“Oh, sorry. The contract says physical contact only when necessary.”

Blair hid what she was feeling and moved away from him slightly.

“That’s not it…… haah.”

But somehow Kalintz’s frown only deepened. A sigh of frustration came with it.

“If this goes any further, I’m going to misunderstand.”

“Misunderstand what?”

“What do you think.”

“……!”

Blair finally understood what he meant and recoiled with a start.

“I was trying to comfort you, so why are you thinking strange things!”

“I doubt the person who gave you that advice meant for you to do it on a bed. And dressed like that.”

Kalintz looked her over with a sideways glance.

It was not the bizarre, nearly transparent nightgown from the wedding night, but it was not exactly layers of coverage either.

Sleepwear was sleepwear, after all.

Feeling his gaze, Blair covered herself with her hands and shot him a look.

“I would appreciate it if you didn’t slander my pure humanitarian goodwill like that.”

“Humanitarian goodwill?”

Kalintz raised an eyebrow at the phrase.

“So you would do this for anyone who was struggling. Whoever it might be?”

“No? Why would I do this for just anyone? It’s because it’s you.”

“And why me.”

“Why, obviously because……”

Blair had been about to say they were in the same boat, but the words died in her throat when she met Kalintz’s eyes. He was watching her with an unsmiling, searching gaze.

“Obviously, what.”

Was it the firelight. His eyes seemed to shift and waver.

“Um…… because we share the same fate?”

Blair answered with an involuntary question mark at the end.

“Ah. We share the same fate.”

Kalintz dropped his gaze and murmured it quietly, then asked,

“Is that really all it is.”

What does he mean. Something about his expression was strange, and Blair’s heart began to beat faster.

It felt like he was expecting a different answer. Was she reading too much into it.

“……What else would it be?”

The feeling she had been dimly aware of for some time now stirred again, soft and restless inside her chest.

Kalintz’s gaze held hers in silence, and the quiet stretched.

“Well. Only you would know that.”

He let out a faint laugh and rose from the bed.

“What, that’s it?”

Blair told herself she was glad he had not pressed further, but a small pang of something lingered.

“You seem more like yourself now.”

Kalintz murmured from the long sofa he used as his bed.

“How so?”

“You’ve been slipping away every time you saw me for days.”

“……Have I?”

Blair felt a guilty twinge but kept her expression perfectly blank.

“Avoiding my eyes, avoiding conversation, avoiding the dance. Why was that?”

Blair found herself in a rather difficult position with all his questions today.

She could not very well say out loud what she herself barely understood, or rather, what she understood but preferred not to.

“I just wasn’t feeling well.”

“It seemed like you only felt unwell when you were around me.”

Uncanny.

Blair mumbled that he must be imagining things and changed the subject.

“I have something I’m curious about too.”

Kalintz, who had been watching her with a skeptical look, gestured for her to go on.

“The Bolton knights. Was that you?”

“Ah.”

He said it as though it were barely worth thinking about.

“You won’t be running into them anywhere from now on, so don’t worry about it.”

“Was it really you? How did you manage it in a single day……”

Blair trailed off mid-murmur, then looked at him with an appalled expression.

“You didn’t have them killed, did you?”

“What? Ha, unbelievable. Do you think you’re the only one with humanitarian goodwill?”

Kalintz answered with a look of pure exasperation.

“I simply made sure they can never hold their heads up as knights again.”

“I knew it. They were a bit rude to His Grace Remarque, but taking their lives would be too much.”

Kalintz folded his arms and stared at Blair with a baffled expression.

“‘A bit’ rude?”

Those filthy creatures, and the things they said about her.

Kalintz furrowed his brow.

“Honestly, I wanted to rip their tongues out.”

“……Are you sure you have humanitarian goodwill?”

Blair muttered that it really did not seem like it, and Kalintz simply let out a long, heavy sigh.

“Anyway. About Duke Brienne.”

Blair leaned back against her pillow and brought it up.

“Again.”

“What do you think he’s planning.”

“You really don’t listen when I tell you not to concern yourself with him.”

“How can I not be concerned after overhearing something like that.”

