The room was truly illuminated this time, with a dozen lanterns pointing at the figure, now crouching from the sudden blinding light. Two guards ran towards it and pulled the figure up by their arms.

The figure was much shorter and thinner in comparison to the tall and broad guards, but the cloak successfully obscured any hint of who they were and covered the whole head. Oda took a step closer to the figure, hands in fists.

"Under the Royal Family's order, you have been arrested for murder!" Her booming voice sent shivers down my back. This was it. We had captured the murderer.

"Remove the hood!"

Hands rose. There was a small cry. The hood of the cloak fell.

And then there was a loud scream.

No, there were countless screams, from the guards, the girls behind me, and the several observers who gathered, but there was only silence from Oda and I.

The face that looked back at us was a helpless one. It was a small face, with sunken eyes, red lips, and widened eyes lined with wrinkles.

Queen Sonota.

"Mother."

The word that left the princess has no feeling. Neither confusion, anger, or any emotion. It was an empty word, like the word held no meaning, and there was in fact no mother standing before her, in a black cloak being held up by two guards.

"The Queen!"

"It's the Queen?"

There was chaos behind us, and also next to me, but they seem to be drowned out.

"You are the murderer," Oda stated. Her voice was still monotonous. Dead.

The queen was the one who sneaked out each night, shrouded in dark, casting away her title of Queen, her crown and guards, just to kill the contestants in the Dandelion System.

The girls that would be wed to her son.

"Why?" Oda's voice grew louder, but the notes were still flat. "Why would you kill them?" Then her words became cries. "Why would you kill Tristesse and Lorna? Why would you kill Priscilla?!"

Priscilla.

Everyone's' eyes turned to the figure on the bed. There was the petite figure underneath the covers. Her eyes were partially closed and her jaw slack open.

She looked so much like Tristesse. She looked dead, just like her.

No. She was dead.

One of her arms hung out of the covers and reached for the floor, lifeless fingers pointing to the ground without words. Her brown hair spread out from her head like blood from a wound, but the wound was on her chest. The dark red flower on the silk cover kept blooming, and it seemed surreal that such a small body could hold so much blood. Even more surreal, not even a drop falls to the ground.

Dandelion seeds, once again, were scattered over her. They glistened like always. They glistened like they did in the box hidden in the walls of Otto's tower.

This was Priscilla's room. The target was Priscilla. And the victim was Priscilla.

I had ran—but there was nothing left for me to save.

Another one of us had died.

Sobs were heard amongst the girls. Low sobs and high sobs. Quick breaths and gasps. Hiccups and chattering of teeth. The sounds blended together as the guards moved to cover the gaping face with the covers, but we could still see the white hand reaching for the ground, the blue veins with their blood never reaching her heart.

She was dead. And this death can't be hidden.

"I never imagined you would do this, that you would be the one."

We all turned to Oda. Only she could speak, while everyone else was cowering in fear.

"That you—you killed these girls with your own hands! The same hands you use to send murderers to the gallows! The same hands that fed me, the same hands that brushed Otto's hair!"

"You don't understand," the Queen whispered. She had finally said something, but her face was still stoic.

"I didn't want to kill."

"Then why?!"

The Queen started to shake her head. Slowly, but then with ferocity as though to shake the blame off.

"I couldn't let Otto go! I couldn't let him be married off! He's not a king—he's just a boy! He shouldn't have to go through such suffering!"

"Did you not agree to the Dandelion System yourself?" Oda shouted. "Did you and Father not enforce it against my wishes?"

"I wanted maids to be able to compete!" the Queen, the murderer, declared with anger, her head trembling. My hearts stopped. Was it true—?

"I wanted Aideen to be able to compete!"

Oda stiffened.

"What?" Her voice was weak.

"All the other girls would manipulate Otto! They only see his riches and his power! They will harm him and he won't be able to fight back!"

I imagined Otto crying, still in that dark tower of his. It is so easy to imagine.

