Chapter 4

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

Adele spun around, startled.

It was a rumor the whole country already knew. But she had hoped Christine, of all people, wouldn’t know it. In his eyes, she had wanted to stay the girl from that long-ago memory.

But that had probably been too much to ask for.

“It doesn’t matter to me. Whether you really poisoned your husband, or were falsely accused.”

Christine said it with an indifferent look on his face.

“Chris….”

“That just means your reputation these days has no say over mine. Not anymore.”

In that moment, she had no idea how arrogant his eyes looked.

As if he’d been born noble from the start — as if he were someone of such lofty standing that she had no business even approaching him.

Christine, the miner’s son.

The unwanted boy who used to wander the whole village with a hungry face, because he had no mother to look after him.

That memory felt, now, like something only Adele herself had imagined.

“But you…. how did you become a noble?”

Adele asked carefully.

“Because I brought the emperor glory.”

He answered with arrogance, drained his teacup in one go, and changed the subject.

“So is this really all the hospitality a guest gets around here?”

“What?”

“You’re not seriously sending me off with nothing but this bitter, astringent water, are you?”

“That happens to be expensive black tea….”

“We haven’t seen each other in ten years, and you’re not even going to feed me?”

“Who’s the one who turned up out of nowhere? And there’s nothing proper to eat right now anyway….”

“Don’t worry, I’ll eat anything. I haven’t had a real meal — I’m about to starve to death.”

“What were you doing that you couldn’t even eat?”

At the word “hungry,” Adele’s face immediately turned worried.

She had always been like that, even back then — the only person who ever worried about whether he’d eaten.

Because of that, there had been a time when Christine thought he’d have given everything he had for her. There had been a time like that.

“I didn’t have a moment to eat, listening to the emperor ramble on. It was basically torture dressed up as a dinner invitation.”

Christine shook his head, looking thoroughly appalled.

“Then wait a moment. I’ll see if there’s anything here.”

“Thanks, Adele. There’s really no one like you.”

He narrowed his eyes into a smile, and his silver lashes caught the light above eyes of blue-tinged gray.

Adele had always been weak to that smile of his. It was the kind of look that made her want to help him, as if she’d been charmed into it.

Maybe Christine knew that perfectly well himself. Maybe that was exactly why he made such thorough use of it now.

But before she went into the kitchen, Adele decided there was one thing she needed to make absolutely clear.

“But let’s get this straight! That thing, that day — it wasn’t a kiss. And I definitely did not start it!”

Then, before Christine could offer a word of rebuttal, she hurried into the kitchen and shut the door behind her.

Thump!

She held onto things more than he’d have guessed.

---

Door shut, Adele sank into a chair at the table.

“Haah….”

She let out a long breath she’d been holding this whole time.

What is going on. Chris….

She was far too confused.

I was trying to forget all of it and just live.

Her life in the mining village, leaving him behind, the memories of her mother….

She’d meant to bury it all like something out of some distant former life — to remember only that it had all been beautiful, and happy, and dear….

Because until now, there had been no one who could point out how distorted that memory really was.

But then he had suddenly appeared.

And not as the pretty boy from her memories, but as a dangerous man.

Every time she caught his gaze, his breath, his scent, Adele’s heart pounded violently. Just being in the same room with him left her short of breath.

A little while ago, in the moment their lips had nearly touched, she’d felt as if her heart might leap straight out of her chest. And after that, she’d been terrified he might hear it still pounding.

“I’ve lost my mind…!”

Adele shook her head, denying it to herself.

Right — it was only that it had been so long, and things felt awkward, and that was all that had taken her breath away.

Anyone’s heart would race if someone’s lips came that close to touching theirs. It was only natural.

Right. That’s all it is. How could I, toward him…. Shameless — how could I possibly….

---

“It’s warm in here.”

Christine murmured it to himself, looking around the empty sitting room.

Before him, the fireplace blazed with a fierce red flame. But that didn’t seem to be the only reason.

A shabby little house, old and cramped beyond description.

And yet, somehow, it felt familiar to him.

Embroidered linen curtains hung over the long, narrow window, and the console was draped in hand-knitted lace.

Candles and small picture frames sat charmingly along the mantel, and green plants grew fresh in every corner despite the winter. Ridiculous as it looked, even the flowers he’d brought seemed to fit right in.

It was just like the house she had lived in, long ago.

That place where the smell of warm bread and sweet cookies had soaked into every corner.

Adele and her mother, who had always welcomed him so warmly whenever he turned up there clutching his hungry stomach.

It felt as though ten years had looped all the way around and brought him right back to that house.

It felt as if, even now, Adele’s mother might appear any moment in her apron, carrying a pie still trailing steam. And whenever that happened, Adele would threaten him not to so much as glance at the pie until he’d finished his writing lesson.

And then there was his father, arriving just then to collect him, pretending to take Christine’s side while he teased her — insisting the boy was slow because he took after his old man, so go easy on him.

Damn it….!

He’d thought they might actually go on living like something close to a family.

A happiness that had been far too short.

And yet, it seemed, he had gone on missing that house Adele had lived in for a long, long time.

Even though it was nothing now but a pointless past.

“A portrait of the Dowager Marchioness Oswald.”

---

It had been right before he was to attend the year-end banquet.

The emperor, who had summoned him, held out a small portrait.

A woman with green eyes, her long black hair swept up.

The woman in the portrait wore plain dress, and yet she was beautiful and elegant enough to catch the eye all the same. But the reason Christine stared at that portrait, transfixed, was something else entirely.

“This woman — is she truly the dead Marquis’s widow?”

“She is. Do you happen to know her?”

