“I’ll read it on my own, so leave it and go.”

“Please don’t be like that. Just read it once. It’s my wish, all right?”

“What do I care about your wishes? Stop bothering me and go do your work.”

“But my work is to make sure you read the letter, isn’t it? Please? Lady Adelaaaide.”

Amy didn’t budge. Instead she plastered herself to Adelaide’s side and pestered her. Adelaide had plenty she wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out. She wondered if the curse had finally started controlling her tongue as well as her actions.

Amy’s entire being was broadcasting ‘I know you’re a good person, Lady Adelaide,’ and Adelaide couldn’t bring herself to say anything harsh to her, so she took her frustration out on the innocent envelope and tore it open roughly.

[To Adelaide, the most wonderful thing I have]

Adelaide crumpled the letter with a crunch and took a deep breath. She told herself Vivian couldn’t possibly be that far gone, and smoothed it open again.

[To Adelaide, the most wonderful thing I have]

“Amy. Burn this.”

“What? Why! Read a little more, Lady Adelaide!”

“I can’t very well burn you, Amy.”

Good. Adelaide’s tongue was perfectly fine. This time Amy could tell Adelaide meant it, and she picked up the letter from where it had been thrown to the floor.

She knew better than to read her mistress’s letter, but the opening paragraph was so striking it forced itself into her eyes on its own.

“Oh…”

“Do you understand how I feel?”

“Lady Vivian said you were wonderful, Lady Adelaide!”

“When I burn you, I’ll gouge your eyes out first.”

Amy pressed on to the next paragraph, undeterred by Adelaide’s threat.

“Oh!”

“Still alive? What’s taking you so long to spontaneously combust?”

“Lady Adelaide, this is serious!”

Adelaide ended up reading the letter that Amy shoved in front of her face.

“Ugh! Honestly! My life! Why does it have to go like this!”

The letter said the following. Stripping away all the flowery language, it amounted to this:

[It seems our dear, sweet, flower-brained friend Violet is planning to run away tonight with a worthless postman, in what she calls ‘throwing her life into ruin.’ Shouldn’t we, as her friends, have a duty to help Violet live in her flower garden forever?]

“L… Lady Adelaide?”

“Amy! Prepare the carriage! No, the carriage is too slow. Get Cherry ready! Put the saddle on her and bring out my riding clothes!”

“Yes!”

Adelaide should not have cared whether Violet threw her life into the mud or not.

But even without the curse that only affected her actions, rage surged all the way to the top of her head.

“Stupid Violet! Don’t go ruining your life over some worthless man!”

Amy, running toward the stables, found Adelaide utterly endearing: all harsh words, yet dead set on riding out to save Violet on Cherry rather than a carriage.

“Lady Adelaide is going to bring us a guest, so let’s be ready, Draco?”

Amy held Draco’s cage in her arms and carefully draped a cloth over the sleeping baby dragon, cautious not to wake it.

Adelaide swung up into the saddle and drove her heels in hard.

Cherry sensed her rider’s excitement, reared up on her front legs with a snort, and broke into a gallop.

“Over the wall, Cherry!”

Cherry seemed tremendously excited to be trampling through the well-kept garden rather than the riding grounds she always ran in.

Adelaide gripped the reins tight and lowered her upper body. Leaving through the front gate would require Duke Berthier’s permission. Adelaide didn’t have time for that.

‘If there’s no road, you make one!’

The wall surrounding the Berthier estate curved and wound in gentle arcs, designed to protect privacy while keeping those inside from feeling enclosed.

Adelaide spotted a section where the curve dipped low and squeezed her thighs tight. She trusted in Cherry’s hind legs.

Cherry spotted the obstacle, coiled with tension, and leaped high.

“Well done!”

All those hours of obstacle training at the riding grounds had paid off. Cherry tossed her mane in answer to Adelaide’s praise.

They cut straight through the city. The sudden appearance of a great horse sent people scattering in all directions, screaming.

“Watch out!”

“Look where you’re going!”

“Help!”

Fortunately, thanks to Adelaide’s exceptional riding, no one fell or got hurt.

If anyone had, Adelaide would have had to dismount and help each fallen person up, and tend to anyone who was injured.

“You watch where you’re going!”

Adelaide’s tongue remained her own even if her actions were under the curse’s control, and she fired back at the person pointing and shouting curses at her.

