🐺🐺🐺
DANIEL came in later, just as Sara was in the middle of reading a book about abilities.
“Good morning, Hermine. His Highness is all ready, so would you be kind enough to bring him his tea again today?”
“Yes, of course. Oh! That’s right. Is everything ready, Claire?”
“Yep, it’s perfect!”
Sara looked back and saw Claire smiling and giving her the “okay” hand sign. On the table in front of her were the usual tea utensils, along with a glass bowl filled with cut-up fruit.
The fruit tea Sara always drank before bed was not suitable for daytime, so she decided to make a different one for Richard. She was good at brewing tea leaves, but she wasn’t used to making tea by steeping fruit in hot water.
She hoped she could prepare the drink in front of him—with pointers from Claire—and then give him a cup of tea that would provide him energy to carry on with his work for the day.
I hope it will make him happy… Well, maybe I can’t hope for that much…
Claire had told her that Richard had never tried anything presented to him by someone other than a servant at the villa. Sara should probably just be grateful if he didn’t throw up his guard and simply accepted the tea she offered him.
Even so, Sara walked with a spring in her step as she loaded everything onto the trolley and rolled it to Richard’s study. She almost even started humming to herself, but she knew that wasn’t very ladylike, so she resisted the urge.
“Good morning, Your Highness,” said Sara, knocking at the study door. “It’s Hermine.”
His reply came immediately.
“Yes, good morning. Come in.”
Sara felt even more elated when she heard him speaking in a normal tone of voice—it was so different from the clearly annoyed one he had used at the start of their marriage.
Today’s shaping up to be a good day! Huh?
Just as Sara buoyantly crossed the threshold into the study, her nose was hit with something so smelly she blinked in surprise.
Richard’s study was thoroughly cleaned every day, and Richard decorated the walls with the handmade scented sachets the queen mother regularly gave him, so there was always a faint but nice smell in there. But today, a pungent stink wafted around the room from seemingly nowhere.
Sara uneasily looked around for the source of the truly awful smell.
Is this…that animal smell again? There’s another odor mixed in, too…
“What’s wrong?”
Sara jumped and quickly looked forward.
Richard, who was again wearing the mask that only exposed the lower half of his face, looked at her curiously—or so it seemed, at least. From what she could see, he still looked slightly groggy after waking up, but it didn’t seem like there was anything different about him.
“No, it’s nothing…”
“Then please prepare the tea. Is that fruit for eating?”
“Oh, no. Today I was thinking of preparing a fruit tea, with Claire’s help… Unless you’d like to eat some of them?”
“I would. Just a few. Could I have two lunes?”
“Of course.”
Lunes were glossy, emerald-green fruits roughly a thumb’s width in diameter. The thin outer skin was peeled before eating. If you cut the skin at the tip with a knife, you could easily peel off the rest.
Sara borrowed the knife from Claire, picked two of the largest and prettiest lunes from the bunch, and began peeling them.
“I’ll bring them to you.”
Sara put the peeled lunes on a plate, gathered up a fork, and walked over to the desk—but then she froze.
The smell got stronger…?!
The animal smell was unlike that of a normal cat or dog, and the other odor was like iron—it was the stench of blood.
She tightly gripped the plate, which had been on the verge of falling to the floor. Her eyes widened as she stared at the source of the smell—Richard.
Likely confused at why she had stopped in her tracks with the plate in her hands, the prince stopped writing and looked up.
“…What’s the matter?”
His hair had rustled slightly at the movement—the smell of blood became stronger.
“Y-Your Highness!”
“Wh-What is it?!”
“Are you…injured somewhere?” she asked daringly.
But he just looked back at her with a stunned look of surprise.
“Am I injured…?”
It certainly didn’t seem so, or that something was physically wrong with him, but Sara trusted her nose and her intuition.
She put down the plate of lunes on the desk and continued looking at Richard, both hands clasped over her chest.
“I’m not injured anywhere… Why would you ask that all of a sudden?”
“It’s just… I smell blood coming off you, Your Highness.”
“What…?”
Sara could tell that, behind his mask, Richard’s eyes had widened as far as they could go.
“And there’s an animal smell, too… Were you attacked by a wild animal or someth—”
BANG!
The desk made a terrible noise as Richard slammed it and got to his feet. Sara hadn’t even been able to finish the question.
