“Allen…… knew the reality. That a gardener’s son and a viscount’s daughter could never be together.”

“That’s how it is with rank.”

Kalintz said it with his gaze lowered.

“I knew it too. I just wanted to pretend I didn’t.”

Blair let out a faint sigh and went on.

“Then one day, something happened.”

“Something?”

“My sister, who had been married off to Count Huston, took her own life. I mentioned this before.”

“……Yes.”

Kalintz answered in a voice that had grown quieter.

“A few months after my sister died, a maid from that household secretly passed me a small bundle. My sister’s jewelry. The letter inside said not to live as she had, but to live freely.”

Blair wrinkled her nose against the sting behind it.

“Reading that, I made up my mind. I would sell the jewelry my sister left me and leave home.”

“That was quite a reckless idea.”

“It was. Truly thoughtless. But I thought it would be all right if Allen came with me. Because I wouldn’t be alone.”

“Did he agree?”

Blair shook her head, without strength.

“No. Allen…… never even heard what I had to say.”

Her diary had been the cause of it all.

After her sister died, she had poured her grief into the diary every day, writing about the jewelry and the letter her sister had left, and about her own foolish plan.

Never imagining her parents might read it.

“I had planned to tell Allen my plan here. But on the day we were supposed to meet, I couldn’t take a single step outside.”

Her diary had been torn to shreds. Her sister’s jewelry was taken from her. She was struck across the face more than once and locked in her room. For over ten days.

“If it was that bad, Allen would have come looking for you. Living in the same house, he wouldn’t have been in the dark.”

“No. I never saw Allen again after that day.”

“Why?”

Kalintz asked with a puzzled look.

“When I was finally let out of my room, the servants told me. That the gardener and his son had run away. That on the night I was supposed to meet Allen, they had slipped out of the estate in secret, afraid of being punished by my father.”

“They were driven out.”

Blair had no choice but to shake her head again.

“I thought so too at first. Uncle Deric and Allen weren’t the kind of people who would just run.”

Blair ran her fingers over the surface of the tree stump she was sitting on.

“So I came here and waited, day after day. Hoping they might come. That was all I wanted, really. I wanted to apologize. To tell Allen I was sorry for putting him in a difficult position because of my foolishness.”

But that wish was never granted.

No matter how long she waited, Allen did not come. And before she knew it, half a year had slipped by.

“Then one day, the stable hand who had been close to Uncle Deric suddenly quit his job.”

He gave no answer when asked why. He only left word asking her to come to Lake Rafen, then walked out of the estate.

“To this lake?”

Kalintz’s eyebrow rose as he listened.

Blair nodded and continued.

“I didn’t understand, but I couldn’t not go. He said it was about Allen.”

“……”

Something seemed to occur to him. Kalintz’s face stiffened, slowly.

“I came to this lake with my shoes on the wrong feet, like someone out of their mind. And I found Uncle Deric there. A complete wreck of a man.”

She could still see it clearly. The hollowed-out face. The eyes filled with a hatred that words could not fully describe.

Before she could even feel startled by the sight of him, he had lunged at her and wrapped his hands around her throat.

Saying the unbelievable words that she had killed his son.

“……So something happened to Allen on the day you couldn’t make it to the meeting.”

At Kalintz’s words, Blair looked out at the lake with heavy, sunken eyes.

“My father was far more…… frightening than I had imagined.”

He had hired men from the back alleys, the kind who would do anything for money, and sent them to threaten Allen. In case Allen might one day become an obstacle to Blair’s marriage prospects.

“The men, well paid, carried out my father’s instructions faithfully. But Allen…… was not the kind of person to simply take it.”

When Allen’s resistance proved fiercer than expected, men who thought nothing of killing let their eyes go dark with it.

“……And that’s how Allen was lost. So suddenly.”

Deep grief and fury settled in Blair’s eyes.

“My father knew all of it, and still used money to silence those vermin and drove Uncle Deric away. While leaving Allen at the bottom of that lake.”

