Chapter 3

“Why did you just disappear like that, that day?”

That day, after they’d finished dancing together, Adele had fled the ballroom as if running away.

She hadn’t noticed while they danced, but once she came back to herself, she realized everyone was watching her and Christine, whispering.

In that moment, shame had made it impossible for Adele to lift her head.

It felt as though everyone had seen straight through to the way her heart had raced for him.

“That wicked woman married an old Marquis for his money and status, then poisoned her own husband — and now she dares!”

It had felt as if she could hear every word of it.

“I’d only meant to deliver my gift to His Majesty and head straight back. Since it was your first time attending a ball, I figured you’d be busy greeting people, so I left without saying anything. I’m sorry if that hurt.”

“Ha. Sorry?”

Christine was smiling, but his eyes were cold.

That day, the moment the dance had ended, people had crowded in to speak to him one after another, and in all the chaos, Adele had simply vanished.

When he’d heard that she’d already left, an odd, unbearable anger had risen in him.

Right. Running off however she pleased — that had always been her specialty.

“Is there nothing else you want to say to me?”

Christine asked.

Adele gazed at him blankly.

There was so much she wanted to say — things she genuinely wanted to pour out without a thought for the consequences.

But what would that change, anyway?

He would soon become the Emperor’s imperial consort. Nothing good could come of someone like her getting entangled with him.

“How is your father doing? That leg of his, from back then…”

Christine looked at Adele with somber eyes, then nodded.

“He’s doing well.”

“I’m glad.”

Until ten years ago, Adele and her mother had cared for Christine like family. His father, who used to come by the mother and daughter’s house often looking for his son, had naturally grown close to them too.

And then their parents had formally announced they would remarry.

But the day before the wedding, Adele’s mother died.

A horrific accident — bitten by a wild beast in the forest.

Christine’s father, who had gone after the beast, was hurt badly enough in the leg to nearly lose his life. And Adele had left both him and Christine behind, going off to her birth father, a nobleman.

She had coldly turned her back on him even as he stood there crying, blocking her way.

She’d said that with her mother gone, there was no reason left to live in a filthy mining town — that from now on, she’d become a noblewoman and live in splendor.

Unfortunately, things didn’t seem to have gone quite the way she’d hoped.

“And you — how have you been, all this time?”

“I’ve done well too.”

She smiled, but her green eyes were dark and gloomy as a deep well — not the bright, lovely eyes she’d once had.

“That’s right — you certainly do look like you’ve done wonderfully for yourself. And here you were, so desperate to become a noblewoman.”

Christine said it mockingly, recalling the report his adjutant Zimmer had given him.

“There was a lot of talk from the moment she married the late Marquis Oswald, sir. An eighteen-year-old girl marrying a Marquis old enough to be her father.”

---

After returning from the ball, Christine had ordered an investigation into Adele.

“Eighteen, and married to a Marquis old enough to be her father?”

“Yes, sir. There was a great deal of talk that it was a marriage aimed at wealth and rising status.”

“She didn’t look like she had either of those.”

At the ball, Adele’s clothes had been shabby by any measure. She hadn’t worn so much as a single scrap of jewelry.

Even so, she’d been beautiful enough — but it had been obvious at a glance that her circumstances were poor.

“That’s… she was driven out two years into the marriage, sir, on charges of poisoning her husband.”

Christine clicked his tongue.

Anyone else, maybe. But her — killing her husband?

With no proper toys to play with, the children of the mining town used to catch insects for sport. Every time, Adele would set the insects they’d caught free, and get scolded for it.

And then Christine would fly at those children without a second thought. He couldn’t forgive anyone who spoke ill of Adele.

And now here she was, called the Empire’s greatest villainess, taking every insult there was.

Of course, the Christine of now had no intention of flying at anyone for Adele’s sake.

The Adele he’d known ten years ago no longer existed.

“Tell me more.”

“Of course, there was no definite evidence, so House Oswald settled it by casting her out. She’s said to be living now in a small house on the outskirts of Greenhill.”

“So what does my adjutant think?”

“Sir?”

Zimmer looked puzzled.

“They just let the murderer of the head of their house go, for lack of evidence? A house as powerful as Oswald?”