"He will never be happy! He might be poisoned, assassinated, anything! Only Aideen wouldn't do that to him!" Tears ran down her worn face and her mouth droops down as she opened it to yell.

"And I begged your father to think of it! But he did not care! He never did—Otto was not a son, only a heir!"

"So I had to take matters into my hands, don't you see? It was so hard for me too! It was so hard, choking Tristesse that day in the forest. She was so frail, and then she died and she was so limp. And then I stroked Otto with the same hands I used to kill her! Yes, just like you said, I used the very same hands. I only have two hands. No matter how I wish for it, I only have two."

Her voice rises and falls, screeching at one point and bawling at another.

She was not a queen nor a murderer. She was a mother who was both a queen and a murderer, with a husband who she hated and a son who she loved and a system that could not allow her to be one without the other.

No. That was not it.

She was still the one who had locked Oscar up. She was still the one who caused Oscar so much pain. She was still the one who erased him from the world.

She was still the one who allowed the same thing to happen to Otto.

She was still the one who killed Tristesse. Lorna. Priscilla.

"No one understands," she croaked out.

She was pitiful, now on her knees, held up by her own guards, face contorted, lined with wrinkles, pallid. The cloak is too big on her slender frame, thin and powerless without her crinolines and heels and crowns, the reminders of her status.

She was old, a woman who might've never loved her husband, who had bore four children, one who died, one who was locked up, one who was still too young to know that her own mother is a murderer, and one who now stood before her and was arresting her for murder.

"I only wanted my son—Otto—I only wanted Otto to be happy."

Her words were disgusting. She was repulsive and sickening and despicable and deplorable and unsightly and unforgivable. Red clouded my vision.

How could Otto ever be happy?

How can be be happy that his own mother killed innocent girls as he was locked away in his tower? That's not what would make him happy.

"You are wrong," I said.

My voice was hoarse, and the lump in my throat grows bigger as the sight of her face, but I continued.

"Otto isn't like that. He wouldn't have been happy hidden away in that tower."

She threw up her head to look at me with eyes that seemed to finally open.

"It's you. That girl from that day." She recognized me. "Karlina Dearcage," she whispered. She knew my name. My real name.

"Yes" I stood up shakily, pushing myself up with the help of my friends. "I spoke with him. He wanted to go out with Oda and his parents—he wanted to see his family again. He wanted to eat tarts and play his flute for us. He wanted people to stay by his side as he fell asleep, and listen to stories. He likes sweets. He doesn't like the night. Do you even know that? Do you even care? All he ever wanted were those simple things."

As I spoke, my own tears, hot and painful, started to fall.

"All he wanted—all he wanted was to not be alone!"

I remembered that night with him. His eyes, smile, voice, and the peaceful look on his face when he fell asleep.

"You don't know your own son!" I spat.

Her eyes quivered and were unfocused.

I watched as the Queen's strength give out and she slid down sobbing, the guards letting go of her when they see there was no more use in restraining a powerless lady. Oda stood over her, her face still contorted in disappointment.

From behind me Aideen, however, walked to her. She bent down and threw her arms over her. We watched in surprise.

The two of them, both dark-haired, hugging and sobbing, seemed more like mother and daughter than the Queen and the princess.

I walked over to Oda.

"They were always more like mother and daughter," Oda murmured. She was thinking of the same thing.

Slowly, I hugged her.

"Karina—" she whispered, voice like a little girl's. "I didn't know. I didn't know anything. And it was always right in front of me."

"Shh, shh." I patted her back as her breathing became raspy. For the second time, the princess was in my arms and I was comforting her.

"No one could've known. No one could understand everything. Not you, not Otto, not the King, not your mother."

"Why can't we understand?"

"Because life is like that. We never understand until it's too late."

She breathes in for a long time before breathing out.

There was movement all around us, people leave, and more people come in. There was still crying, some shouting, some voices I recognize, and some I don't.

I pulled Oda closer to me.

The night seemed to never end.