Chương 109: 44-1. Sick Love

By the time I reached the East Tower, I had begun seriously contemplating a philosophical question. Is it physically possible for a human being to swallow their family name, a scandal, a betrothal, a princess, an emperor, an enemy nation's token, and a dinner invitation all in the same day, and somehow not choke to death on the spot? The answer, apparently, was yes.

Provided that said human being had been born with a constitution forged from pure misfortune, and had long since developed something approaching religious devotion to the art of catastrophic bad luck. The palace corridors at night were quieter than during the day. Magic lamps burned in sequence along the walls, their light not exactly warm—more like they'd decided not to make you look quite so much like a posthumous portrait.

The deep-colored carpet swallowed every footstep completely, so that even Jessi and I walking across it felt like we were attending our own funeral procession, with only the priest missing to make it official. Jessi walked beside me, unusually quiet for a stretch. Which was deeply suspicious. The quieter she got, the more certain I became that her brain was busy hatching some wonderfully immoral but depressingly effective scheme.

Sure enough, the moment we reached the base of the East Tower and she spotted the two sword-bearing guards posted by the door, her eyes lit up with unmistakable interest. A profound sense of impending disaster stirred in my chest.

"Young master," Jessi murmured, "you should go in alone." I stopped and looked at her.

"Did your conscience finally wake up and tell you some disasters shouldn't have accomplices?"

"No," she answered without hesitation.

"I'm worried that if I go in too, when Her Highness starts throwing things, I'll be first in the line of fire."

"At least you know yourself."

"Everyone needs at least one virtue," she said, entirely unashamed, then tilted her chin toward the two guards.

"Besides, His Majesty summoned you to see her, not me. An extra person changes the whole atmosphere." That was, for once, almost reasonable. I looked up at the tower. Night pressed down heavily, and the high windows let through only the faintest suggestion of light—like someone had locked their troubles inside but forgotten to shut the shadows in with them.

"What are you planning to do?" I asked. Jessi blinked and smiled lightly.

"Distract them, of course." She said it like she was planning to pick up apples at the market, not neutralize the royal guards standing watch outside a princess's chambers. I almost felt sorry for those two men. They thought they were pulling a night shift. They were actually guarding their own lives.

And they had no idea that the short, annoyingly cheerful young woman in front of them was precisely the kind of person who could talk a man into counting tower bricks while making him feel like he was performing vital service to the Empire.

"Young master," Jessi suddenly leaned close, dropping her voice.

"Whatever you hear in a moment—don't look back." I stared at her.

"That sentence makes it sound like I'm about to owe the palace significant property damages."

"Nothing that dramatic," she said with perfect earnestness.

"At most, the guards will suddenly become aware that someone on the other side of the tower is having a very intimate rendezvous." I nearly choked.

"What are you talking about?"

"This whole setup is practically designed for that sort of thing," Jessi said, looking entirely innocent.

"High tower, nighttime, curtained windows, posted guards, secret meeting. Young master, if this weren't the royal palace, I'd be expecting a traveling bard to climb out of the wardrobe any moment to collect royalties." I pressed my fingers to my brow. Wonderful. I hadn't even seen Erina yet and I was already composing eulogies for my reputation. At this rate, tomorrow's version circulating through the capital wouldn't be "The Rosa heir pays a nighttime visit to the princess."

It would be "The Rosa heir deploys his pickpocket associate to clear the premises before a clandestine midnight rendezvous." That script would be too crude even for third-rate tavern audiences, yet my life lately had developed an inexplicable preference for exactly this kind of extravagantly vulgar production.

"Young master," Jessi called again.

"What." Her tone shifted slightly toward something more genuine.

"When you go in—don't try to be strong about everything." I blinked. Jessi rarely spoke like that. Her words normally skipped across surfaces like stones on water, light and glancing. When she actually meant something, it was jarring enough to throw me off balance.

"Isn't it a bit late to be saying that?"

