Rosinante watched as Riersha seized Sona’s arm and disappeared into the distance, and burst out laughing.
“It seems Lady Riersha is a bit shy around strangers.”
“…Shy around strangers?”
“Yes.”
“With this face?”
Pernoa dragged a hand down his features and asked the question as though it genuinely refused to compute.
Rosinante clicked his tongue inwardly. That wasn’t quite what I meant.
“Yes. Shy around that face.”
“…”
“It is only natural, my lord. This is the first time the young lady has met you. A little awkwardness is to be expected.”
Pernoa furrowed his brow at the unexpected dilemma.
Four years. In the span of those four years, the child had come to see Pernoa as a stranger.
Rosinante’s eyes glinted with undisguised fascination.
Who could have ever imagined they would witness Pernoa fretting like this—anxious and uncertain before his own daughter?
Pernoa Arachrene, worrying over the feelings of a four-year-old girl.
Rosinante recalled the image from just a short while ago: Pernoa sitting beside Riersha, unable to get a single word out until every last person had vacated the Hall of Truth. He pressed his lips together to keep from laughing. That image, he was quite certain, would follow him to his grave.
“By the way, Rosinante.”
“Yes, my lord?”
“Why is Riersha so small? She should have been receiving regular supplies from the main estate.”
“…About that. The collateral branches interfered with the supply deliveries, and the young lady has had rather a difficult time of it.”
“Those wretched collateral bastards. I knew it.”
The air around Pernoa rippled with a sudden and chilling bloodlust. Rosinante nodded in wholehearted agreement.
Four years ago, in exchange for registering Riersha in the family register and guaranteeing her safety, Pernoa had been forced to relinquish his title as the Young Duke. The collateral branches had revolted, insisting that Riersha’s magical deficiency made her absolutely unacceptable as a successor.
It had also been the day that Arcmund—a man of unwavering principles—fell silent for the very first time.
It went without saying that the incident had left Arcmund’s position within the family deeply precarious.
Breaking the rules had created no shortage of problems, yet there had been no other way to protect Riersha.
But the greatest problem was something else entirely.
The Imperial family, which had long been watching for any opportunity to place a leash around the neck of House Arachrene, had finally begun to stir. Someone, it seemed, had let slip that things inside the duchy were far from stable.
Pernoa raked a hand through his hair with the air of a man nursing a persistent headache.
For now, the most pressing matters were—
“First, I’ll need to get acquainted with the children. And I’ll need to drag that runaway back home.”
“Yes, I suppose that would be the proper order of things.”
Rosinante responded in earnest agreement.
“After that, I’ll beat those wretched collateral bastards into the ground.”
“Yes, that would be best. Though, my lord—”
“What.”
“…Going forward, might you consider being a little more mindful of your language? The young masters have turned out the way they have precisely because they grew up watching you.”
Like father, like sons.
Rosinante thought of the young masters and heaved a long, weary sigh.
When they were small, they had been rather endearing in their own way. These days, it was nearly impossible to catch a glimpse of that. The moment anyone tried to get close to them, they would bristle and snap like cornered animals.
Given everything they had been through, it was understandable—and yet it worried him all the same.
Rosinante shook his head slowly and continued.
“Just a few days ago, young Master Ricador sent such a murderous look my way that my knees very nearly gave out. I am not being dramatic. You will need to substantially increase my hazard pay.”
“What?”
“…I misspoke.”
The moment Rosinante found himself caught in that sharp crimson gaze, he snapped his mouth shut in a hurry.
Even so, he could not retreat entirely.
There was still something that needed to be said.
He cleared his throat and straightened his posture with deliberate gravity.
Pernoa’s nature could not, by any generous measure, be called gentle. After years of fighting on battlefields where death lurked at every turn, expecting warmth from him would be asking for something unreasonable.
And yet—
“Ahem. In any case, the reason I raise this at all is because I am genuinely concerned about Lady Riersha.”
“What does Riersha have to do with it?”
“Imagine, if you will, the young lady watching you just now—and then turning to someone and saying, I’m going to beat those wretched bastards into the ground.”
Pernoa opened his mouth to argue and said nothing.
