“Goodness,” I said, giggling despite myself. He’d warned me not to provoke him, yet here he was dropping hints of what was to come, telling me I could stop him if I so desired. I sensed glimpses of his struggle between desire and reason.
I myself couldn’t decide whether to calm him or egg him on, so instead, I began to recount an old fairy tale. It was the same tale to which His Highness had alluded.
“Once upon a time, there was a bird that sang a beautiful song in the night. Her gorgeous singing voice saw her presented to the emperor of the time, and she went on chirping her tunes by his side. So too did the emperor cherish the bird. But one day, the nobility gifted him a rare, foreign bird that would keep singing for as long as one wound the key on its back, and it quickly became the object of everyone’s adoration. The original bird came to prefer singing in the wild, and she fled from the emperor’s side...”
“What a fool he was,” said the prince, managing to sound firm and angry, though his voice was barely above a whisper.
I went on, “The foolish man later fell gravely ill. No one knew how to save him, least of all the wind-up bird. His various misdeeds had come back to haunt him. The Reaper stood by his bedside. The one to save him was—”
His Highness’s voice abruptly grew sweet and soft. “The bird who sang by his side. She flew back to the man in the maw of death and saved him from the Reaper. Almost like you, Eli.” He then told me, without hesitation, that I had pulled him back from the brink of death.
Suppose, for argument’s sake, that I had declined to return to the capital and chosen to continue nursing the sick in the Ralshen Region. Perhaps the Saint, Lady Pharmia, would have taken my place by His Highness’s side. Perhaps I would have sought a new place to sing. Perhaps Duke Odin and his faction would still be in power now.
And all of that would have gone against His Highness’s wishes.
If that was how he felt, I was truly glad I had come back—no matter what sacrifices I’d had to make, no matter if it meant thwarting the dreams of one I’d considered a friend. And all of my own free will.
“Your Highness...”
The Emperor and the Nightingale, penned by a very famous playwright, was a popular play performed at Saoura’s Royal Theater. Although I wasn’t much for love stories, even I had read it out of an interest in the language used in the classics. Thus, I had memorized a certain one of its lines.
I hesitated for a long time over whether to say it out loud. The line didn’t belong to the bird that had returned to the emperor, but rather used that bird in a metaphor to persuade a lover to stay. Either way, if I was ever going to say it, now was the time.
“That is the song of a nightingale, not a bird that sings at dawn. Do not leave this place yet, my love. Stay here with me.”
My whole body, cheeks and all, burned as I recited the line straight from the play. His Highness’s eyes went wide, but he answered me with a smile. It was one of the most gorgeous things I had ever seen.
“I know, my beloved. That is a bird that mimics the dawn. It shall not disturb our night together.”
Saying this, he stroked my cheek one more time. It felt tender more than it did ticklish. And as he did, he cast me an oh-so-affectionate glance.
“Eli,” he said in a voice overflowing with emotion. “Elianna... Without you, my nights would never turn to day...”
His Highness placed a quick kiss upon my lips before peering into my face with those sparkling blue eyes. He smiled back at me wordlessly as I stared at him, enchanted. Then he pressed his lips to mine once more—a deep, passionate kiss. Caught up in this unparalleled bliss, I finally understood. The lips were special because lovers could bring them together and, with each breath, exchange feelings too strong to express in words.
His breath felt hot against my face, and I soon realized that the breath escaping my own lips must have grown just as heated.
“Eli...”
My eyes snapped open as if beckoned by his warm breath, and my gray eyes almost seemed to intertwine with his blue. The sound of him feverishly whispering my name held me captive.
“I’m sorry. It’s too late to stop now...”
His half-lidded gaze and approaching breath invited me to close my eyes, my heart pounding in my chest—and that was when the door opened without warning, and in came a man making excuses for himself.
“M’lady? I’m guessin’ you’re asleep since the lights are out, but for security’s sake, I’m gonna close the curtain—”
All three of us reacted differently: the man froze in his tracks and went dead silent, I watched myself turn red as a beet in the prince’s irises, and His Highness scowled and donned a frightful aura.
My manservant, Jean, let out a panicked scream like he’d just stumbled across some unspeakable horror. “Why is the demon lord here?! Wait, no, that explains it. So that’s why Annie an’ Sheila got nabbed by the imperial guard...”
After hastily rationalizing the situation, he shouted an apology and fled the room in a fluster.
Now that the mood had been well and truly ruined, His Highness rose from the bed with no small amount of irritation, cursing under his breath. He tacked on a few disgruntled mutterings while he was at it. “Damn him... He better not have become one of the tanuki’s underlings.” Annoyed, he added that it had become much harder to punish him directly.
As for what had become of Jean after we returned to the capital... Unsurprisingly, he’d been put on full bed rest for some time, but he’d been able to return to the field much sooner than I had. He was still working on regaining his muscles and stamina, apparently, but his first assignment post-recovery had been to guard the perimeter after my homecoming. His Highness had sent a few imperial guards with me as well, so he’d been working with them.
Based on what I’d heard, after some discussion with my father, it was ultimately decided that nothing would change and Jean would remain by my side as my valet. I’d mentioned to him that the imperial guard was better paid, to which he’d replied that this was the easier job. That manservant of mine was as lazy as ever.
Fighting back my shame, I followed His Highness’s example and sat up. All the while, I lamented the number of things I’d been caught doing or wearing today that I wished I hadn’t.
The sounds outside the room were slowly but surely getting noisier. His Highness took a deep breath and seemed to reset his emotional state. With a practiced hand, he lit the lantern next to the bed. The sun had long since set, and darkness had fallen over the room. Lighting a single corner made it feel as if the whole manor had sprung back to life.
His Highness called my name, and I forced myself to look up and meet his gaze. With a soft chuckle, he passed on a surprising bit of news. “For your information, my father—His Majesty the King—should be back on his feet soon.”
With a gasp, I sprang off the bed. “Truly?”
“Yes. His health has been steadily improving, and given the current state of things, he’s determined not to lie sick in bed forever. I plan to act as his aide, but I’ll have to leave the capital for a bit after he takes the throne again.”
“What?” My heart skipped a beat. “But...why? Where are you going?”
In the heat of the moment, I blurted out that I would accompany him.
His Highness shot me a rueful smile, then pacified me with a shake of his head. “This whole scandal has had widespread repercussions. We can leave the matter of trade with Maldura for later, but our ties to the Miseral Dukedom have to be strengthened. It’s best that I be the one to go.”
Duke Odin was considered the main culprit in the recent scandal—in the series of incidents that had shaken the kingdom. I’d heard he was recently stripped of his peerage, though, so perhaps I ought to be calling him the “former duke.” Regardless, he’d been closely related to the Miseral Dukedom. His sister, the queen, was still under house arrest. House Odin had also presided over Kelk Harbor, Sauslind’s western border, and thus enjoyed a thriving trade relationship with the maritime nation of the Miseral Dukedom.