“Yes! Don’t tell me you didn’t know. What else would you call this but being a hostage? Dragged to a foreign country without even knowing why……. Ha. Let me be clear. Don’t lose to anyone here. Do you understand? If Terion doesn’t do well here.”

“Yes, if I don’t do well.”

“Heil, Heil won’t do well there either. Do you hear me? If you lose here, Heil loses there too. If you get hurt, I think Heil will get hurt too. The thought of Heil going through what you go through turns my stomach, so no matter what anyone does to you, don’t just take it. Do you hear me?”

Even as she spoke, she felt she was being far too rude, but her broken mouth would not close on its own.

Fine. She had already gone this far…….

“……Answer me, now!”

Fine, really…….

“Do you want to be friends?”

That came out of nowhere, and Pamona felt something spark and crackle inside her chest.

One of them was shouting herself hoarse, all worked up, while Terion Iligen stood before her and looked at her the way someone might look at a wild plant growing freely in a garden. A little unfamiliar, a little fond.

She wanted to say yes. She wanted to say yes so badly. But she had no idea how to get words like that out of her mouth. Friends. She had never had anything like that.

Not knowing what to do with herself, Pamona frowned for no good reason.

“What? Are you even listening to me?”

“Be friends with me.”

Pamona, afraid she might hesitate and embarrass herself, let her reddened face do the shouting for her.

“Do whatever you want and just answer me!”

Amusement flickered across Terion Iligen’s eyes. He swept a hand over his face trying to hold back the laughter that had nearly escaped, then stretched his lips into a long, beautiful smile.

“So we’re friends now?”

Then he reached over and gently took her pinky finger, swaying it lightly back and forth. The broken Pamona creaked and nodded. Terion Iligen’s eyes curved like he had spotted a small, endearing creature. Then he clasped his hands behind his back and took the lead, slowly lifting his feet up the stairs.

“I won’t lose, I won’t take it lying down, like you said. I’m sorry for being oblivious and fearless and making you worry. I’ll try to be a little more careful going forward.”

He had been listening to every word she said, it seemed, and gave her the answers she wanted, point by point.

“I don’t need to learn to fight, it’s fine. I’m someone who values intellect, and I don’t do brutish things.”

“Who said anything about becoming brutish? You should at least train enough to defend yourself if someone attacks you.”

Pamona hurried up the stairs after him, talking as she went, and her breath came a little shorter than before. Any hesitation she might have felt about whether to drop formalities and follow his lead was made irrelevant by how naturally the words came out, like old friends. Terion Iligen moved on legs far longer than hers with easy grace, unhurried, like a swan gliding across a lake.

“I hear the men of Masion are obsessed with every kind of martial art. How far would be enough? If you’re going to do it, you have to go all the way or it means nothing. But I don’t want to bulk up and pack on muscle until I look like I might explode. It ruins the line of the clothes.”

He said that, then turned back to look at Pamona and smiled.

“You’re impossible! So you’re saying you’ll just take a hit if someone swings at you?”

Terion Iligen stopped abruptly, and Pamona stopped with him.

“No.”

He held a smile at the corners of his rounded lips and came back down two steps toward her.

“I’ll stay by the princess’s side.”

He bent slightly at the waist to meet her eyes.

“What?”

Terion Iligen extended his hand toward her, palm facing up. Pamona already knew how warm and soft that white, smooth palm was, and she wanted to take it.

“You said they won’t hit me when I’m with the princess. Then I’ll just have to stay close. What else can I do.”

If she took that hand and climbed the stairs, she thought her breath might come a little easier than it did now.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. You’ll keep protecting me, won’t you, Pamona?”

Terion Iligen reached over and took her hesitating hand firmly in his. Warmth spread through her hand, and somewhere she could not quite name, she felt an itch she wanted to scratch.

“Me, protect you?”

The arm holding Pamona’s hand firmly bore her weight, steadying her so she could climb the stairs with ease. It gave him nothing in return, and yet he did it. With his hand to hold, climbing the stairs was no effort at all.

“How am I supposed to protect you?”

“You seemed to manage just fine.”

Ha…….

