Should she admit her own suspicion felt rather excessive and embarrassing?

“You’re up early? I was coming to draw the curtains, ho ho. It’s spring now, so the morning sun comes in early. Let me draw them for you and you can sleep a little longer!”

Mixed in with the bouncy chatter were a few words that were simply too unfamiliar to Bellus.

Things like spring. Like sunlight.

Things she had never heard from anyone’s lips, things she had thought existed only as printed words in a dictionary, came drifting toward her without warning.

Perhaps that was why.

Why she let herself be guided by this impossibly soft-handed woman and lay back down in the plush bed without resistance. Why she didn’t snap the neck of the woman leaning close to tuck the blanket carefully around her.

Watching the pale sky disappear behind thick velvet curtains with something like reluctance, then drifting off to sleep the moment the woman’s careful footsteps left the room with a quiet “Rest well, then,” it was all because of this.

Spring. Sunlight.

A fleeting desire to see them with her own eyes, those things that would resemble that clear and beautiful forest.

* * *

A sound sleep taken in an unfamiliar place left a strange guilt in its wake.

Woken by the sound of rustling movement, Bellus was now making her way toward the rear garden for breakfast.

Her guide was the flying squirrel of a woman she had encountered in the early hours of dawn.

The woman, who had been drawing the curtains when Bellus woke to the sound of her presence, had turned around and introduced herself as the head butler of this estate. With the same fluttering manner and a bright smile, she had added, “Please call me Lora!” and Bellus had found herself nodding before she knew it.

And so, because Lora had noticed Bellus unable to pull her gaze from the sunlight streaming in through a wide-open window on the way to the bathroom to wash her face, they were now heading not to the dining room but to the rear garden of the estate.

Lora’s suggestion had been quite, no, actually considerably tempting.

The rose garden hadn’t bloomed in full yet, but the one plum tree had already burst into flower, she chattered in a soft voice, and before Bellus knew it those words had slipped gently into her ears and tapped her right in the chest.

The faint tickle at the pit of her stomach was surely anticipation, but Bellus, her gaze stolen by the sunlight filtering through the tall windows that lined every corridor, had no presence of mind to spare for thinking about what she was feeling.

Had it not been for the voice she suddenly caught, Bellus might have been unable to pull herself away from it all for quite some time.

“…A key?”

“That’s what I’m saying! Apparently that’s exactly what he said!”

“What kind of key? Like a master key to unlock his heart, something like that?”

The hushed, noisy whispering of people gathered at the foot of the stairs finally drew Bellus’s gaze away from the sunlight and toward the source of the sound. She had no idea what they were talking about and was watching them with nothing more than mild indifference, but the same couldn’t be said for Lora standing beside her.

Tap, tap―!

The sight of her stamping her dainty little foot to get their attention was rather fierce. Not that it stirred anything more in Bellus than the vague impression of “can a flying squirrel even get mad?”

The way she strode forward with big steps despite her small frame looked almost like hopping, and Bellus thought she might be able to fly at that size, then lengthened her stride to catch up with Lora.

It was a distance that demanded busy little steps from a small person like Lora, but Bellus, taller than most women, closed the gap in just a few strides.

The way the people ahead startled with a “Eeek!” at their approach also looked exactly like small animals with their fur on end, and Bellus couldn’t help but let out a helpless laugh.

Was this estate full of nothing but people like this?

“You two! What are you doing in the corridor?”

Lora, one hand planted firmly on her hip, had made up her mind.

Under ordinary circumstances she would have let it go with a light word of caution, but she had been thinking for a while that the commotion in the estate needed to be settled at least once. Lord Yantis’s sudden behavior had caught her off guard too, but as head butler she needed to keep her composure.

And besides, it wasn’t only that.

The person who had casually brought this unfamiliar guest into the estate was not in the house right now. And would likely be gone for some time.

She let out a helpless sigh at the wave of complicated feelings, but whatever the circumstances, it was her job as head butler to handle what her master had set in motion.

Which meant that early this morning, Lora had walked into the room where the unknown guest lay sleeping with the attitude of someone going into battle.

And then, the murderous black eyes that had met her without warning made her heart leap clean out of her chest, all her resolve from moments before rendered meaningless.