"Late is better than never." She shrugged.

"If Her Highness wants to yell at you, let her yell. If she wants to throw something, dodge. And if she wants to cry—" Jessi paused here, her expression doing something strange and complicated.

"Then I suggest you prepare your last words in advance." I let out a short, humorless laugh.

"You have tremendous faith in me."

"Not in you," she said with brutal honesty.

"In women." There was nothing to argue with there. Tonight, from start to finish, the most dangerous element had never been the emperor, or the chancellor, or even the Yansha Empire. It was women. An emperor could rearrange your fate. A foreign nation could end your life. But a woman would systematically dismantle your life, your reputation, your sanity, and your sleep schedule piece by piece—and then make you admit she was completely justified in doing so.

Jessi watched me not respond, smiled quietly, then stepped forward. Both guards immediately turned their attention to her.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," she said, her voice light and clean, harmless as someone who'd never lifted anything heavier than a prayer book.

"I'm sorry to bother you—I was downstairs just now and noticed one of the ladies-in-waiting seemed to have dropped something." I stood where I was, watching her fabricate reality from thin air, and silently lit a candle for the nonexistent maid. One of the guards frowned.

"Dropped what?"

"A key, maybe? Or a seal?" Jessi tilted her head with helpful uncertainty.

"Right around the corner there. I would have picked it up myself, but she seemed very flustered, and her color was off. I also thought I heard her mutter something like 'Her Highness cannot find out'..." I nearly applauded her. Masterful. The first half was bait. The second half was the hook. If the guards ignored it, they were derelict. If they investigated, they were caught. Jessi could have retired from thievery entirely and gone into fishing—she would have emptied every river in the capital within a fortnight.

Sure enough, the two guards exchanged a look, their expressions shifting into the particular discomfort of men who'd just been handed a problem they couldn't afford to ignore. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. One glanced at me, then at the closed door.

"His Majesty has ordered that Lord Rosa may enter alone," he said quietly.

"You stay here."

"Of course I'll stay," Jessi said, sweet as a saint.

"I wouldn't dare disturb Her Highness. It's just—if that lady really did lose something important and it comes back around later, I'd hate for the blame to land somewhere it doesn't belong." The second guard's face changed immediately. In the royal palace, the most frightening thing has never been a sword. It's accountability. A sword at least gives you a clean ending. Accountability means writing reports, enduring reprimands, and potentially spending months carrying blame for some senior official's bad mood.

These two men clearly had extensive experience with that process, because they hesitated for barely half a breath before one murmured something to the other and turned to stride briskly around the corner. Jessi stood where she was, looking for all the world like she donated regularly to temples and had never entertained an impure thought. I worked very hard not to make a face that said of course you did. The remaining guard cleared his throat and stepped aside.

"Lord Rosa. Her Highness is within." I nodded. My throat had gone dry. Standing before Varen III in that windowless room earlier, I hadn't felt my chest tighten like this. But now, in front of this door, with my hand not yet touching the wood, I could already feel my breathing catching on something invisible. It was pathetic. It was also understandable. An emperor could only decide how you lived.

A princess was a different kind of problem entirely—the kind that could make you walk out the other side and realize you no longer had any idea how to live like a person. Jessi touched my arm lightly. I turned. She looked at me without any of the usual mischief, just reached up and smoothed the last stubborn wrinkle in my collar.

"Young master," she said quietly.

"Go in." I looked at her for a moment.

"And you?"

"I'll guard the door." She tilted her chin toward the remaining guard.

"And keep an eye on this gentleman, in case he suddenly feels compelled by duty to press his ear to the wood and further his education in palace affairs." The guard's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. He'd clearly heard every word. I didn't bother cleaning that up. I just exhaled once, raised my hand, and knocked. Once. Twice. Silence came first from the other side. Thin silence—thin as a half-held breath—and heavy too, the kind where every object in the room seemed to be waiting to see who would speak first.

Then, after a moment, a very soft voice drifted through the door.

