Even so, he had not been able to release the tension, and only now did Andrea let out a long breath of relief.

He reached out and stroked Riley’s golden hair. Watching his own fingers tremble faintly, he was reminded of how terrified he had been over these past days that he would not be able to bring her back.

It was a stroke of fortune that his judgment had been right.

In the final moment when Fabienne was dying, Andrea, driven to the very edge of a cliff himself, had been seized by something close to clairvoyance.

He had caught the movement of Fabienne’s eyes in the instant she spoke, and read what it meant.

Give up. That woman, by now……

The gaze that had fixed on the collapsing ceiling as she said those words. The corners of her mouth lifting in a satisfied, convulsing smile.

And then the words that followed.

……must be dead.

In that moment, Fabienne had been placing the cause of Riley’s death in the collapse of this very building. She had tried to hide it, but to Andrea’s desperate eyes, the entire sequence had been unmistakably clear.

Riley is here!

Of course, from the painter’s hints, he had already suspected with reasonable certainty that Riley was being held somewhere nearby, but if even one thing had gone wrong, if she had been moved somewhere else, if she lost her life according to some prearranged plan…… the thought alone made his skin crawl.

He had assumed that with Henry and Riley each held as hostages against the other, a woman who loved her son so fiercely would not make a reckless move first. That assumption had been wrong.

Either way, Andrea had made a gamble, throwing his full force into this collapsed castle rather than splitting his troops and wasting precious time. And the result was this.

He looked down at the treasure he had pulled back from the brink, his eyes full of relief and a joy that felt like surfacing from deep water.

The curling strands of hair near her ear, the swollen eyes pressed shut, the innocent curve of her forehead, all of it looked especially fragile.

Watching her sleep with those soft, even breaths, a thought from long ago that he had completely forgotten surfaced in his mind without warning.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

It was a summer when Andrea was around twelve years old.

A cadet at the military academy, he had been living in a distant city, and he had returned to the palace to spend his summer holiday in the capital.

Even after coming back, he spent most of his time in the forest and hunting grounds behind the palace.

One day, lazily shooting at partridges and thrushes, he heard a strange sound nearby.

“What is that?”

The attendants and knights following behind him also stopped short and tilted their heads. From somewhere came the intermittent sound of something whimpering, like a puppy.

Andrea, hunting rifle loaded, turned toward the sound first. If it was a wild boar piglet caught in the brush, there was no reason not to catch it.

He made his way to the edge of a small marsh and narrowed his eyes.

“What on earth is that?”

In a shallow pool no deeper than a puddle, a tiny creature was whimpering and thrashing.

It was covered entirely in thick mud and unrecognizable, but the occasional sounds of hng, bweh coming from it suggested it was a person.

Before anyone could stop him, Andrea stepped straight into the marsh and pulled the thing out himself.

Lifted into the air, it blinked its round eyes several times and then burst into tears.

“Keh, hng, bwaaaah!”

It looked to be about four or five years old. The figure was a complete mess, like a mole, but the eyes were a teary, swollen lavender, and Andrea was momentarily caught off guard.

“Good heavens! It’s a child!”

The knights came running and shouted, but Andrea held the child out at arm’s length and stared at it blankly.

The child spat out the mud that had gotten into its mouth and cried considerably louder than it had when it was only making animal-like sounds.

The mud the thrashing child flung landed on Andrea’s hunting coat, and the knights quickly held out their arms.

“Your Highness, let us take the child! Your clothing will be ruined!”

He handed the child over and said.

“Clean it up.”

The group made their way down together to a spring not far away.

One of the knights carefully cradled the sniffling child and began to wash it, then called out in astonishment.

“Good heavens! There’s golden hair coming out!”

“Oh, and now there’s a chubby little face too!”

Andrea watched the knight state the obvious out loud and found him pitiful.

But everyone gathered around had gone soft-faced watching the adorable child emerge from the mud.

Andrea too found it privately amusing to watch the cute features reveal themselves one by one from beneath the little mud monster exterior, and observed with genuine interest.

Brilliant golden curls, a round forehead, plump red cheeks, a pouting mouth. When a silk dress trimmed with ribbons and fine lace appeared as well, the cuteness doubled.

The strap shoes she had been wearing were apparently lost in the marsh, and only one remained, dangling as she kicked her feet.

“Ugh, she’s adorable.”

The knights let out silent screams and clutched their chests. The more that was revealed, the more she looked like a child from a picture book.

Throughout the whole process of her adorable self being uncovered, the child kept sniffling and calling for her mother and her nanny.

She was almost certainly a noble visiting the palace as a guest.

A knight wrapped the wet child in a cloak to keep her from catching cold and came forward carrying her, and Andrea held out his hand.

“Give her here.”

The knight asked in surprise.

“You wish to hold her? You mustn’t, Your Highness. Your clothes will be soaked through as well. Allow me to carry her.”

But the outstretched arm did not withdraw, and so the child was handed to Andrea.

The child had stopped crying but was still whimpering softly, and she looked up at him.

“……”

In those round, water-filled eyes, summer clouds drifted slowly past. They were eyes that called to mind the lavender fields and the lake behind the palace.

What an unusual color.

He did not know why he had bothered taking the child himself, given that he did not particularly like children, but either way he would need to find her guardian.

The palace was his home, and he told himself it was simply his duty toward a guest, making excuses for behavior that was unlike him.

The child’s lips had turned purple from the cold, and Andrea pulled her closer, cloak and all. He reached the path leading back to the palace gardens.

Just then, a lady’s maid came running from somewhere, bowed hastily, and explained.

“I, I am terribly sorry, Your Highness the Crown Prince. She is a guest of Her Highness the Queen, and she disappeared somewhere in an instant, and we have been searching for her.”

“Ah.”

Other servants were also running toward them, so she was likely the daughter of one of his mother’s friends, the ones who had been staying for a few days.

Andrea handed the child over and glanced down at her face.

The child had already fallen asleep, golden lashes tipped with teardrops like tiny jewels.

He felt an impulse to poke her cheek, but the maid had already carefully taken the child away.

As the warmth left his chest, something strangely hollow remained in its place.

“Your Highness should return to the palace and change as well.”

A knight’s concerned voice made him attribute that strange hollowness to the wet clothing.

He stood watching blankly as the maid carried the child away, and a knight who was on familiar terms with him tossed out a teasing remark from beside him.

“Your Highness, do you wish you had a little sister like that?”

Andrea gave a short, dismissive reply. “Nonsense.” He turned and walked away.

The knights, abashed by the crown prince’s returned coldness, quietly followed behind him.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Something flickered in Andrea’s eyes as a long-forgotten day came back to him.

The face of that tiny child was overlapping with Riley’s face as she slept in his arms.

He stretched the corner of his mouth into a slow smile and murmured.

“Grew up to be quite the handful.”

Andrea had believed he first met Riley as Raul when she was sixteen, but it seemed that was not the case.

He had once heard in passing about his mother’s childhood friend, a woman who had a child out of wedlock, been cast out by her family, and drifted from place to place.

He pinched Riley’s thin cheek as she slept defenselessly and whispered close to her ear.

“I’m sorry.”

Sorry for pulling you out only after you had already been through so much, then and now.

But thank you for holding on. He was grateful beyond words. Grateful enough to die.

The carriage rattled and jolted at full speed, but Riley slept on, cradled in Andrea’s arms the whole way.