Rezet bent at the waist to meet her eyes.

He brushed a hand over Elise's cheek, gone pale in the span of a moment. His voice gentled on its own.

"What I mean is—once we know each other a little better."

"……."

"This—is for later's use." He tapped the sheet with his hand.

Elise blinked her damp eyes. She seemed to have grasped, more or less, that this did not mean he had no intention of holding her.

"…Once we're closer?"

"Yes."

Relief, unease, resentment, impatience—each crossed her face in turn. She seemed to have talked herself into accepting it somehow, but her eyes still held their distrust.

"How much time do you need?"

"That depends entirely on how Your Highness conducts herself."

"Why should that be on me...? You're the one who's supposed to be making an effort. You won't even show me your face, and the one time I went out to see you, all you did was get angry with me…"

"...My apologies."

Elise's expression went blank, all argument gone from it. He admitted it and apologized at once, and there was nothing left to complain about. Did he even know he did this—shut her up every time with a single clipped line like that?

Rezet studied her carefully as she closed her eyes, looking for all the world like someone who had surrendered the will to fight.

"Your Highness."

"……."

"I'll have your rooms on the second floor prepared, so you can rest there in comfort as well. If the topmost floor is inconvenient, choose whichever room you like."

Elise nodded, reluctant. She still seemed sulky, and gave no answer in words.

Those lips, pressed shut. How was he supposed to open them?

"If you want to ride, tell me."

Another single nod, nothing more.

"There's a festival in the square outside the castle. Would you like to see it?"

This time, she paused.

Rezet did not miss the curiosity seeping into eyes the color of gold laid over honey. It seemed her wish to go outside had been genuine after all.

"Shall we go tomorrow?"

"…Yes."

"Understood. I'll come up for you in the morning."

Only then did Elise's expression ease, a little more. Whatever he'd decided, the relief of knowing she wouldn't be left alone had settled over her.

Even after hearing her answer in full, the man went on watching her a long while before he spoke, low.

"What I've said just now—it stays between the two of us. Everything else as well. Understood?"

"……."

"Your Highness. You need to give me an answer."

Elise thought his voice, pressing for a reply, sounded somehow lower than it had a moment ago. She let out a thin sigh and nodded again.

'If he's just right there, right there whenever I need him—then it's nothing.'

Taken together, what Rezet Kyrstan was really saying was that he wouldn't touch her until they'd grown sufficiently close. Perhaps that, too, was some facet of his principled nature.

And when she thought it over, the order of things wasn't wrong, either.

Once her anger had cooled a little and she went back over it carefully, Rezet's reasoning was, in fact, quite sound. Elise had no wish to risk her life to sleep with him. Nor, of course, did she want to be taken as though she were being violated.

Right. I just need to think of it as taking things a little more leisurely.

With that, Elise believed this particular quarrel had settled into a lull. A few more days spent building closeness, she thought, and that would be that.

But that was a very great misapprehension on Elise's part. Of course, it would be some time yet before she came to feel the full weight of that fact.

6. A Lover's Taboo

The next day, when Elise opened her eyes, she witnessed a startling sight.

Someone was sitting by the window, visible the instant she pulled back the bed's canopy. The man, who had been drinking tea and looking over some papers on parchment, felt her stir and raised his head.

Elise's lips parted, blank.

"…Andrei?"

A tear that had gathered along the corner of her eye slipped free. Her vision cleared.

'Oh… no, it isn't.'

She had nearly mistaken him. Not Andrei—her husband. The instant the last traces of the dream she'd been having a moment ago fully cleared away, she saw the man's face properly. His brows were drawn slightly, as though something displeased him.

Rezet, watching Elise with an unreadable expression, spoke slowly.

"You can sleep more. It's still early."

"…Why are you here?"

"I told you yesterday I'd come up in the morning."

"Morning…."

It was, of course, morning. Only the sun hadn't risen yet, and the world beyond the window was still dim.

Elise rubbed at her sleepy eyes. Her surprise lasted only a moment before drowsiness came rushing back over her, as if the whole thing had never happened. These past few days, sleep would have fled her by now—how strange.

