TRHK Chapter 14

"I thought he'd come later. He arrived sooner than expected."

"He's become quite striking. The academy must have suited him."

Striking. Sure.

Having known Joel Courtner only through a novel, Maylin had thorough, well-founded prejudice against him. He was the man who'd toyed with the original Maylin until his parents had her killed. It would have been stranger not to be prejudiced.

"For tonight, there's a small gathering—just family and retainers. A larger welcoming ceremony will follow soon."

"...I'll go get what's needed from the storage."

If she went anywhere near the party hall, she might encounter Joel Courtner. She intended to work as far from it as possible.

Eifel gave her a peculiar look.

"You really have changed, haven't you? Before, you couldn't wait to get near Lord Joel."

...So that's how it had been.

Entirely believable, for the original Maylin. She had nothing to say to that. She smiled awkwardly and headed for the storage room.

The world she'd come from had class distinctions too, but this one made them starkly, visibly clear. Commoners longed to be nobles. Nobles never let them forget that they weren't.

Thinking about the original Maylin's fate made everything feel heavier.

"Maylin, can I help?"

Servants kept approaching as she moved things around. Normally they snuck sidelong glances and kept quiet for fear of the butler, but today they were noticeably forward.

"It's fine. I can manage."

She turned each one down and kept to the back. The head maid observed this and offered rare praise before moving on—she seemed to approve of Maylin neither slacking off nor trying to make herself conspicuous to the nobility.

Maylin was simply avoiding the Count, the Countess, and Joel Courtner.

Tonight's gathering was just family and retainers. To celebrate Joel's return.

Would Kahron be attending?

The household knew him as a wandering commoner knight. They might not have invited him. And he'd just refused the Count's offer to join the knight order.

Somehow, thinking about it made her want to see him. Having Joel Courtner in the castle at all was unsettling, and she found herself wondering where Kahron was—alone somewhere.

"I should go find him later."

"Where?"

She spun around. Someone had answered her out loud.

A man stood at the dim entrance to the storage room. A servant? His clothing was too elaborate for a servant. And that face—she'd seen it somewhere before—

"Who are you?"

She asked, tense. He laughed—ahaha—a bright, easy sound. He was handsome. Something about him still made her uneasy.

"Oh, right. You don't recognize me, do you, Maylin..."

He knew her name. Which meant he knew her.

She looked at this man she'd never seen before in her life and felt a cold unease settle in. Noble clothing. An unhurried manner. A face she'd never met but somehow wasn't entirely unfamiliar with.

"...Forgive me."

She'd begun to sense who he was. Her body went rigid. She moved toward the door.

"Wait a moment."

He reached for her arm. She jerked backward as if she'd been burned. He couldn't quite hide his surprise.

"Where are you rushing off to?"

"I need to get back to work."

"I'm Joel. Joel Courtner."

Damn it.

A situation that called for exactly that.

Her original plan to avoid Joel Courtner had just collapsed completely because he'd come looking for her. Was this how things had begun, between him and the original Maylin? She'd never read their first meeting in the novel. Imagining it now made her want to sigh.

After a moment's deliberation, she bowed her head low, the way she had for the Count.

"Lord Joel."

"Yes. I'm Joel."

"...May I bring these things to the hall now?"

He looked genuinely thrown. "What?"

"The things for the hall—"

"No. I'm not asking you to repeat yourself." Something in his voice shifted. "Did you hear what I said? I'm a noble. The heir who will one day lead this house."

'I know, please stop.' She would have said it out loud if he weren't nobility. Knowing exactly who Joel Courtner was was precisely why she was trying so hard to leave.

"Yes, Lord Joel. If you'll excuse me—"

"Wait, Maylin!"

He stepped forward with an oddly anxious expression. Then—

Eifel's voice came from outside.

"Maylin, the head maid needs you, quickly!"

A beam of light in the darkness. Maylin answered immediately.

"Coming!"

Hearing the other voice seemed to catch Joel off guard. He went still.

Maylin bowed once more and got out of the storage room as fast as she could without running. He didn't stop her.

"Are you all right? I heard something. It sounded like you were in a difficult situation."

Eifel whispered as they walked down the corridor together.

"You saved my life. Thank you."

