“Goodness, how beautiful!”

A fire show by the renowned alchemist had begun, and the crowd was surging toward it like a wave.

Ha. This is a nightmare.

Urgency was making her want to sigh when something caught her eye.

A slight man standing near a statue. Wearing a grey mask that covered his entire face, he glanced around suspiciously, then slipped something out from his sleeve and checked it.

“……!”

A dagger with a razor-sharp edge. Blair’s heart dropped. No one at a banquet was permitted to carry a weapon except the royal guards.

The man tucked the blade back into his sleeve and began moving quickly.

“No—!”

“Why, why, what’s wrong?”

Tilda asked, tensing up alongside Blair at her alarming reaction.

Blair rapidly assessed the situation. Following that suspicious man alone was far too dangerous. But calling the royal guards risked losing him.

And if that man is an assassin sent by Duke Brienne, we need to be the ones to catch him.

Handing him over to the Valian royal family would be the same as putting crucial evidence into the duke’s hands.

She was hovering helplessly, trailing the suspicious man’s retreating figure with her eyes, when a familiar silhouette came into view.

“Rashid……?”

Spotting the young duke of the Armos Islands, Blair’s eyes lit up.

“Tilda, go find Ernst. Tell him there’s a suspicious person in the banquet hall wearing a grey mask. Tell him Duke Brienne is targeting Kalintz.”

“What?!”

Tilda recoiled at the words that came crashing down like a thunderclap.

“There’s no time, go!”

“What about you, Your Highness?!”

“Don’t worry about me.”

Blair left a white-faced Tilda behind and pushed quickly through the crowd.

The man in the grey mask seemed to be heading toward the rear garden. Blair kept her eyes fixed on him and made her way to Rashid. He was easy to find, standing a head taller than most and with his distinctively dark complexion.

“His Grace Remarque.”

Rashid turned and opened his mouth slightly in what looked like mild surprise.

“……You’re calling me by name openly again.”

It was already the second time tonight that Blair had broken the rules of the masquerade, but that was the last thing on her mind.

“I don’t particularly mind…… what is it.”

Rashid’s voice hardened in an instant as he registered the look in Blair’s eyes.

“I need your help. Right now.”

❀❀❀

“Why does he look like he’s chewing on something rotten again.”

Ariela blew a thin stream of acrid smoke from the end of a long, slender stick as she spoke.

“If you have nothing to report, stop giving me a headache and go.”

Kalintz watched the smoke curling up into the night air and answered with irritation.

“Taking it out on me for no reason. What, did someone fail to understand your feelings?”

Ariela said it in a teasing tone and leaned against the terrace railing.

“The princess consort didn’t exactly seem like an easy type.”

“……Ha.”

Kalintz scowled deeply and moved to leave. His mood was at its absolute worst tonight, and he had no patience for anything that rubbed him the wrong way.

But Ariela had no intention of stopping.

“Aren’t you putting your own feelings a bit too far ahead?”

“What would you know.”

“With that personality of yours, it’s obvious. You were blind with jealousy earlier, over the young duke of the Armos Islands.”

She added that he was admittedly handsome, and Kalintz’s patience hit its limit.

He was about to walk away again when Ariela asked quietly,

“What can you actually give her, Your Highness?”

“……What?”

“Say it becomes real between you two. The plan goes through, Willer Brienne is driven out, you fake your death, Princess Lina takes the throne. Then what?”

Kalintz said nothing, and Ariela continued.

“You’re going to be the leader of some small mercenary company in Valia. So what about Her Highness? Does she follow you to Valia? To a place where she has no one?”

“I’m not going to force her. Whatever she wants—”

“Then you’d have to send her to Lis. That’s what the contract says.”

Ariela stared at Kalintz’s face for a moment, then let out a long sigh and spoke.

“Whatever way you find, that’s something the two of you can work out by talking. But, Your Highness. Even that is only possible if you’re both certain about each other. The two of you started this relationship with the ending already decided. Breaking that takes real conviction. Doesn’t it?”