He didn’t put any faith in Adele, but something about the situation did strike him as suspicious.

“Well… there were also rumors that she had some kind of relationship with the Marquis’s son…”

Zimmer, answering, caught sight of Christine’s chilling expression and quickly changed his wording.

“I’ll look into it further and give you a fuller report, sir.”

Christine rose from his chair.

“Never mind. Have the carriage made ready. We’re going to the outskirts of Greenhill now.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to see the Dowager Marchioness?”

“Is that a problem?”

Zimmer’s face went blank with disbelief.

Anyone else, sure — but this was Count Weiss, the man they called the Ice Demon King.

A man who, up to now, had never so much as glanced at the stunning beauties and well-matched women who’d tried to tempt him. A war-hungry madman who seemed obsessed with nothing but battle.

That he’d even asked the Dowager Marchioness to dance had been shocking enough on its own. And now he’d had her investigated and was going to pay her a personal visit…

This was a heart signal if he’d ever seen one!

Still — of all people, a widow with a reputation like that, of all things.

Personally, Zimmer wasn’t thrilled about it. But he decided to root for his respected lord’s heart all the same.

That he’d found somewhere — anywhere — to set his heart was a good sign in itself.

“If it’s your first visit… shouldn’t we prepare some kind of gift, sir?”

Christine, halfway out the door, paused.

But he answered curtly a moment later.

“Whatever you think’s best.”

“Yes, sir! Leave it to me!”

---

What Zimmer had prepared as a gift turned out to be, apparently, the entire contents of a flower shop.

“There are so many flowers!”

Adele marveled as she pulled out every vase in the house to divide up the enormous bundles of flowers.

The house she lived in was a small, run-down, two-story building.

Judging by the curtain drawn across the stairway entrance, the second floor didn’t seem to be in use at all. The first floor was centered around a fireplace, with an armchair and a rose-colored sofa set beside it. Next to the fireplace, a narrow hallway led off toward the bedrooms, and just at its entrance sat a kitchen doubling as a dining room.

Worn-down as it was, the whole interior was small and shabby enough to take in at a single glance.

“Yes, right about here should do.”

Adele set the flower vases down here and there around the room.

Christine, standing with his arms crossed as he watched, finally spoke up.

“It’s a mess. We’d be better off throwing the whole lot out.”

With the narrow house decked out in such a riot of colorful blooms, it looked for all the world like a gypsy’s den.

“True enough. It is a bit much, isn’t it?”

When Christine frowned, Adele stuck her tongue out at him.

“Sorry — I’ve just never been good at saying things I don’t mean. Flowers must be expensive enough as it is in winter, and now you’ve gone and wasted your money for nothing.”

“Noted. Next time I’ll bring something you actually need. Though it looks like there’s more than just one or two things you’re short on.”

Christine looked around her shabby little house and clicked his tongue, as if the sight of it were pitiful.

Calling it a manor was generous — the place was no better than a commoner’s house.

But Adele paid no attention to his condescension.

“Next time, you said?”

She seemed even more flustered by that than by anything else.

“Why, you don’t want me coming back again, ever?”

“That’s not it, but… there are people watching, and this is such a small, close-knit neighborhood…”

Christine’s brow furrowed, as though irritated.

“What’s the problem?”

“What?”

“You don’t even have a husband right now. Is it really such a disgrace for a widow to see a man?”

Adele shot him a glare.

“What are you even talking about. You’re not a man, to me. You’re just like a little brother…”

“Then there’s even less of a problem, isn’t there?”

And then, all at once, Christine leaned his face in close.

“—!”

Startled, Adele stumbled backward and her leg caught on the sofa, throwing her off balance. He quickly caught her by the shoulder.

“Why so jumpy?”

“W-well, it’s because you came at me out of nowhere.”

“So, did you have some strange thought?”

“Strange thought about what?”

Adele stared at him, bewildered.

But in truth, her heartbeat kept racing faster and faster.

He’s too close!

Beneath the flower scent filling the cramped house, she caught his own.

Cool and secretive, like the scent of a chilled forest…

A scent that seemed, somehow, enough to bewitch a person.

It was the same scent that had clung to her body ever since she’d come home from the ball — the strange man’s scent that had invaded even her bedroom that night and kept her tossing, unable to sleep.

