The day his memories returned, the rain that fell on his shoulders was just like that day.

When he spoke of that day, he meant that time. The day the gunpowder exploded and his officer looked at him with bleeding ears, trembling and weak. The day Ronan de Lamarlac prepared to send him to the afterlife with a sardonic smile. On that day… the rain poured down relentlessly.

The rain was the same on the day Swan proposed to him. And the day she told him she was pregnant, it fell with the same steady persistence. Atlion had just returned from visiting the spot where he’d been found. The light drizzle had turned into a heavy downpour by the time he returned.

Swan stood before him, soaked and shivering like a drenched rat, her eyes wide with fear. She seemed frightened, as if she feared he would leave again. But if he had intended to leave her, to disappear, he wouldn’t have stayed so long. Atlion had many options – he could have left at any time.

He watched her in silence as she hugged herself tightly, crying as if trying to purge her despair. Her face, pale and drawn, seemed almost blue as she cried. Without a word, he took her in his arms. Instead of begging him not to go, Swan begged him to marry her.

Drenched from the relentless rain, she shivered as she clasped her hands together and whispered desperately like a prayer. Her words, scattered and urgent, were filled with emotion but ultimately unnecessary. He wouldn’t have left Swan whether her pregnancy was real or not.

He held her close. He embraced the woman who was struggling to hold back her tears, her hands still clasped in front of her, and carried her back to the cabin. The marriage was arranged at once.

Atlion, unfamiliar with the customs of a commoner’s wedding, entrusted everything to Tom and Swan. For a while, Swan’s face radiated excitement. She talked endlessly and worked tirelessly to decorate her home. Her happiness was evident as she spoke of the sweetness of newlywed life. She even sewed her own dress from fine silk that Tom had brought from the village. But then ….

“Sir, you’re not happy, are you?”

It was two days before the wedding when Swan asked him this, her eyes fixed on Atlion as he stared out of the dull, overcast window. Atlion didn’t answer.

From that moment on, Swan stopped smiling. She no longer chattered or spoke of decorating her home or the joys of married life. The Swan, who had once glowed with happiness and occasionally called him “darling”, fell silent.

But at some point… yes, at some unknown moment, even the smallest signs of joy faded. Had she noticed? That he had regained his memory?

If so, when had she found out? Was it that rainy night, fifteen days ago, when she clung to him and begged him to be her husband? Yet on the same night his memory had returned, he had given no sign of it.

Even if Swan had noticed, there was no way of knowing exactly when she had become aware. What was certain was that she had changed. She no longer pressed her cheek against his arm to warm it, nor did she flit around him chattering away.

There were times when her expression became distant and empty. Atlion remained silent. It did not matter if she chose not to speak first, or if he chose not to speak.

A few days later, they held a small wedding in the modest courtyard of the cabin. Swan wore a simple white dress of plain silk. Unlike noble brides who wore luxurious velvet or bright satin, Swan was too poor to afford even dyed fabric.

And yet she was beautiful. Or at least she was to Atlion. The pearl on her brooch, designed to mimic those worn at an empress’s coronation, was fake. The flowers that adorned her red hair were just two simple blossoms picked from the garden. Yet she was radiant in her simplicity.

Even in her worn and modest clothes, Swan was a beautiful bride. And then… she stopped asking about his lost memories. The questions she had once asked so often faded away. Nothing, not even the slightest mention of his past, passed her lips again. And so time passed.

“Oh no… oh dear, what do we do now…?”

Tom paced nervously nearby, shifting anxiously from foot to foot. For four hours the only sound from the cabin had been Swan’s cries of pain. Childbirth, they said, was an ordeal like no other – a pain so excruciating that it felt like the pelvis was twisting and the perineum was tearing, sharp enough to cause fainting. For women, it was a battle, and the delivery room a battleground.

But for Atlion, it was strictly a woman’s business. He remained detached, without the curiosity to understand.

Wasn’t it just a natural occurrence? Nothing out of the ordinary. It was just a child being born. That’s all it was. The swan was giving birth to his child. The child being born was his.