"Come in." I pushed the door open and stepped inside. The room was darker than I'd expected. Only a few lamps were lit, their glow pressed low by heavy draperies and curtained walls. The window drapes hung half-open, letting night and moonlight seep in together, dividing the chamber into one half of dim amber and one half of cold shadow. There was a faint scent in the air—not strong, the kind that lingers when its owner has forgotten she's still alive, and only the fragrance remembers to keep going.

Erina sat by the window. Her back was turned to most of the room, her silhouette drawn quiet and still against the half-drawn curtain and the night behind it. She had changed her clothes—not the formal splendor she'd worn to stand before crowds in daylight, but something lighter, more private. And yet it was still immaculate. Still arranged with the kind of precision that said she had put herself together inch by inch before allowing anyone to enter and see her. The door closed softly at my back.

And then there was only me, and the princess sitting half-hidden in curtain and shadow. When the door shut behind me, my first thought wasn't nervousness. It was regret. Regret that I hadn't simply played dead in the corridor. Playing dead would only have cost me my dignity. Dying in here would require much more presentable final words. The royal palace was the sort of place that expected proper form even from the last breath of the dying, which struck me as unreasonably demanding. The room was very still.

The window curtains hung half-open, letting in both night and moonlight, dividing the bedchamber into one half cold and one half colder. Not ordinary quiet—the kind that presses every sound down into silk and carpet until only breathing is left, stubbornly refusing to surrender. Erina sat by the window. She had changed back into formal royal dress. Ice-blue heavy velvet draped along her figure and fell to the floor, silver-thread embroidery tracing the collar and waist with ruthless precision.

The twelve-pointed sacred seal gleamed faintly in the moonlight. Her waist was cinched narrow, her shoulders held perfectly straight, and even the white gloves resting in her lap were pristine to the point of severity. She looked noble, composed, and cold—as if the woman who had shared half a water flask with me on mountain roads, who had curled up asleep under a shared cloak in rattling carriages, had been nothing but a fever dream I'd once had and never quite managed to confirm.

This was what the Grand Princess was supposed to look like. And that was precisely why the ache that had been pressing against my chest all the way here suddenly felt even more impossible to ignore. I stood near the door and spoke first.

"You've lost weight, Erina." My voice hit the empty room and sank almost immediately, as if even the echo knew better than to linger in a place like this. Erina didn't answer right away. She only lifted those eyes—blue as a frozen sea—and looked at me across the length of the room. The look was very still.

Still in the way that comes from sitting alone with your thoughts for a very long time, long enough that whatever embarrassment, hurt, or anger had been there at the start had been folded back, layer by layer, beneath the surface of a princess. Then she lifted the hem of her skirt slightly and rose from the window seat. Velvet and gauze whispered as she moved. She walked forward a few steps and stopped beside a white stone pillar.

Moonlight fell at an angle, catching her hair and turning every strand of silver-white into something almost cold enough to burn.

"Every day there are banquets, consultations, greetings, and people testing the edges of things," she said at last, her voice still quiet but a degree colder than I remembered it.

"But more exhausting than any of that is a certain coward who apparently had the time, yet still didn't dare show his face." I pulled the corner of my mouth into something that wasn't quite a smile.

"I'm only the son of a border house," I said.

"I shouldn't be turning up in places like this without cause. People might get the impression that Her Highness lets bastards track dirt across her threshold." The room went still again for a beat. Erina's brow drew together slightly. Not ordinary displeasure—something closer to the expression of someone who has just been pricked somewhere unexpected. The flicker of it crossed her eyes and was pressed back down just as quickly.

"Track dirt?" she repeated softly, as if turning the ugliness of the phrase over in her mouth. Then she took another step forward. The distance between us shrank.

"I seem to recall," she said, looking at me steadily, "that when we first met at the mountain monastery, you had considerably fewer rules about where you were and weren't supposed to be." Her skirt dragged lightly across the carpet as she moved—a sound too composed for how close she was getting.