Just being near him was enough to leave Adele short of breath. Not wanting him to notice, she quickly turned her head away.

But Christine caught her chin and turned her face back to his.

“Don’t look away. We’ve only just met again after all this time — don’t hurt my feelings.”

He stared at her so intently it seemed he might swallow her whole. Her own face was reflected in the mysterious blue-gray of his eyes.

Adele felt as though she might be trapped there forever, just like this.

In the end, she reached up, grabbed both his cheeks between her hands, and yanked them — hard, with a sharp stretch. She didn’t stop there, either; she gave them a shake for good measure.

“Enough joking around, Chris.”

When he glared fiercely at her, she quickly let go — but made sure to say what she meant, plainly.

“You really are just like my own little brother to me. Sure, you’ve gotten much more handsome and much more of a man than you used to be, but to my eyes, you’re still that little kid who used to trail after me like a puppy.”

It seems that when a person runs into something utterly unexpected, their brain simply stalls out.

Christine just stood there with his mouth open, glaring at her for a long moment.

A puppy? A little kid? Trailing after her?

Surely none of that was supposed to describe him, right now?

But Adele didn’t seem to notice how foul Christine’s mood had turned.

“I still remember it so clearly. How pretty your smile used to be, how much you loved sweet cookies and bread, and that little brat who went absolutely crazy for apple pie—”

“Enough.”

In an instant, he leaned his face in even closer. Those lips that had made every woman in the Empire ache with longing seemed about to touch hers at any moment.

“C-Chris…!”

Adele’s eyes went round.

“Then you must remember this too. Who your first kiss was.”

His breath brushed ticklish against her lips, and then, just like that, they touched—

“Mm—!”

At the same instant, Adele shoved him away with all her strength.

“What are you doing!”

“Did you forget? That you were the one who kissed me first — me, your little brother.”

Adele cried out, startled.

“What are you talking about. I wasn’t the one who did it first!”

“So you admit there was a kiss, then?”

“No, that wasn’t a kiss! How was that a kiss!”

Even after that, she kept talking, as if making excuses.

“You’d fallen in the water and stopped breathing, and I panicked and gave you mouth-to-mouth, that’s all.”

“That wasn’t quite all of it, was it?”

“And then, when you finally started breathing again, I was so happy — yes, I kissed you because I was so happy! It was never anything like a real kiss! We were both out of our minds at the time, and that’s just how it happened—”

“Then why is your face turning red?”

Adele, in the middle of her rambling excuses, shot him a fierce glare.

“My face isn’t red!”

“You look exactly like a ripe tomato. Want me to show you a mirror?”

“Never mind! There’s something wrong with your eyes.”

“My eyes are perfectly fine. Excellent eyesight, too.”

“If I say it isn’t, then it isn’t!”

“Damn it, Captain Stubborn!”

Then a short silence fell.

A moment later, a laugh slipped out from between Adele’s lips — pfft.

Christine shot her a look as if to ask what was so funny, and her expression turned wistful.

“I really haven’t heard that in a long time.”

“Heard what?”

Asking that, Christine looked exactly like a sulky little boy — a face Adele had seen all through their childhood, one deeply familiar to her.

Only then did something in Adele finally settle, relieved.

Because this splendid man in front of her really did seem to be the same boy she’d once known.

“You used to always call me that — ‘Captain Stubborn.’ And your face, saying it just now, hasn’t changed one bit from back then.”

She remembered a great deal about him, really.

She’d thought she’d forgotten it all and simply moved on.

After leaving him behind, saying she’d live well all on her own…

“Same goes for you. Then and now, that stubborn streak of yours hasn’t changed a bit.”

Even as he said it, his expression had softened, and he sank down onto the sofa.

Adele added another log to the fire, which was starting to die down.

“I’m really glad we got to meet again, Chris. But don’t come here anymore, from now on. Nothing good can come of you getting tangled up with me.”

Crackle. Crackle.

The flames caught the fresh log and burned, crackling.

Yes. This is the end of it.

Bitter as it was, Adele said her farewell silently, in her heart.

“Why? Because you’re the woman who poisoned her husband?”

Adele spun around, startled.