start. Whether she was in danger somewhere while this version of herself stood here wearing her face in the middle of Dawnlight Palace. But this wasn't the place to ask those things. And…Evelyne didn't actually trust this person to answer those questions kindly. Scarlett gave a soft scoff and looked away again.

"Busy with whatever matters she decided were important enough to abandon this charade. She did not deign to share the details with me." Evelyne's jaw tightened, and she held herself back from cursing her sister under her breath. This was one of the most politically significant events the empire had seen in years. Even if she had realised and accepted that Scarlett had chosen to involve herself in something dangerous during it, there was nothing Evelyne could do about that here.

She only wished it hadn't involved leaving this impossible other version of herself behind to stand in her place and act as if nothing was wrong. What was Evelyne supposed to do with that? She kept observing the woman next to her for a while. … There were other things she wanted to ask, even beyond whatever danger her own sister had thrown herself into. Things she perhaps should ask, since there might never be another opportunity.

But each time she reached for the words, something inside her recoiled and closed around them. She was afraid to hear the answers. This wasn't the first time she'd been forced to accept that she hadn't moved as far beyond the past as she'd thought. Giving up, Evelyne sighed and started to turn away.

"It must be rather pleasant for you," Scarlett suddenly said. Evelyne stopped. The woman's voice had been almost entirely neutral, with no trace of emotion, as if she were commenting on the weather. But that wasn't how Evelyne heard it. She looked back at her.

"What do you mean?" Scarlett didn't turn. Her gaze remained on the lake beyond the glass, distant and still.

"This." She lifted one hand slightly, indicating the garden around them. The people. The palace. Maybe all of it.

"Influence. Recognition. The first budding signs of respect from those who would once have struggled to remember your name." Her eyes shifted towards Evelyne.

"A sister who no longer seems disgusted by your mere presence." Evelyne went still.

"All things you longed for, were they not?" Scarlett asked.

"And all you had to do to obtain them was stand aside, choose to do nothing, and accept the apostate who came to take the place of the past you found so inconvenient." This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. For a second, Evelyne could only stare, eyes wide. Then the anger in her almost snapped.

"You think you're in any position to say anything—?!" She stopped herself before it was too late. The words had come out loud, but not enough to draw obvious attention from the other terraces. Just enough that Evelyne felt the force of them in her own throat and the tension in the air. She closed her mouth and drew in a deep, careful breath through her nose. Scarlett had turned her head slightly, regarding her from the corner of her eye.

There was a faint trace of interest there now, as if Evelyne's reaction had been the first thing in this conversation to actually earn something more than annoyance or indifference.

"How admirable," the woman said.

"You have 'matured'." Evelyne's hands tightened at her sides. Scarlett looked away again.

"But you do not have to shout your grievances at me. It hardly matters to me whether you fled from your own resentment and chose to embrace her like some grateful stray offered shelter." Evelyne's eyes narrowed. The anger returned in a cleaner shape this time, but now it only helped steady her.

"I prefer her to you," she said. The statement carried years of humiliation and neglect. Of standing in the same house as her sister and being treated like an embarrassment. Of a young girl who had once thought her sister actually cared. Scarlett didn't even seem to hear it. From the side, Evelyne could only see the line of her cheek, the faint curve of her mouth, and the angle of her eyes as she looked out over the water. There was nothing obvious there.

Nothing to suggest the words had struck anything at— Evelyne paused, realising she was wrong. There was the slightest movement in Scarlett's hand where it rested against the balustrade. Her fingers tightened against the stone. It was so brief it might have meant nothing. For several breaths, neither of them spoke. When Scarlett finally did, Evelyne couldn't tell whether the absence in her voice was real or whether she only imagined it because she wanted to.

"How pleasant for you." Evelyne's anger faltered.

"To be permitted the luxury of choosing," the woman continued.

"To decide which pieces of someone are worth keeping and which can be discarded. To mourn nothing, because the replacement is kinder. More useful."

