Jacob turned his gaze to Valt, who belatedly bowed his head.

“Where is it?”

“By ‘it,’ what do you mean…?”

“The half-blood ghost that came back from the coffin. Are you going to open the carriage door or wait for her to get out herself?”

Jacob spoke toward the carriage window, and for a moment his eyes met Meliciel’s.

A half-blood ghost was what he called Meliciel.

“Get out. I have something to say to you.”

Jacob’s red hair looked exactly like Duchess Katrina’s from the portrait.

“Didn’t you hear me say get out?”

Jacob raised his eyebrows in a threatening manner, so Meliciel lowered the window cover and stepped out of the carriage.

The sensation of fine soil seeping into her shoes felt strangely disorienting. Her strength was not fully recovered yet.

Meliciel barely kept her balance and stood before Jacob.

“What is it?”

“What is it? I am going to be Duke one day.”

She looked up at him with a question in her eyes that said, so what? Jacob clicked his tongue shortly.

“Not coming to pay your respects once, and you act impertinent like that’s something to be proud of?”

“I didn’t know I was supposed to pay my respects.”

“It is only natural for anyone of the Chloe family to greet the master of the ducal house.”

She didn’t know paying respects to Jacob was proper etiquette. Even if she had known, there was no one to ask where he stayed or when it would be appropriate to visit.

Even the Duchess never demanded a greeting, so she assumed the other siblings naturally had no interest in her either.

“Should I pay my respects now?”

She sensed Jacob’s fiery manner wasn’t entirely about the greeting, so she asked quietly, and he crossed his arms and spoke.

“Ha! Never mind. You must have heard, but our family will soon have a wedding.”

What? That has nothing to do with me.

“The Duke already gave the order to have the wedding prepared before autumn.”

“Yes.”

“So make sure you prepare a proper wedding gift within that time.”

A wedding gift?

“A wedding gift… would that be a divine power painting?”

“Not entirely stupid, are you? You’d better give it your best. The other party is Grand Duke Diozart.”

Diozart…?

“Any problem?”

Meliciel froze in shock before she even realized her face twisted.

“Diozart, you mean…”

“Grand Duke Kahar. Surely even someone as dim as you knows who that is.”

When Meliciel didn’t answer, Jacob clicked his tongue as though he couldn’t believe it.

“Grand Duke Kahar de Diozart is the Emperor’s nephew. Word is thick that the Grand Duke, wrapped in grief after Viviana’s death, has been wandering from battlefield to battlefield. But the marriage between the two houses is a settled promise. What needs to be done will be done.”

Kahar, wrapped in grief after Viviana’s death.

The fact, delivered through someone else’s words, pierced Meliciel’s unguarded chest sharply.

“For people like us, a marriage isn’t child’s play. Someone has to take Viviana’s place.”

Someone?

“Shalon will probably be the one to marry the Grand Duke. She and Viviana are the same age, after all.”

Shalon. A sister the same age as Viviana, something Valt also chattered about. She saw her in the portraits but the memory was faint.

“Those two… are getting married?”

“Yes. With Viviana gone, a suitable lady must take her place. Not a half-blood ghost like you, of course.”

Jacob sneered to his heart’s content and left, yet Meliciel stood there unable to move for a long while.

***

The small mountain at the border between the Chloe family’s territory and the Eclipse Count’s territory was not a bad place for her to stay.

The tower was only about three floors tall, and from the outside it looked more like a cottage with high ceilings.

I wonder if Teacher Valt will come today.

Valt went down to the village for the summer festival hosted by the nearby Eclipse Count and hadn’t returned for several days.

He seemed to like drinking. She hoped he hadn’t drowned himself in a barrel of it.

In Valt’s absence, the servant Erik managed the cottage, handling Meliciel’s meals, bath water, laundry, and all general housekeeping.

Erik was originally a laundry servant at the Duke’s castle, and he seemed unhappy about being sent all the way out here because of Meliciel, so he was always curt.

Nothing but rude people.

With nowhere to rest her heart, she threw herself into work from the day she arrived, and more than twenty days passed.

Fingers that at first lacked the strength to grip a piece of charcoal now sketched freely.

She couldn’t contain the flood of sensation that came with painting again after so long.

She painted the dense forest visible through the third-floor window in meticulous detail, dozens of times over.

