Chapter 290

Roar! Romance is In the Air.

Ruby slowly closed her eyes as she crossed the finish line. She could hear the roar of the crowd. As they cheered loudly, she slowly opened her eyes and saw Mia in front of her.

It was finished. She didn’t make it. All that was left was to watch her opponent, a small woman, get farther and farther away.

That’s all... I’ve lost.

It took a while for her to realise what was going on, but she was ready. She...should have been ready.

No regrets. She had agreed with herself. After all, she had done everything she could and pushed herself as far as her body and time would allow. She had done everything she could, but she had lost.

She had been given the chance. She had been able to fight—really fight, with all her heart and soul—for the person she loved.

That was a wonderful thing to do. A blessing. So she had no reason to feel bad. No reason...to despair...

“It was a good fight. A good fight, for sure. And in a fight, someone loses. Sometimes I’ll be the one. I know what to do. I—”

Her voice was shaky. She took a shaky breath in.

“I... I can take it when I lose. I’m...”

Words turned into gasps of desperation. Her diaphragm turned against her and started shaking on its own. Her short, quick breaths squeezed the air out of her lungs.

The world around her started to look like a kaleidoscope, but then it turned into a dull sea of colour. One tear after another fell from her eyes. She rubbed hard and desperately at them, but they wouldn’t stop.

Ruby cried. She cried like a young girl who had just lost something important to her.

I’m the one who won, hnnngh! Me! So why do I have to go through this?

Not only did she do a victory lap like a sack of potatoes, but she also got hit in the face with another one of Kuolan’s nasal cannons. She walked slowly toward the changing tent while cursing this bad turn of events.

“You were amazing, milady! Absolutely amazing! Don’t worry. I’ll clean you up and make you look nice in no time!”

“All right, Anne, thanks... Ugh, my hair...”

She saw Ruby off in the distance as she walked. She had her back turned from Mia.

Hm... I might have made a few mistakes along the way, but a win is a win. She can no longer bother me about Sir Vanos. She might not like it, but she’ll have to just deal with it.

Mia put her hands on her hips and made a huffing sound.

All of this was her fault. If she hadn’t dragged me into this whole mess, I wouldn’t have had to go through the shame of...all this! I need to say this out loud! Okay, Ruby, get ready, because I’m going to brag a little bit!

She went up to Ruby and circled around her so she could get close so she could laugh off her anger.

“Who—”

She couldn’t get the rest of her sentence out of her throat. Ruby was crying so hard that it sounded like her heart was breaking.

Huh? Excuse me? Why is this girl crying?!

Mia was completely lost. Even worse...

“It was amazing how Her Majesty rode that horse.”

“Indeed, it was. How exciting! She always does a good job.”

... Her smart ears picked up the sounds of Tion and Rafina coming closer. It was the perfect timing. A very badly perfectly timed.

That is, very, very bad. Uh oh! If people see me like this with Ruby, they will think I made her cry. I’ll look like a mean-spirited bully.

She decided quickly to grab Ruby’s hand and lead her toward the changing tent.

“All right, come this way. In you go.”

Malong’s sister was the only other girl who had signed up for the tournament, so the changing tent was pretty much a private space for now.

“Anne, could I ask you to stand guard outside and make sure no one gets in?”

Still, it doesn’t hurt to be extra careful. Mia looked at Ruby after Anne nodded and left the tent. She had stopped crying, but she still had tears all over her face.

Even so, Mia didn’t look any better.

The fact that the dried fluid on Ruby’s face came from a human might have given her the edge in the “who’s dirtier” competition.

“Well, here.”

She gave Ruby a small towel and said, “Wipe your face first.”

As she thought about why Ruby was crying, she was trying to figure out what was wrong.

Given that, I need to figure out how likely it is that Ruby will become a Serpent in the future versus how likely it is that she is already one. This calls for extreme discretion....

If she took Ruby’s sword and caused her and Vanos to break up, she would break Ruby’s heart. Would the Chaos Serpents pass up a soul that was so weak and ready to be taken?

Unlikely.

In the army, the House of Redmoon has a lot of power. If the Serpents want to take down the empire from the inside, Ruby would be a very useful pawn. Having a grudge against Ruby and seeing her turn into a Serpent was about the worst thing that could have happened.

What if, instead, she put Ruby near Vanos? Assuming that the Serpents hadn’t gotten to her yet, this plan would make it very hard for them to get into her mind in the future. Besides that, she would have done her a huge favour.

If, on the other hand, Ruby was already a Serpent and she lied about having a crush on Vanos to join Mia’s faction...

I went through the same thing with Sapphias... Better to keep her close to Vanos so he can watch over her.

