“Ah… ahh.”
A faint sound, confirming that he was alive, reached me. At that tiny sound, my eyes flew open.
“Your Highness!”
“…I’m alive.”
A sound whose meaning I couldn’t tell, whether relief, resignation or complaint, slipped out between his parched lips. It was not a sound that suited an eleven-year-old boy.
“Would you like some water?”
Before I even heard Cassion’s answer, I had poured a cup and held it out. Meanwhile, our house’s attendant helped him sit up. He even set a soft cushion behind his back, lest the hard headboard dig into it.
By the time that series of movements was finished, Cassion’s eyes had come into sharp focus.
“This is Flack, an attendant of House Irenber. From now on, Flack will see to His Highness’s needs.”
Flack bowed deeply at the waist toward Cassion. Cassion’s suspicious gaze swept over me and Flack in turn.
I waved the hand holding the water cup. It meant take it quickly, but Cassion only stared at it blankly.
“What are you?”
When I stubbornly tried to press the cup into his hand, he raised his hand to knock it away.
But the weak hand failed to accomplish its purpose; it limply gripped my wrist and then fell away. Cassion did not even have the strength to hold my wrist properly.
“Flack, wait outside. You too, Janice.”
After the two of them left, we stayed silent for a while, looking at each other.
Just as the silence was getting dull, Cassion rolled his bloodshot, reddened eyes around the room. His eyebrows twitched.
Had he noticed?
Thanks to the lamp I had left softly lit in place of moonlight, Cassion’s transformed room was clearly visible.
A cleaned room, a desk properly stocked with what he needed, and a wardrobe thrown open to show neatly arranged clothes packed tightly inside.
While tidying Cassion’s room, I had worried that if Dayson visited later and saw how it had changed, he would kick up a fuss.
But the state of Cassion’s room had been far too bad. It wasn’t fit for even a healthy child to live in, and for Cassion, a sick boy, it was a cruel environment.
Dayson didn’t visit often, after all.
In the past, Dayson would tell me about it after he met Cassion. Counting it up quietly, the interval was quite long. He had come today, so he wouldn’t be visiting Cassion for a while.
It would be good for him to be comfortable, even if only for a while.
When Dayson’s visit drew near, I could just change the room back. That was why I hadn’t thrown away the shabby things from Cassion’s room, but gathered them in one corner.
“How is it, Your Highness?”
“You… what are you, I said?”
Cassion repeated the same question with a dazed face, as if dreaming.
“You can’t be curious about my name. So you must be asking why I’m being kind to you.”
“That’s you being kind?”
“Of course. Nursing a sick person, buying the things he needs, and from now on, taking revenge for you.”
“What? Ugh, cough.”
Cassion’s voice rose. Then a cough burst out. I quickly held the cup out to him.
He had slept quite a long while with a fever, so his throat must be bone dry. Talking in that state without drinking any water would make even a healthy person cough.
Cassion clutched his chest and coughed dryly for a long time, then finally took the cup I held out. Gulp, gulp. He drained the water like a man who had been in a desert for days.
Cassion set the cup down with a clack and stared straight at me. His gaze was quite sharp.
“Don’t glare at me like that. I want to get along with the man I’m going to marry.”
Cassion shook his head, then lay back down as though he no longer wanted to bicker.
He had been startled by the word revenge but not by the word husband, so he probably hadn’t heard it properly.
I pulled the blanket up to his chin and said,
“You can listen lying down, Your Highness.”
“The late Duke Irenber up in heaven must be truly sad. The daughter who is to inherit the house has gone mad.”
If he weren’t sick, I’d have that mouth of his right now!
Cassion was the type to earn himself a beating with his mouth. If I married him, I would have to fix that nasty way of talking first.
“Which would be sadder, a mad daughter inheriting the house, or having it taken by a worm of a younger brother? And what if the daughter were thrown out? If I were my father, I think the second would be sadder.”
Cassion, who had been wriggling under the blanket, stopped moving. His eyes sharpened.
He studied my shadowed face for a long time. Then, after a while, he ran his tongue over his dry lips and said,
“Is it your uncle that’s the problem?”
Cassion was clever. From my words alone, he saw right through my family’s situation. He skipped several steps and pinpointed the core of my problem.
“That’s right. That’s why I came here.”
“Why?”
But clever or not, a child was a child. He seemed to have no idea why I had come to him, and asked.
“Because I need a husband.”
“Whose? Yours?”
I nodded.
“All right, congratulations on your marriage. Do you need a witness?”
“No. I need someone to marry. I’m going to marry you, Your Highness. Let’s accept the congratulations together. His Majesty will serve as the witness, won’t he?”
Cassion turned to stone. His head, which had been facing the ceiling, moved toward me. Every time he moved, it seemed I could hear the sound a wooden puppet makes when it moves.
