Swish—

A quiet sound, like something cutting through the air. And then the whisper of an arrow splitting the dark grazed past his ear.

❀❀❀

Blair paced the parlor and bit her lip.

“Shouldn’t he have been back by now?”

Kalintz had left around dusk, which meant he should have returned at least an hour or two ago.

But for some reason, midnight had come and gone with no word from anyone.

“Kalintz, Ariela, and even Lady Miller. Not one of them has come back.”

Blair said it in a tight voice.

“The fact that Lady Miller hasn’t returned either suggests something has happened.”

Ernst, who had been saying they should wait, now had a rigid look on his face as well.

“I’ll send a fast knight to assess the situation—”

“Your, Your Highness!”

Tilda, standing nearby with a worried expression, suddenly cried out and pointed somewhere. Blair turned in surprise and drew a sharp breath.

Standing near the arched door that led to the terrace was, impossibly, Kalintz.

“Your Highness? How did you come from there?”

“I came in through the terrace. The guards were making their rounds at the front gate.”

The fact that this was the second floor seemed to be no obstacle to him whatsoever.

“Are you all right? Why are you so late—!”

Blair moved toward him with concern, then stopped short at the state he was in. His clothes were torn in several places and smeared with dark blood stains.

“It’s not my blood. Don’t worry.”

Kalintz noticed her expression and was quick to reassure her.

“There was an ambush after all, then?”

At Ernst’s question, Kalintz pulled a dark red cloth from his pocket. It bore a pattern of three snakes with their heads intertwined.

Ernst’s face went rigid the moment he saw it.

“Your Highness, that’s—!”

“What is it? What does it mean?”

Blair asked, her voice uneasy.

“They’re an assassin group notorious throughout Valia for being the most ruthless and relentless of their kind. That Brienne…… so he had already decided to kill that alchemist from the start.”

Kalintz nodded.

“There were at least thirty of them, by rough count.”

“Thirty?”

Blair asked back in disbelief. That was nearly twice the number of mercenaries who had gone with Kalintz.

“Their only target was the alchemist. Against our attacks they only defended. They kept going after the alchemist to the very end.”

“Then the alchemist……”

Kalintz didn’t answer right away, but the answer was already written in the way he clenched his jaw.

“He…… threw himself off a cliff while trying to escape.”

“He chose to die on his own?”

Blair asked again, unable to believe it. Ernst spoke in a low voice.

“He judged it the better option. Being caught by that assassin group doesn’t mean a clean death. They’re the kind who conduct alchemy experiments on living bodies. There is no peaceful end at their hands.”

“Good lord……!”

“Even with Your Highness there…… there would have been no way for that alchemist to escape thirty of them. Ha, d*mn that Brienne.”

Ernst couldn’t hold back the curse.

“What about Lady Miller? Is she……”

Blair asked with a tight feeling in her chest.

“Ariela went after her, so I don’t know yet. But if my guess is right, perhaps……”

Someone knocked urgently at the parlor door, hard enough to rattle it.

“I’m coming in!”

It was Ariela’s voice. She didn’t wait for permission and threw the door open.

“Haah…… you’re already back, Your Highness.”

She looked no better than Kalintz.

“What on earth happened? That horn sound, and then all of a sudden Brienne’s men—!”

Ariela pulled off her torn black hood and explained what had happened.

Duke Brienne’s men, who had been tailing Lady Miller, had drawn their swords the moment a horn sounded from the forest, as though on a prearranged signal.

But at that same moment, Lady Miller had thrown open the carriage door on the opposite side and bolted, and Ariela had been left with no choice but to fight off the men trying to kill her.

“……That horn was a signal from the assassins on my end. They had arranged in advance to eliminate Lady Miller as well if anything looked suspicious.”

Kalintz said it through gritted teeth.

“So what happened? Is Lady Miller safe?”

“Haah…… about that……”

At Blair’s question, Ariela trailed off with a troubled expression.

“She’s gone. She ran off in the middle of the fight with Brienne’s men.”

When the chaos was over and they checked the carriage, Lady Miller had already vanished.