That wasn't a figure of speech. She genuinely owed Eifel. If someone other than Eifel had witnessed her alone with Joel like that, word would have reached the Count and Countess immediately.

"That was...Lord Joel, wasn't it?"

Maylin nodded at the careful question. Her face must look quite dark right now.

"Oh dear. You've got it hard."

Eifel patted her shoulder a few times without another word.

In the midst of everything, it was considerable comfort. Eifel probably didn't know the half of it.

"Thank you, Eifel..."

"Don't thank me for that. Oh—and it wasn't a lie about the head maid. Take those things and go."

When Maylin reached the head maid, she was told to attend to the elderly noblewoman in the party hall.

The noblewoman sat in her chair, staring blankly at nothing. She seemed entirely removed from the noise and activity around her. Maylin attended to her as she usually did, offering the foods she preferred.

"Oh."

She spotted Kahron.

'So he is here...'

He was wearing a white shirt under a dark jacket, dark trousers—she'd only ever seen him in tunics, and the formal attire was alarmingly, devastatingly new. Her eyes went immediately sideways.

She was already bad at keeping her head around him. Dressed like that, he was clearly trying to destroy her.

For better or worse, she wasn't the only one in the hall struggling to maintain composure. Women who appeared to be nobility had color in their cheeks and were sending glances his way with studied casualness. Kahron himself stood with a bored expression, drinking.

Knight Commander Landale, also in formal dress, called Kahron over from across the hall—bringing him, it seemed, to make introductions to the Count, Countess, and their retainers. Kahron set down his glass with an air of unavoidable inconvenience and walked over, looking as though the world itself had wronged him.

It was reassuring, in a way, that he wasn't only like that with her. He was exactly the same with nobility. He was probably noble himself, but no one here knew that.

Somewhere in between, Joel had returned to the hall. Ignoring his gaze—which kept finding her despite all appearances otherwise—was agony. Whatever he'd been to the original Maylin, he was nothing to her, and based on their exchange in the storage room, they weren't supposed to be much of anything yet. She didn't understand what he wanted.

She sighed inwardly and draped a shawl over the elderly noblewoman's shoulders. She seemed a little cold.

Then the Count and Countess sent a servant to ask about the noblewoman's condition. Naturally, attention turned toward Maylin—from the Count, the Countess, and everyone nearby.

Including Kahron. Including Joel.

Their voices didn't reach her from across the hall, but the quality of their gaze did. Like the Count's slow appraisal in the noblewoman's chambers that time—the noblemen, the men especially, were looking her over with the same thoroughness. She felt each one.

"She seemed a little cold, so I've put a shawl on her."

She answered, her voice not quite steady. The servant carried the message back to the Count and Countess. The Count nodded. She hoped he'd send her away with the noblewoman now, but that didn't seem to be coming.

The servant brought her another shawl.

"Another maid will attend to Her Ladyship. You—go and clear the plates."

The butler had materialized beside her.

Why give that task to her specifically? She couldn't refuse, so she moved as slowly as she plausibly could. The plates and glasses to be cleared were, of course, all on the nobles' side. She tried to stall by pretending to be occupied elsewhere, but the butler kept looking at her pointedly until she walked over as if pulled by a string.

The closer she got, the more suffocating the noblemen's attention became. Why did they look at people like that? And Joel Courtner was among them.

She kept her eyes down, looking at nothing in particular, avoiding all of them.

"Here."

A hand appeared in her line of vision, extending an empty glass.

Something familiar made her look up. When she saw it was Kahron, she felt an involuntary wave of relief.

"Aren't you drinking rather a lot?"

She'd been wanting to say that. He was going through glasses like water. The fact that he looked entirely sober made it stranger.

"Well, well, Kahron." A very drunk-seeming Hwirozen materialized with an arm slung around Kahron's shoulders. "Do you need your wife's permission to drink now?"

The word wife made both her cheeks go hot.

Had Eifel not told him yet that they weren't together?

"Get off."

Kahron said it flatly. Hwirozen immediately threw both hands up in surrender.

"I'm not saying he needs permission—"

She was still red-faced and trying to explain herself when she caught Joel Courtner's eyes from across the room.

He was staring at her with the expression of a man who'd just been hit with something he hadn't seen coming.