He smiled again.

“……Are you broken too?”

Terion Iligen’s bright laughter rang out and scattered through Payen Castle.

* * *

“You don’t know them?”

“No.”

“Hm.”

They had a meal together, exchanged some idle talk, read for a while, had another meal, and still stayed together in Payen Castle. They had each claimed one end of the sofa in the study and were leaning back when Terion Iligen brought up the four princes they had run into that morning.

The resolve to march over to Sionel and report everything had long since faded.

“I’m asking because I don’t know much about Masion’s culture, but, Princess.”

“Yes.”

“Is it normal here not to know your own siblings’ names?”

Well, is it…….

Pamona looked at Terion Iligen with narrowed eyes. He seemed to find her funny, and let out another small laugh through his lips. A free and easy laugh, as always.

Having grown up seeing only siblings who armored themselves in consistent, stone-faced expressions, she felt a strange sensation every time he laughed with such unclouded brightness.

“My father the king has sixteen children. There are princes I’ve only seen twice in my life. I’ve never made any effort to memorize them, since I don’t run into them often. And once I marry and leave the royal palace, I’ll probably never see them again, so I’ve wondered what the point would be.”

Pamona was in an oddly good mood today, and she rambled on about things he had not even asked.

“It was a kind of revenge. I had no way to let out my anger at the princes. So I took my own petty revenge. I don’t care about you either. I’ll die never knowing your names, I told myself.”

The princes talked among themselves even when Pamona was right in front of them, treating her like she was not there. If they happened to cross paths, they gave a single nod and nothing more. It was not that they felt toward Pamona the same inferiority they felt toward Sionel or Reynard. In their eyes, Pamona was simply no different from any other worker in the palace, someone they had no reason to bother with.

“I see.”

Pamona had wanted to appear before Terion Iligen as someone who had never been dismissed by the princes, and had pushed back at them so fiercely for that reason, yet here she was, making it all pointless by confessing the truth outright. She wanted to tell on them. She wanted to say how awful they were.

“I just avoid them. I always have. If it looks like I might run into them, I hide, I walk away. Even when we’re in the same space, I keep my distance. That’s why I liked the Twin Castle. The east wing is far away from everything, so there’s no chance of running into anyone.”

Pamona was pouring out her grievances to Terion Iligen in a way that made her wonder how she had ever held it all in until now.

“Everyone dislikes me.”

Heil, with her accommodating nature, held no real complaints about her half-siblings or anyone else, and simply felt grateful for what she had. So these were words Pamona had never been able to say freely to anyone.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t go around smiling all the time.”

“……”

“I’ve been unhappy for a long time. That’s my most fatal flaw.”

“Is unhappiness so bad?”

“Who likes a pessimist?”

“I find it appealing, actually.”

“……”

“I like that you are unhappy.”

“……”

Is he a little off after all?

“……Okay.”

She nodded without even questioning it, and he laughed again.

“Anyway. You witnessed the longest conversation I’ve ever had with them in my entire life. Everyone except Sionel, I want nothing to do with.”

“Prince Reynard?”

“Worse. With the other princes, there’s no exchange at all, so I just have to avoid their eyes. But Reynard picks at everything. And his temper has been something else since he was little. Though I’ve seen enough of him that I think I understand why.”

“What is it?”

“His mind is slow, so there’s too much in the world he can’t make sense of, and that makes him lose his temper all the time.”

Terion Iligen pressed his fingers to his eyes and laughed.

Does he think that was a joke? Must be nice. Having so many things to laugh about.

Ilion must have been a place full of pleasant things, she thought. That would be why he grew up laughing this much.

Pamona had always lived carrying a weight that felt like someone was constantly pulling her down toward the ground. Terion Iligen, by contrast, was like a great dolphin someone had set free in the ocean and told to swim as far as it liked. What a shame, bringing a dolphin to land this barren. Pamona felt a pang of sorrow for him.

“Pfft……. I’m not laughing because it’s funny.”

“It’s all right. It can be funny.”

“It’s not funny. But I keep laughing. Because the way you talk is cute……”

There it is, again. He keeps saying things like that without a care in the world…….