Noah’s magic flowed into her with each lingering kiss.
Every brush of his lips fills me with warmth.
She knew these kisses were meant to heal her, and yet Noah cradled the back of her head, drawing her closer and deepening his embrace in a way that suggested it was more than that.
When they paused to breathe between kisses, he would whisper, “Princess.”
His voice trembled with unspoken feelings that he must have been holding on to during his long days of waiting.
“Yes,” she murmured, stroking his hair. “I am your princess.”
As she touched him, she took stock of her own body. Unlike in the dreamworld, there was no sense of wrongness about it. Her body had been that of a thirteen-year-old when she had entered her enchanted slumber, but it had grown into the body of a sixteen-year-old. She knew this body well from both her dream and her years of using it as a disguise.
She found it curious. She should not have grown while she was suspended in that deathlike state, yet it seemed to have aged all at once the moment she awoke.
She brushed the thought aside. For the moment, she wished to focus on Noah.
“You have been such a good boy, waiting for so long. I, too, longed to see you again,” she said, stroking his black hair as a reward for his faithfulness.
“All this time,” Noah whispered hoarsely between kisses, “I have awaited you.”
“Noah...”
Pressing a final brush against her lips, Noah drew back and watched her with his dark eyes. He took her hand in his and lifted it with grace. He was ready to lay his feelings bare.
“For all these years, I have ached to touch you like this.”
He pressed a kiss, not to her lips, but to her wrist. This one was not meant to pour magic into her, but given for another, deeper reason.
His words made her heart ache.
My precious Noah.
Claudia, overcome with tenderness, wrapped her arms around him and pressed her forehead against his.
Their hair brushed together as she dropped a kiss onto the tip of his nose.
“Noah.”
“Please, let me hear your voice a little more.”
Such a request from Noah was rare.
Claudia finally realized the depths of his yearning for her, and she was elated.
She answered him with the tender affection one might show a beloved puppy.
“You have been such a good boy. Truly, you have, my dear Noah.”
“More,” he murmured.
She had left him alone for too long. He was sulking. Once, he would never have allowed himself to voice such selfish desires, but now he spoke them aloud without hesitation.
“I still have not had enough of you.”
A fond laugh escaped Claudia’s lips at his adorable behavior.
Leaning closer, she brought her lips to his ear. “My Noah.”
He jolted at the sensation. Her warm breath, mingled with the lightest touch of her lips, grazed his ear.
“Do you feel it?” she asked.
Her hand slid to rest over Noah’s heart, where his pulse thundered wildly beneath her palm. Her voice came out as a whisper.
“Just as our magic once mixed inside of you. So too has your magic remained in me, always.”
“Princess...”
“I shall return it to you. In return...” With her other hand, Claudia tilted his chin upward, guiding him to look into her eyes once more. “Give me more.”
At her command, Noah did not hesitate.
With each gentle kiss, Claudia could feel Noah’s magic flowing into her. And with it, something warm and deeper still.
And something more...
Memories also began to surface—of the things Noah had experienced in her absence.
The memories must be embedded in the magic Noah is returning to me.
She closed her eyes and allowed the visions to unfold in her mind, as he continued to kiss her.
It truly has been three years since I went to sleep. In that time, Noah has risen to be named the next chief conjurer of the kingdom, and all the while, he sought a way to awaken me.
Perhaps the dream she had seen was flowing into Noah as well.
Proof of it came when Noah, trepidatious, pulled back slightly.
“My magic that lingered in you...” he said.
“Hmm... Are you referring to Leonhard?” she murmured, winding her arms around his neck and tilting her head playfully.
“I must beg your pardon,” Noah said, his voice quiet. “It seems I have behaved most disrespectfully toward you.”
“Oh my. That boy was also my precious Noah. I never thought it disrespectful.”
She felt a ripple of relief, knowing that she had been able to keep the promise she had made within the dream.
She laughed and decided to tease him a bit. “No need to fret. Even when you kept watch over my bath, you were nothing but a gentleman.”
“I...cannot entirely vouch for that,” came his strangled reply.
“Oh? Is that so?”
Her words, meant only to tease, were met with an unexpected admission.
“After all, ever since I first laid eyes upon your grown form some ten years ago, I have never once been able to tear my gaze away.”
“Oh?”
