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—Time turned back a little.
After the face-to-face between Noi and Panselinos, Kardia was in a back chamber of the palace.
Panselinos, who had guided Kardia into a room lit by scant lamps, wore a stern expression plain even in the gloom.
“What’s the matter, Your Majesty?”
“I came for a serious talk, Kardia-sama.”
Alone together, both men’s manner shifted from before.
“I’d hoped to be thanked for coming all the way out here.”
“That as well—I want to hear it all. Why the sudden visit? I’ve asked you to come to the castle for forty years now. You had no interest in the palace—why now?”
“For her. I thought it might please her. The girl likes to eat.”
Kardia sat on the sofa in the richly appointed room. Even by lamplight, his gaze was warmly tender.
“…And I thought, at least for the very last time, it might be all right.”
“…What did you say?”
It seemed the quiet words Kardia murmured did not reach Panselinos.
Kardia gave a small shake of his head. “No.”
“Tell me—what does one usually do with a wife?”
“…I beg your pardon?”
“You had a wife before twenty, didn’t you, Panselinos? Besides holding her at night, what do you do?”
“With a child that young—! Kardia-sama, I beg you, do not stray from the path of humanity!”
“I won’t lay a hand on her.”
“Honestly. Everyone talks like I’m some starving beast.”
Kardia said, looking thoroughly fed up.
“—What do you intend to do with that girl?”
Panselinos had known Kardia since he himself was a child.
Eighty years ago—when Panselinos’s father, the late King Photizo, disparaged Noi Galenée, the First-Sun mage, Kardia struck him in public.
Fengalow, then king, barely managed to spare Kardia from execution. Kardia was banished to the marches—exiled to Hyuetos.
Back then, Hyuetos suffered near-constant rain and lived forever on the brink of flooding. Crops would not grow; people would not remain—an infertile land.
Kardia remade such a land by magic—raising the ground, regulating the rainfall, hardening the mire.
Where there is land, people come. Where people come, life begins; where life continues, people increase. Thus Kardia protected the place all had abandoned, in his own way.
And the one who followed Kardia like a hero was Panselinos.
As a boy, Panselinos adored him so much he would ride his grandfather Fengalow’s Zephyrai, Luxe, and sneak off to visit. Kardia, in turn, never treated the affectionate Panselinos harshly and let Hyuetos serve as the boy’s secret base.
And because Panselinos had known Kardia since those days, there were things he could see.
“What do I intend—about what?”
“This marriage wasn’t for my sake as an excuse, was it? The marriage itself is an excuse for something else. You have no need to make excuses to me. You could simply keep saying no, as you’ve done these forty years.”
Kardia arched one eyebrow high.
“An excuse to whom? To that girl? Why do you insist so on keeping that child—one with no mana—by your side?”
Through the great window behind Kardia, the moon was visible.
Moonlight lit his long black hair, obscuring his expression.
“Thirty years younger than me, and you’re giving me a proper lecture?”
“It is you that I truly care about! You must understand that!”
When Panselinos raised his voice, there was a knock at the shut door. He told the guard who looked in, “We don’t need you,” and the two were alone again.
“So everyone thinks I’m a devil or something… —Ah, no, that’s not it.”
Kardia smiled in self-mockery.
“Everyone who knows me has merely noticed—I’m not properly human.”
Reclining against the sofa back, Kardia set a hand to his abdomen, closed his eyes, and said so.
“Kardia-sama!”
Panselinos barked in a strong tone.
Before the guards could knock again, Kardia rose from the sofa and opened the door.
“It’s all right. Nothing you need to fret over. —I’ll just make a little use of things.”
Looking back at Panselinos, Kardia said this, flashed a bright smile, and waved.
By the time Panselinos pushed up from the sofa, even that long hair had passed beyond the door.
He sagged and sat back down where he had risen.
“…Shall we call him back?”
A solicitous guard glanced between Panselinos and Kardia and asked, but Panselinos shook his head.
“—No, it’s fine. I shall return as well.”
Covering his face with one hand and sighing, Panselinos could not help but pray for the safety of Kardia—and of the girl he had spoken of with such gentle eyes.
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