Chapter 318: The Culprit
There was one more difference between this world and the alternate tiline Ruby ca from. But it had nothing to do with Cecilia.
It was Ruby’s own actions.
Ruby didn’t prophesy Jove’s incident. Which ans Jove’s incident didn’t happen in her previous life.
If everything else didn’t change, the only thing that changed was Ruby’s own prophecy. The variable was not external. It was her.
The reason Jove almost died was because Ruby decided to take advantage of her knowledge of the future and prophesied the Emperor’s death.
The announcent that should have prevented had instead created.
But why was Cecilia sure that it was the prophecy that caused Jove’s incident? It could be sothing else, right?
Cecilia sneered. Even if there was so unpredictable butterfly effect that happened, she wasn’t soone who would just chalk it up like that. A child genuinely was about to die.
It wasn’t sothing else. It couldn’t be sothing else.
Because the people who wanted the Emperor to die didn’t want anyone else to die.
Damon finally returned after reassuring his half-siblings and informing them about the whereabouts of their shocked mother. He looked exhausted. After all, he had been performing competence for hours.
It was long past bedti when he joined the ladies’ table and started his questions.
"Saintess, I summoned you to ask you whether everything in your vision was the sa as what transpired. It seed that it wasn’t the sa?" Damon asked.
"Yes. I was just shown the death of the Emperor. But oh... For them to hurt the Young Prince too..." Ruby put her hand to her chest, her face falling into sadness. "I never expected... I never thought..."
She then started narrating what she saw in the prophecy while Damon and the others listened, the details of blood and marble and the angle of a body falling, the sequence of revelation that had sent her running to the Emperor and then to the public.
Damon, just by knowing what he knew, already arrived at where Cecilia was at this particular conclusion. If she didn’t see Jove’s incident in her vision, wouldn’t it an the prophecy sohow caused Jove’s incident?
After all, with the heightened security and all, and the change in the Emperor’s schedule to anticipate routine surprises, all chances of well-planned assassination was destroyed.
The prophecy that was warning was also disruption.
Though, this argunt was just blaming the seer for the forbidden knowledge without blaming the actual culprit of the death and violence.
Damon and everyone else couldn’t prove that Ruby wanted anything by releasing the prophecy either. The defense was available, the plausible deniability, the sacred status of the Saintess that protected her from accusation as surely as Damon’s performance protected him.
But Cecilia, with her experience, knew. She didn’t have to prove it either. She had seen Ruby operate. The motive was visible in the history of Ruby’s rise.
"You ladies should actually go to rest now. The investigation will proceed and your help is appreciated. That is all," Damon said after listening to everything Ruby ’knew’ from the ’prophecy’ she got, and asking the appropriate questions.
He stood and escorted them one by one to their guest rooms.
Ruby’s first. Then Lady Sees’.
And lastly—
"Why do you want to know what Jove could’ve told us about this incident?"
In the palace corridor in front of Ivy’s guest room, Damon cornered her, his body occupying the space that propriety would have left vacant, his eyes pinning her down.
But Ivy didn’t back down.
"Damon, can’t you see they’re accusing you?" Ivy grasped his arm, her fingers finding the muscle beneath the sleeve. "It’s already started."
"Did you see them dare?" Damon scowled.
"This could ruin your repu—..." She stopped, the sentence dying as she recognized its inadequacy and its misalignnt with the man she had co to know. "No. I know you don’t care. I know you can get away from any accusation. But you don’t want to be seen as soone who would hurt your siblings, right?"
His siblings.
The half-children he had protected through performance of threat, who had learned to fear him so that others would fear to harm them.
"Why do you care, then? Because we’re friends?" Damon hissed, finally asking the right question.
"Because you don’t deserve that!" Ivy snapped. "You don’t deserve to be seen as soone who would command to kill his own father, who would command to strike his own brother, who would—"
Damon’s eyes faltered.
"You," Ivy dug on his chest with her index finger. "You don’t deserve everything that had happened. Yet you accepted it all."
He accepted that he would be seen as a tyrant. A murderer. A violent, ruthless crown prince with blood on his hands.
The acceptance that was also construction, the deliberate engineering of a reputation that would protect what his actual self could not.
Beyond that, he accepted being soone who should never consider love. Soone who would never deserve love.
But Damon...
"No, Ivy," Damon shook his head, his violet eyes glowed and his posture leaned forward to her, reclaiming the space she had occupied, pressing his monstrosity against her refusal to be frightened by it.
His face hardened.
"I deserved everything that happened to . Because I chose to be this way."
Ivy’s jaw tightened, and her eyes started to water.
"You are not worried for ," the mont Damon’s face softened, he had co to his own conclusion. "You didn’t even pity , Ivy."
Ivy’s tears fell to her cheek and Damon wiped it with his thumb, grasping her face gently.
"You just cared about your own conscience," Damon said, his voice deep, low and velvety. "Because you’re the one who ordered to kill my father, right?"
Right.
The reason why Ivy ca personally in the first place for this diplomatic trip. The reason why she discussed the difference of the wound that had taken the Emperor’s life and the one on Jove’s neck. And the reason why she was so eager to hear from Jove himself of what happened.
Was because she was the one who ordered the kill, but not Jove’s incident.
And her conscience—
"Who did you send?" Damon asked, his eyes putting weight on her, the violet of them suddenly hard, suddenly the color of ice that could cut. "Your fiancé?"
Ivy’s eyes shook as she looked up at him. The way he had her in his grasp, face held, options eliminated.
"It might be difficult. But I can prove that," Damon said coldly, feeling Ivy’s grasp on his tunic tightened. "Unless..."
He grinned. The expression that had terrified maids and ministers and his own siblings, that was itself a weapon, that transford his face from beautiful to sothing else entirely, sothing that could not be looked away from.
"Unless you break off your engagent with him... And marry
instead."
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