“Still, it’s thoughtful of Queen Rhea to look out for you like this. I would have thought she’d shudder at the very mention of Valia.”

“She dislikes Grand Duke Clovitz. But she still has a great deal of affection for Valia itself.”

Blair said it thinking of Queen Rhea’s bright smile as she spoke about Valia’s customs and people.

Thinking of the queen, who had been left alone and powerless in a foreign land, forced to turn her back on the people and home she loved, Blair felt her anger at Duke Brienne rise again.

“It would be lovely if Her Highness could come with us…… but that’s too much to hope for, isn’t it.”

“She was quite firm about it. As long as Grand Duke Clovitz is alive, I don’t think Her Highness will ever set foot in Valia again.”

Blair answered with a touch of bitterness, then turned her attention back to the list of key figures in Valia, the catalog of gifts for the Valian royal family, and the overall itinerary, going over everything once more.

After carefully working through the documents for some time, Blair seemed to remember something and spoke to Tilda.

“Tilda, could you clear my schedule the afternoon after next?”

“The whole afternoon?”

“There’s somewhere I need to go on my own.”

Tilda looked puzzled. Blair rarely arranged outside engagements.

She was about to ask where Blair was going when someone else asked the question first.

“Where do you need to go.”

“Your Highness the Prince.”

Tilda noticed Kalintz standing in the doorway of the bedroom and bowed quickly in surprise.

“You startled me. Why are you coming from in there?”

Blair was just as startled.

“Didn’t you say you were watching the new trainee knights today?”

“I did. Though it’s been quite a while since I got back.”

“Quite a while?”

Blair followed Kalintz’s glance toward the window. The sky outside had gone completely dark.

“You weren’t coming, so I wondered what you were doing.”

Kalintz walked over slowly and looked over the Valia-related documents spread across Blair’s desk.

“You lost track of time looking at all this.”

“……There’s a lot to prepare before we go.”

Bringing up Duke Brienne in front of Tilda would only invite a lecture, so Blair gave a vague answer and began tidying the desk.

“Let’s go. I think that’s enough for today.”

Tilda, who had been watching the two of them with a warm look, quickly said her goodbyes and disappeared.

“So. Where are you going?”

Back in the bedroom, Kalintz turned to Blair and asked.

“Why were you eavesdropping.”

“I wasn’t eavesdropping, I just heard. Why was the bedroom door open.”

The new cleaning maid must have made a mistake.

Blair let out a quiet sigh and spoke.

“I’m going to the lake.”

“The lake?”

Kalintz asked as though he had no idea what she meant.

“The lake where I ran into you in disguise, the day I snuck out of the palace.”

“You mean Lake Rafen.”

Blair’s eyes went wide with surprise.

“You know that lake?”

But Kalintz glanced away and said nothing.

“You told me yourself it wasn’t on any map.”

“It’s on the map I have.”

Kalintz thought to himself that it was not technically wrong, since Ernst, a living map, knew about it.

“Don’t tell me, when you were looking into my background……”

“I only know the name. It’s not the kind of out-of-the-way lake anyone goes looking for.”

Blair studied him with a skeptical look, then let it go with an air of indifference.

“You’re right. Very few people would know about it. By now, I might be the only one.”

Allen was no longer in this world either.

“So. Why are you going.”

At Kalintz’s question, Blair hesitated for a moment, then answered in a quieter voice.

“It’s Allen’s death anniversary.”

❀❀❀

A secluded forest. The dense undergrowth swept aside with a sharp rustle.

“It really does seem like almost no one comes here.”

Kalintz pushed aside weeds that reached his waist with the flat of his blade as he spoke.

“It’s been a long time since I came this way. That’s probably why.”

Blair murmured from behind him. Kalintz let out a small laugh.

“You only ever used the back passage. No wonder.”

“I don’t mind hearing that from anyone else, but not from you.”

“You used it freely for so long without paying a toll. You can at least put up with this much.”

“……Since when does a back passage have a toll.”

Blair stuck out her lip and grumbled at the back of his head.

Why did he insist on coming along in the first place.

