Moonlight Ball

Iris’s hands were still shaking but she breathed a deep sigh of relief after seeing the first few words,‘ To the Duke of Genes’, it was a person she didn’t know. Although the future looked dark for her, at least it wasn’t someone from the Magic Tower, since they had a keen eye for detail.

She looked at the very end of the letter and saw the name ‘Rosemary En Letaire’.

Iris scanned the font of the letter with her eyes then took a deep breath as she tried to boost her mana, almost shouting in the ancient language as she said, “Iris Ellaine is, huh, what?” She stopped abruptly and grabbed the letter with both hands and began reading it at high speed, ‘To the Duke of Genes. You, my brightest moonlight out of all. Our sun has just lost all his nobility.’

The letter wasn’t about an affair, it had nothing to do with infidelity. She read on, ‘For now, I will be the sun. Imperial Letaire was protected by the Goddess Ruthna. So, it would be most reasonable to be in the arms of the Queen.’ It was a letter of treason!

Iris reread the letter and her eyeballs felt like they were about to fall out. Even though she didn’t know who the Duke of Genes was, it seemed he was the one who was plotting this rebellion. According to the letter, Queen Rosemary and Duke Genes were plotting to commit treason. She thought that the King was ineligible and that she had the right to the throne, so she’d bought poison from a wizard and poisoned the King, and then killed the wizard and declared that she would become heir to the throne.

Is the wizard she’s referring to, me? She’d wanted Iris to make a poison that could kill the King.

Iris looked in the mirror, forcing her stiff neck to move. The woman in the mirror was beautiful, beautiful… and stupid! Way too stupid! Even Iris, who didn’t know much about the world, knew a little about the King. He would be thirty years old this year and was already a swordmaster. He was a magic swordmaster and also a man who had killed a dragon at the age of twenty-two.

The Queen had gone to the Magic Tower to request a pill to poison the swordmaster. There were only three swordmasters on the continent and only one king in this country. She seemed desperate to destroy his life.

Although the King was young, he had unconditional support from his people. He was a rational monarch and a fearless conqueror and the country was strong and progressing every day. With all kinds of foreign cultures coming in, the country was becoming the interface for numerous exchanges. But, she was planning to kill the King without any justification. Even if the King was a winner in life this was not called for.

Iris could see how this treason would end. “You’re crazy, Queen!” She yelled at the mirror and the reflection mimicked her; Iris felt like she was becoming Rosemary.

***

She wasn’t able to sleep all night. Iris opened her eyes with a blank expression and looked carefully at the maids walking about on their tiptoes. They didn’t even attempt to make eye contact with her. They seemed to regard the Queen as a plague rather than someone to behold. And Iris, who was now Rosemary, watched their behaviors with a very heavy heart and complicated feelings.

She didn’t have anything to say. If she were to tell them they could walk comfortably, it would make them suspicious of her, and if she continued to act as the Queen, she would feel bad because she’d feel like a human plague. Above all, this uncomfortable atmosphere was unbearably painful for Iris, who normally shielded away from people.

She tried to look on the bright side: what if all these people talked to her with a smile? Although it was painful to be in an environment like this, it could become more painful and so Iris decided not to say anything.

Sometime later, during her grooming, her heart was broken. A maid caught her eye. “Again? I told you to be careful!” Another maid shouted at her. This particular maid kept bumping into things and almost dropped the items she was holding. The maids who served the sensitive Queen became more on edge and stared at her fearfully. While Iris was pretending she wasn’t watching them, she was looking at them indirectly in the mirror, and she noticed then that the maid being yelled at, didn’t have good eyesight.

Iris’s name was known for mass summoning magic, but she preferred smaller magic. It was her specialty to make smaller magic very delicate and accurate. It was the medicine that best served her, and she was one of the nation’s leading doctors. She thought she could fix the maid’s eyesight if she took a proper look, but it wasn’t the time for her to do that. She had to pretend that she knew nothing about it, but it wasn’t as easy as it seemed since the maid worked for Iris. Once she stood out, she kept standing out. She was being shunned by the other maids and it seemed to be because of her eyes. The poor woman looked distressed.

Iris recalled being a maid when she was young and how she was treated like a slave. If they were to pick the humblest person in the mansion, that would be Iris. She’d been treated like an animal and ate leftovers like one and she was lucky that they didn’t feed her excrement. She couldn’t interfere though, she needed to pretend to be Queen Rosemary.