“However, since it’s late today, I’ll prepare so you can enter the palace first thing tomorrow.”

“Please do.”

After the manager bowed and left, Rita flopped down on the bed. 

The bed with its soft blankets and the elegantly decorated room were unimaginably larger than her quarters at the top of the royal palace.

‘…What is this? I was trying to leave.’

She’d made all the mental preparations she could, but the lifeline that would connect her to the world beyond the continent had been severed in an instant. Instead, she’d become tied to Torre Kingdom. Everything had nothing to do with her own will.

Everything felt like fate’s cruel joke.

The next day, she dressed even more splendidly than yesterday and boarded the carriage. The royal palace she’d definitely looked back at again and again when leaving yesterday gradually drew closer.

‘This feels strange.’

When she was a court painter, she’d used the side gate to enter and exit the palace, but now she could enter through the grand gate where nobles came and went by carriage. The difference in status was starkly felt from the very entrance.

She still felt dizzy about how people would react seeing the changes in her and what she should explain. But it was something she’d eventually have to face. Rita stepped down from the carriage.

When she told an attendant at the palace her business, he wrote her name on the waiting list for the audience chamber. Judging by the waiting order, she’d have to wait about an hour, so Rita wanted to stroll through the courtyard near Sardena Palace for a while.

The moment she passed through the corridor and reached the garden, she stopped in her tracks. The person she thought she’d never see again stood before her eyes.

“Your Highness…?”

“Rita.”

Gabriele looked even more splendidly dressed than when she’d last seen him. His brown hair receiving the sunlight shone with a warm golden glow, and his brightly lit nose bridge cast deep, short shadows. 

The cloak draped over one broad shoulder fluttered gently in the breeze that cooled the summer heat.

“You were planning to leave me.”

“…”

He smiled in a way that looked somehow lonely. In the garden filled with all kinds of summer flowers, his smile created a mysterious and melancholy atmosphere.

He stepped forward and asked.

“I know I must have confused you.”

“…You did.”

“But I never wanted to let you go. Once you drew close to me, I couldn’t stand you moving even slightly away from me after that.”

Gabriele, who had finally stepped forward, reached out his hand to her.

Though her heart wanted to step back, Rita’s body actually accepted his touch, frozen like a startled rabbit. Gabriele gently brushed back her golden bangs.

“So Rita, who threw herself at me, was a little bad too.”

“I…”

His words sounded exactly like everything was because he liked Rita. Her heart was pounding with deep resonance.

Everything felt like a dream. The dream she’d once had of being allowed to stand beside him. Something too blasphemous to even speak aloud, so she’d just swallowed it down.

But could she hope for that…?

Nothing that had happened around her since yesterday felt real.

The moment she opened her mouth to answer something, he knelt down.

“Your Highness…?”

He was someone who originally couldn’t kneel to her. 

Of course not when she was a court painter, and the same now when she’d been hastily registered and was only on her first day playing noble. 

Rita reached out to help him up, but instead of taking that hand, he pulled out a small box from his br*ast.

When he opened the box, what emerged was a ring set with a large diamond. It displayed brilliant rainbow-colored radiance when it caught the sunlight.

His eyes looking up at Rita were by no means confident. Instead, she glimpsed very serious and earnest emotions in Gabriele’s eyes.

“Become my bride, Rita.”

Thump—her heart dropped. Her whole body seemed to become blood vessels carrying fresh blood, resonating throughout.

First with her eyes, then with her body, she’d coveted him. It had already been quite some time since her head was filled with nothing but thoughts of him.

She’d decided to leave Torre to remain a painter. But there were many other reasons hidden behind that.

She hated that his image she painted would spread to women all over the world. Hadn’t she thought from the start that she didn’t want to show his n*de even to Princess Medina?

What’s more, if queens and princesses from all over the world came flooding to the palace to marry him, and she watched Gabriele meet them one by one and pledge eternity with one of them, how would that feel?

That was the fate that would come unless she left the palace. The only places she could escape from all that news were ships on the sea and the New Continent.

A place where she could remain just as a painter, not as a woman who failed at love.