"That's not what this is," Evelyne said. It wasn't. The fading anger tangled with something heavier that pressed throughout the gaps. Not guilt or sympathy. She refused to call it that. Not for this woman. Not for the part of Scarlett that had looked at her for years and seen so little worth keeping. But she didn't know what word to describe it with. She turned, not wanting to keep looking at the woman's profile.

"You're not even her," she muttered. The remnants of a sister who had never treated her like one had no right to stand here and speak as if she were the one who had been abandoned.

"You think she is?" that voice followed behind her. Evelyne pushed it out as she left. Amy used Mistress' metal sphere to leave Grace's Solarium at the top of Dawnlight Palace, then spent some time determining where, precisely, her next destination ought to be. She knew her target. She simply didn't know where the girl was. Her first try was a place she had visited once before.

Allowing the sphere's magic to connect her to the teleportation mechanism Mistress had set up through the palace's inner structure, Amy searched for the familiar point and let the artifact draw her towards it. The world folded, and she appeared in a familiar room.

It was spacious and unlit, but a simple thought produced flames all around to illuminate walls lined with bookshelves, an arched window overlooking Rellaria Lake, and an ornate canopy bed carved from dark, burnished wood with plush quilts and silk pillows piled atop it. Two large desks stood near the entrance, cluttered with books, maps, and various writing implements. Amy took a few moments to look those over, then walked over to the bed and confirmed that there wasn't anyone hiding beneath the quilts.

There wasn't. She let out a disappointed sigh. These were the quarters of Regina, the first princess, and also the very place where Amy had run into the second princess when she had been sneaking through the palace the last time she'd been here. She hadn't actually expected the second princess—the 'second star of the empire'—to be here now, but it had been worth checking nonetheless.

Amy didn't know where the girl's personal quarters were, and Dawnlight Palace was large enough that searching it room by room through the metal sphere while also trying to identify the people she found would take far too long. She had less than an hour before she needed to return to the proceedings, after all, and though she had placed restrictions on what her doppelganger could say and do, she didn't want that woman standing in her place any longer than necessary.

Casting another look around the chamber, Amy considered where else she would be most likely to find the second princess. She could at least search through this section of the palace first. That seemed reasonable enough. But if she didn't find the girl here, where next? Given the princess' age, it seemed unlikely that she would be taking part in the proceedings in Rosalind's Garden. Amy hoped the girl wasn't outside the palace somewhere, like Hamet Garden.

It was even more unlikely that the emperor would have allowed that today of all days, but as Amy had learned, it was possible that the second princess had somehow come by a means of sneaking out on her own. If that turned out to be the case, she wasn't sure what the best way to meet with the princess would be. Could she maybe involve Slate and Nol'viz somehow?

She set the thought aside for now and activated the metal sphere again, allowing her senses to spread through the artifact's magic as she searched the nearby rooms for any sign of the princess. She found attendants moving through adjoining corridors, guards posted outside some sitting room, and several empty chambers, but no sign of the princess. With little other choice, she expanded the search.

Her awareness passed through corridor after corridor, chamber after chamber, drifting across more attendants, guards, storage rooms, sealed doors, and spaces that were difficult to interpret through the sphere's somewhat limited perception. She only paused when she noticed something odd. A faint frown touched her brow as she tried to determine what it was, but the sense she received through the sphere was too vague. It wasn't a person, nor was it any obvious sign related to the second princess.

It was more like a flaw in the palace's shape. After considering it for a moment, Amy activated the sphere and had it teleport her there directly. The world folded again, and she appeared in an empty, shadowed corridor separate from most other activity. In front of her was a single worn door with a rounded metal handle that looked new. Amy's eyes narrowed on the door. It seemed perfectly ordinary at first glance, but there was something very curious about it all the same.

She had become familiar enough with arrays and other kinds of magical workings to at least be able to tell that it was warded in some fashion, but she couldn't quite tell what it was about the door that piqued her interest. Taking one step closer, she considered bringing out the Array Forge to analyse it in more detail, but she didn't have to. The wards suddenly deactivated at her approach. She blinked, confused at first, before realising this meant they had likely been primed to recognise her in some way.

