Soft sounds followed one after another, and Kalintz’s marks spread across her skin.

Feeling herself filled with him from head to toe, Blair pressed her hand to his chest. The body burning like fire rose and fell roughly beneath her palm.

Her hand was tracing slowly down over the firm lines of his abdomen when her fingertips caught on something.

The cloth wrapped around Kalintz’s wound.

“Kalin……tz, wait. Your wound……”

Blair pushed gently at his shoulder and checked the injury. The bleeding had long since stopped, but it was obvious that moving this roughly was not a good idea.

“……It’s fine.”

But Kalintz answered carelessly and pulled her back by the waist. He had clearly run out of patience.

The sight of him undone like this sent a quiet thrill through her, but Blair barely held onto her reason.

“Kalintz. I never want to see you lying there without a word again.”

Just thinking of him burning with fever, unconscious, made her throat tighten.

“It was so painful. Truly.”

Kalintz clenched his jaw and fixed her with an intense stare. His eyes were full of longing and something tender.

“……Ha. That damned boar.”

He finally let the curse through his teeth, rubbed a hand over his dry face, and released her waist.

“When we get back…… do it then.”

He hadn’t quite caught the small murmur, and Kalintz frowned slightly.

“I can’t hear you.”

“……When we get back. All you want.”

For a few seconds, Kalintz went silent, wondering if he had heard wrong. Then he laughed out loud.

“Ah, Blair. You really are something.”

He laughed for a long moment, his eyes curving attractively at the corners. Blair turned her head away in embarrassment, but his hand caught her before she could go far.

“I can never let my guard down for a moment. You always catch me off guard.”

“I don’t do it on purpose.”

Blair pursed her lips, flustered, but what Kalintz said next stopped her breath.

“That’s why I like you.”

The plain confession sent her heart racing all over again.

“Enough to make me wonder if any of this is real.”

Blair looked at him quietly for a moment, then drew his face slightly toward her and kissed him. It was a shy kiss, almost unbelievable given the heat they had just shared.

“Does this make it feel more real?”

“……What you said about doing it when we get back. Don’t take it back later.”

The kiss seemed to have stirred something in Kalintz, but Blair only smiled faintly and rested her head on his shoulder.

The warmth of the campfire had filled the damp cave. Listening to the rain outside slowly ease, Blair let her heavy eyelids fall closed.

❀❀❀

Clatter. A busy sound came to her ears.

Blair opened her eyes slowly, blinked a few times at the uneven stone ceiling, then remembered she was in a cave and pushed herself upright.

“Ugh.”

A groan escaped her at the terrible muscle ache, as though every part of her had been beaten.

“You must have used muscles you don’t normally use. I worked them out for you last night, and it still hurts that much.”

Kalintz had been examining something near the campfire. He stood and walked over.

“You worked them out? When?”

“While you were sleeping.”

She had no memory of it at all. Not only had she fallen dead asleep before him despite his injuries, she had apparently received a massage on top of it.

Blair lowered her head slightly in embarrassment.

“Don’t worry. I’m not enough of an animal to take advantage of someone sleeping.”

“That’s not what I meant……! I feel bad. You’re the one who was hurt.”

At that, Kalintz gave a quiet laugh.

“More than that, I’d appreciate it if you understood how hard it was to hold back.”

“Pardon?”

Blair let out a helpless laugh looking at Kalintz, who had somehow become even more brazen than before.

“What’s that, anyway?”

Kalintz kept brushing what looked like dried dirt off something in his hand. It seemed to be the source of the clattering from earlier.

“There were some herbs nearby, so I put them in the canteen and warmed it. It’s hot, so drinking it should give you some energy.”

He couldn’t put the leather canteen directly over the fire, so he had apparently coated the outside in clay and set it near the flames. Kalintz finished knocking off the dried clay and handed the canteen over.

“Thank you.”

