Chapter 13

Adeline looked around the neatly arranged bedchamber, her gaze filled with quiet emotion.

“I kept everything in order so you could return at any time, Your Highness.”

“It’s been a long time.”

She stepped inside, fingertips brushing over the familiar surface of the furniture. It had been more than ten years since she last stayed in this room, yet the air still carried the faint scent of memories enough to stir a gentle, aching nostalgia in her chest.

“This really is my room.”

Adeline took in the space she had lived in until she was ten, until her mother’s death and her own exile to the northern residence. When she sat down on the edge of the bed, Britta arrived with a tray of tea.

“You’ve suffered a lot while I was gone, haven’t you? You didn’t run into any trouble?”

“Oh, please, nothing at all. You know I can hold my own among the maids.”

Britta puffed out her chest and stretched both arms in a show of vigor, the brown hair she’d tied up bouncing with the motion.

“Liar. Even before I left, you were the one who took all sorts of abuse because of me.”

Seeing how much thinner the maid had become in the year she’d been gone made Adeline’s heart twist painfully. Even earlier, on her way to this room, the maids she passed in the corridors hadn’t bothered to greet her and only stared. It was enough to show clearly how much Britta must have endured in her absence.

After easing the stale heaviness in her mouth with tea, Adeline hesitated and asked.

“…How is Mother?”

“During the trial, we thought Your Highness would be executed. Then, the news suddenly spread that you were to marry the man appointed to rule Velasque, and the entire palace erupted.”

The situation was so easy to picture that she closed her eyes and sank back against the cushion. Now that she was, for the first time, a little distance away from the man who had been with her on the way here, the tension that had held her upright began to drain from her body.

“Your Highness, are you truly going through with this marriage? I know you have no other choice, but it’s too unfair. They cast you out without a second thought, and now suddenly—”

Even though her maid’s outrage spilled over, Adeline knew all too well that from the start, being of royal blood meant she could never be free of responsibility.

Britta grasped both of Adeline’s hands tightly.

“Your Highness, it’s not too late even now. You must run away.”

Britta pulled something from within her apron and held it out.

A boarding pass.

Adeline, recognizing that the destination was a foreign kingdom, held her tongue.

“Your Highness, the wedding is in less than two days. If you leave tonight, even—”

“That’s impossible.”

“Pardon?”

She shook her head, thinking of the man who would never allow such an escape.

The treaty that he would spare her life so long as the marriage took place meant, in other words, that if she ran again before the ceremony, if she made him a public laughingstock one more time, he was precisely the sort of man who would drag her to the gallows himself and place the noose around her neck.

“When he’s guarding me this tightly, it’s impossible. The best timing would be after the wedding ceremony.”

Once she became his wife legally, she wouldn’t be breaking any promise and the vigilance surrounding her would inevitably lessen.

“It’s not like I ever had dreams of meeting a man I loved anyway.”

With that thought, marriage hardly seemed the greatest hurdle.

Britta made a clearly displeased face, but realistically, it was the option with the highest chance of success.

“Oh, and about Lady Katrina…”

“Hm…”

Britta’s words trailed off as Adeline, worn down by weeks of relentless travel, felt her eyelids slowly sink.

︵‿୨ ₊‧꒰ა ཐི༏ཋྀ ໒꒱ ˚₊ ୧‿︵

BANG!

At the sound of the door being thrown open and slammed shut, Leon filled the glass of ice with whiskey and lifted it lightly as though in a toast.

“As expected of a man who loves his drink, you’ve hidden quite the good bottle in your office. It has been a while, Commander Ansel.”

“…Commander Rübenhart!”

It was Ansel Biden, commander of the Neidel forces and the temporary overseer of this place, who had barged in with noisy commotion. Breathing heavily at the sight of Leon helping himself to liquor in someone else’s office as if it were his own home, he dropped onto the sofa opposite him.

“What is the meaning of this, Commander Rübenhart?! I hear you abducted the princess after she attempted to flee.”

“Ha… Is that how the rumor’s going around?”

Leon gave a small laugh, the slender corner of his mouth curling upward.

The glass in his hand trembled with the motion of his flawless, solid wrist, the clear ice within clinking softly. The sharp-sweet scent of whiskey rose as the amber liquid slipped past his well-shaped lips. Only after his thick throat moved in a slow swallow did his answer follow.

“You’re mistaken.”

“Misunderstanding? The report from Molton says otherwise. They claimed the princess tried to flee by climbing the rear mountain in the dead of night, and the uproar was so great that a detention order was issued. However, before they could even carry it out, you spirited the princess away, and the entire Allied command was in an uproar.”