Pamona felt embarrassed by the hand she had been gripping so tightly and quietly let go, then clutched at her collar instead. Afraid the princes might change their minds and come back, she grabbed Terion Iligen and dragged him along, nearly running all the way back to Payen Castle.

On the way, her reason slowly returned. Once all the emotions that had surged to the top of her head settled back down, everything went dark before her eyes. What had she done? If Terion Iligen had not been there, she would have wanted to sink to the ground and tear at her hair.

No, if Terion Iligen had not been there in the first place, she would never have done anything so reckless. Was she not the foolish one, not them? What would she do if they retaliated? She had put on a show of bravado in front of a foreign prince.

“Pamona.”

She had no presence of mind to answer. As Payen Castle drew near, the guards spotted her from a distance and opened the gate. She rushed inside, pushed Terion Iligen through, turned back to confirm the gate had closed, and only then did the strength drain from her entire body.

“Pamona, are you all right?”

Terion Iligen caught her arm as she kept pushing at his back, and looked at her face.

“Don’t let anyone in. Anyone. If someone comes, tell them I’m not in the castle.”

Pamona was too busy warning the guards to even hear Terion Iligen’s voice. She felt certain that at any moment, the gate would fly open and someone would come storming in.

It was not entirely an unreasonable fear. Her younger brother Reynard, whenever the mood struck him, would come crashing in as though he meant to tear the whole castle down, hurling whatever he could get his hands on.

She tried to calm herself, passing a hand over her face and bending at the waist to breathe deeply. When she raised her head again, a single tear she had not noticed gathering from all the tension dropped from her eye.

Terion Iligen, meeting her eyes in that state, could not bring himself to extend the hand he had reached out to help her up, and froze with a startled look.

“……I think I need to go to Sionel right away.”

Pamona let her head drop again. Had she lost her mind for a moment back there? Now that the anger was gone, only fear remained in its place. All manner of imaginings swept rapidly through her head. The princes’ castle and Payen Castle were not that far apart.

Even staring at the ground, what she saw before her were the countless situations that might come. Her breathing was growing shorter by the moment, when Terion Iligen bent deeply at the waist and looked up at her from below.

“Later. Calm down first.”

Pamona’s vision filled with the blue eyes looking up at her. As she gazed back quietly, she noticed that the lashes blinking slowly were very long and thick.

His eyes are so deep. Not just blue, but it looks like other colors are mixed in there too, in a strange, subtle way…….

“Who am I?”

“……Terion Iligen.”

Her breathing slowed, and the agitated air around her gradually settled back into place.

“Are you going to cry more?”

“No. I wasn’t crying.”

Pamona suddenly felt the sensation of returning to reality, and it was awkward. He folded his blue eyes into a smile.

“There you go.”

Then he rose to his feet, straightened her posture as well, and gently swept a hand down her back. Sensing that the tension she had been about to release would come rushing back at his touch, she reached up and brought his arm down.

“Terion, are you good in a fight?”

“Pardon?”

Terion Iligen’s eyes went wide and round, and unlike her, he seemed perfectly at ease, as though nothing had happened at all. Whether he had mastered the royal art of appearing unruffled, or whether a genuinely innocent person had simply landed here without a clue, Pamona was the only one feeling frustrated.

“Are you good or not?”

“Well, I’ve never had occasion to fight anyone……”

“So you’re not.”

At that, Terion Iligen burst out laughing. He had no idea this was not the time to be laughing like that.

“There’s no shortage of people here who can teach you to fight. Plenty of people make their living teaching it. You’d be better off picking someone and learning as soon as possible.”

“Fighting?”

“Should I look into it for you? Someone who teaches well. My betrothed has no equal in Masion when it comes to combat. I can’t have you learn from him directly, but if I ask, he could probably introduce you to a good instructor. But wait, does Ilion really not teach its princes swordsmanship properly? What are they thinking? If you can’t fight, you should at least have a guard with you. Why do you go around alone without any fear?”