"Sleep more. I know you don't usually wake at this hour."

Rezet set the parchment down on the side table and rose, crossing to her. He smoothed down her tangled hair with one hand, then pressed her shoulder back against the bed.

"…Are you up already? You said it was still early…"

"I don't sleep much in the mornings."

"I see…."

Another thing she didn't know about Rezet. Maybe this was how it worked. Learn one small fact, then another, and at some point you'd have become 'close.'

Elise turned onto her side, facing him.

"Then—can you stay here a little longer…?"

The man answered, indifferent.

"That's why I came. I'll wake you in time, so sleep."

Elise thanked him softly and closed her eyes. The piece that had been missing from that spot for a week was back, filling the hollow. Steady. Warm.

"Get out of there, sister. You know—the place you belong is—!"

From somewhere beyond a dark field of vision, Andrei shouted something at her.

"Come back, Elise!"

Reproach, probably—blame for the wretched state his sister had fallen into. But her brother's desperate cry was shouldered aside by the hand moving through her hair and dissolved into nothing.

Elise sank quickly back into sleep. No dream followed after.

"……."

Hair like silver thread, brushing the small of her thin back, slid through the man's fingers. Something threaded between the strands—not hair. A faint current of power, winding itself around his thick fingers.

'...Grating.'

An unpleasant furrow creased Rezet's brow. The thing, carrying a faint light, vanished without a trace inside his closed hand a moment later.

It was a warm spring day, thin clouds strung across a clear sky.

Elise, who had gone long without remembering the turn of seasons, looked around at the flower-heavy streets on either side with unfamiliar eyes. She was outside Lothier Castle, in the city, for the first time.

By late April the south would be sliding into early summer. In Argan the sun would already be sharpening against the crown of one's head and the back of one's neck, the start of summer proper—but here in the north, a cool spring wind still lingered.

"The north doesn't get very hot even in summer. Lothier's milder than most of the other regions here, but it's still true that the summers run cool and the winters harsh."

Rezet adjusted his grip on her hand. They were walking near the central square instead of riding.

"That's a relief."

"What is?"

"That even wrapped up in this stifling outfit, I won't be too warm."

Elise was, once again today, bundled thoroughly in a robe. Rezet Kyrstan's own handiwork, without question.

"Tell me if it becomes too much."

"I will."

She answered obediently enough, though there was no chance Elise would ever admit to fatigue with her own mouth. If she told this man she was tired, he would drag her straight back to the castle without so much as a backward glance.

Inside, she hadn't known it felt stifling. Out here, she could finally breathe.

Elise had never walked a street like this before. Never watched so many people at once, either. She walked with her heart fit to burst and looked at everything.

The village festival was winding down toward its close. In truth, the area outside Lothier Castle was closer in scale to a city than a village.

Dozens of roads spread out from the central square like threads of a spider's web. The street felt fit to burst with the din of music, merchants' cries, and the raucous chatter of passersby.

In a place like this, riding a horse only drew more attention. So to see the festival properly, they had to wade directly into the crowd. One careless moment and a paper-thin person like Elise would lose herself entirely.

None of it suited Rezet in the least.

"It might be easier if I just carried you—"

"I want to walk. I've never walked outside before."

"…Never, not once?"

"Probably not. If a walk went on even a little too long, Andrei would come running as if the sky were falling. Just like you, right now—desperate to lift me right off my feet before I could take another step."

Rezet held to an uncomfortable silence. It seemed she hadn't been expecting an answer anyway; Elise had already turned back to the puppeteers.

Elise almost never spoke of her dead twin brother aloud. Yet Rezet knew exactly how much she'd depended on Argan's Emperor. He knew, because every time Elise dreamed, she called her brother's name and wept without end.

It had happened on the road to the capital. It had happened on the road to Lothier. It had even happened just this dawn.

This was the second time she'd confused him with her brother in a dream.

'…Andrei?'

The first time, he'd thought it unbearably pitiable. Now he had no patience for pity whatsoever.