—

Atlion’s recovery was going well. Theo was also recovering well. Atlion made sure to check on him regularly, providing care and attention until Theo was fully healed and ready for a long journey.

Whenever Theo greeted Swan, it was with a bright, happy face. Seeing his radiant expression often brought back memories of the moment she first met him.

Sometimes tears would well up in her eyes and she would find herself drowning in uncontrollable emotions. But Theo would gently wipe the tears from her cheeks and ask, “Everything’s better now, so why are you crying?”

“Look at this. The little princess brought it for me.”

He smiled, revealing his clean teeth, and held up a glass jar. Inside, sealed with a cork, was a small wildflower and a delicate butterfly fluttering its wings. With no air circulation, the butterfly wouldn’t survive long unless it was set free. Theo intended to release it without Mirabella noticing.

“You call her a princess?”

Theo looked at her thoughtfully for a moment before breaking into a broad grin.

“I’m sorry, Swan.”

Atlion had approached her unnoticed and was now on one knee, looking up at her. His eyes were filled with despair. She did not want to turn away, did not want to hold on to her resentment.

Yet there were moments when her heart ached deeply. It hurt to look back at how much she had changed – how love had made her feel so helpless and broken. She despised herself for becoming someone she couldn’t stand. And she hated him – the man who had made her that way. To love him with all her heart and yet hate him so much that he hurt her was a pain in itself.

“I was wrong.”

Instinctively, she shook her head slowly, her movements almost habitual. Before she noticed, a tear rolled down her cheek. The pain in his blue eyes as he watched her was unmistakable. Swan pressed her lips together, holding back her emotions, before speaking carefully.

“That turkey…”

In the palace, it might have been a common dish served at one of the three daily meals, but in Swan’s home, it was a dish reserved for the most special of occasions. To afford it, she had spent days gathering herbs, selling them and saving every penny. And yet…

“I’m sorry. You must have been angry that I didn’t take a bite.”

Atlion cupped her pale cheeks, his whisper so tender it only made Swan cry harder. How could someone so kind and gentle have failed to show her warmth when she needed it most? The thought stirred a flood of resentment all over again.

She shouldn’t feel resentment. She had no right. She had deceived him first, tried to bind him by all the wrong means. Swan had been at fault then, too, trying to claim him in ways she shouldn’t have. Avoiding his piercing blue eyes, she looked away and shook her head.

“I was wrong, Swan.”

He cupped her pale cheeks in his hands, pressed his lips gently to hers and murmured his apology. Her tight lips trembled slightly.

“I… I used to eat this with my mom,” she choked out, her voice trembling and wet with emotion. “Only on really special days… we saved it, treasured it…”

Her voice trembled as she tried to control her breathing and hold back the tears. She didn’t want to cry over something like this; it felt more like whining than expressing real grief. She had promised herself not to cry over something so trivial. After all, it was a matter that had been settled long ago. 

Despite their past conflicts and the pain that had been caused between them, Swan had chosen Atlion in the end. That was what mattered now.

He had already paid the price. He had suffered for two and a half years. More than that, even in the days they had lived together, he had been a man who fulfilled his responsibilities. She didn’t want to reopen those old wounds now.

She wanted to say that it was all right, that it didn’t matter any more. It was all in the past and they should just concentrate on moving forward. But as soon as she opened her mouth, an uncontrollable stream of complaints came out instead.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. I didn’t mean to blame you anymore, but I just…”

“It’s OK, Swan. You can say more. I can hear it all – everything I did wrong to you…”

Her damp eyes blinked as she met his steady gaze. He didn’t waver, even though her lingering resentment might have seemed petty or annoying to someone else. Perhaps it was this unwavering sincerity that made it impossible for her to hold back the tears.

“Everything that hurts your heart… I’ll hear it all.”

Atlion found himself unable to speak either. In truth, he had always known. During meals, or when they lay facing each other, he would sometimes catch Swan’s face darkening for a moment. No matter how hard she tried to feign brightness, the shadow that lingered in her heart remained.

He stood and pulled her into his arms, holding her slender form as he gently stroked her wavy hair. Her small face, buried against his chest, felt as delicate and fragile as a shard of the pale moon. Atlion gently lifted her chin and kissed her. The soft intertwining of their lips and the warmth of her breath were maddeningly sweet.

