However, unavoidable prejudice existed. Women could become knights, but to open the door to promotion, they had to prove far more than men who joined under the same conditions.
“What’s your name?”
“Karan Etro, my lady.”
“Etro. I once heard that the only daughter of Viscount Etro’s house chose to become a knight instead of marrying.”
“Yes. I am that very Etro, my lady.”
“Viscount Etro must have been blind, to think of marrying off a talent like you.”
Karan smiled before she could stop herself. Adelaide’s blunt words were a relief.
People acknowledged Karan’s talent, yet they would casually suggest that instead of clashing with her parents, why not continue swordsmanship as a hobby?
“The Viscount certainly did have poor eyesight.”
“The old man at my house is the same. If I told him I wanted to learn the sword, the Duke would clutch the back of his neck and keel over. Do you have time?”
“Pardon?”
“If you have time, come to my house and pretend to teach me swordsmanship. Lately he’s been putting on airs about being young at heart and open-minded, and I want to remind him that he’s just a stubborn old man.”
Old man. Karan turned the word over in her mind and clenched her back teeth, pressing her lips shut as they threatened to part.
“I will, make time, my lady.”
She barely held back a burst of laughter as she answered Adelaide.
Adelaide gave a satisfied smile and jerked her chin toward the chamberlain waiting for her, signaling that they could go now. The chamberlain shook his head slowly.
They say every child is their parent’s karma, but Duke Berthier must have committed a great sin in a past life.
Cyril, unaware of what had transpired outside, looked puzzled at the sight of the chamberlain’s troubled expression and Adelaide walking in wearing a well-fed smile.
“Lady Adelaide.”
“I greet His Highness the Crown Prince.”
“This is a private setting, so there’s no need for excessive formality.”
Cyril ignored the hand Adelaide extended to receive a kiss on the back of it and gestured for her to take a seat.
Without a hint of embarrassment, Adelaide withdrew her hand and sat down where Cyril had indicated.
“I imagine you’ve heard the rumors that I’m a reckless young lady.”
“I’ve experienced it firsthand.”
“May I ask an impertinent question, as befits a reckless young lady?”
Cyril felt laughter rising within him, and they had barely been together a few minutes.
Having been born and raised in the imperial palace all his life, Cyril had met many people whose outward appearance differed from their inner nature. Adelaide was the same, of course. Unlike everyone else, though, it was the other way around.
“You may.”
“I heard that Your Highness does not kiss the back of a hand in order to preserve your purity until you meet your true love. Is that true?”
Dager let out a loud, deliberate cough. Adelaide paid it no mind. It was a question she had been curious about throughout her previous life.
Back then, Duke Berthier had not trusted Adelaide enough to allow her outside the house, and naturally she’d had no opportunity to meet members of the imperial family.
A rare chance had come her way, and it seemed worth satisfying her curiosity.
In truth, it was a question Adelaide had forgotten until she met Cyril again. If Cyril had simply kissed her hand, he would never have received such a pointed question, but this was the price he paid for treating a reckless young lady with too much leniency.
“Are you daring to take me to task for not showing you proper courtesy, my lady?”
“It seems you’ve never met someone who truly takes you to task. I simply thought that since Your Highness invited me to a private meeting, I would match that tone with my question. If you’d rather not answer, you need only throw me out.”
“So you’re telling me to let the rumor spread that the reckless young lady went and made trouble even with the Crown Prince?”
“I don’t see how that would cost Your Highness anything.”
“If word got around that even the Crown Prince couldn’t get the better of the reckless young lady, my dignity and reputation would be in the dirt.”
Dager found it remarkable to see Cyril leaning comfortably back in his chair, trading jokes. The Crown Prince he had served always sat with a straight back and never let his guard down, no matter who he met.
Cyril was the Crown Prince, but he had no small number of opponents. The Emperor had placed Cyril on the throne and then lost interest, and the Empress was forever eager to belittle him at every turn.
Some speculated that because the imperial couple had been on poor terms when she was pregnant with Cyril, they had never been able to feel affection for the child who was born.
The speculation had some merit, for Prince Albert Ravi Magriv Lichtein’s name drew from both the late emperor and the Empress’s maternal relatives.
Cyril Aiden Zephinus Lichtein, on the other hand, was nothing more than a string of pleasant-sounding words, and not a single relative on either the Emperor’s or the Empress’s side bore a similar name.
For that reason, Dager found himself looking at Adelaide differently, as someone who made Cyril let down his guard and feel at ease.
“You have a refreshingly direct personality, my lady.”
“You’re welcome to simply call me the reckless young lady, Your Highness.”
“I don’t have the nerve to call someone by a disparaging name to their face, so I’ll decline.”
“Ah, if the troublemaker at my house took after Your Highness even halfway, my life would be so much easier.”