“……”

“Are you laughing?”

Terion Iligen, with no idea that Pamona was burning up inside, covered his mouth and laughed. Even now, every time he laughed, the way his hair moved with him was beautiful enough to make her want to scream.

“I wasn’t alone. I was with Pamona.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

She was watching Terion Iligen play dumb when he understood perfectly well, and Pamona felt afraid. She was afraid the princes would retaliate, and she was afraid of what Terion Iligen might come to think of her afterward.

Would he end up resenting me, thinking I was the one who made things worse by getting involved. Did he actually want to stay on good terms with the princes?

“Why are you laughing, Terion? Is this funny to you?”

If she did nothing, it was obvious how the princes would come at her going forward. They would dress themselves up in pretense and false civility, approach her, and do whatever it took to push her down and keep her beneath them.

“Terion just got to Masion and doesn’t know anything yet. The men in this country are obsessed with fighting. They try to solve everything by force. No matter how elegantly and correctly Terion speaks, those idiots have no intention of listening. Whether they can’t hear it or they hear it and still don’t understand, either way that’s just how it is. Whether they know it would look pathetic to lay a hand on a woman, or whether they just don’t want to get on Sionel’s bad side, either way they’ve never touched me, so it’s only because of that it passed the way it did. Did you think you could laugh knowing what those idiots would have done to Terion if I hadn’t been there?”

Even in the middle of all this, Pamona felt sick at herself for so cleverly weaving lies into the truth. The reality was that he had gone through all of that because of her. Not wanting him to know she was always treated that way, words had slipped out without her realizing it, words that amounted to: you survived because of me.

So please, believe what I’m saying, and don’t hate me later. Don’t regret that all of this happened because you got involved with me. Is he already regretting it? Should I tell him even now to leave this castle and try to smooth things over with them?

“If I hadn’t stopped you, that pretty face of yours would be a bloody mess by now. The princes don’t need a reason to act like that. Those guys absolutely have to fight it out to see who’s stronger, those idiots, what is wrong with them, why are they like that? Are all their heads broken or what!”

It must be my head that’s broken, clearly.

My mouth, my thoughts, my actions are all out of control.

“Thank you, Pamona.”

Without warning, a low and gentle voice rang out, entirely out of keeping with the moment, and Pamona stopped short before she could say another word.

Throughout all of it, while she fired away with her face red and barely breathing, Terion Iligen had simply held her gaze with a warm look in his eyes. He was calm, as though not a breath of wind had touched him. Seeing how composed he was, Pamona almost fell into the illusion that nothing had happened a moment ago at all.

“Stop smiling like that.”

At those words, Terion Iligen smiled all the more.

“Thank you. You must have been frightened, but you stood your ground.”

His words hit Pamona like a dull blow to the head, and she felt something rise all the way to the back of her throat. He really had nothing to thank her for. Because of her, he had needlessly made enemies of the princes. And yet this blue-eyed guest was thanking her.

Pamona, who had been talking nonsense out of fear that he would come to resent her, pressed her lips shut for a moment. She had never heard words like this before, and she did not know how to respond.

“Pamona, how do you speak so well? You were battering those big men with words left and right.”

“I told you to stop smiling.”

“You were incredible. It’s a good thing Pamona was there, honestly. Without you I might have turned and run, really.”

“I don’t think you can hear me. I said stop smiling. This is an extremely serious situation. Can Terion not hear me either? Are you pretending not to hear, like the princes?”

“I hear you perfectly well, Pamona.”

“Then why do you keep laughing!”

“Am I still laughing?”

Terion Iligen said he had no idea when he had been laughing, that he genuinely did not know he was smiling. Pamona was so frustrated by this guest who could not read the room that she nearly wanted to stamp her foot.

“You came all the way here as a hostage to another country, and you’re this unbothered, really! What are you thinking? Hm? The reason those idiots come over and try to push you around is because you go around smiling like everything is fine!”

“Hostage, hostage?”

His face held the look of someone struck by hail on a clear day.