The force of the impact had jostled the plate. The lunes rolled off the plate and onto the desk, then fell and squashed onto the floor. Book and documents that been precariously stacked on the desk had slipped off, too, the pages flapping noisily on their way down.
Sara couldn’t utter a word. Richard’s lips were twisted in anger, his canines visible as he gnashed his teeth.
Maybe he was right to always wear a mask…
Sara was sure that the gaze he was fixing on her was full of loathing and fury.
“Your…Highness…?”
“Get out.”
“I-I’m—so sorry—I said too mu—”
“If you know that, then get out!”
His voice was like a growl.
No…he really growled.
The air in the study shifted. Sara felt goose bumps blooming across her skin, like she had been seized by a chill.
The smell of the beast grew thicker.
It was hard to breathe. Without knowing why, she felt tears spring to her eyes.
What’s…going on?
She couldn’t say anything.
Richard’s hands had not moved from where they had pounded the desk. They began to tremble—the veins on the back of his hands started bulging. His head was slumped forward, his breath coming out in rough wheezes. Claire, who had been as shell-shocked as Sara, now ran forward and pulled at Sara’s arm.
“Hermine! This way! Daniel…!” she cried in the direction of the door.
But Daniel, who seemed to have sensed that something was amiss, was already barging into the study.
The next thing Sara knew, she was floating in the air, drifting toward Daniel. He had used his ability to pull her away from Richard.
Sara’s mind was totally blank. As Daniel held her protectively, her lips began to tremble.
“D-Daniel…”
“This way!”
Before she even had the chance to respond, Daniel dashed out of the study with Sara in his arms. He continued running through the foyer and out to the hallway.
It was there that Sara was finally able to break through the suffocating feeling in her chest. She slumped down on the floor and coughed.
“I-I’m sorry. Daniel, back there—”
“Please… Please don’t say anything.”
When she heard the entreaty in Daniel’s voice, Sara swallowed her words.
Daniel’s uniform, which was always so crisp and smart, was now crumpled and disheveled. Even his hair was ruffled.
He looked down at her with pain in his eyes and started helping her up.
“His Highness has been suffering for a long time… I understand that you want to ask all sorts of questions, but right now…”
Unable to say anything else, Sara closed her mouth.
When she shut her eyes, what came to her mind was not the low roar Richard had uttered but, for some reason, the image of the crushed lunes on the floor.
✦ ✦ ✦
🐺🐺🐺
IT was very late at night.
She heard a low voice, followed by the sound of a closet being opened and closed. Sara slipped out of bed.
Putting on only her slippers and leaving her bedroom, she saw Claire standing in the middle of the living room, as if she had been waiting for her.
It was strange seeing Claire here this late—normally she would go back to her own room at night.
“Claire…”
“Princess Hermine… I’m very sorry, but I’ve been told not to let you leave.”
“I understand… His Highness is going out, isn’t he? I want to tell him good night,” said Sara in a firm voice.
Claire grimaced. But she didn’t seem displeased at Sara’s words—rather, she looked at her with pity, as if she were pained by her determination.
“I don’t recommend doing that.”
“I know. But I haven’t wished him good night yet tonight. That’s all I’ll say.”
“……”
Faced with this refusal to back down, Claire eventually caved and dressed Sara in only a dressing gown.
Sara thanked her and, after pausing at the door for just a moment, went out into the foyer when she heard the door to the study open.
Richard stepped out of his study and into the dim light of the foyer. When Sara saw him, tears spilled from the outer corners of her eyes.
He wore black clothes and a mask that covered his entire face. His breath seemed to catch when he first saw her standing there. After a stretch of silence, she heard his muffled voice.
“Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know… When I saw you there, I just started crying for some reason.”
“……”
“…Good night, Your Highness. I eagerly await your return.”
Having accomplished her goal, Sara had just been about to return to her room when he called out to her.
“You…”
When she looked back, she saw Richard standing there, both hands clenched into tight fists.
“…You’ve already realized, haven’t you?”
Sara didn’t respond.
“…I will call you to my room tomorrow night. Don’t leave your room until then.”
If it were any other time, he would have told her in a soft voice, “Please don’t leave.” Now, however, his tone was so commanding that a chill of sadness spread through Sara’s chest.
But it was easy to see that he was hurting terribly, too. Sara meekly nodded and curtsied.
“…I understand.”
Richard didn’t say anything in return. He left with a swish of his coattails, and Sara caught a whiff of a scented sachet coming off him.