She only really knew one person who would have had reason to set something like that up. Mistress hadn't told her about this place, but Amy also hadn't asked the woman about any of her recent work. Though she still had to find the second princess and learn what connection the girl had to Eidolon, Amy also wanted to know what this was. So she resolved to investigate it quickly before returning to her search. Placing one hand on the new handle, she pushed the door open and stepped inside.

At first, she was surrounded by darkness. The doorway behind her disappeared after only a few steps, and for a while, there was nothing but the sound of her own breathing and the faint pressure of magic all around her. She kept walking for a dozen or so steps, one hand held slightly out to the side even though there was no wall to touch. Then the dark began to thin. She emerged into a space that looked like someone had taken the idea of a ballroom and started building it in the middle of a nebula.

A wide floor of smooth stone stretched out before her, polished to such a degree that it reflected the surroundings almost perfectly. Yet parts of it ended in clean, unfinished edges that dropped away into darkness scattered with drifting lights. Other sections weren't solid at all, instead existing only as glowing outlines, like an architect's sketch drawn directly into reality with mana.

Tall pillars glittered throughout, while arched walkways stretched away from the central floor, curving through the darkness before ending abruptly. Here and there, fragments of walls, balconies, and ornate structures hung suspended in place, waiting for whatever hand was shaping them to return and finish the work. Above, there was no ceiling. Instead, a vast expanse of swirling colour spread overhead.

Clouds of violet, blue, gold, and silver drifted through one another in slow motion, threaded with rivers of starlight and clusters of distant lights that resembled entire galaxies. The whole thing felt less like a room and more like a pocket of existence carved out somewhere between worlds. At the centre of it all stood the beginnings of a long table. A stretch of dark wood and pure white stone. Several seats around it were solid, while others were only vague impressions or frames of light.

There were places set for people there, and maybe for things that wouldn't fit in any normal chair at all. That, in particular, caught Amy's attention and left her slightly confused. She took in the space. It reminded her of an interstitial space between realms, but different. Maybe it was more like those 'nexuses of possibility' that she had once visited with The Gentleman. If a fair bit more… unfinished. If she were to guess, this was where Mistress was planning to hold the 'gala'.

Amy was genuinely intrigued by how this place worked and what it was meant to become, so she brought out the Array Forge and activated the artifact, letting its mana spread through her surroundings to analyse and record what it could. She suspected that the arcane secrets at work here were beyond her level even with the knowledge contained within Thainnith's legacy, but the Forge could save structures it encountered, so it wouldn't be an issue for her to consult Yamina about what she had seen here later.

Although the wizard had claimed she would appear here in Elystead in connection with the establishment of the Empyreal Barrier, she had gone radio silent over the last few days. Amy wasn't entirely sure of her current status. That small detail aside, Amy let the Forge store as much relevant information as possible, then paused as it detected a genuinely massive stream of mana being fed into the space.

The only close-up comparison Amy had seen for something providing this amount of mana was Olgolzkreh's heart back at her estate. Presumably, this was coming from the rumoured elder dragon heart that powered the palace's defences. So it was true that it had reached a similar level to the heart of an ancient dragon. She would say that Olgolzkreh's heart felt like it held more raw potency, but the mana coming from this source felt more refined and controlled.

She imagined it was a lot easier to work with than what she had back home. It did make her wonder how much of the palace's power Mistress was siphoning for this side project of hers, and how no one had noticed it yet. But that woman clearly had her own tricks, so maybe it shouldn't be such a surprise after all. Once she felt the Forge had recorded a reasonable impression of the space, she deactivated it and turned to head back the way she had come.

She was curious to explore more of this place once it was completed, but that would have to wait. The darkness closed around her again as she left. Now that she had seen what waited beyond it, the passage seemed more like a curtain than a corridor. A dozen steps later, the door appeared ahead of her. Amy pushed it open and returned to the shadowed corridor, already raising the metal sphere in one hand as she prepared to continue her search. Then she stopped.

Someone was standing a short distance away, half-hidden in the dim light near the far wall. A girl in a white dress, gold hair gathered into a braid. A pair of blue eyes fixed quietly on Amy. For a moment, neither of them moved. Amy lowered the sphere slightly. It seemed the second princess had found her first.