Until not long before, Christine had lived his life on the battlefield. He held a noble title and nothing more — no friendships among the other nobles, no interest whatsoever in their world.

Perhaps he had made himself that way on purpose, if only to cut off whatever he still felt for Adele.

“Not well enough to say I know her. She was the daughter of the woman who looked after me as a boy.”

“Good. Then attend this banquet, and get reacquainted with her.”

“What’s the reason?”

“She may be holding onto a document that belonged to the late Marquis.”

“A document of the Marquis’s?”

“Just a blank document. One bearing my own signature. It disappeared after the Marquis died, and no matter how hard we’ve searched, we haven’t been able to find it.”

Christine didn’t believe a word of what the emperor was telling him.

Marquis Oswald had been dead eight years now. And he was still searching, after all this time, for a mere blank document?

It had to be a document of tremendous importance to the emperor.

“I’ll get close to her, then, and look into it.”

He bowed and turned to go, but the emperor added, with something meaningful in his voice,

“It’s fine to grow close to her. Just don’t do anything that would upset April.”

“…..”

“Hm. Was that too demanding a request?”

“Depending on how you look at it.”

The emperor laughed heartily, then suddenly dropped his voice, turning serious.

“You’re already as good as family to me. You know that.”

The emperor had long since let slip that he saw Christine as a future imperial consort. He meant to use April as bait, to make Christine irrevocably, certainly his own.

Bait that held no appeal for Christine whatsoever, of course.

“Your Majesty is my liege.”

Every time, he slipped away with just such an ambiguous answer — the same as he had now.

---

Adele came out of the kitchen, still wearing her apron.

“Dinner’s ready, Chris.”

But there was no answer from him.

“Chris…?”

Adele, walking toward him, stopped short and let out a quiet sigh.

He had fallen asleep.

Arms crossed, his back leaned at an angle against the sofa, his long legs propped up on the table — he slept as comfortably as if it were his own home.

Adele sank down on the floor beside the sofa where he slept and watched him quietly.

He looks exactly the same asleep as he did back then.

He’d grown far taller than before, his build had hardened, even his voice had changed — and yet, asleep, his face still kept traces of the young boy he’d once been.

A boy whose voice hadn’t even broken yet, even at seventeen.

Most boys his age had grown into something close to full-grown men by then. But Christine had stood nearly as tall as Adele, who was a year older than him.

Even so, no one had ever dared tease him for it.

Christine had been prettier than most girls, but no one could ever beat him in a fight.

He’d been quick on his feet, slender yet strong, and watching him fight had sometimes felt like watching some fierce, wild beast.

And in the end, he had become a hero of the battlefield.

And turned into this — this splendid man.

Not a boy anymore, but a man….

Watching him sleep, Adele felt some strange feeling rising up to take hold of her, and she quickly turned her head away.

She added more logs to the fire, its embers burning low. When Tanya got back, she’d no doubt pull a long face over how little firewood was left — they rationed it carefully enough that they didn’t even use the second floor in winter.

But even if it meant going a little cold for a while, she wanted to let him sleep somewhere warm.

Crackle. Crackle….

The sound of the fire filled the room with a quiet stillness.

Outside, the snow was falling thicker, and the day was growing dark.

---

It had snowed heavily that day.

Christine, having just turned seventeen, had recently started working at the mine.

Adele had been in a hurry, meaning to bring him his lunch. She’d been helping out at her mother’s bakery, swamped with orders, and ended up running far too late.

So she decided to cut across Garden Lake as a shortcut. It was nearly the end of winter, and the ice had already begun to thaw beneath it, but the snow piled on top hid that from her.

It happened when she was about halfway across the lake. The moment she shifted her weight, the ice beneath her feet crumbled like a biscuit, and she dropped straight through. The midwinter lake swallowed her down like a bog.

“Adele!”

Christine, who’d come out to meet her, saw it happen and threw himself into the water.

That was the last thing she saw.

When she came to, she was back on dry land. Beside her lay Christine, soaked through, pale and ashen as a corpse.

And he wasn’t breathing.

“Chris! Chris! Open your eyes!”

Panicked, Adele shook him frantically. When he still wouldn’t wake, she gave him mouth-to-mouth like someone possessed.

Thankfully, he finally managed to breathe.

At that, Adele burst into tears. She sank down like a little child and sobbed out loud.

“Waaaaah!”

“Why are you crying?”

Christine looked at her, baffled — she was always the one playing the grown-up, older-sister act, after all.

“Hic— hic! I really thought you were going to die! Hic!”

“I’m fine. Look, I’m perfectly all right….”

“Are you really all right?”

Adele, shoulders heaving as she sobbed, had a red nose smeared with tears and snot.

Maybe it struck him as funny, because Christine’s eyes crinkled into a smile, and he wiped her face clean with his hand.

“Yeah. I’m all right.”

“How are you all right? Your lips have gone completely blue.”

“Adele, yours are bluer than mine.”

“Ngh…. I think I might actually freeze to death.”

Adele hugged herself tight, shivering.

“Me too.”

Christine pulled her into his arms. Whether it was the cold, or relief, Adele held him back just as tightly.

Both of them were frozen through and shivering. And yet wherever their bodies touched, the other’s warmth felt searing.

It felt as if some deep, dense feeling, long sunk to the bottom of her, was slowly melting loose.

It clouded her mind like silt stirred up from still water.

She couldn’t hold on to a single coherent thought.

And then, so naturally that neither of them could have said how….

Their lips found each other, and they warmed the frozen skin beneath with slow, searching kisses.

A kiss all the more passionate for being clumsy, all the more instinctive for being innocent.

Yes — that had, without question, been a kiss.