Lewian threw on his clothes and left the bedroom with his expression already set in a scowl. He paid no attention to the maids waiting outside his door, startled or not, and made his way to the sitting room without slowing.

“Goodness. He moves without making a sound.”

“I know. Is it because he carries the blood of the divine beasts? There’s something about him that doesn’t feel quite human.”

“Right. And his looks are certainly otherworldly too. I nearly lost myself staring at him back in the room without even realizing it.”

“Rodencian royals being beautiful is practically common knowledge. Still, a person who’s lost their mind is a bit….”

“That’s just how it is. Apparently he burned someone at the banquet last night too.”

“Ha, how many times is that now. Even if the person is a condemned criminal, what kind of pleasure is there in watching someone burn alive?”

“The pay is good, so I do the work, but I’m frightened too. I need to be careful not to get caught in the crossfire.”

The maids, worried they might be scolded if caught idle, began diligently erasing the traces of the night before in the now-empty bedroom.

* * *

The morning air in the capital is always heavy. Railroads and factories had certainly made life more convenient, but they had not made the air clean. On a day like today with not a breath of wind, the pollution settled over the ground together with the fog, making everything feel even more unpleasant.

At times like these, I always find myself missing the slightly salty, fresh sea breeze that used to blow in over the land when I opened my door in the morning.

I got out of bed longing for a seaside morning I would not be able to experience for some time. It was still early, but the sun had grown fierce, and the world beyond the curtains was already blazing under the intense, scorching light of midday.

“You’re up?”

Hanna must have been waiting just outside the door, because the moment I opened the curtains she came bustling in with the washing water.

I had told her many times that I was perfectly capable of handling my own washing water, but Hanna had been cleanly ignoring that request for years now.

‘It is a maid’s job to see to her employer from the moment she wakes to the moment she sleeps!’

I had heard it so many times I had it memorized by now. I hurried through my washing so as not to put Hanna to extra trouble, and helped her wheel the cart out.

After a simple breakfast, I sat down in front of my canvas out of habit. Dark blue and vivid red paint had been mixed onto the fairly large canvas, but no clear outlines had taken shape yet.

It had been a long time since I had genuinely wanted to paint something, and I wanted to do justice to the scene in my head, but today picking up the brush did not come easily.

Word had arrived from Helena less than a month after the wedding. The child’s name was Isabel, she said. Half a year later, a portrait arrived of the baby in white, receiving her baptism. The painter must have found the child endearing, because the plump cheeks were touched with a delicate rosy flush.

Heliones had looked at that portrait again and again. He had it framed and kept it close, fixing his gaze on it for long stretches whenever he had a spare moment. He must have wanted to rush out and see his first niece at once, but at the time, as the imperial prince of a defeated nation under surveillance, he could not leave the Gertil family estate.

I had divorced immediately after Rodencia fell, so I never had the chance to meet Isabel in person. What about Heliones? He must have been enormously busy rebuilding a nation that had once been destroyed. Had he found the time to visit?

I was curious, but it was too personal a question for me to ask. Especially when I had no idea what words of comfort to offer him.

And Helena? Comforting someone who has lost a parent or a spouse or a partner is difficult enough, but for a parent who has lost a child, I could not think of a single thing to say, not even the kind of conventional words of condolence one offers out of courtesy.

Helena and I had never been on good terms, but I was worried about her. How had she borne that grief alone in a foreign country?

I knew that even having these thoughts was overstepping, since I was no longer part of their family. I should simply respond the way one would upon hearing sad news about an acquaintance.

I tried to settle my restless thoughts and threw myself into the painting for the rest of the day. Hanna dragged me away at intervals to have tea and snacks and wipe the paint off my face, but every other moment I devoted entirely to finishing the piece. I was deep in the middle of mixing colors when Heliones visited the lodging in the late afternoon. I quickly set aside the work in progress and went to receive him.

“I greet Your Majesty.”

He was not generally a person of light or cheerful moods, but I could tell at once that today he was different from usual.