Having heard that secret exchange with the Valia diplomatic envoy.

Blair thought back to the conversation in the garden and continued.

“It seems like he’s scheming something involving His Majesty the King…… and he said he needed something from the Valia Duchy?”

Kalintz stared at her for a moment, then shook his head with a faint sigh.

“Right. In a couple of months, it’s Grand Duke Clovitz of Valia’s birthday banquet. Brienne will use that as an excuse to go to Valia and obtain whatever it is he needs.”

“What could it be.”

“That’s something we’ll have to go and find out. Fortunately, there’s someone with a remarkable talent for gathering information.”

Kalintz looked at Blair as he said it.

“Is that someone me?”

Blair pointed at herself. Kalintz looked back at her with an expression that said who else.

“I’m going too?”

“I can hardly go alone. Both our names will be on the invitation. I’d rather not give anyone grounds to make trouble.”

Blair’s eyes went wide at the unexpected answer. She had been certain he would tell her to stay quietly in Eiron.

“You keep telling me to stop concerning myself with Duke Brienne.”

“Because I didn’t think you actually would.”

Kalintz dropped his gaze slightly and added,

“Better to have you where I can keep an eye on you.”

“Honestly. Am I some kind of runaway foal?”

Blair pouted and grumbled, and Kalintz simply let out a quiet laugh.

“Get some sleep. Tomorrow you’ll be dragged around to all manner of events again.”

At that, Blair made a face that said she was already exhausted and blew out the candle on the nightstand.

The room dimmed, and only the crackling of the fireplace filled the quiet.

Blair tossed and turned, feeling oddly self-conscious, then whispered softly.

“Good night.”

The reply came only after a few more rustles.

“You too.”

The air between them felt slightly different from usual. Both of them shifted and stirred for quite some time.

❀❀❀

“Are you sure this is all right?”

Ernst looked genuinely surprised to hear that Blair would be going to the Valia Duchy as well.

“Duke Brienne will be far more brazen there than he is here. And we still don’t know what he’s after.”

“Leaving her here alone doesn’t guarantee her safety either.”

Kalintz tapped the armrest with his fingers.

“Blair isn’t the type to sit quietly and take things, so there’s no telling what she might do on her own. Better to keep her close.”

“That’s true. Going to the Valia Duchy and back would take over a month at minimum. Being separated from Her Highness the Princess Consort for that long would also be a bit……”

Ernst shrugged as he said it, and Kalintz’s eyebrow twitched.

“Listen, Ernst. You keep forgetting. Blair and I are not in a romantic relationship. We are, as someone put it…… companions bound by fate. Tied by a contract.”

At the suddenly sharp response, Ernst scratched the back of his head with a mildly flustered look.

“Ah…… I didn’t mean it that way this time.”

“What?”

“I simply meant that Her Highness the Princess Consort alone in the palace doesn’t seem particularly safe, in the literal sense.”

“……”

Watching Kalintz say nothing, Ernst pressed down the laugh threatening to escape.

“Ahem. Well, I’ll keep that in mind. You were saying it’s purely a contractual arrangement, something like that?”

“……Get out.”

Does he even know what his own face looked like when he said it was a contractual arrangement.

Thoroughly absorbed in watching his old friend’s first love unfold, Ernst let the corner of his mouth twitch as he left the study.

❀❀❀

The next day, Blair had to submit to an examination by Mediang, the royal physician, first thing in the morning.

“His Highness the Prince was most insistent. He said your overall condition seemed poor and asked me to take a thorough look.”

It was the consequence of telling Kalintz she had not been feeling well when he asked why she had been avoiding him.

He really was suspicious.

Blair felt her heart flutter pointlessly again at the thought of him looking out for her.

“Before as well, His Highness seems to take very careful notice of Your Highness’s health.”

“Pardon?”

Blair asked, sipping the medicinal tea Mediang had brewed himself.

“Do you not remember? When you were a frons, I came to visit at His Highness the Prince’s request.”

“Oh…… ha. Right. I had a terrible stomachache.”

That was the very occasion when she had been feigning illness to avoid Kalintz’s persistent dinner invitations, and Mediang had shown up anyway.