"You were wearing armor that looked like it was holding itself together through sheer spite, carrying a sword that hadn't been cleaned in recent memory, standing in a doorway, beating down three men for someone you thought was just an ordinary nun."

"That was because I genuinely thought you were an ordinary nun." I took a step forward too. Then another. Three steps between us now. I could already catch her scent—not the distant, expensive fragrance of the audience hall, but something closer, lower, warmer. The kind of warmth that comes from fabric and skin and a long, enclosed night pressed together. Erina looked at me, and something surfaced in those blue eyes that didn't quite belong to a princess.

"But that ordinary nun," she said quietly, "never forgot you." She turned, walked to the edge of the bed, and sat down slowly. The heavy ice-blue skirt spread out around her like a flower that had bloomed in perfect silence. The bed was too large and too soft—not the kind of soft meant for sleeping, but the kind specifically designed to accommodate respectable breakdowns. Erina raised her hand and patted the space beside her on the mattress.

"Come here, Cedric." I didn't move. She watched me, her tone unchanged.

"Or," she said, "have you lost even the nerve to sit beside me?" I stood where I was and drew a breath. I knew this was her move. I also knew that if I crossed that distance, a great many things tonight would stop being the kind that could be held at arm's length with etiquette and proper posture. But she just kept looking at me—no smile, no embarrassment, no visible exit. Only a quiet, almost ruthless kind of insistence. So I walked over anyway. One step. Two steps.

I stopped at the edge of the bed, with less than a fist's width between us, and sat down. The mattress dipped softly beneath me. I thought, without meaning to, of the escape—the two of us crammed into a single carriage, sharing one cloak, splitting the last half-bottle of clean water and a piece of bread that could have doubled as a blunt weapon. The cold had been brutal then. We'd been pressed closer than this.

Neither of us had had the luxury to think about titles or propriety or betrothals, or even whether we'd still be breathing by morning. Now I sat beside her, close enough to reach, and it felt further away than that carriage had ever been. Erina turned her head and looked at the side of my face. Her voice dropped gradually.

"We survived the Raven's pursuit. We broke into underground ruins. We crawled out of that hell called Angel City alive." She paused.

"Back then, you called me Erina." A beat of silence.

"Not Your Highness. Not Princess. Not someone I'm not supposed to touch." I tightened my hand into a fist against my knee.

"Erina," I said quietly, "this is Cliffhold." I didn't look at her. I kept my eyes fixed on my own hands.

"You are the Grand Princess of the Empire. What happened today has already made enough of a mess. I can't—""I don't want to hear that right now." Her voice dropped. Not loud. Just absolute. The next moment, her hand shot out and seized my collar. I didn't have time to react. She pulled, and momentum carried me backward, and suddenly I was lying against the soft give of the mattress, the pillow shifting beneath my head, my breath knocked entirely out of rhythm.

Erina didn't give me time to recover from the sheer indignity of the situation. She was already above me, both hands braced on either side of my head, pinning me between her and the bed with composure that was frankly unreasonable given the circumstances.

Her silver-white hair had finally come loose from its immaculate arrangement and fell around us like a curtain—a few strands brushing across my cheek and the side of my neck, light enough to be maddening, dangerous in the way that certain things are dangerous without ever being sharp. She looked down at me. Close enough that I could see everything in her eyes she hadn't meant to show anyone. The princess who had held herself perfectly upright through an entire imperial audience was gone.

The ice sculpture by the window was gone. What was left was a woman who had been holding herself together until now—beautifully, impressively, and right up to the edge of breaking. Outside, the waves struck the cliff face below the keep, one after another, each impact heavier than the last. She stayed there, a few inches above me, her breathing slightly uneven, her eyes giving nothing back.

Then, in a voice that was almost, almost gentle, she asked—each word placed with deliberate care:"Cedric—" Her hand still held my collar.

"Will you hold me?"