She made as if to peer into his face more closely, but Noah silenced her with another kiss.
“More importantly,” he said after a moment.
“Hmm?”
Noah frowned. “Your suspicions were correct.”
The playful air that had hung between them until now shifted sharply. She heard a rumble somewhere in the distance.
“Lemilsia’s chief conjurer is none other than its first king, Reinard. His soul lingers here in the realm of the living, bound by his obsession even after death—but that isn’t all.”
It seemed that the things Leonhard of the dreamworld had seen now dwelled within Noah.
“Our enemies are not only Reinard and Sieghart—”
Noah’s words cut off. Both of them sensed the approach of a formidable presence at the same time.
They’re coming.
Yet before Claudia could so much as stir, Noah swept her into his arms.
She wound her arms about his neck. “Noah, if you mean to teleport me away...”
“I won’t.”
The unexpected answer made her tilt her head in surprise.
Carrying her up the steps toward the altar, Noah continued, “It is because I knew you would want to stay that I chose to wake you now, rather than after all was ended.”
She laughed as he conjured a chair and carefully lowered her onto it.
“You truly are my good boy.”
“I am honored by your praise.”
Kneeling before her, Noah laid his hand upon the hem of her white funerary gown and wove a familiar spell into the fabric.
Before her eyes, the soft material transformed, turning a vivid crimson.
“My mother’s greatest fear was that Reinard’s magic would one day steal me away,” Claudia said softly. “But it seems we need not fear that any longer.”
“We cannot say so with certainty. We must remain vigilant.”
Her feet, bare only moments before, were now clad in shoes matched perfectly to her crimson gown. Both felt soft against her skin, as all of Noah’s creations did.
Yet after this, it is not myself that I must worry about.
The approaching presence drew ever nearer.
“Noah, I have something to tell you. It is for your ears only.” Drawing him closer, she brought her lips near to his ear.
Yet it was for one moment and one moment alone, as she drew back immediately after.
“Can you do it?” she asked.
Noah blinked at her as she smiled down at him.
“Of course,” he said as he rose to his feet at her side. She stood, graceful in a gown the color of blood and ripe apples.
“Then, my dear Noah... Show me just how beautiful a hound you have grown up to be.”
“As you command, my lady,” Noah answered.
All of a sudden, they felt something touch the chapel’s protective barrier. Something was attacking it from outside.
Noah conjured a sword into his hand.
The barrier began to crack at the chapel’s entrance. It was buckling beneath a force like a surge of fury.
Dark magic. A magic befitting a conjurer with eyes the color of obsidian.
For a moment, a silence like gently falling snow enveloped the chapel.
Then a series of cracks echoed through the chamber.
Fragments of the barrier rained down, glittering like shards of crystal as they fell. Though beautiful to behold, they bore a sinister aura, and each hit the floor with an unpleasant crash, the shock of it reverberating through Claudia’s body.
Within the rain of shards, a young man opened the chapel’s door and stepped inside.
It’s been long indeed since I last breathed in the air of a battlefield.
Claudia rested one hand lightly upon the arm of her opulent chair, fixing her gaze upon the intruder.
Noah’s barrier was preserving the sanctity of this room. Outside these walls, the air was already choked with the same foulness that once filled the air of this kingdom five hundred years ago.
But unlike the wars of that distant past, this enemy was no faceless soldier.
“So...you have finally awakened.” Noah stood glaring at the intruder, but the newcomer’s obsidian eyes were fixed solely upon Claudia.
“I’ve come to fetch you, Adelheid.”
“Sieghart...” The name slipped from Claudia’s lips as she stared at the intruder.
In that moment, she recalled the dream she had left behind. The scene of awakening in the coffin flashed before her eyes, and then so did the boy she had met there.
The Leonhard of that world had regarded her with silent fury and a terrible will to dominate her. And now, Sieghart’s eyes—burning exactly as Leonhard’s had—pierced straight through her.
This world’s Sieghart so closely resembles the Leonhard of my dreams. Yet more than that...
Beneath the madness, Claudia sensed a presence she knew all too well.
This magic belonged to Reinard—her first apprentice, one who had risen to become king after her death.
She narrowed her eyes and saw a smirk twist Sieghart’s face.
“The magic you were once missing has been restored,” he said. “What truly wonderful news.”