BPOTWC Chapter 37

"......."

"You mustn't ever regret that decision, Your Grace...... That's why...... I'll......"

"I understand."

Clarisse finally managed the barest hint of a smile, and spoke as though sealing a promise.

"I'll definitely become a magnificent eighteen-year-old! I'll grow up well!"

That was pretty deeply sincere, but for some reason, Maximilian said nothing back.

Maybe he just couldn't find the words.

'I think I made things hard for His Grace.......'

She drooped, hanging her head, and a moment later a big hand plopped down on top of it.

Clarisse slid her eyes up to look at him, and at the warmth settling over her head, a small, helpless 'hehe' slipped out before she could stop it.

The moment the Duke left the annex, Clarisse hurried straight out to the garden and pressed a kiss to Mallangie.

"Well? Amazing, right?"

Clarisse set Mallangie on her palm and gave one twirl, right where she stood.

Around the mansion stood evergreens taller than Clarisse herself. Their neatly trimmed blue-green leaves hid the trunks and branches almost completely, till they looked just like a great green wall.

At the center of the garden was a fountain that no longer ran, and a narrow ornamental canal that led away from it. There was no water in it now, but it seemed that in summer, water probably trickled quietly along this path.

The ornamental canal ran on past the green wall that ringed the garden, out beyond it.

Clarisse spread her legs wide and planted a foot on each edge of the canal. She wasn't sure why she suddenly wanted to do this, but somehow it seemed like fun.

"Mrrph!"

"Won't fall. Can even walk forward like this, see."

Clarisse began to waddle along the canal, legs spread wide.

"Mrrph!"

"Said I won't get hurt."

After a few more steps, she started to feel a little stuffy, and yanked the hat covering her head and ears off in one go.

Her neatly arranged hair sprang up like a lion's mane.

"Ahh—cool. Nice...... Winter here, but still feels warm somehow...... Huh? Did I just say the capital's warm?"

Clarisse stopped her waddling walk and giggled to herself.

"Mrrph?"

"It's just—I feel like I've become a real child of Sheridan. Gardener-grandpa told me that a child of Sheridan wouldn't feel the capital's winter as cold at all. So."

Clarisse lifted her chin just slightly. As though putting on airs.

"I'm a child of Sheridan."

"......Mrrph. (That's usually just how people catch cold—getting cocky like that.)"

Clarisse went "nuh-uh, nuh-uh," and kept right on shuffling her spread-wide legs along the canal.

But this pleasant little adventure seemed to be nearly at its end.

Before she knew it, she'd arrived in front of a tall, towering evergreen.

"Mrrph?"

"Can't go any further than this. His Grace said not to."

"Mrrph."

"You hear some kind of sound......?"

Clarisse pressed her ear against the rough, scratchy tree.

Mallangie said he could hear a voice speaking, but Clarisse's own ears caught nothing at all.

"There's no sound at all...... Oh."

Clarisse understood the answer at once.

Something Mallangie's ears could hear, but Clarisse's own ears could not.

Clarisse hopped down off the edge of the canal. It was only a little deeper than knee-height, so there was no danger in it.

She quickly tucked Mallangie into her hair behind her shoulder, then flopped flat onto the ground.

It seemed there was a "talking stone" somewhere beneath this evergreen.

'I wonder what kind of stone lives at the royal palace?'

Curious now, Clarisse crawled forward.

When she passed through the low tunnel formed by the tree's leaves, she lowered her head and body even further and crawled.

Then, in one sudden instant—

Thunk! Her crown slammed into something rock-hard. Stars—a whole swarm of them, spinning.

"Ow!"

Clarisse quickly clutched her head and dropped flat onto the ground.

She'd thought air was passing through here—had there been a wall after all?

"Ngh."

No—it hadn't been a wall, it seemed.

Not judging by the sound of a boy's voice coming from somewhere above her head.

'Who is that?'

Clarisse rubbed her still-throbbing head and slyly lifted just her head to look.

The tree tunnel was dark, so the other person appeared only as a faint, indistinct shadow.

"Who's there?"

Clarisse asked, very carefully.

"......."

There was no answer from the other side—but instead, Mallangie, still tucked in her hair, whispered quietly into her ear.

"Mrrph."

"He's angry......?"

A flinch.

At her words, the other side seemed to give a small, startled twitch.

"I'm sorry I bumped into you."

Clarisse offered her apology at once.

Instead of answering, the other person shuffled back several steps.

The moment Clarisse closed the gap to follow, he panicked and bolted straight out of the tree tunnel.

Clarisse soon emerged from the tunnel as well.

Strong sunlight fell white and bright against her eyes, which had grown used to the dark. Through her blurred vision, the shape of the person she'd met in the tunnel wavered before her.

He wasn't an adult.