He wanted to say that would never happen. But then he thought of his three sons, and the words died on his tongue.
“So from here on, you must also make use of proper and gentle language.”
“…Was raising children always this much trouble?”
Pernoa thought back, trying to recall how, exactly, he had raised the others.
“Well, the young lady is at an age where she will imitate everything she sees. And if you think spending time with her the way you did with the young masters—battle games and sparring exercises—that will end very badly indeed.”
“…”
“Absolutely not. That is not an option.”
Rosinante repeated his warning several times over, as if once were not nearly enough.
⁂
The annex. Riersha’s room.
“Lady Riersha, why did you come back so soon? Why didn’t you spend more time with the Young Duke?”
Sona tilted her head and asked.
Riersha let out a long, heavy sigh of genuine inner turmoil.
“I dunno what to do.”
“About what?”
“He feels like a stranger.”
She had just met her father for the first time—a man she had never laid eyes on before.
But calling him Father right away was something her lips simply refused to do.
There was too long a gap between them for that.
Ten years.
Riersha carried memories up to the age of ten, which meant there was precisely a ten-year void standing between her and this man.
Right now I’m four years old, but still.
If she were being honest, the one she felt more at ease with was Arcmund, by far.
On top of that, she was still deeply moved by the fact that he had taken her side at the disciplinary committee—that he had thought of her and spoken up for her.
“Is the Young Duke difficult to approach, my lady?”
“Mm-hm.”
Riersha gave a candid nod.
She had no idea how to act around Pernoa. His cold, severe appearance made it all the harder.
The moment she had seen him come rushing to the disciplinary committee, her chest had swelled with something almost too big to contain. She had understood for the first time what it meant to have a guardian—a sturdy, sheltering wall standing between her and the world.
She had felt what it was like to be safe.
But that was separate from everything else.
“It’s just so awkward.”
Riersha’s honest confession earned a gentle nod from Sona.
Given how little time Riersha had ever spent in comfortable company with other people, drawing closer to Pernoa would naturally be twice as difficult for her as it would for anyone else.
For Lady Riersha to be able to approach him without fear, the Young Duke will have to be the one to make the effort.
…But was that something he was capable of?
Sona smiled to herself, a little helplessly.
“It’s perfectly natural for things to feel awkward between the two of you. You’ll grow closer with time—that’s all this is.”
“Do you think I can really do that?”
“Of course. And who knows—perhaps the Young Duke is sitting somewhere right now worrying about the very same thing.”
“Father too?”
Riersha looked as though she genuinely could not believe it.
Could Pernoa truly be feeling the same way she was? Really?
“You both simply need a little more time. There’s no need to rush.”
“…Okay.”
“Shall we think together about how you might get closer to him?”
“Hmm.”
Riersha blinked, her face clouded with thought.
Her long lashes fluttered up and down as she worked through the problem in earnest, her small lips pressing and pursing with the effort of it.
As Sona waited patiently for an answer, she cast her mind back to how she herself had once grown close to a certain person she had set her heart on. Applying that logic to Riersha’s situation, a fairly sensible idea began to take shape.
“What do you think of this? We make a gift to give him.”
“A gift?”
“Yes! You love jewelry and pretty things, my lady. I’m certain you could make something beautiful.”
Riersha flinched.
The jewelry Sona was referring to were the trinkets she had frantically packed when she’d been planning to flee the ducal estate. When she had been found in the forest, she’d apparently been draped head to toe in toy accessories, which had given people a certain impression of her.
That she was a child who adored anything sparkly and ornate.
“…Actually, about those accessories…”
“Yes, the things you treasure most, aren’t they?”
Sona smiled warmly, as though the matter were perfectly settled.
Riersha hesitated, then gave up on trying to explain. There was nothing to be gained from revealing that she had been in the middle of running away.
“So shall we try making one?”
“…Yes. But I want to make two.”
“Two?”
“I wanna give one to Grandfather too.”
At Riersha’s decisive little answer, Sona blinked in surprise—then broke into a bright, radiant smile.
For her to already be thinking about reaching out to Arcmund on her own—this was a very good sign indeed.
“Of course! Then let’s go find the materials right away, shall we?”