Blair had planned to tell him she was visiting her family home and slip away quietly to the lake on her own. But Kalintz had insisted on accompanying her.

“Were you planning to come alone down a path like this with no escort.”

“I didn’t say I was coming alone. I was going to ask Sir Werner.”

“Leaving me behind, on purpose?”

Kalintz stopped and turned back with a furrowed brow.

“You’re…… busy. And you have a great deal to do.”

Blair glanced away and made up an excuse.

She knew perfectly well that it was natural for Kalintz to come with her. But for some reason, she did not want to go to Allen with him.

What is there to not want.

Allen had not been her lover. And Kalintz was not her lover either.

The one thing the two had in common was that she held uncertain feelings for both of them. One in the past, the other in the present.

Though the nature of those feelings was a little different.

What she had felt for Allen was the clumsy tenderness of youth. What she felt for Kalintz was something more complicated, and stranger, and less familiar.

“Ernst is busier than I am these days.”

Lost in thought, Blair cleared her throat to hide what was on her mind.

“Ahem. Has the investigation made any progress?”

Just as Kalintz said, Ernst had been thoroughly occupied lately looking into the various medicines and herbs being given to King Rubens. It felt like more than a month since she had last heard his easy chatter.

“Nothing certain yet. All conjecture at this point.”

Kalintz said it with a slightly harder expression.

“It would be good to have even a small lead before we leave for Valia.”

“We’ll have to wait. Ernst will turn something up.”

For all his indifference, Kalintz had a deep and steady trust in Ernst.

After walking a little further behind him, the view opened up beyond his broad shoulders.

“We’re here.”

“We are.”

Lake Rafen came into view. The place where memories of Allen lived, and where she had said goodbye to them.

Blair walked slowly to the water’s edge. She sat down on a bare tree stump and took out the purple amethyst pendant, setting it beside her.

“It’s been so long.”

She murmured to herself and looked out at the lake and the landscape around it.

The season had turned, as it always did at this time of year, with nothing too much and nothing too little.

Sometimes it felt like a blessing for someone who had left too soon. Other times it felt utterly indifferent, as though it could not care less.

“A good place. Quiet and natural.”

“Isn’t it? It was like a secret garden for Allen and me.”

“On a death anniversary, shouldn’t you go to where they’re buried.”

At Kalintz’s question, Blair lowered her head slightly.

“There’s nowhere to go. Allen was cremated.”

Kalintz flinched, visibly caught off guard.

It was understandable. In the Kingdom of Eiron, even commoners were generally buried in communal or family plots. Cremation was sometimes done, but usually only when a body had decomposed or been badly damaged.

“……Drowning, then.”

After a long silence, Kalintz murmured the question. Blair answered with a small nod.

A brief silence followed. Wind passed over the lake, stirring small ripples across the surface.

When those ripples reached the shore and faded, Blair slowly opened her mouth.

“Allen was the son of a gardener.”

It was a story she had never told anyone.

Blair’s father, Viscount Mervish, had been poor. A noble with nothing to his name but a small patch of rural land that barely deserved to be called a domain.

His life changed when an herb gatherer stumbled upon a mine by chance.

Suddenly the owner of an iron ore mine, Viscount Mervish used his natural talent for business to amass a fortune.

With that money he bought a townhouse in the capital and hired the herb gatherer as the estate’s gardener.

“After profiting so enormously, all he gave the man was a job as a gardener.”

Blair said it with a short, humorless laugh.

“That gardener, Uncle Deric, had a son the same age as me.”

“Allen, then.”

Blair nodded and continued.

“That’s right. Allen and I understood each other perfectly. Even as a child, I had no interest in embroidery or anything like that. I preferred sitting under a tree reading, or watching the stars.”

Kalintz let out a small laugh, as though that was exactly what he would have expected.

“Allen and I were always together. We used to come to this lake all the time to get away from my mother, who hated it terribly. After a few years, when we were getting into our adolescence, we had come to know each other better than anyone.”

Well enough to know what the other was thinking just from a look. Well enough to recognize the reason behind the hesitation that sometimes crossed those eyes.