“I know how important painting is to you.”

Rita, an illegitimate child of a noble from a remote territory, had been able to come to the capital because she painted, and could stay in the same place as those who moved the world.

She could ignore her father who tried to manipulate her as he pleased, and could confidently leave Gabriele when he acted unreasonably.

“If you accept, I’ll help you achieve your dreams in whatever form.”

Even if she couldn’t be a court painter forever, she could be a painter forever. Rita looked into his serious eyes.

“I love you, Rita.”

He who would completely possess this country treasured her dream, which could be seen as so small, this preciously. Worried and careful that possessing Rita might instead wither her.

Because she knew he was this kind of person, painting him had been joyful. She’d wanted to depict how the kindness originating from Gabriele’s soul and the fierce, arrogant temperament that seemed contrary yet harmonized with it came together in his appearance. Being attached to such a fascinating being, becoming captivated was inevitable. She liked him.

The status of the person she’d come to like happened to be impossibly high, so standing beside him would be like jumping into another world, as much as going to the New Continent. 

But Rita was no longer afraid. Because she had her own hands that could paint any world, and she had Gabriele’s eyes looking at her warmly.

When her mouth finally opened, an attractive smile with all anxiety completely gone appeared on Gabriele’s face.

* * *

“What are you doing?”

“Observing.”

An afternoon in the capital with sunlight pouring down. A painter who had set up an easel on the street answered.

The painter wearing a brown corset and white apron had twisted her dazzling blonde hair up under a white kerchief and hummed while keeping her eyes fixed on passersby. Her cute feet tapped to the rhythm.

A hooded young man asked again.

“You don’t have a single customer, is it okay to be so carefree?”

“Of course I draw portraits for money. But my purpose isn’t to draw a thousand, ten thousand portraits to save money. I want to improve my skills. How objects are composed, what changes they meet and how they move. What aspects light takes according to the characteristics of objects. If I don’t understand all of this accurately, drawing well is nearly impossible. I must constantly observe.”

“I see.”

“And I like drawing people. People are the most beautiful thing among all creation. Everyone seems to look similar but they’re actually completely different. The years they’ve lived and their souls seep into their appearance. Drawing people living on the streets is good, and later I want to draw nobles who frequent that palace too. I want to see how they differ from ordinary people. But that work isn’t my final goal either.”

“Then?”

The painter who had been rattling off her thoughts in a comfortable voice with a singing rhythm closed her mouth as though thinking for a moment.

“Well, I don’t know. I just want to keep painting. While getting better. And if I keep painting, someday I’ll know what it was I wanted. Customer, would you like a portrait?”

The young man shook his head. Instead, he took out a silver coin and placed it on the painter’s palm.

“Not now. Instead, when you really become good enough at painting to stay in that palace, I’ll request one then.”

There had been people asking her to paint on credit, but this was the first person to give a deposit in advance. 

The painter tried hard to see the face inside the hood with her large blue eyes. But everything except the white, prominent bridge of his nose was deeply wrapped in shadow.

“Alright.”

Soon the painter smiled brightly.

“Because I’ll definitely become a court painter at Torre Palace someday!”

The young man, Gabriele, looked at that sparkling face and then soon mixed into the crowd.

* * *

“Who is that person?”

“The newly entered court painter. She’s popular in the capital, and I hear merchants and even nobles compete to commission her.”

At Count Ferdinando’s words, Gabriele paused briefly to watch the painter.

She was looking around various parts of the palace with a maid’s guidance while carrying painting tools. The moment he saw those rolling bright blue eyes, a thrill ran down Gabriele’s spine.

Forgotten memories vividly came back to life. He’d thought it was all boasting and passed it off as nothing, but that painter had really done it.

“I believe her name is Margarita di Grimaldi.”

In a court where flashy but empty rhetoric prevailed, Margarita who had achieved what she declared as a commoner felt even more impressive.

After that day, the diligent court painter was noticed here and there. Watching her skillfully paint and socialize with people, Gabriele realized.

How pleasant her clear voice and soft intonation were to hear.