“Troublemaker?”
Adelaide launched into a detailed litany of complaints about Lionel. Cyril listened carefully, then broke into a light laugh.
“No wonder you dislike Duke Berthier, my lady.”
“Right? I wish others could see the old man, I mean the Duke, for what he truly is.”
“Old man, hm. That’s fine in front of me, but if you ever find yourself before His Majesty, you’d do well to watch your words.”
Cyril studied Adelaide carefully. She was a striking woman with hair that was lighter than a red rose but deeper than pink.
“I think I understand why I invited you today.”
“Were you asking me, or answering yourself?”
“The latter. Her Majesty the Empress openly despises me. His Majesty placed me on the throne as Crown Prince and then considered his hands washed of it.”
Dager quietly stepped back and left the room. He carefully closed the door, then called a tight-lipped knight to stand guard outside.
“Your chamberlain reads the room well.”
“Dager is closer to me than family.”
Adelaide felt she had seen that chamberlain somewhere before. But the Crown Prince’s chamberlain would have little reason to leave the imperial palace under ordinary circumstances.
‘Am I imagining things?’
She shifted her gaze and found Cyril wearing a bitter expression. Adelaide turned over what he had just said. Closer than family. Cyril was not an orphan. He had parents and a sibling, all very much alive. And yet the person he considered family was a mere chamberlain.
Adelaide had given up on accepting Duke Berthier as family and had not filled that place with anyone else. It was not a relationship that could be dismissed simply as being estranged from one’s parents.
Unexpectedly, the deep sense of loss Adelaide had carried came back to her through Cyril. Perhaps that was why the words slipped out.
“Your Highness, if I may be so bold, please don’t cling to the hope of your parents’ love. It’s a futile thing.”
Adelaide remembered with perfect clarity the face, the voice, and the gesture of Duke Berthier as he drove her away. He had cast Adelaide out because she had hurt a stray orphan he had taken in. Without a moment’s hesitation.
As she wandered the streets, Adelaide believed Duke Berthier would come looking for her. That belief held for one day, then two, then a month, then three months, until it vanished without a trace.
She had truly been abandoned.
Adelaide no longer hated Lionel. Looking back now with clearer eyes, Lionel had simply been summoned to the Berthier estate without knowing why. But Duke Berthier had no right to absolution.
“A young lady younger than me speaks like an old soul who has lived through everything.”
“I haven’t lived through everything, but I do know that parents are only human.”
Cyril straightened in his seat. Adelaide, who seemed to have nothing holding her back, spoke with an incongruous bitter smile.
“Humans make mistakes.”
“Shouldn’t a mistake be something that can be forgiven?”
“Does the wound on my body disappear just because the stone that struck me was thrown by mistake?”
“…….”
“Humans make mistakes, and the ones who suffer from those mistakes are also human. So the one who made the mistake must pay the price.”
As Cyril sat lost in quiet thought and lifted his teacup, Adelaide caught sight of something on his exposed wrist. Before she could even register what it was, her body moved on its own.
“My lady!”
Cyril hurriedly pulled his sleeve down to hide the wound. But Adelaide firmly pushed up his shirt sleeve and took in the sight of whip marks packed densely across his skin.
“This is beyond insolence!”
“I’m not doing this because I want to either! Stay still! It’ll be over faster this way!”
Adelaide blew gently on each scar and rubbed them softly with her hand.
“It doesn’t look like it’ll be over anytime soon. Does the chamberlain know?”
“Dager knows, of course, but”
Adelaide rang the bell. Dager stopped in his tracks at the sight of Cyril’s arm in Adelaide’s grip as she sat on the floor.
He wondered whether he had interrupted a private moment and whether he should bow his head and beg forgiveness on the spot.
“Chamberlain, bring me a scar-removing ointment.”
“An ointment, my lady?”
“I don’t know where the chamberlain was or what he was doing while your master ended up in this state. Surely a palace this large can’t be short on scar-removing ointment.”
“Ah, I’ll fetch it at once, my lady.”
Dager left, and Cyril tried to shake Adelaide off. Having surrendered herself to the curse, Adelaide held fast to Cyril’s arm and refused to budge.
“Stop, moving! I don’t want to be doing this to you either, Your Highness!”
“If you don’t want to, then just let go!”
“I’ll release you once I’ve applied the ointment, whether you like it or not! You’re not a child. Don’t be embarrassed just because someone saw a few scars!”
Cyril found it so absurd that the strength drained out of him.
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philopaste
exactly!!! Look pushing someone down the stairs is clearly horrendous but parents visit their kids in jail for doing worse. He could’ve sent her to a convent, could’ve sent her to a remote villa, could’ve sent her to jail!!! But he turned her out and then just left her to essentially just die?? I hope they expand on this later