Her throat stung like she’d swallowed a fish bone. Alisa scrubbed frantically at the tears mixing with the rain on her face.

Don’t cry. I can’t cry. Saint Nicholas said he turns a deaf ear to children who weep.

She pressed her lips together and clenched her fists. One, two, three. She counted silently and held her breath. The tears that had been about to spill along with her father’s sobs barely, barely stopped.

‘Mum is coming back.’

She would definitely come back. There was no doubt.

All the jewelry in her mother’s room was gone, but the warm, down-filled coats were still hanging there. So she must have planned to return before winter.

‘Until then, I have to be good and not cry.’

Alisa was sniffling, rubbing her tears away with her sleeve, when she heard it.

A crackling sound from somewhere nearby. She turned her head. A voice was coming through the earphones of the radio, lying abandoned on the bed.

—It has been seven days since Roxia Ludendorff, lead actress of the Royal Globe theatre company, vanished on the day of a performance amid reports of debt. The Royal Globe has announced its intention to pursue the Ludendorff family for breach of contract damages, while the whereabouts of Roxia Ludendorff remain……

Alisa’s grip on the windowsill tightened.

Where was her mother right now? Had she already left Montrau? Or was she still here?

Without knowing it, a nameless longing surged up from somewhere deep inside her.

‘I wish it would rain harder.’

Hard enough to stop her mother in her tracks. More than now, so much more — enough to flood the rivers and hold her feet in place.

Even if the house were swallowed by water. Even if every pretty dress were soaked through with mud and ruined. It didn’t matter. She just wanted something to keep her mother from leaving.

The wish she murmured through tears came true.

That night, the port city of Montrau in Westroben was struck by record-breaking torrential rain. The rivers burst their banks under the force of the downpour, and waves surged up over the coastal cliffs.

And every memory left on the ground was swept away by the raging tide, crumbling like a sandcastle.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

1655, Montrau — 250 years earlier.

Rain hammered down on a rattling carriage.

Eden stared up at the carriage ceiling with dark, sunken eyes. The water pouring from the sky looked ready to punch straight through it at any moment. The rain was that fierce.

The boy, twelve years old that year, had hair as black as raven feathers. His fringe was combed into perfect shape, but the deep blue eyes beneath it were thoroughly bleak.

The knuckles of his clenched fist stood out pale against his skin.

Today was the final day of the funeral for his mother, Queen Anne.

All the prominent figures in the kingdom had turned out, and crowds of ordinary people had lined the streets to follow the procession and pay their last respects to the queen. Yet Eden, her own son, had been bundled into a carriage the moment the funeral service ended, as though he were being chased out.

He hadn’t even been allowed to watch his mother’s coffin be lowered into the ground. The excuse given was that it was improper for the crown prince to be near the body of a queen who had died of illness. But the real reason was obvious — he had displeased the Countess of Fenton.

The Countess of Fenton was the king’s most beautiful mistress. Married to an aging count and hiding behind a borrowed title, she could never rise to the position of queen — but that didn’t mean her influence was limited to that of a mere countess.

‘You must be devastated by the loss of your mother. Go away and rest, Your Highness. I will inform His Majesty myself.’

This lavish carriage she had offered with such apparent generosity would not stop until it reached the country estate of his maternal relatives. It was, in every practical sense, house arrest.

Unable to bear the suffocating pressure in his chest, Eden wrenched the window open. Cold air rushed in, and rain came with it.

When the seat began to get wet, the servant riding with him frowned.

“Good grief, Your Highness. It’s raining. You can’t just open the window whenever you please.”

“Where’s Jo? Why are you here? Weren’t you one of the Fenton household’s servants?”

“Not anymore. I serve Your Highness now.”

“Right. Of course you do.”

Eden muttered under his breath and turned back toward the window. The servant kept grumbling beside him. Eden sighed and was just about to close the window when he saw it.

A familiar silhouette, flashing past in the blur of the passing landscape. He shot to his feet and grabbed the window frame. Leaning out, he got a clearer look.

“Mother?”

The red velvet of the outer coat was unmistakable. The green emerald rose brooch pinned to it was something he had seen hundreds of times.

It was his mother. She had to be alive after all. Her death from illness — that had been Countess Fenton’s lie.

“Mother! Moth—”

“Good heavens, what are you doing!”

The servant grabbed Eden by the shoulder and hauled him back inside. Dragged in by that rough grip, Eden sprawled across the seat. In the same moment, the servant slammed the window shut.

Clunk. The closed window cut off the outside world.

Eden sat frozen, both cheeks soaked with rain. He blinked a few times before he managed to pull himself upright. His shoulder ached where he’d been shoved into it.

“Going away to rest, he said, and now he’s losing his mind, honestly……”

The servant muttered, casting a sideways glance at Eden.

Eden pretended not to hear, but a cold dread settled in his chest all the same. Maybe he really was losing his mind. Even thinking back on it, the woman he’d spotted outside the window could only have been his mother. There was no other explanation.

What other woman in the world could be wearing his mother’s coat and his mother’s brooch?

No. Wait.

Eden pressed his thumbnail into his palm and kept thinking.

What had he eaten before getting into the carriage? He tried to remember. He thought he might have had something to drink. He’d said he was thirsty, and someone had handed him a cup.

“……Something was put in it. It had to be.”

He dug his nail in until blood came. Yes. That was it. Whatever he’d drunk before boarding the carriage had been laced with something hallucinogenic. There was no other way to explain it.

Eden pushed the image of his mother from his mind.

Once he’d settled on an answer, the cold finally caught up with him — his upper body was soaked through and shaking. The servant, busy chatting with the coachman and looking the other way, showed no sign of fetching a blanket.

The boy fought with everything he had not to shiver in plain sight. Pressing down the grief rising in his throat, Eden thought to himself:

‘I wish it would rain harder.’

Hard enough that the carriage couldn’t move another inch. Hard enough to make it stop — so he could go back to the palace and see his mother’s face one last time before she was put in the ground.

The carriage lurched violently over a stone in the road. The cushion beneath the seat couldn’t absorb the impact, and it slammed up through his lower body. Eden grabbed the window frame and barely kept himself from pitching forward.

From outside, the voices of the coachman and the escort knight reached him in fragments.

“The rain is too heavy! The bridge is about to flood!”

“D*mn it, go faster. We’re crossing no matter what!”

The carriage began to race over the uneven dirt road.

Eden tightened his grip on the window frame. The carriage lurched again, and the latch on the window gave way.

Through the window now swinging open, Eden watched the carriage roll onto the bridge. Below the arched stone crossing, the river churned and heaved.

“Faster, faster!”

The carriage crossed in a desperate rush. The moment the rear wheels cleared the far end, the floodwater swallowed the bridge behind them.

Eden stared back at the road they had come from, his face drenched with rain. The water was tearing across the bridge. The only way back to the palace was collapsing, helplessly, before his eyes.