So, if she really is a serpent, she won’t be able to do anything. She said she loved Vanos, so she would have to stay close to him to keep up the act. She would be stuck being watched all the time because her front gave her no room to complain. That’s much better than just letting her go.

When I have control over someone, it’s easier to deal with them.

That was the main point of the quick math she did.

But she was also thinking about how much she wanted Ruby and Vanos to fall in love. Why, you ask?

It’s delicious to love someone from a different social class! Because Mia was becoming a romance nerd, and she liked dating people from different classes.

One of the books she had borrowed from Chloe was a dramatic love story between a knight and a princess, and the idea of seeing one in real life made her mouth water. Plus, from a front-row seat!

I can’t miss this!

At the end of the day, all of her thinking and planning was just an excuse for her love of romantic melodrama.

Ruby, on the other hand, was still trying to figure out what was going on.

“I... I’m joining the Princess Guard?”

Mia nodded.

“You’re right. Just between us, Ruby, I want the Princess Guard to do some very important jobs in the future. They won’t just be responsible for making sure I’m safe. I want them to do what I say. My own army under my control.”

During the Great Famine, Ludwig worked hard to prepare and send out food transports, but they were often attacked before they got to their destination.

Hungry crowds and soldiers who were starving turned into bandits who attacked supply waggons. Sometimes the guards on the transports would go rogue and steal the food. Every time her troops betrayed her, Mia wanted them even more.

I wish I had a good team I could count on... Soldiers who will never betray me and always do their jobs right.

She had learned that not having to worry about being betrayed at every turn was a great luxury. Knowing this, she had been wondering if her most trusted soldiers, the Princess Guard, could be used to protect these important food transports if they were needed.

It would be great if I could get Ruby to help... Very nice indeed. With her on board, the Redmoons might even agree to send troops from their private elite army.

She really needed reinforcements in the previous timeline, and she might be able to get them now.

I’m getting ahead of myself, that’s true. Who knows? Maybe things won’t go that well. For now, it’s enough for me to see how this relationship between Vanos and Ruby develops. Oh, I can’t wait!

She thought with a smile as she imagined what might happen between the two of them.

Mia Luna Tearmoon, the Empress of Tearmoon, is known to have a lot of friends.

People like Saint Rafina Orca Belluga, the Etoiline Esmeralda Greenmoon, Chloe of Forkroad & Co., and Tiona Rudolvon, the daughter of the Outcount Rudolvon, are often named as some of her closest friends. Even though they came from different places, these women became close friends with Empress Mia.

So, what about her most loyal allies? Those who stayed close to her through both friendship and a promise to do right?

Even though people have different ideas, I would like you to think about the name Ruby Etoile Redmoon.

The fact that she was born into the House of Redmoon and was the daughter of one of Tearmoon’s famous Four Dukes should have been enough to give her a place in history.

But as you know, her fame isn’t because she was born into a wealthy family. Instead, it’s because she was the first woman in Tearmoon’s history to be the Ebony Moon Minister.

As the head of the Ebony Moon Ministry, which is in charge of military matters, she used the power of her family and the help of Grand General Dion Alaia a lot. This gave her the ability to make big changes in the imperial army.

She gave Tearmoon’s military a new lease on life by getting rid of inefficient old practises and putting in place new, effective systems that fit with the times. This was a big part of Empress Mia’s plan to reform the empire as a whole.

It’s interesting that no one knows for sure how she got so involved with military matters. Even though the House of Redmoon has had strong ties with the Ebony Moon Ministry for a long time, no one knows why the daughter of their duke chose to throw herself into the cruel world of war and bloodshed. There are no records of why she did what she did.

Based on the fact that she started out as a soldier in the Princess Guard, it seems likely that at least some of the arrangement is due to the will of the then Princess Mia, but this is just a guess and probably always will be.

A second mystery surrounds her, and it has something to do with her husband. In particular, the strange fact that there isn’t much known about the man. The Four Dukes are the most powerful nobles in Tearmoon, after the empress herself. It seems impossible that we don’t know the name of one of their sons-in-law from history, but that’s what we have to deal with.

One theory is that she had a May-December romance and married a soldier from a normal family. She would have stayed with him for the rest of her life. Even though they were very different in age and social standing, the theory says that Empress Mia and her friends gave them the support they needed to pursue their love.

This is, of course, pure speculation, but the fact that people even think this way shows how interesting the mystery is. I think this story stuck around because all three of her sons grew up to be tall men, but there didn’t seem to be any other noble men at the time who were as tall as her sons and fit her status.

– An excerpt from a historian’s essay