“So if I behave well, none of that will happen, and if I do something wrong, Ian Dnie might stray? Say Ian Dnie goes and has a child outside the marriage. Are you saying that could be my fault?”

“It would be your fault if you go around making disgusting rumors with some other man!”

Right. This was the kind of person Reynard was. And was it only Reynard? The whole world was like this.

She did not want to live feeling wronged and blaming the world, yet the world kept making her feel wronged.

She would tell herself it was her fault, her mistake, that she was lacking, and then the world would make her blame it anyway.

“Nothing to be done about it, then. I just won’t get married.”

“And here I came all this way feeling sorry for you, trying to help!”

“Oh. Thank you. You’re a great help.”

When she thought about what she had done wrong, nothing significant came to mind. And yet Pamona had to go on living with her own safety as a constant worry. It was not simply a matter of not being treated the same as someone else. It was not a struggle over fair and equal opportunity.

She was talking about a threat to her life.

If you don’t conduct yourself properly, if you don’t stay quiet and obedient. Someone else will try to ruin your life. Be good now. If you don’t want to be unhappy, if you don’t want to live in fear, be a modest and understanding lady.

When words like those blocked her path, she had no choice but to sink down helplessly. She was afraid. That other people held the power to ruin her.

She left Reynard there, cursing and slamming the table, and rose from her seat. Watching him fly into a rage like that, she could tell he would be kicking the table and throwing chairs before long.

From the time he was very small, before he could even walk properly on his own. Reynard had always been quick to throw every tantrum he had whenever things did not go his way.

At least when he was younger he would just shriek and throw himself on the floor, but once he got a little older he started using force. It was not that she found him too unpleasant to deal with. She simply had no way to handle a situation that turned violent, and so she fled the sitting room.

On her way up to her bedroom, she ordered the knight escorts that if Reynard tried to come up, they were to stop him. Even if he did not do anything directly to her, the situation itself was suffocating. If something were to happen right then, Pamona had no power to protect herself.

Back in her bedroom, she leaned against the closed door and gripped the door handle tight. If Reynard wanted to open that door, her grip would do nothing to stop him.

“Your Highness.”

“Su, Lora.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Don’t upset his sensibilities?

“Pack my things. I’m leaving Payen Castle.”

The recklessness she had never once indulged in her entire life came over her, less than a year before her wedding.

* * *

The palace workers skipped their evening meal and unloaded everything from Payen Castle. More than twenty large carts and carriages accompanied the move, and by the time everything had been transferred to the Twin Castle, the surroundings had grown dark.

“Princess……”

Terion Iligen had come running out upon hearing the news of her move, and stood watching the belongings file into the Twin Castle in a daze. He must have been tending the garden, because he wore gloves with dirt on them and held a lantern in one hand.

“You came for good? Really?”

He said it and tried to cover his mouth with his gloved hand, so Pamona quickly grabbed his arm to stop him.

“If you’re here now, that means I……”

“Hm?”

He trailed off and looked down at Pamona quietly. She looked back at those eyes without understanding, and the varied lights mixed into his blue irises were so clear she could have counted them one by one.

Terion Iligen swallowed whatever he had been about to say and soon stretched his lips into a smile.

“Welcome.”

Pamona smiled back at him. The left hand not holding the lantern pulled off its glove and reached out toward her.

“Let’s go. I’ll show you something beautiful.”

Pamona looked once at his hand and once at his face, then held out her right hand and set it gently into Terion’s. Terion Iligen closed his hand around hers without a moment’s hesitation.

They stepped into the garden. Once they moved in among the trees, the sounds of the workers faded into the distance, like a different world. Light leaked through the castle windows and made it possible to distinguish large shapes, but the thick canopy of leaves made it hard to catch much moonlight.

Only the lantern swinging in Terion Iligen’s hand lit the path ahead of them.

In the main castle’s dining room, where the king resided, there was a large table. The small lake in the garden was far smaller even than that table. A few stone bridges rose over the lake. Pamona followed Terion Iligen across them.

He would step forward, then turn back to light the stone Pamona was about to step on, and only after she crossed safely would he take another step and turn to check on her again. That was how they moved slowly inward, one step at a time.

“Sit here.”

When they reached a spot in front of a dense thicket, he set the lantern down right beside it and bent one knee to the ground. He pushed the thick brush aside a little, and there was a small patch of bare soil, perhaps a few feet across.

“Look at this.”

And in the bare patch of ground Terion Iligen’s finger pointed to, a tiny green sprout pushed its way up, the kind you had to look carefully to see at all.

“It’s a seed I brought from Ilion.”

The impossibly small and delicate sprout was almost translucent.

“It sprouted already.”

“Oh……”

It had not been long since he arrived, and yet the seed had already broken through the soil and come up.

“I planted many, but this one is the only one that came up.”

“Will it be all right?”

“It’ll have a hard time of it, having to fend off insects on its own.”

“The trees around here are all so tall too……. Will it get enough sunlight? It’s so small……. It doesn’t look like it can grow well.”

Pamona felt a pull of concern, the way she might for a seed she had planted herself. It looked so fragile, and she felt sorry for it.

“I’ll help it along. Clear away the insects, let the sunlight in, water it, cheer it on?”

He smiled at the sprout that was barely visible unless you paid close attention. He stretched out his index finger and tapped the ground just in front of the sprout, not the sprout itself, as though urging it on. The sprout looked so delicate that a single touch would snap it.

“It pushed through all this hard ground to get here……. It’ll become something, whatever it turns out to be.”

The sprout was very small and slender. Even so, it stood straight and held its place, and that was something to be proud of. It stood upright on its own with nothing to lean on.

Terion Iligen looked more confident than he had that first day he asked to be put in charge of the garden.

“I’ll take good care of it. Until the day it becomes something very large and wonderful.”

The light from the lantern flickered across his face. Pamona still felt worried about this tiny sprout no bigger than her fingernail. But Terion Iligen’s gently curved eyes gave off their own blue light even in the dark of the thicket.

That light was beautiful, and Pamona wanted to sit there a little longer. The lantern light wavered over their faces as they sat side by side.

* * *

She woke to a clear morning for the first time in a long while. Coming back to the Twin Castle must have put her at ease, because Pamona had slept very deeply. Her body felt light. It was a morning she felt good for no particular reason.

She wanted to see the sprout Terion Iligen had shown her the evening before again. She resolved to observe its color and shape closely this time and come back to draw it on paper. The sprout had a simple shape, so it would probably be a little easier to draw.

Her feet were light as she came down the stairs. She stepped out through the castle gate and turned the corner, and the garden came into view. The sight of it made it truly sink in that she had come back to the Twin Castle, and she could not stop smiling. She bounced on her feet with excitement as she stepped into the garden.

“Good rabbit!”

What rabbit?

Terion Iligen popped out from between the trees. They were really in the same castle. It was two castles, but could they not just be considered one, since they were connected? He had not been up long, and yet running into him this early, he radiated a vivid presence.

“No, wait, pfft.”

Terion Iligen suddenly doubled over laughing. What was a good rabbit, and why was he laughing like that first thing in the morning.

“Is there a rabbit?”

“I was trying to say good morning, but I was thinking you looked like a rabbit and the words came out wrong.”

Terion Iligen saying something so silly made Pamona laugh softly too. She had thought he might still be asleep.

“You’re up early, Terion?”

“So are you, Princess. Shall we eat together later?”

“Yes, I’d like that.”

“Would you come to my castle?”

“Yes, I will.”