“She even left her shoes behind so she wouldn’t leave tracks.”

Ariela bit her lower lip.

“She didn’t come back to the palace either?”

“No. At least not here.”

“She used the opening to run. Away from both Duke Brienne and us.”

At that, Tilda, who had been quiet, let out a disbelieving laugh.

“Ha. What a cowardly woman. Maybe she planned to run like this from the very beginning.”

Having spent a fair amount of time alongside Lady Miller, Tilda’s sense of betrayal ran deeper.

“But she……”

Blair clearly remembered the anger that had crossed Lady Miller’s face the day she had confronted her.

The voice that said she didn’t want to die by Duke Brienne’s hand. The flash in her eyes when Blair offered her the chance to become a double agent. That had been the reaction of someone who wanted revenge.

Had she fabricated all of that? Or had her heart changed afterward?

“Haah. I don’t know.”

The frustration pulled a sigh out of her.

Kalintz, who had been quiet, spoke up then.

“Hard to say. We’ll have to wait and see.”

“Pardon? What do you mean?”

Blair looked at him, puzzled.

“Lady Miller’s behavior during the meeting with the alchemist was strange. It was almost like she was exchanging some kind of information with him, out of sight of Brienne’s men.”

Kalintz relayed exactly what he had seen in the forest.

She had handed the alchemist a note written in Valian, and he had shown a flash of fear upon reading it. When he said there was a missing ingredient, Lady Miller had immediately asked where to find it rather than what it was.

“The moment they parted ways, the alchemist took off as though being chased. And crucially, when he ran into the assassins, he wasn’t particularly surprised. It was us he was startled to see.”

“……You’re saying Lady Miller warned the alchemist about the assassins?”

Kalintz nodded.

“If she planned to run from the start, there was no reason to do anything that strange. Whether the alchemist lived or died, she could have simply run on her own.”

He continued with his arms folded.

“My guess is that she found something out from the alchemist through those notes. I don’t know what it was, but…… I don’t think she disappeared somewhere alone simply to escape.”

Silence settled over the parlor when he finished.

“Then finding Lady Miller is the most pressing thing right now.”

Blair broke the silence in a quiet voice. Ariela nodded and got to her feet.

“I’ll tell the mercenary members to search the surrounding villages. She can’t have gone far yet.”

“I’ll go keep an eye on Duke Brienne’s side. He’ll be looking for Lady Miller too.”

Ernst said he would report back immediately if anything unusual turned up, then left.

Tilda soon returned to her own room with a worried look, and the parlor was left with only Blair and Kalintz.

“……It’s been a long day.”

Blair said it as she dabbed ointment on a small scratch on Kalintz’s cheek.

“I’m glad you came back safely.”

“Someone said they wouldn’t let it go if I got hurt again. Had to come back in one piece.”

Blair frowned at the out-of-nowhere remark, then realized it was a joke about her own threat and let out a quiet laugh.

“Don’t worry. It’ll work out.”

Kalintz drew the hand applying the ointment toward him and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist.

“……I hope so.”

Blair closed her eyes as she answered, as though trying to sort through the tangle in her head.

❀❀❀

The next morning, Blair was woken early by a knock at the door.

“Tilda? What is it?”

Blair asked in a half-asleep voice.

“A page boy came and left this for you. Something about it felt strange.”

Tilda handed something over with a rather serious expression.

“This is…… a belasion?”

It was a Valian flower with strikingly beautiful purple petals.

“You know what it is?”

“Yes. The other day, in the garden of this detached palace……”

Blair stopped mid-sentence. She grabbed Tilda by the shoulders and raised her voice.

“Tilda! Who left this flower?”

“A, a page boy. You know the one who’s often seen near the royal temple. He said some woman suddenly gave him this flower and asked him to pass it to Your Highness.”

It seemed to be the same page boy Lady Miller had once silenced with that gesture.

“Bring that page boy here. Right now.”

Tilda moved quickly at Blair’s expression, which said she had figured something out.

Blair turned and stared quietly at the purple flower resting on the table.