And she painted again. Because if she didn’t, she feared she would feel unbearably foolish for letting the news of Kahar’s marriage crack her chest open all over again.

How stupid.

She poured herself into work, trying hard not to think of him.

Fortunately, the conditions were better than when she was with the Nail of God tribe. No one rushed her work, and no one watched over her.

But the hole in her heart was larger than it was then. A cold breath kept filling her up.

The guilt over the child wouldn’t fade easily.

***

Clatter, clatter.

The cargo wagon Erik drove jolted along the mountain path. Meliciel spread a cushion in the cargo bed and tried to settle her lurching stomach.

She hitched a ride on Erik’s wagon today to find an art supply shop.

She was starting to need proper tools, paints, brushes, oils, and Valt readily suggested she come down to the village, saying it was better to choose supplies yourself.

It was the first time she got to look around a village since becoming Meliciel.

She was looking forward to it.

Her body, worn out from focusing only on work, kept tilting sideways. She nodded off several times.

“We’ve arrived. Please get out.”

Erik knocked on the wagon canopy and called to Meliciel in an irritable voice.

Meliciel got out of the wagon and, while Erik left the cargo wagon at a depot, looked around the village entrance with curious eyes.

It seemed like a fairly large town, bigger than she expected. Perhaps because the summer festival was in full swing, there were many people and the atmosphere was lively.

A fountain shot high in the square, and behind it, the entrance to the market and a long row of restaurants stretched out.

There were shops that launched magical fireworks, and even a peculiar one where flower petals rained down from the sky.

While her eyes were stolen by all the colorful and unusual sights, Erik returned.

“Miss, do you see that sign over there?”

“Yes. The wooden-colored one?”

There was a shop with a brush-painted sign where Erik pointed. It wasn’t far, just across the street.

“Wait for me there. I’ll go find Master Valt.”

“Where is the teacher?”

Speaking informally to Erik felt awkward, but she couldn’t use formal speech with a servant either.

She asked awkwardly, and Erik didn’t even answer, just snorted and disappeared.

Being ignored again.

She was left alone without a single attendant despite being a duke’s daughter, but this suited her better.

Come to think of it, she never seemed to have been left alone like this before. She always traveled with someone, or lived under someone’s watch.

She slowly blended into the crowd.

“Out of the way!”

“Ugh…!”

Then it happened. A merchant carrying goods shoved her shoulder and pushed her somewhere she didn’t intend to go. Her small frame was knocked around by the forceful merchants and swept right into the crowd.

She barely managed to slip away to a less crowded spot, but she no longer knew where that art supply shop was.

“Phew…”

The worry was brief. Meliciel stopped in front of a certain shop. Her gaze was instantly captured by canopy decorations hanging on a long line.

Various colors and pretty jewels sparkled brilliantly in the air. Beautiful and radiant.

Swaying gently in the breeze like waves, the canopy decorations hung in long rows, sometimes clinking against each other and sometimes pushing one another aside.

Wrapped in the long curtains, Meliciel walked carefully through the space where the decorations hung.

The sun seemed to be setting, for a red light shone through the swaying decorations.

Between the long lines rippling like waves, a deep navy uniform appeared.

A navy uniform?

The familiar shape of the epaulettes felt like a dream, and Meliciel’s eyes trembled.

Through the gently swaying fabric, a familiar scent, his scent she could never forget, drifted over impossibly…

This can’t be.

With trembling hands she carefully parted the curtain and stepped forward. A black cloak and a solid chest stood there like a vision.

She raised her head and saw blue depths and jet-black hair above sharp, clean features.

Kahar de Diozart. He was standing there.

“…Your Highness?”

When she heard Kahar was marrying Shalon, she thought she might see his face again someday. But that was supposed to be at the wedding.

Kahar stood right before her, as though mocking Meliciel for the turmoil she felt over the news of his marriage.

He was really there.

In her dying moments, how wretched she felt, longing for Kahar while knowing he still loved Viviana.

And yet she regretted not telling him, if she ever met him again, to let her stay by his side just once.

Would she have been able to protect the child then?

“Your Highness…”

And was this heaven, or hell?

It was an emotion that couldn’t be split into black and white. Kahar was someone Meliciel both resented and felt a complicated love for, but he was also a man she once held in her heart.

Not anymore, of course.

Kahar’s blue presence coiled slowly around her heart.

It was hot and stinging, ready to blaze up and then freeze over.