Pouring every bit of strength my small body possessed into that pull, I sent Lucas sprawling flat on the ground.
“You—!”
He shoved himself up, and there was a red mark forming on his forehead. He blinked at it, pressing his fingers to the spot with a dazed expression.
Then the indignation caught up with him, and his smooth brow crumpled.
“You — when I asked you before whether you were a spy and you didn’t say anything — it’s because you are one! So why are you sitting here telling me you’re not?!”
The accusation hit home like an arrow. I shook my head.
“I’m not a spy!”
That was a lie, technically. But—
“Even if I was born a spy, I can choose not to be a spy if I don’t want to be!”
That was the truth.
“I’m going to change my own life!”
The words came out before I could stop them — raw, unfiltered — and Lucas’s eyes flew wide. His mouth fell slightly open.
Everything I’d endured to get to this point flashed through me in an instant.
Everything I had done to escape being a spy.
How far I’d gone.
“Hhh… hff.”
Especially that moment — when my cover had been blown and I had tried to choose death — how terrified I had been.
And then Calypse, reaching out his hand.
The memory broke something open in me. Hot, wet pressure gathered at the corners of my eyes.
That idiot. I’d wanted to rescue him cleanly, partially because his face reminded me a little of Calypse.
Turns out their personalities have nothing in common.
“Ugh—”
I bit down hard on my back teeth hard enough to leave marks on my jaw, trying to hold back the tears.
“I’m not going to be a spy anymore!”
But the grief was already past the point of containment, and my small body collapsed under the weight of it.
I hadn’t wanted to cry.
But once the first sob broke free, it dragged everything else out with it.
I had been carrying too much in this tiny body.
Pressing down too many worries, too many fears, for far too long.
“Hey — wait — wait—!”
The cold wariness on Lucas’s face began to dissolve. He flailed awkwardly and sank down in front of me.
“If you didn’t want to be called a spy, you just had to say so.”
His hand reached out — then stalled halfway, hovering uselessly in the air between us as if it had run into an invisible wall.
“Why are you making someone misunderstand and then falling apart like this!”
I wailed and shouted back at him.
“I am a spy! But I came to rescue you precisely because I want to stop doing this! That’s what I’m telling you!”
“So are you a spy or aren’t you?”
“I am one, you idiot!”
“Don’t cry — no, wait. Ugh. Ew! Snot!”
“……?”
Please. He was the one who clearly hadn’t bathed in at least a month.
“Lucas, you’re the disgusting one!”
Stung, I shoved him.
“That — that’s not what I meant! I didn’t mean it like that—!”
Lucas, having been shoved without resistance, went red-faced and flapped his hands in flustered protest.
He turned away, struggling with his own expression — and then, with obvious effort, let out a short yell:
“Hey!”
Both hands wrapped firmly around my cheeks.
“?”
I stared up at him in wide-eyed shock.
“You’ve got snot coming out. I’m going to wipe it. Stop crying.”
He grumbled the words under his breath, brow furrowed in displeasure — and then, with his bare hand, wiped my nose.
An eight-year-old wiping my snot. Embarrassing, technically. But I was five, so it probably passed.
“Haaah —”
Having actually used his bare hand to accomplish the deed, Lucas wiped his palm on his shirt with an expression of profound suffering.
But —
Drip.
“I have more snot.”
I pointed helpfully at my own nose.
“Oh come on! My hand is filthy.”
Lucas went red again.
Ah. He blushes when he’s flustered. Good to know.
“It’s fine. Just blow it on your shirt.”
I grabbed the hem of his shirt and launched myself forward.
“Wha—”
Lucas went rigid — but he didn’t move away.
“HONK.”
“……”
And so I achieved a deeply satisfying nasal clearing.
Lucas’s face had taken a turn for the worse, understandably.
…But he did comfort me earlier, didn’t he?
I was pretty sure I’d felt hands patting my back while I was in the middle of a nightmare. Even if he’d never admit it.
He might actually be a decent person.
He’d gone beet red while panicking, and he’d still wiped my snot with his own bare hand.
I snuck a guilty glance at his now-decorated shirt and scooted sideways to sit beside him.
A brief silence settled between us.
After so much chaos, the quiet that followed felt cleaner and purer than any other — like the air after rain.
Like the inside of my own head.
Okay. Back to the problem at hand. How do we get Lucas out of here?