Clatter, clatter.
He seemed to be badly shocked.
“You… you’ve lost your mind, haven’t you?”
With an appalled expression, he spat out words as rough as his lips.
It was reasonable to refuse. A sudden visit from the Lady of Irenber, and a proposal out of nowhere.
But if he thought about it for even a moment, he would see that marrying me was by no means a loss.
I set about persuading him at once.
“Think about it, Your Highness. You have nothing to lose. If you marry me, you’ll have the mighty House Irenber as your steadfast ally. You know what kind of house Irenber is, don’t you? Even His Majesty can’t treat it carelessly.”
House Irenber had contributed immensely to building the kingdom’s wealth with its superb diplomacy and business acumen.
There had been more than five wars that House Irenber had prevented, and more than ten countries that had established relations thanks to House Irenber.
There had even been a king who offered to give them the most fertile land in his country if House Irenber would take his citizenship.
That’s attractive enough, I mean me, and my house! So, Your Highness, you only have to accept. If you’re shy, you can just nod. You’re clever, after all.
“Marry me, Your Highness.”
So Cassion, my proposal…
“No. I have no intention of marrying you.”
You aren’t supposed to refuse it!
“Are we going to the palace today too, my lady?”
Janice asked.
I had no time to nurse the pain of my first heartbreak.
During the palace tour I had secured a secret passage for sneaking in and out of the Third Prince’s Palace, and I visited Cassion often. Every time I went, he turned me away at the door, but I didn’t give up.
They say it takes years even to win good vassals, so winning a husband was worth that much effort.
“No.”
Janice had assumed, as always, that we would go to the palace today, but today I had somewhere else to be.
I got up at dawn, bathed, and changed with Janice’s help. Today I took special care, even adding a big ribbon to my dress.
When I had finished dressing, I looked at myself this way and that in the full-length mirror.
I looked lovely from every angle.
“I don’t care for pumpkins.”
Cassion had refused my proposal for a ridiculous reason.
“I can’t accept being called a pumpkin, but beauty standards differ from person to person, so I’ll take it. Still, I have a lot of money.”
“What good is having money when you’ll die without being able to spend all of it?”
Hearing him say he would die, I was struck speechless. In that moment, I understood his attitude of not even considering my proposal.
Maybe it wasn’t that he disliked me, but that he was worried about his own situation, unable to take responsibility for a marriage.
The words I’ve seen you grown, so stop worrying rose all the way to my throat, but I swallowed them.
If dying is the problem, then I’ll just keep you alive.
“Pardon? What did you say, my lady?”
Oh, you saved me! What is it you want? No, you don’t have to tell me. I’ll give you everything!
I giggled, imagining what Cassion, saved thanks to me, would say. Janice stared at me, laughing out of nowhere, with a strange look.
“Let’s go, Janice.”
“Where? Please tell me where!”
Janice trailed after me as she spoke, but I didn’t answer.
I was going to meet someone, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to see that person.
“My lady, where is this?”
In a back alley that did not suit my gorgeous dress at all, I leaned crookedly against a wall and waited for someone.
Stench rose from the filth caked thick on the ground and walls. Janice held out as long as she could, then pinched her nose.
“Doesn’t it smell to you, my lady?”
It does. And I’ve smelled something similar before.
In the underground dungeon.
I didn’t want to remember that time, but I did not avoid it. Painful memories make me angry, and anger is the engine of revenge.
I was just about to explain that a stench like this was nothing.
There was the sound of footsteps tapping along the ground.
Someone was approaching us. Probably the person I was waiting for.
I looked up with a wide smile. Sure enough, the person I had been waiting for so desperately was coming toward me. I waved at the approaching figure.
Red hair tied high swayed. At the sight of the woman, whose face was more youthful than when I had seen her in the past, my heart fluttered.
Glad, longing, grateful.
“Aunt!”
Cho, head of Chorni, my aunt, who in the past had shown herself at the execution ground for my sake, stopped in her tracks.
“Aunt, it’s me, Diana Viola Irenber! Your one and only niece!”
I rushed up to Cho, who stood blinking blankly, and took her hand. I shook it up and down, making no effort to hide how glad I was.
“Ugh.”
But it seems I was the only one who was glad. In the blink of an eye, Cho had me in her grip. She wrapped her arms around me from behind, pinning me, and set a knife to my throat. A faint smell of sweat came from Cho’s body.
“My lady!”
Janice, left behind when I ran, shrieked and stamped her feet. As Janice grew agitated, the rats in the alley began to squeal.
“Tell that one to stay still.”
Cho muttered ominously in my ear.
“Janice, don’t move! This person won’t hurt me. She’s my aunt.”
“And stop with the aunt business already.”
“Yes, Aunt.”
Being an obedient niece, I answered at once.