Allen had lain there for days, sunk to the cold floor of the lake. Alone in the dark.

“Allen…… he shouldn’t have gone like that. He had done nothing wrong. He was just a pure, kind boy who loved the stars.”

The voice that had been trembling slowly filled with tears.

“Blair.”

“How much must he have resented me, down there in that dark water.”

The guilt sank without end, down into the lake.

“Even if I apologized a thousand, ten thousand times…… haah.”

The words she could not finish were swallowed by tears. Like all those words that had never reached anyone, swallowed by the lake.

“Even just once…… I want to say I’m sorry properly.”

Blair quietly lowered her head.

Tears had been falling down her cheeks in silence for a while when a gentle touch came.

“I think Allen already knows.”

Blair looked up at Kalintz, who was quietly brushing the corners of her eyes.

“And I don’t think Allen resented you.”

The evening light must have been catching in his eyes. His gaze felt very warm.

“If anything, Allen probably wished you wouldn’t cry like this. That’s what I would have wanted.”

Why did those few words bring such comfort.

Blair managed a watery smile and said quietly,

“……I hope so.”

She was rubbing her swollen eyes when she felt a large hand wrap around her head and draw her in. Before she could understand what it meant, his scent reached her.

“Someone told me this is what helps when things are hard.”

His low voice came from above her head. Soft and gentle, unlike the firm chest against her cheek.

He held her gently where she stood and stroked her hair.

“Just so you know, this isn’t because we share the same fate, like someone once said. And it certainly isn’t humanitarian goodwill.”

It was a quiet jab at the excuse she had given when she comforted him.

“Then what is it?”

“Think about it.”

Think about it. What does that mean. Blair glanced up at him, and a memory of a past conversation surfaced.

‘Ah. We share the same fate. Is that really all it is.’

His expression then had been much like this one. That strange look that made her heart flutter whenever she met it, watching her as though searching for something, as though expecting a different answer from this relationship that had begun with a contract.

“What if I start thinking whatever I like.”

Hearing things like that over and over, Blair was growing more and more confused.

“Go ahead.”

The reply only made her mind more tangled. Blair lowered her head again and quietly closed her mouth.

“You seem a little better now.”

After a stretch of silence, Kalintz pulled back slightly and looked at her face.

“……Thank you.”

Blair rubbed her reddened eyes and murmured softly.

“What happened to the gardener?”

“He couldn’t bring himself to do anything to me in the end.”

Uncle Deric, who had loved her like his own daughter, had disappeared that day. With a face full of pain and anguish.

“A few months later, a small box arrived with a short letter.”

‘This is something Allen meant to give you. Even if it isn’t your fault, I don’t think I can bear to see you.‘

That was the last of Deric.

“So that necklace had a story like that.”

Blair nodded and turned the amethyst necklace over in her fingers where it rested on the tree stump.

“It’s the only keepsake Allen left behind.”

There was no grave to visit. All she could do was come to a place filled with memories and remember him.

“Even so, I think Allen knows there’s someone who remembers and comes to see him.”

Blair gave a faint smile.

“Thank you for saying that. I’ve never told anyone this before…… but saying it out loud, it doesn’t feel as bad as I thought.”

“I’ve never told anyone about my mother either. Except you.”

“So we each know one secret of the other’s.”

“So it seems.”

Kalintz let out a light laugh. Seeing it, Blair felt something in her settle.

Just then, wind came down from the mountain.

It brushed through the leaves, scattered Kalintz’s hair, and finally reached Blair’s red strands.

“Shall we head back.”

The voice was quite gentle. Blair looked quietly at the hand held out to her, then carefully took it.

The warmth that passed through her fingertips made her heart lurch again.

The feeling that had deepened along with the season had grown, without her noticing, to something she could no longer easily pretend away.

❀❀❀

The procession departing for the Valia Duchy was considerable in size.

It was the first foreign trip for the prince and princess consort as a couple, and the Eiron royal family had apparently taken care with the arrangements.