And yet…

“Sir, aren’t you a little worried?”

The man, his eyes red with frustration, couldn’t contain his irritation and finally spoke. Though he wasn’t her father, or even related to her by blood, Tom had always shown great concern when it came to Swan.

From the moment Swan had announced her pregnancy until now, Atlion had not shown the slightest hint of awareness – as a father, as a husband, or even as the man responsible for the pregnancy. Tom seemed to feel it was his responsibility to act where Atlion would not.

He had tirelessly gathered everything Swan might need – herbs beneficial to expectant mothers, maternity aprons and pyjamas, books, even charms and trinkets steeped in ancient superstition. For Tom, a child was never just a child. Unlike Atlion, who showed no sense of ownership or concern for the child as his own, Tom took the situation seriously.

Perhaps it was Atlion’s indifference that drove this unrelated old man to save his money – money he might have spent on rum – and use it instead to care for Swan.

“What is it?”

“It’s… it’s about Swan.”

“What about her?”

“She’s in pain, yet you haven’t even flinched… I may only be a lowly commoner, but when my wife was alive and in labour, writhing in pain, I didn’t stand by and watch as detachedly as you have done, sir.”

The man’s face flushed, then turned pale as he huffed in despair. A husband who couldn’t act like one – what hope was there for him to be a proper father? He wasn’t a real man. Poor Swan. Poor Swan. Why had she chosen such a man to be her husband?

That was probably what he was thinking. Atlion remembered the sight of the man clutching a bottle of rum, crying uncontrollably, and Swan’s silent, unreadable expression as she watched him. Swan was not one to wear her emotions openly.

“Ahhhhhhhh!”

The scream that had been a constant pressure on his chest suddenly ripped through the cabin, loud enough to shake the walls. Atlion looked away from the seething man. He was right. Atlion wasn’t a good man. He hadn’t been a good husband. And maybe he wouldn’t be a good father either.

“Almost there! Just one more push! One more!”

The midwife’s voice rang from the cabin, rising in time with Swan’s labouring breathing. Beneath the midwife’s commanding tone, Atlion could hear Swan’s weak, broken cries. She seemed utterly exhausted, unable even to wail properly.

All she could manage were shallow, strained breaths. Her raw, instinctive cries began to falter and finally faded as the peak of her agony seemed to subside.

“Waaah!”

A faint, delicate cry – so faint it was little more than the breath of a small, defenceless creature. Was it a boy? Would it be better if it was?

‘Swan has given birth. This child carries the blood of the imperial family.’

Which makes the child royalty. In truth, if events had unfolded as they should have, Swan would never have given birth to his child. But she had. Her belly had grown steadily, and now she had delivered safely.

So Swan had given birth to a child of royal blood. If there was any sense of fatherhood in him, that was the extent of it. Nothing else stirred in him. In truth, he didn’t feel that the child was really his. Unless he thought of it that way, unless he told himself over and over again that the life growing in her womb was his masterpiece….

And yet Swan had become his wife. If he had lived his life as it was meant to be, she would never have entered it as his wife.

And yet it was strangely amusing to think about – it really felt that way. He found it hard to think of Swan as anything other than his wife. He couldn’t imagine another woman taking her place as his wife. Yet the child alone felt strange to him. He was the one who had planted the seed in Swan’s womb and yet, unless he repeated it to himself, it didn’t feel like the child was truly his.

Swan, the woman he had married in front of the tearful old monk Tom had brought to perform the ceremony. Swan, who wore a veil less elegant than scraps from the Imperial Palace, who blushed softly as she smiled.

‘My wife. My wife.’

“It’s a girl! A girl!”

Late that evening, the midwife Tom had desperately fetched from the village emerged from the cabin, her face beaming with joy. She had been gasping for breath on the way up, barely keeping up with Tom, but now she was jubilant as she announced the news.

Tom collapsed to the floor, overcome by sobs. Tears rolled down his face as his hands trembled, and he wiped them away before glancing briefly at Atlion. Then, with a subdued expression, he turned his head away. Atlion said nothing and stepped silently into the cabin.