The warm tea slid down her throat and into her stomach, and just as he said, she felt a warmth spread through her.

“We should be able to move soon. The rain’s stopped.”

Blair nodded and pulled on her half-dried clothes.

Outside the cave, a pale dawn was pushing the night back.

“A whole day has already passed.”

“The rain will have washed away our tracks. Otherwise Ernst would have found us long ago.”

Blair nodded, looking out at the forest heavy with rainwater.

“Still, they’ll be somewhere near where we killed that beast. Or possibly where I collapsed. Let’s try retracing our steps.”

They fed and watered the horse, then moved along the stream. Kalintz navigated the way back with ease, as though he had a map in his head.

At last they reached the spot where Kalintz had lost consciousness and fallen. The blood-stained strip of cloak half-buried in the mud confirmed it.

“Do you think Sir Werner came here?”

Blair murmured, looking around. Kalintz had been scanning the area in silence, and he seemed to spot something and moved toward it.

Blair followed him to a spot near a fairly large tree and found something unexpected.

“That’s an insignia.”

An Eiron insignia was caught in the vines wrapped around the tree trunk.

“But why is it facing backward?”

“It’s a signal we agreed on between us. Hung with the back showing, it means a meeting point. If we wait, they’ll probably come here……”

Kalintz stopped mid-sentence. He turned his gaze to the right side of the forest.

“They’re already coming without me having to say it.”

Blair turned her head in surprise, following his line of sight.

Sure enough, the undergrowth not far away rustled, and a familiar voice carried through.

“Helix. Once I find them both, I’m stepping down as captain. You take command of the knights.”

“Captain. By that logic, we should all step down. We failed to protect His Highness and Her Highness just the same.”

“I’m also His Highness Kalintz’s personal guard knight. What I carry is different.”

Ernst’s voice, now just a short distance away, was heavier than Blair had ever heard it.

At the grave tone, Kalintz gave a quiet laugh and murmured.

“It is different. The weight of responsibility and duty is far greater.”

“Exactly. The responsibility and duty I carry is…… who was that just now?”

Ernst turned to look at his knights and asked. He followed it with a sharp demand to know who had spoken informally.

“Um, Captain?”

“What? Ron, was that you?”

“No, it’s not that, it’s His Highness……”

“What are you talking about? Why are you bringing up His Highness out of nowhere?”

Ernst was frowning deeply when he snapped his head in the direction his subordinate was pointing. His eyes went wide enough to look ready to fall out.

“Who gave you permission to step down as captain. Someone who carries such weighty responsibility and duty.”

“Your Highness……?”

Ernst blinked blankly a couple of times, then let out a cry and threw himself at Kalintz.

It was a deeply moving reaction from a personal guard knight who carried no ordinary burden, the kind that could bring tears to the eyes.

❀❀❀

The hunting competition, thrown into chaos by Kalintz’s disappearance, was hastily brought to a close after two days.

“Grand Duke Clovitz must be losing face badly.”

Ernst murmured as he poured the tea.

“Of course. There are many people in Valia who are passionate about the hunting competition. A mid-event cancellation, this has never happened before.”

Ariela, sitting on the parlor sofa with her arms crossed, answered.

“Though with word that an accident befell the heir to the Eiron throne, no one seems willing to say much out loud.”

“The Valian royal family hasn’t made an official announcement about the details yet?”

At Blair’s question, Ariela nodded.

“They couldn’t. The fact that someone used forbidden alchemy to create a mutant would be enough to overturn everything, and on top of that, the mutant attacked the Eiron prince in the royal hunting grounds? There’s no way they can say that.”

She gave a scornful laugh and continued.

“If we hadn’t shown them the carcass of the mutated boar, they probably would have insisted to our faces that it was all nonsense.”

Ariela was a royal alchemist, yet she seemed to hold no small amount of contempt for the royal family.

“They must all be tearing their hair out right about now.”

Ernst clicked his tongue with a sardonic smile.