The Armetia estate sat on the outskirts of the city, past the town center, near a quiet lake.

The gatekeeper spotted Adelaide charging toward him at full speed and waved his arms in alarm.

“Stop!”

“Out of the way!”

“It’s dangerous, please stop!”

“Open the gate or get run over!”

The gatekeeper at the Armetia estate was not a man of the same professional dedication as the footmen at the Berthier estate.

He valued his life above all else, so instead of holding his ground to verify her identity, he flung the gate open in a panic.

Adelaide shot through the front gate.

“Violet!”

“Wh… who are you, and why are you calling for our young lady?”

The second obstacle in Adelaide’s way was a footman at the Armetia estate.

He had come running at the sound of Adelaide bellowing at the top of her lungs without even dismounting from her horse, and he recognized the unruly young lady at once.

“Lady Berthier?”

“Violet! Come out right now!”

The footman, convinced that Violet was finally about to die at Adelaide’s hands, threw himself in front of the door with everything he had. Not that it amounted to much, given that he was a footman posted there for appearances, and his slight frame straining with the effort only made him look pitiful.

“Violet!”

“Lady Berthier! Whatever our young lady said, I’m sure she meant it in the best possible way!”

“Do you even know what your young lady is about to do, in the best possible way?”

“Not ride into someone’s home on horseback, perhaps?”

“Are you daring to criticize my conduct?”

The footman dropped flat to the ground. Faced with a situation too absurd to process, the words had flown out of his mouth before they reached his brain.

And who was Adelaide? The unruly young lady.

“No! How could I dare!”

“Violet! If you’re not out here by the time I count to three!”

Adelaide paused for a moment to think of a threat that would send Violet flying out the door.

“You’re banned from bathing with me for life!”

The footman glanced up sideways. He had heard the unruly young lady wasn’t the sharpest, but wasn’t that a bit much? The moment he thought so, the door he had been guarding burst open outward.

“That’s not allowed, Adel!”

“Oof…”

The footman sprawled face-first on the ground in an undignified heap and thought to himself:

‘So our young lady really is friends with Lady Berthier.’

A threat that would make even a passing dog scoff, and Violet, who came bursting out at a threat no passing dog would fall for. They were quite the pair.

“Adel!”

“Hold on, stop right there.”

Violet hadn’t come empty-handed. She had been struggling to drag a large travel bag behind her, which was why she hadn’t come out immediately despite Adelaide’s calls.

“What is that?”

Adelaide had a bad feeling. She sensed she shouldn’t ask, but the large travel bag was impossible to ignore.

If Violet were going somewhere, a maid would pack all her luggage. So why had she appeared dragging a travel bag with her own hands.

“Adel.”

Violet called out with resolve.

“I’m running away from home!”

Adelaide turned Cherry’s head right back around.

Amy had said it. Violet Roberta Armetia was a single delicate flower, graceful and slender like a pure white lily.

“Violet!”

“Adel, help me! I’ve never gotten on a horse by myself!”

That pure white lily was showing her calves and struggling to climb up onto Cherry.

The moment Adelaide pulled the reins to turn around, Violet had grabbed Cherry’s tail on top of it all.

If Cherry hadn’t been a well-trained horse, she would have become a lily crushed by a powerful kick.

“I suppose we’ve become the kind of friends who understand each other without words. The moment I made up my mind to run away, here you are, Adel! You must have felt something was seriously wrong and come running, right?”

She was wrong. Adelaide had only come to scold the foolish woman who kept a flower garden growing inside her head, the kind that belonged in an actual garden to be admired from a distance.

If they truly were the ‘friends who understand each other without words’ that Violet so firmly believed them to be, then Violet should have quietly gone back inside instead of stubbornly hiking one leg up and insisting on getting onto the horse.

“Help me up, Adel!”

“Cherry is not strong enough to carry both of us.”

“Nonsense! Those are truly magnificent muscles.”

Violet kneaded Cherry’s thigh muscles with greedy hands. Cherry, starved for praise and admiration thanks to her tight-lipped owner, tossed her mane with a proud air.

“How lovely. Is your name Cherry? Cherry, you don’t mind me getting on, do you?”

“Violet, Cherry is a horse. She can’t understand human speech.”