No, what is there to teach?
I should be going after the people who raised him to be this ill-tempered. Did he want to turn sour? Of course he didn’t.
I blinked my big eyes, put on the kindest smile I could fake, and said,
“If I had been sent by someone, just as you say, Your Highness, what would you do, baring your teeth like that? Besides, I’m thirteen. That’s hardly an age for being put up to something and sneaking around.”
My cute, lovable face, inherited from only the best of Mother and Father, was one of my greatest weapons.
I knew exactly how much an expression made up to look kind could soften the person across from me.
“Whoever sent you, it wouldn’t be someone fond of me. And since I’ve already caught you, what good is acting going to do?”
But Cassion did not fall for my charms.
Quite the backbone for such a little thing. And he keeps saying things that are pretty much right.
I like him.
Still, I couldn’t let him keep being so insolent. Especially since we would have to get along from now on.
“You think before you speak. You don’t just say whatever comes to mind.”
“That’s not something I should hear from a girl who barged into a prince’s palace.”
Was that what had bothered him? That I had shown up out of nowhere?
It was a sensitive, prickly point, but it was also a fair one, so,
“Wait just a moment.”
I stood up and went outside. Then I knocked, knock knock, and politely asked for permission.
“Your Highness, this is Diana, daughter of the ducal house of Irenber and its future head. I humbly beg your leave to enter.”
There, the most honorific form of speech.
From inside the room came the baby names of all sorts of animals. When he got as far as the young of animals I had never heard of or seen in my life, a harsh coughing took over.
Soon the coughing turned into retching.
“…Your Highness?”
I threw away any thought of asking permission half in jest and half in earnest, and flung open the door.
Cassion, who had been sitting on the sofa when I left, had collapsed onto the floor and was coughing. There was blood on the hand clamped over his lips and on the floor.
“Your Highness Cassion!”
“How is he, Dallas?”
Without taking my eyes off Cassion, who lay on the bed unconscious, I asked Dallas, the house physician of House Irenber.
“His body is very worn down.”
“And treatment? It can be done, right?”
“I cannot promise that a body weakened once will improve right away.”
“You get over a cold and your body is fine again right after.”
Dallas let out a deep sigh and fiddled with Cassion’s wrist.
“That may be true for a passing illness, but in His Highness’s case…”
Dallas fell silent. His expression was very dark.
Was it hard to say in front of the patient?
“Dallas, let’s talk outside.”
I ordered Janice to keep watch over Cassion and went out into the corridor with Dallas.
Dallas followed me, but kept glancing back at Cassion.
“Tell me, Dallas.”
Out in the corridor, I shut the door tight, and not content with that, led Dallas into the room across the way. The middle-aged physician followed meekly wherever I, smaller than he was, led him.
“His Highness does not have long to live.”
Dallas cried out to the gods and then spat out those shocking words. But I did not believe him. I had seen Cassion grow up healthy.
“You’re saying it’s an incurable disease?”
“Yes. With present medicine, we cannot even diagnose His Highness’s illness. So we cannot use medicine either.”
But Cassion had grown up perfectly well and come to my execution ground. That meant there was a cure somewhere, without a doubt.
“Dallas, are you sure you examined him properly?”
“Yes, my lady. His Highness must be suffering greatly right now.”
Dallas began to explain Cassion’s condition. Hearing it, it was serious. From Dallas’s account alone, it was a miracle Cassion could even sit up.
And in that body, he had gone around cursing out this bastard and that bastard. Judging by the spirit in his cursing, he could have beaten a cow to death.
Should I praise his mental strength, or scold him as a fool who got worked up while his body was in no state for it…
“So you’re telling me to give up like this?”
“My lady, it is not giving up, it is acceptance. And as you know, my lady, the royal palace already has some of the continent’s finest physicians. They must be looking after His Highness. There is nothing more I can do.”
How could Dallas, after seeing Cassion’s condition and the palace, say anything like “looking after”?
It was a moment to doubt Dallas’s eyesight. I asked, as though demanding an accounting.
“When will he wake up? You must at least be able to tell that.”
“I cannot promise that either.”
Dallas was frustrated at a situation in which he could not say a single thing clearly. I understood how bewildering it was for him, summoned out of the blue and made to say only difficult things, and yet I was angry.
A condition in which he might die at any moment meant he could die today. That was absolutely not allowed!
There had to be a way. After all, he had grown healthy enough to come all the way to the execution ground!
But just because Cassion became a healthy adult in the past, does that mean he will be healthy in this life too?
I suddenly sank back into a worry I’d had before.
Hadn’t my own life changed? In my past life, by now I would have taken Count Kolkos as my guardian and met Dayson, yet here I was in Cassion’s palace.
The past has changed, so he could die. Before I come of age.
Seeing him faint from coughing, I felt more uneasy than the vague worry I’d had before.
Even if I succeeded in marrying him, if he died I would have to give up the position of head of house again.
A minor who marries into the royal family enjoys the position of head of house only for as long as the marriage lasts.
