Clodine moved her arms and legs freely and surfaced with practiced ease. She floated upon the water with motions that were not only unskilled, rather, they were graceful.

Ahazan narrowed his eyes slightly as he watched her from a short distance away. He remained silent for a long moment, his expression thoughtful, before speaking in a lower, more subdued voice than before.

“You can swim?”

Clodine lowered her gaze briefly, then lifted it again to meet his.

‘As you can see.’

Her eyes seemed to say exactly that.

Ahazan’s expression remained firm, but soon a faint, unreadable smile curved his lips.

“How did that happen?”

Since childhood, Clodine had despised water. While most people naturally learned to swim as they grew, she had reached adulthood without ever mastering it.

In truth, she rarely went near water at all, except when Ahazan swam.

She liked watching him. On bright days, when he cut through the water with strong strokes beneath the sun, it felt as though the sight alone cleared the heaviness from her chest.

‘Don’t you want to learn? I could teach you.’

He had often asked that, whenever she stood at the riverbank.

Each time, she would only smile shyly and shake her head.

But there had been one time, just once, when she had nodded.

It had been shortly after Ahazan publicly declared before the ministers that he would personally go to war.

That day, like today, they had spent a quiet afternoon by the river.

He had asked her again whether she wanted to learn to swim.

‘Teach me. I want to learn now.’

She had said it while holding back tears. She was smiling, but her face was full of sorrow.

‘But only after you return from the war… Teach me then.’

Hugging her knees, she had leaned closer to look at him.

‘Promise me you’ll come back and teach me, Ahazan.’

It had sounded almost like a plea.

Ahazan had drawn himself halfway from the water and gently stroked her cheek, smiling tenderly.

Then he had closed and opened those beautiful eyes she had always loved.

‘I promise.’

It surprised her that he still remembered that promise. Of all the promises they had made to each other, it had been one of the smallest, most insignificant.

If he had let it drift away with the river that day, she would not have blamed him.

Clodine moved her arms smoothly, savoring the sensation of floating. There was not the slightest trace of fear in her movements.

“I learned in the kingdom,” she said lightly, as though it were nothing of importance.

“From whom?”

His voice, in contrast, was deep and calm like still water, hiding turbulence beneath.

She turned her head and met his gaze. He looked troubled.

“From my captain of knights.”

Ahazan let out a short, humorless laugh.

“In that country, do captains of knights teach their sovereigns how to swim?”

There was something unmistakably sharp in his tone.

Clodine’s brow furrowed.

“I asked him to teach me.”

“Is it a hobby of yours, asking just anyone to teach you to swim?”

“My captain was not ‘just anyone.’”

After that, Ahazan ceased his childish probing.

Instead, he stretched his long limbs and lay flat upon the water, staring up at the sky.

Clodine shot him a sidelong glance, then did the same, floating beside him as she looked at the blue sky above.

They drifted in silence, as slowly as clouds moving overhead.

The quiet, pretending to be peaceful, was broken by Clodine at last.

“After you disappeared from my life… after I became someone who had nothing to do with you… I changed.”

Each time the current brushed against her ears, her voice echoed faintly in her head.

“I learned more than just swimming. I can shoot a bow fairly well now. I even learned swordsmanship.”

Though she kept her eyes on the sky, she could feel Ahazan turning his head to look at her.

“I’m not the same foolish Clodine who only knew you.”

Now she turned to face him fully.

Their gazes met above the shimmering surface of the river.

“Don’t pretend you know me anymore. Don’t bring up promises from long ago. You and I are strangers now.”

You’re the one who made me this way, Ahazan.

She did not say the last words aloud, but her cold gaze spoke them clearly enough.

Having said her piece, Clodine sensed that their fragile peace had, as always, collapsed into ruin.

She swam calmly back to shore.

The servants who had been watching from a distance hurried forward to dry her with cloths.

She intended to leave ahead of Ahazan; she already knew the way back to the villa.

Only once she stepped out of the water did she realize how cold she had become.

She wrapped her long outer garment tightly around herself and began walking.

The meadow they had crossed earlier now felt entirely different.

Sharp twigs underfoot and tall reeds brushing against her calves seemed to obstruct her path at every step.

A strange sorrow rose within her.

She walked with heavy, deliberate strides, fists clenched tightly in the fabric of her cloak.

