“—ge. Paige,” Westalia said, but the woman just scowled and didn’t reply.
Westalia and Paige were on their way to the office of the Imperial Guard. They were traveling by carriage, and Paige seemed to be lost in thought.
Paige’s injuries had healed quickly, and she was able to regain full mobility two weeks after the escape from the Reyn mansion. She was remarkably resilient, but there was now an infection in her eye, so the eye patch remained in place. Westalia had told her repeatedly not to rub it, no matter how much it itched, but Paige hadn’t listened, so bacteria had gotten into the wound. Westalia hoped the swelling would go down soon and that it wouldn’t permanently affect Paige’s eyesight.
“Paige, are you listening?” Westalia asked.
“Oh, sorry,” Paige said, jolting back to reality. “I was just thinking. Were you saying something about not telling the crown prince you’d secretly enrolled in cooking classes?”
Westalia was silent. She’d never talked to Paige about the cooking classes. And actually, when had Paige even realized Westalia was attending lessons? She’d recently been disguising herself as a commoner in order to attend cooking lessons so she could surprise Leonardo and Paige, but after turning ingredients into charcoal on the first day, scorching the teacher’s hair on the second day, and breaking the frying pan on the third day, she’d finally been banned from the class.
“—believe it?!”
“Huh? What?”
“They forced me to withdraw! Can you believe it?!” Westalia cried, covering her flushed face with her hands. “Why do I fail every single time?! I must have been forsaken by the goddess of cooking. But I’m not going to give up!”
Westalia pouted and looked out the window of the carriage. Paige’s shoulders began to shake with laughter.
“You’re just too much sometimes,” Paige got out between laughs. “A forced resignation. Oh man, you’re going to make me cry.” She wiped at the tears that had gathered in the corners of her eyes.
Westalia would normally lob a barbed comment back at Paige for her teasing, but this time she was just relieved to see her friend smiling.
“You finally laughed,” Westalia said.
“What?”
“You’ve had a really angry look on your face for a while.”
Paige looked down, ashamed. “Thank you, Westalia. Talking to you makes worrying feel ridiculous.”
“Is that your way of saying that my worries are inconsequential and ridiculous?” Westalia asked, crossing her legs and jabbing her pointer finger at Paige.
Paige shook her head. “Not at all. I was just thinking again about how glad I am that I met you.”
“Wh-What’s with this all of a sudden?!” Westalia stuttered, shocked by the sincere words coming from her usually cocky friend. Westalia leaned back in her seat, a slight flush coming to her cheeks. She certainly wasn’t dissatisfied with the compliment.
I feel like she stole one of my lines, Westalia thought. For her—someone who’d lost everything before, thrown to the curb with only her tattered body and heart to rely on—it was hard to put into words just how reassuring Paige’s presence in her life had continued to be.
The beautiful streets of the capital rolled by outside the carriage window. Westalia listened to the clopping of the horses’ hooves against the cobblestones for a few moments.
“We’ll be arriving at the headquarters for the Imperial Guard soon,” Westalia said. “There should be someone there who knew your father.”
Paige said nothing, only clenching her fists.
The purpose of their visit today was to gain information about the corruption case involving Gasparo Lanchester. When Paige’s father had talked to her about it, the only thing he’d ever say was that it was a false accusation, or that Tiberio Reyn had framed him, so Paige didn’t have a very good grasp of what had happened.
So Westalia had decided to look into proving Gasparo’s innocence herself. Besides, if what had happened to Gasparo had anything to do with Elizabeth Pink, then it could be a critical card to have in hand when she exposed Tiberio.
“We’ll resolve any of your father’s last regrets,” Westalia said.
“Do you really think that can be done?” Paige asked.
“It’s not a matter of can or can’t. We will.” That was how Westalia always carved out her future. She believed that no matter how reckless a course of action was, if she had the resolute determination to do it, then she would succeed.
Paige’s vision swam and her shoulders shook slightly. She rarely spoke weakly, but her voice was somber now as she spoke. “I’ve always regretted it. I did everything wrong. If only I had never left my parents, if only I had been there for them, then it wouldn’t have ended so badly. I think I just used paying off the debt as an excuse, but really I wanted to get away from dad, who was growing weaker, and mom, who was so sick. I didn’t become a slave for my parents; I just did it to run away.”
“You’re wrong, Paige.”
“What?”
“We all have only so many choices at any given time. You were under so much stress and you just made the best choice you could in the moment. More to the point, it was really the only choice you had. No matter how it turned out, it doesn’t mean you were wrong. You’re only human. You’re allowed to turn away. You’re allowed to run away. I could never think that was wrong.” Tears were slowly gathering in Westalia’s eyes. Paige had been fighting in that dark hell for so long. Who could blame her for the choice she had made? If anyone did, Westalia would beat them up.
Daily life was made up of a series of choices, but it didn’t always turn out the way one wanted it to. Still, no one knew what the right answer was at any given time, and people could only make the choice that felt right in the moment. No one could change what had already happened anyway, so why not let go of the regrets and sadness, so your heart could feel a bit lighter?
“I like who you are now, Paige. I love you. I could never look down on any of the choices you’ve made or the path you’ve walked up till now. It’s made you who you are. I think it was all...necessary.”
Tears overflowed from Paige’s eyes, even from behind the eye patch. Westalia started crying in earnest too. They hugged each other silently.
“I was thinking about Tiberio,” Paige said. “He did such terrible things to me and my family, and yet he remains alive and well. I hate it. I spend every moment of my life wanting to kill him. I don’t know what to do with this rage. It has nowhere to go...”
So thoughts of Tiberio were what had put such a grim expression on Paige’s face earlier. Westalia, too, had once been in the depths of despair, having spent her young years in solitude, confined in a royal villa, betrayed by her best friend and rewarded with a poisoned cup, and finally abused by the very people she had thought she was protecting. But Paige’s pain was unimaginable.
“I know how you feel. I felt the same way. But no matter how much we hate them, those people don’t think about us one bit and just blithely live their lives. When I think about that, I feel stupid for spending my precious time and energy on someone I hate.”
“That...is a good way of thinking about it.”
Being angry and full of regrets wouldn’t change reality, but that didn’t mean it was easy to stop worrying about things. Westalia, who’d struggled and suffered so much in her life, knew that very well, but she still wanted to relieve Paige’s suffering and make her feel better, even if just a little bit.
“So you just keep your eye on what you need to do. What is it that you really want to do right now?” Westalia asked.
“I want to devote myself to being the loyal knight of the future empress of this country—Westalia Lejainne.”
Westalia smiled elegantly at Paige. “Well then, for now, just try your hardest to do just that. I will make you laugh as often as I can so that your heart will feel a little lighter.”
Westalia abruptly put her hands on either side of Paige’s face, and the other woman nodded back at her with a teary smile.