Once the moon rose in the sky, he’d found himself heading here before he knew it, out of pure habit.
Cain wandered the garden aimlessly.
He knew perfectly well that staying any longer wouldn’t fill this restlessness, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to head back easily.
He stood in front of a flower bed he had no interest in and looked at the flowers instead.
Viola always lit up over things like this, delighted.
Unfortunately, Cain couldn’t find much of anything interesting in them.
He thought he’d enjoyed himself yesterday. He couldn’t say why it was different now.
Ha. What am I even doing.
Wasting time for nothing. Far from settling, his mind only grew more tangled.
At last, Cain resolved to head back.
He was turning to step back toward the residence when—
Across his sharp senses, a familiar presence brushed by softly.
Rustle.
The light sound of footsteps on grass.
And carried on the wind, that particular bittersweet scent of greenery.
No servant of the Duke’s house dared to loiter here at this hour.
Which meant the owner of this presence had to be…
“Viola?”
Cain wondered if he was hearing things. Because there was no way it could be true. Why would she, who ought to be sleeping by now, be out here at this hour?
But as an illusion went, she was far too vivid before his eyes.
“Your Grace…!”
As if bothered by the skirt trailing down to her ankles, she hitched it up slightly and ran toward him.
Then she finally stopped in front of him and caught her breath.
At this unexpected meeting, Cain had gone stiff without meaning to and said nothing, and her eyebrows drooped.
“I’m sorry, I’m terribly late, heh heh…”
Viola said it while scratching the back of her head, embarrassed.
For a moment, Cain only stared blankly at her.
Wasn’t she supposed to be sleeping?
Why is she out here at this hour? No, before that.
There was something he needed to confirm. Cain asked:
“Are you… all right?”
The woman blinked, then let out a short sigh.
“Oh, my body? I’m perfectly fine! More importantly, I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t worry you unnecessarily…”
So she’s aware she causes worry. Though given that, she seemed to cause plenty of trouble anyway.
Still, she didn’t seem to be lying about being fine, and she started chattering away as usual.
“But I was so surprised to wake up in my bedroom. Someone must have carried me there—I’m so sorry, I must have been heavy…”
Heavy, indeed. It was almost laughable.
She’d been even thinner than he’d expected. Did she even eat properly?
Cain answered indifferently.
“Not particularly.”
“Pardon? Don’t tell me you’re the one who carried me?”
Walking ahead, she turned back to him, startled.
Saying yes would surely have made her faint on the spot, so Cain gave no answer at all.
Seeming to take his silence as confirmation on her own, the woman’s ears turned bright red in an instant.
“Ooh. It really was you. Thank you for helping me.”
How embarrassing… I must have been heavy… she added quietly, fanning her face with her hand as if to cool the heat of embarrassment.
A woman the size of a squirrel, heavy indeed.
Unaware of his thoughts, she flapped her hands and spoke again.
“I keep showing you nothing but embarrassing sides of myself, it seems.”
It was hard to make sense of her standards. Acting this timid over something so trivial, and yet astonishingly bold about serious matters.
“That doesn’t matter to me. Recklessly eating poison, on the other hand, does.”
“That… that’s true. I’m sorry. I was rather desperate at the time, in my own way. And proving it myself was the surest way, too.”
Looking quite bashful, she quickened her pace.
If he left her like that, she might overexert herself out of embarrassment.
Cain decided to change the subject.
“Come to think of it, I ran into your daughter. Melody.”
“Gasp. Really?”
At the welcome topic, she stopped in her tracks.
“Yes. She was spirited.”
Cain thought back to Melody.
Ordinary children usually burst into tears the moment they laid eyes on him.
Melody, far from fearing him, had instead confidently demanded this and that of him.
If not for her looking so exactly like Viola, he might have believed she carried Asheln blood.
Do those who hold powerful holy power differ from ordinary people, perhaps?
Or perhaps she simply took after her mother. Viola was just as fearless.
At his brief praise, Viola’s face brightened.
“It’s not just me saying it because I’m her mother, but Melody isn’t only spirited, you know.”
“Is that so.”
“Yes! You have no idea how clever she is. And so kind-hearted too. Not to mention how cute she is. Just the other day, she even gave me a flower ring as a gift, can you believe it?”
Bragging about her daughter poured out of her like a bursting dam. Was she really this delighted?
Her sprout-green eyes shimmered and sparkled in the moonlight.
The sight wasn’t unpleasant. Cain wore a faint smile and lent an ear to her stories.
“And unlike me, she has such a good sense of direction! Her athletic ability is great too. She won first place at the village footrace not long ago. Haha, I wonder who she takes after.”
The faint curve at the corner of Cain’s mouth went stiff.
Who she takes after, indeed.
He knew she’d only said it lightly, as small talk, but he couldn’t understand why those words bothered him.
His mood sank without his meaning it to.
Why, all of a sudden?
“Your Grace? Is something wrong?”
Unlike himself, his feelings must have shown on his face, because Viola looked up at him.
But there was no answer that would come from being asked. He didn’t know the reason himself.
Cain opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again in the end.
He pretended nothing was wrong and simply continued the walk.
The night deepened, little by little.
The next day, in the afternoon.
I found myself being scolded by Jayden out of nowhere.
“I heard everything! What were you thinking, honestly!”
The moment I walked into his bedroom for his treatment, Jayden came straight at me, as if he’d been waiting, and started getting angry.
He seemed to have somehow heard about what happened yesterday.
Sob. I never thought the young master would hear about it too.
Lately it felt like I kept getting scolded by children.
Melody, and now Jayden too. I was the adult here, whatever anyone thought!
“Viola doesn’t even have Tamutar disease, so why would you eat something so dangerous!”
“I’m sorry. But I had to check, all the same.”
Honestly, even without Celia, I would have had to do it eventually.
It wasn’t an ordinary herb; it was an extremely dangerous poison.
I might have been confident it was safe, but there was no telling how Jayden, the one who’d actually have to take it, would feel about that.
Who would willingly agree to eat a poisonous herb out of nowhere?
So there had been no choice but to check and prove it myself.
I’d only carried out what I’d already planned to do, but it seemed that act had wounded Jayden’s heart.
I noticed the redness and swelling around Jayden’s eyes. He must have cried himself to sleep last night.
I worried him so much.
He was scolding me energetically enough right now, but he must have been badly shaken.
Jayden wrinkled his nose and shouted again.
“Then I should have just eaten it myself in the first place, since I’m the patient! I’ll have to eat it eventually anyway!”
“The formulation isn’t even finished yet. It would be terrible if you took something like that carelessly.”
And besides, what I’d taken yesterday was only the antidote, not the actual medicine for Tamutar disease.
Eating the poison and then taking the antidote was clearly a different thing from properly combining the two into a finished medicine.
The latter minimized the side effects of the raw ingredients and was, relatively speaking, far safer. What I’d done yesterday had only been to demonstrate that the antidote itself was safe.
I was counting the pointless patterns on the floor, lost in thought, when—
Jayden hit me with an unexpected blow.
“So it’s fine for you, then?”