“……”

“Love is a wonderful thing. I have a hard time believing you of all people are feeling it, but I’m rooting for you regardless. Only……”

Ariela exhaled a hazy breath of smoke.

“Try looking at something other than your own feelings.”

Kalintz watched the pale wisps of smoke Ariela had left behind. They drifted and scattered in the air, and he let out a short, helpless laugh at how much they resembled the inside of his own head.

Conviction. Had he ever thought about that.

Kalintz turned Ariela’s words over carefully.

The truth was, from the moment he became aware of his own feelings, he had tried to put them away. The desire that kept surging up, the hope that kept raising its head, all of it had unsettled him.

The resolve had broken at Lake Rafen. The moment he saw Blair crying, laying bare her deepest wound, something inside him had burst open beyond his control.

Even as he wiped the tears from those green eyes, a base jealousy had risen in him at the fact that she was weeping for someone else.

The feelings that had been adrift grew clearer. His heart swelled beyond what he could contain and kept flowing toward her.

Don’t be greedy, wait. He had told himself that, but watching Blair react to every word and gesture he made wore his patience down to nothing.

So in a way, it was inevitable.

‘What do you mean, the kind that makes a person’s heart—!’

That one unguarded piece of truth, spilling out without warning, had undone him completely.

He had tangled his breath with hers and taken her in. Her lips, her nape, the softer skin below.

When his name finally left her mouth. The longing in that voice had pushed him to his limit. He had wanted every part of her, right then and there.

And then.

‘I don’t remember much, but…… if I did anything that could be considered a mistake, I apologize.‘

First, the air went out of him. Then came the anger. Watching her try to deny everything that had passed between them the night before with a transparent lie had made something in him surge.

Of course he understood it in his head. Why she was pretending with such an obvious lie. What she was afraid of, and why she was hesitating.

But he had still wanted it. For her to throw that damned contract aside and give him her heart.

To say that she wanted him too.

“……What an idiot.”

Ariela had been right about everything. In the end, he was the one who had failed to give Blair any certainty.

And then he had thought that simply showing his own feelings clearly would be enough for Blair to give hers in return. How naive.

“Haah.”

Kalintz let out a frustrated sigh and sat on the railing. Part of him wanted to put one of Ariela’s foul weeds between his teeth.

Just then, quick footsteps came toward the terrace.

“Was it this way?”

“The alchemist said the far end!”

Ernst’s voice. And alongside it, Tilda Royce’s.

A moment later, the quiet terrace was invaded by the owners of those voices.

“Your Highness! Why are you here!”

He was about to ask if there was some reason he shouldn’t be, when Tilda tore off her mask and poured out words in a rush.

“Hah, hah. Her Highness asked me to pass on a message urgently! In the banquet hall, there’s a—haah.”

“Slow down and say it properly. Why is Blair—”

Kalintz’s face hardened in an instant. Ernst cut in and relayed the message quickly.

“She said there’s a suspicious person in the banquet hall. That Willer Brienne may have made a move…!”

Kalintz pushed himself off the railing.

“Blair.”

“P, pardon?”

The voice had gone so cold that Tilda flinched and stumbled over her words.

“Where is Blair right now.”

“Oh…… after she told me to pass on the message, she went somewhere. It looked like she was chasing someone—”

“Alone?”

“N, no, she seemed to be going with someone.”

“Someone?”

Kalintz’s interrogation was already barely rational, and Tilda scrambled to recall the last glimpse she had caught of Blair.

“The…… young duke of the Armos Islands.”

❀❀❀

“Hah, hah. He definitely went this way.”

Blair caught her breath and looked around. The man in the grey mask was nowhere to be seen.

“Who exactly are we chasing.”

Rashid asked in a firm voice. He had run just as hard as Blair, yet his breathing was barely disturbed.

“A man in a grey mask. Slender, slight build.”

Blair looked frantically for any fresh tracks on the ground as she spoke.

“What are we chasing him for. Is he an assassin?”

“Yes.”

The unexpected answer made Rashid’s expression harden further.