I had a sense of the reason, so I said nothing and led him to the sitting room, then brought out the refreshments that happened to be ready. Heliones said nothing the entire time the fragrant, steaming tea was being poured into his cup. He sank deep into his chair, rested his chin in his palm, and stared blankly into the air.

He did not speak or stir until every last wisp of steam had risen from the cup and disappeared. The sight of him was perfectly beautiful in the way of a painting produced by a painter’s full imagination, but it carried that distinctly inhuman quality that paintings have, and I decided I could no longer leave him to himself.

I turned and looked around, and there in a basket sat the plums I loved most, gleaming with a tempting sheen. Hanna’s thoughtfulness, knowing I always reached for a plum whenever I needed to clear my head.

It was already midsummer, so the firm plums I preferred were harder to come by, but I examined the basket with a hawk’s eye. If there was one talent I had that was worth showing off, it was picking out the most perfectly sour-sweet plum in the bunch. I put that talent to full use and selected the sourest one in the basket.

Even as I cut the plum with a knife, Heliones sat there with his body present but his mind clearly somewhere else. I cut the plum into bite-sized pieces, speared one on a fork, and called to him.

“Your Majesty.”

“Yes, ack.”

I timed it to the moment his lips parted and slipped the plum into his mouth. Heliones sat there unable to close his mouth, looking thoroughly bewildered, and I looked back at him and mimed chewing with great purpose.

Heliones reluctantly chewed the plum along with me, pulling a face the way someone might if forced to chew a rotten radish. He had never liked sweet-and-sour flavors, so it must have been quite an ordeal.

But it was only a small piece. Heliones swallowed it quickly and glanced around looking for something, so I poured fresh tea from the pot into a clean cup and handed it to him.

Heliones took the cup in both hands and drank the tea in urgent gulps.

Good thing it had cooled to lukewarm by then. Was one little piece really that sour?

Heliones set the cup down with a slightly more refreshed expression than before and gave me a nod. A faint crease appeared at the corner of his flawless eyes, and the sight of it made him look like a real person stepping out of a painting, which put me somewhat at ease.

“How on earth do you eat these?”

Heliones watched me cut a large piece of the remaining plum and eat it, and his brow furrowed on its own. The mere sight of it seemed to bring back the sharp sourness from a moment ago.

“When the sour flavor spreads through your mouth, your whole mouth fills with saliva and it wakes you right up. It’s so good!”

“I really can’t manage plums….”

“It’s not just plums. You barely touch blueberries either, or marmalade. You always eat rich, heavy food.”

“Ah, you noticed?”

“Of course I noticed. Think of how many events we’ve attended together.”

“I see. You noticed… all along.”

At my words, Heliones dropped his head with an expression that looked, for reasons I couldn’t quite understand, on the verge of tears. Did I say something wrong? I had barely managed to get him looking like a human being again, and now he was going to go stiff on me.

But my worry was short-lived. After only a brief dip in mood, Heliones lifted his head again with a full, clear smile on his face.

“It looks like you were painting.”

“Pardon?”

I had put away the canvas and paints long ago. How did he know? I checked myself to find out, and sure enough, I had stupidly left my apron on. A painting apron was, of course, covered in paint.

What was the point of rushing to hide the evidence if I was going to leave myself looking like this. I was annoyed at my own carelessness.

“What are you painting? Looking at the paint on your apron, it seems like quite a dynamic piece.”

“Ah, well.”

The apron was streaked here and there with red and blue from painting the red flowers and the summer night sky. I hadn’t been aiming for something dynamic, but I could see why he might think so.

It was only natural that Heliones would be curious about the painting after seeing me like this, but I didn’t want to show it to him yet. It wasn’t that I lacked the skill, but for some reason I felt strangely reluctant to show it to him in particular.

“I’m working on a landscape.”

“A landscape? Of what?”

“Well… I’m still at the stage of laying in the base colors. I’ll show you when it’s finished.”

“Ah, I see. I don’t know much about that sort of thing. I’ll look forward to the day it’s done.”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie, since it genuinely wasn’t ready to show anyone yet, but something sat uneasily in a corner of my chest, and I found myself quietly avoiding his gaze.