After some distance—

A strong grip suddenly seized her arm.

She staggered and turned sharply.

“At most, ten years.”

It was Ahazan.

Still dripping wet, a large cloak thrown carelessly over his shoulders, he stepped closer.

“Do you know this? For me, those ten years felt like a thousand.”

“What are you talking about—?”

Confusion clouded her face.

Ahazan did not raise his voice, yet every word carried weight.

“If it angers you that I act as though I know you… then from now on, I will truly learn you. Every part of the woman you’ve become.”

With each firm word he spoke, Clodine felt as though a heavy weight was being tied to her chest.

Ahazan was a man who never needed to raise his voice to assert his authority. When he chose to wield his natural dignity, he seemed every bit the ruler born with untouchable power in his grasp.

“When someone is desperate enough, a single day can feel like a hundred years.”

Clodine could not bring herself to refute him. She only glared in silence.

Without arrogance, yet brimming with certainty, he concluded the matter.

“What’s ten empty years? I can make up for that easily enough.”

***

The day had felt unbearably slow, yet night arrived in the blink of an eye.

Clodine sat before the fireplace in their bedroom, both hands wrapped around a cup of steaming tea. Since swimming in the river, something had felt wrong. She had layered on thick clothing and kept drinking hot tea all afternoon, yet chills still crept through her. By nightfall, a dull ache had begun to throb behind her eyes.

‘Do you know? For me, those ten years felt like a thousand.’

Why had he said something so absurd?

As she had all afternoon, she turned his words over in her mind. It was absurd, yet hearing it had made it seem as though those long years had been unbearable for him because of her.

‘As if that could be true.’

He was the one who had handed his fiancée over to O’Neil like an inconvenient burden. What reason would he have had to think of her while he fought on a battlefield where life and death were decided in an instant?

Clodine pressed a dry hand to her damp forehead. Sweat clung to her skin despite the chill running through her. Heat burned faintly behind her eyelids.

He unsettled her with expressions she could not read, words she could not decipher, and now even her head throbbed because of him.

‘If I sleep, I’ll feel better.’

She opened her eyes and stood. For a moment, dizziness made her sway, but she steadied herself and walked to the bed.

The blankets felt unbearably heavy, as though they were pressing against her throat. Still, sleep came swiftly. It felt as if some unseen force beneath the floor were pulling her downward.

She sank into it.

It did not take long for Ahazan to notice something was wrong.

As he had the night before, he lingered outside until Clodine had gone to bed, then entered quietly. The firelight flickered across the walls as he stepped inside. She lay where she had fallen asleep.

He leaned his back against the door for a moment, thinking about what she had said earlier.

‘I’m not the foolish Clodine who only knew you.’

It was not new information.

The day she had written from the kingdom, telling him she had fallen in love with another man, he had already known she was no longer the same Clodine he once knew.

Even so, he had clung to old promises, to shared memories, not because he believed they still held meaning for her, but because he himself had never been given a single chance to fulfill them. Ten years without the opportunity to keep even one promise had left him with a bitterness he could not quite swallow.

‘At most, ten years.’

In truth, the words had been reckless bravado.

Imagining how she had changed during that time stirred an uneasy impatience within him. No…perhaps jealousy. He had always wanted to be the one who knew her better than anyone else.

‘For now, it’s enough that she’s back.’

He repeated that to himself, calming the restless beat of his heart.

Then something pulled him back to the present.

He lifted his gaze to her.

At first glance, nothing seemed different from the night before. But then he noticed it, the sound of her breathing. Even from several paces away, it was harsh and uneven.

“Clodine?”

He crossed the room quickly and bent over her.

Up close, her condition was unmistakably poor. He grasped her shoulder carefully and shook her.

“Clodine. Can you hear me?”

At first, she only panted in her sleep. Then, as if dragged upward from some dark depth, her eyelids fluttered open.

Her gaze was murky, dark and unfocused, like sediment sinking to the bottom of water.

Ahazan brushed his hand swiftly over her flushed face and neck.

“When did this start? You’re burning up—”

He broke off mid-sentence.

Not only his voice, but his urgent hands froze where they rested against her.

Clodine, who had seemed too weak to move, suddenly lifted both arms with what little strength she had and threw them around his neck, clinging to him tightly.