Then again, thinking about it, it hardly seemed like an adult could have made it through such a narrow tunnel at all.

Clarisse blinked her eyes hard, again and again.

Each time, the other person's shape came a little more clearly into focus. Pale blond hair, lashes so long they cast a shadow across his eyes, eyes of a startlingly clear, transparent blue......

Somehow, he was a boy who looked older than his years.

Perhaps it was simply the effect of the coat and suit he wore, formal down to the last button, in a way that looked almost uncomfortable.

The boy, too, stared back at Clarisse with startled eyes—she who had just now emerged from the darkness.

Sitting face to face across the canal, it was Clarisse who broke the awkward silence stretching between them.

"I'm Clarisse. No—I mean, I am Clarisse."

Clarisse had considered speaking casually to the boy, who looked about her own age, then decided against it. She wasn't sure why, but she had a strong feeling that she shouldn't.

"......."

Even to her brave little introduction, the boy gave no answer.

"Are you all right, where you hit? It hurt so much I saw stars."

Clarisse rubbed at her still-throbbing head with her palm and managed a smile despite it.

The boy showed no particular reaction.

No—judging by how thoroughly his expression had crumpled, he still seemed to be angry.

'It must have really hurt.'

What should she do in a situation like this?

As she puzzled it over, Clarisse remembered a storybook she'd read not long ago.

In it, when a child got hurt, someone would blow gently over the wound and say, "Don't hurt, don't hurt—phew, there."

Clarisse rose up out of the canal and stepped boldly right up in front of the boy.

Then, before he had any chance to step back, she puffed her round cheeks full of air, leaned toward the top of his head, and blew.

"Don't hurt, don't hurt—phew, there."

At that, the boy's face scrunched up and he jerked his head back—and finally, for the first time, he opened his mouth.

"......Are you crazy?"

It was a pretty voice.

"I'm not crazy."

Clarisse answered earnestly, and rubbed at the crown of her head for a moment.

"Though it's still a little sore."

"......Ha."

The boy glared at her like she was beyond belief, then brushed off his clothes with sharp, irritated smacks and stood up.

"Tell anyone you saw me here—I'll kill you. I mean it."

"I'll kill you."

Kill you. Such a terrifying threat that Clarisse lost her words, if only for a moment.

'Now that I think about it......'

Clarisse hadn't been able to speak casually to the boy from the very first moment she saw him, and now, somehow, she thought she understood why.

The boy looked a lot like him.

'On the day that child turns eighteen, you must bring me her head—without fail.'

The lord of this land.

"......I suppose."

When Clarisse only stared at him without a word, he let out a sigh and dropped his head.

"...Guess you can't even tell on me. Not when you don't know who I am."

Somehow the words came out sounding self-mocking.

To Clarisse's ears, they somehow also sounded as though he wanted her to know him.

'But I really don't know who he is.'

Only that he resembled the King very, very closely.

That was when it happened.

"......Mrrph."

Mallangie, still hiding in her hair, spoke up in a small voice.

Only after hearing what he said did Clarisse look again at the boy—and notice, beneath the collar of his shirt, a special pendant.

Set into it as an ornament was a stone of deep blue, and Clarisse knew at a single glance that it was a "story-telling stone."

"That—!"

Clarisse forgot her manners entirely and pointed a finger straight at his collar.

But the boy, as though he had no further business here, turned on his heel with almost cruel indifference.

That was when it happened.

"Prince Valentin!"

Clarisse called out the boy's name in a loud, clear voice.

Valentin Ashton Sapheris.

The current King's young half-brother, born just before the late King's death, and Maximilian's other half-brother.

Of course, Clarisse hadn't known any of this information beforehand.

She knew almost nothing about the Sapheris royal family.

It was the prince's pendant that had told her, and Mallangie, hidden in her hair, who had heard it and quietly passed it along.

"The boy will be pleased if you call him Prince Valentin"—that's what he'd said.

But that advice turned out to be half right, and half wrong. Prince Valentin did, indeed, "react" to Clarisse's call. He stopped stock-still on the spot, at the very least.

But when he turned to look at her, there wasn't the faintest trace of pleasure on his face—only wariness, thick and guarded. Exactly like the way the outer wall of Sheridan Manor had once looked at Clarisse.

"How did you find out who I am?"

To this question, she couldn't very well say your pendant told me.

"I just...... know."

She had no better excuse ready, so Clarisse mumbled out something vague.

"Ha."

At that, the boy looked even angrier than before—his face actually flushed red.

'What if the Prince means to kill me?'

Someone of royal blood would surely hold enormous power.

Clarisse, feeling frightened, squeezed her eyes shut tight, and at the same moment heard Mallangie whispering in her ear.

"Mrrph. (He says he looks really happy—don't get the wrong idea.)"

"......Huh?"

He was happy?