Which meant that to inherit the house in a way that could never be shaken, whatever happened, I had to keep the marriage going with Cassion until I came of age.
More than anything, I need Cassion to bring my vaguely pictured revenge to completion.
I intended to seat him on the throne Dayson had so desperately wanted. That would be the finale of my revenge.
And I have to repay the debt, too.
Setting everything else aside, I’m not someone who can live owing a debt.
Having thought that far, I shook off my musings and gave Dallas an order.
“Do something. Anything.”
“There is nothing I can do.”
Dallas gave up without a second thought.
“Is that something a doctor should say?”
“My lady…”
Dallas shook his head as he looked at me. He seemed very troubled. Only when I realized that in his eyes I looked like a child throwing a tantrum did I calm myself down.
“Fine. Go back. Go back and find information, anything at all, about His Highness’s illness.”
A cure would be even better.
“And you, my lady?”
“I’ll go home once His Highness regains consciousness.”
“It is late.”
Dallas’s voice was full of worry.
“You are our house’s physician, not my guardian.”
Dallas bowed his head at my cold attitude. The big man looked smaller than I was. Only then did I think of the self-reproach he must have felt today as a doctor.
But I was too tired to comfort him.
Cassion had collapsed before my eyes, and getting Dallas into the palace had not been easy.
When Cassion collapsed, I laid him on the bed and rejoined the tour group.
I had nearly seen Paulaner turning the whole palace upside down looking for me.
Horrifying.
Just imagining it made me shudder. I met Paulaner, made the excuse that I wasn’t feeling well, and slipped out of the royal palace.
After that I went straight back to the Third Prince’s Palace with Dallas. By the secret passage I had noted on my way out.
Don’t think, just because I’ve explained it briefly, that the process was easy. Nothing is harder than dodging people’s eyes in a royal palace.
Luck was on our side, and we reached the Third Prince’s Palace without anyone else noticing.
Dallas thought my conduct suspicious, but he said nothing and examined Cassion diligently.
That alone was admirable, but… a doctor should keep trying to the end!
I opened the door irritably and walked into Cassion’s room.
Cassion still had his eyes closed. His wrists and ankles, poking out from under the filthy blanket, were bony. I swept my gaze around the room.
The room was full of cold, the fireplace unlit. Spring had come, but the nights were still chilly. Nobles sometimes lit their fireplaces even in summer…
Cassion’s blanket was far too thin to keep out the cold, and it was dirty, stained yellow.
Dust lay in clouds in every corner of his needlessly large room.
“Living in a place like this, you’d catch illnesses you never had.”
As if he had heard me, Cassion’s fingers twitched. I came to my senses and went over to the bedside.
“Your Highness, Your Highness! Are you awake?”
I took hold of Cassion and shook him. His body flapped about like paper.
His body felt as if it would crumble under my hands, so I quickly let go.
I had no way of knowing whether he was thin from not eating or from the illness.
I had definitely seen his hand move, yet no matter how much I shook him or shouted, Cassion did not stir.
The dirty blanket wrapped around him kept nagging at me.
Think good things, wear good things, use good things, and good things will happen to you.
Remembering Mother’s words, I pulled off Cassion’s blanket and threw it aside. Instead I covered him with the outer coat I had worn here.
With only his head poking out from under the flower-embroidered coat, Cassion finally looked his age.
No, who would take Cassion for eleven? Skinny as he is. He’s tall enough, so if he only put on some weight he’d look so much better.
Looking at him kept making my heart ache. Perhaps because I saw myself in him, having lost my parents early.
“Janice, could you bring one attendant you can trust? Someone you truly trust.”
“Right now?”
It was a moonless night, so dark outside that you couldn’t see a hand in front of your face.
I worried about sending Janice out alone on a night like this, but once she was out of the palace there would be a carriage, so it should be fine.
“Yes. And when you come, bring my blanket and pillow, and bed sheets, and… I should write it down!”
I had meant to ask for just a few things I needed right away, but the list of things to ask for kept growing.
Janice and I searched Cassion’s room for paper and a pen.
Janice muttered that we would be punished if we touched a prince’s things without permission.
“I’ll take responsibility. Tell them I did it all by myself. So just search.”
Reassured by that, Janice began turning out the drawers to her heart’s content.
Clothes that looked impossibly small for Cassion’s body and unusually large ones poked out of the drawers.
Looking at them only made me angry, so I slammed the wardrobe door shut and went through the desk.
“How is there not one decent notebook?”
On Cassion’s desk lay only a few books, clearly from Dayson, of the sort suited to small children who had just learned their letters. There was not even a fountain pen, supposedly an essential for a noble.
In the end I had to tear a flyleaf from a book and write with Cassion’s blood, which had been spattered on the floor. Dissolving someone else’s dried blood with water to write was the worst feeling.
“Won’t you be scared going by yourself?”
I held out the finished note and asked Janice.
“I have lots of friends, so I’ll be fine.”
Janice sometimes gives strange answers. I was worried, but seeing her confident face, it seemed all right to send her.
“I’ll be back!”
Janice said briskly and left the palace.