My mind returned to the question I’d been turning over since before I woke up. Making a run for it would be dangerous — there were clearly staff positioned near the exits, and we’d come quite deep into the building.
What if I slipped out alone and told Knox I’d found Lucas?
Knox wouldn’t believe me. I’d already failed to find the young lady Calypse had been searching for, and now I was claiming I’d stumbled across the young lord? Not a chance.
So what else?
I was still chewing over the problem when —
“Hey.”
Lucas, who had been glancing sideways at me, spoke up with uncharacteristic uncertainty.
“…You said you came here because you wanted to stop being a spy. That you wanted to rescue me.”
I glanced up. He was sitting hunched and awkward, scratching his forehead with one finger, as if trying to look casual.
“…Yeah.”
He seemed to be ready to talk now. I nodded, wiggling my short fingers.
“So does that make you a fugitive?”
“……”
But his next question silenced me again.
Technically, fugitive wasn’t quite right.
Because I’ve been adopted by your father.
But announcing that right now would only result in him not believing me. So I left that part alone.
“I’m still working on that part.”
“Sure, fine. Figure it out later.”
He shrugged it off with unexpected ease, and then — as though he’d suddenly resolved something internally — stood up.
A rough, open palm was extended toward me.
“You’ve had your cry. Get up.”
“…Why?”
“We have to get out of here. We can’t exactly live in this place.”
That was the very thought I’d been circling for the past hour.
No plan yet — but we had to try.
“All right. Let’s go.”
I made up my mind and took his hand, and he pulled me to my feet.
“Trust me and follow my lead!”
“What, exactly, am I supposed to be trusting you—”
He cut himself off. His grip on my hand tightened, and he pulled me behind him.
“I’ll take the front. You stay back.”
“But I was the one who came to rescue you—”
“Who exactly is rescuing who here?”
My eyes went wide at his words. Because from where he stood, Lucas’s Ice Affinity was already stirring — frost crystals beginning to drift and form around him.
Oh.
I’d been so concerned with how to extract him that I’d forgotten the obvious: Lucas was a Krost. He had the Ice Affinity.
“Okay then. Let’s go!”
I reached up, wiping the last trace of snot from my nose with the back of my hand in a moment of solemn determination.
“Use that ice freely.”
“Look at you, changing your tune. You look like a dandelion seed and you’ve got the nerve to—”
“What was that?”
I craned my neck and stuck my head out from behind his shoulder to ask, and Lucas, face suddenly scarlet, whipped around to face forward.
“Nothing! Let’s just go!”
He really can’t say anything nicely, can he.
But that wasn’t the point right now.
With a reasonably dependable boy in front of me, I wrapped my fingers around the door handle. Cold seeped through the air as the Ice Affinity began to spread.
“Let’s see five years of effort put to use.”
________________________________________
That same moment, at the Ahili Circus.
…Damn. Lost her.
Knox was still wandering, having combed through every corner twice.
He’d kept his hand on the back of her neck expressly to prevent this. And yet.
The audience in this illegal Creature show had the manners of a stampede.
“Aisha!”
“Yeaaah!”
“Get out of the way, would you—!”
Shoving through the tidal wave of people, he climbed to the highest tier of the audience section and fitted both monocles over his eyes.
Please. Please.
She was conspicuous enough — she should have been easy to spot.
But there was no golden-haired, twin-tailed child anywhere in his field of vision.
Even if he found her —
As long as she isn’t being trampled by those people…
Spy mission or not, the circus was packed to bursting. And to reach the rendezvous point, that small child would have had to fight through all of this alone.
“……”
A chill crawled up the back of his neck.
Since the day he had lost his family, Knox had lived behind a mask. And Calypse — slowly, quietly — had let his real face emerge again only because of that child.
She was a spy. It was still unclear. But however it had happened, she had rekindled something in a duke who had been quietly extinguishing himself.
I have to find her. Even if it turns out she is a spy. Even if she ends up in a cell — I still have to return her alive to His Grace.
“Please… just don’t be trampled…”
He breathed the prayer and kept scanning, and his desperation must have been answered — because in the corner of his vision, tucked against a wall, he spotted a single door.
[Staff Storage Room]
An unremarkable door. A supply closet, by all appearances.
He was about to pass it by —
Ahili Circus. Midnight. Staff Storage Room.
His heel stopped on the floor.
________________________________________