Why had he hurt her? How could he cause pain to someone so sweet, so utterly lovable? Then and now, she had always been the same – achingly sweet and precious.

He had fallen so deeply in love with her that he had lost himself. Yes, just as Calyps had mocked him – he had married a mere commoner. And yet he had fallen in love so clumsily, so foolishly, that he spent a year tied up in an obscure village in the countryside.

And the last two years? They had been even worse.

How miserably and foolishly he had searched for her. In all that time, it had never occurred to him how Swan must have felt about him. He had only been consumed by the thought of the woman who had fled, the woman who had toyed with his heart. That alone had blinded him.

And to think, she had even been with another man. If she had carried that man’s child to humiliate him forever as her husband, he really didn’t know how he would have reacted.

But now he had found Swan and was holding her in his arms again. He tried not to think about how much Theodor Dianton had cared for her. After all, Swan had chosen him. She belonged to him now. Whatever life she had shared with Theodor, however fulfilling it might have been, didn’t matter.

Still, it pierced him like a thorn in his heart. What kind of life she had lived, what had fulfilled her – none of it mattered. He would fill all the gaps himself.

If she missed her life with a commoner, Atlion would become her commoner. If she longed for the countryside, he could arrange for her to live there occasionally. The palace was vast, and he could build a cottage in one corner to mimic a quaint country retreat. In fact, he had been planning this for the past two and a half years, overseeing the construction with this idea in mind.

“Swan.”

He kissed the cheek of the woman who cried endlessly in his arms, pressing his lips against the traces of her tears. Then he touched the wet streaks with the tip of his tongue. Swan looked at him in silence, swallowing her sobs as she remained in his embrace, allowing him to lick her tear-stained cheek.

“I’m sorry.”

“Your Majesty…”

“I will never hurt you again. I’ll never mean nothing to you.”

Atlion, who had been licking her tear-stained cheek, took Swan’s shoulders gently. His large hands gently wiped her damp face. He gazed into her absinthe green eyes, gleaming beneath her long lashes. Lightly biting his cherry lips, he pulled her fragile body into a tight embrace. Swan, who had been staring at him with her lips pressed tightly together, finally opened her mouth.

“Say the words I love most.”

She asked for the words that always felt sweet, no matter how many times she heard them. Atlion looked down into her bold green eyes under her delicate lashes and spoke clearly, pronouncing each syllable with precision. It was a phrase he would whisper endlessly from now on, one that would never lose its meaning.

“I love you, Swan. My absinthe.”

—

The coronation took place early in the morning, well before noon. Tom stood watching Swan, wearing an elegant magnolia-coloured dress. She wasn’t his biological daughter, but she was the child he had raised as his own. From the time she was a tiny infant to her delicate and beautiful youth, she had been his beloved girl. Even the faint freckles on her nose had endeared her to him.

Although his wife had died young and he had no children of his own, having Swan made Tom feel less lonely. Still…

“Children grow up, don’t they? Unless they’re dead, no child stays a child forever. Imagine her getting married and moving far away with her husband.”

Nancy had said this as she handed him a towel while he sat there, drunk on rum and sobbing over Swan’s departure. Her tone had been blunt, but her words hadn’t been wrong. Swan was no longer a child. And children, when they grew up, had to leave one day. All he had to do was think of it as Swan moving far away to start a life with her husband.

“If only it were that easy.”

Tom muttered, wiping away his tears with the towel Nancy had handed him. Slowly he began to pull himself together.

Several months passed after that – probably half a year. Contrary to his fears that he’d never hear from her again, Swan sent him a letter to let him know that she was well. 

But that letter was to be the seed of trouble. Not long after, a group of knights burst in and grabbed him by the collar. For a moment he thought his head was on the chopping block. Instead, they snatched Swan’s letter and left him alone, leaving Tom confused and shaken.

How much time had passed since that commotion? By now Tom had become almost indifferent to knights bursting in and grabbing him by the collar. But this time was different. Sitting in a carriage on his way to the royal palace, Tom thought about the knights who had come for him, and now found himself staring at his adopted daughter, who looked every bit the noblewoman she had become.

“So when an adopted daughter becomes an empress, even a lowly man like me can dress up and enter the royal palace, is that it?”