‘Oh! You’re awake?’

Her voice had come out half a tone higher than usual from the tension.

She had barely managed to plaster a smile onto a face that wanted badly to crumple at the embarrassingly off pitch. Bracing herself against the humiliation, she had rolled her eyes in something close to resignation to look at the guest who would be watching her, and found that the murderous edge had softened, and those sharply angled eyes had somehow come undone.

Looking at her now, she was also a bit like a black cat with its fur bristled up.

Her legs had locked up from the tension she’d been holding until just moments ago, and the relief she felt inwardly made her steps come out slightly off-beat as she hurried them forward. Lora, watching her own trotting footsteps, had not the faintest idea that Bellus was comparing her to a flying squirrel, and was closing the distance with what she considered a fairly measured approach.

Unfortunately, Lora’s judgment here was wrong in every possible way.

Her first mistake was comparing Bellus to a mere “cat.” Bellus was plainly a predator, and the standoff was nothing more than a tiger sizing up the prey before it, deciding whether or not it was hungry.

In the end, this situation amounted to a hapless little flying squirrel, oblivious to everything, wagging its tail and trotting straight toward a predator with its claws hidden, as if to say “please catch me.”

Though from Lora’s perspective, it was rather unfair.

With good reason: stripped of her military uniform and dressed in a white frill-laden dress, Bellus had a certain endearing quality to her. On top of that, her black hair falling naturally in waves past her shoulders was doing quite a lot to soften the impression Bellus usually gave, which was nothing but severe.

So it was no wonder the cold black eyes that watched the target before her with the readiness to snap a neck at any moment weren’t quite doing their job.

With even her firmly pressed red lips looking almost sensual in their tightness, there was nothing more to be done.

But Lora, unable to see an inch past her nose, was simply closing in slowly and carefully, the way one might try to calm a hissing cat. And soon she found herself, standing before this quiet and docile unfamiliar guest, in a state that was half relaxed.

Well, even if Bellus had been not a cat but a wildcat of the predatory variety, Lora had every reason to maintain a good relationship with this unfamiliar guest no matter what. What mattered above all else to her was the fact that this guest was someone Lord Yantis had carried in with his own arms.

So Lora intended to give this woman the finest treatment possible.

‘Yantis Kal.’

The master of this estate, and the hidden leader of Justia. Their leader, who saved those suffering under discrimination and oppression and offered himself as a steadfast refuge, was nothing more than a young man who had lived a mere twenty-nine years.

Yet the burden he carried was immense, belying his age.

As Attica’s Archmage and a seasoned strategist on par with a battle-hardened veteran, Yantis was the very symbol of Justia. All those who followed him and chose to become members of Justia yearned for salvation and hope from him.

But among them, there was no one who would save Lord Yantis.

And that was always what worried Lora.

Whether he was bearing that weight too much on his own, always walking quietly at the front. Whether someday, he might be crushed beneath it.

Whether this stubborn leader, who didn’t know how to ask others for help, would endure and endure alone until he finally crumbled at the end.

She carried all of those worries and watched over her superior with care, giving her best, but she knew her best alone had its limits. She was, at the end of the day, a servant under his protection, not a companion who walked alongside him.

So right now, Lora was quietly hoping.

That this woman her master had suddenly brought home, doing something so unlike himself, might perhaps become the steadfast companion who could support Lord Yantis.

So first, Lora intended to do everything in her power to help this woman settle in here completely.

So comfortably, so naturally, that she might suddenly feel out of place anywhere else.

‘I’ll deploy every skill I’ve built up as a maid and bring her over to our side!’

Lora’s roar was fierce and nothing could stop her, and part of that effort was right here in front of her: firmly educating these two pups who didn’t know enough to fear a tiger.

“What did I tell you the duty of a maid is?”

Lora scolding them sharply, and the two of them deflating and apologizing. Yet Bellus tilted her head, struck by a strange feeling. The people bowing politely to apologize to her, and Lora walking beside her down the corridor, glancing at her to gauge her reaction.

‘…What could it be?’

Bellus had no idea that the “key” they had been talking about referred to what Yantis had said about her the night before, and she could only turn it over in her mind, not even able to guess why these people were apologizing to her.