More Important Than Marriage
The moment I opened my eyes, I met the gaze of a very grim-faced Cassion.
"Your Highness? What are you doing here?"
"I could see the carriage sitting there, but you never came in, so I wondered if something had happened."
Somewhere along the way, Cassion had started worrying about me.
"Just one moment, Your Highness."
At my beckoning, he stepped closer to the carriage. Cassion was still so small that the only thing visible above the window line was the tuft of his spiky hair. Left with no choice, I leaned out.
"Your Highness, did you come down because you're worried Julia might torment me?"
Gripping the window frame, I whispered the words low in case anyone overheard. Cassion shook his head. Scowling to boot, he grumbled,
"Who said anything about worrying? Your carriage is blocking the road and it's an eyesore. I came to tell you to move it, and fast."
What a terrible liar.
"You can see they're clearing the road, can't you? We can't leave until they're finished."
Cassion's gaze swung between Holsman, hard at work trimming the way clear, and me with my chin propped on the windowsill.
"Looks like it'll be a while yet," he said, his voice trailing off oddly at the end.
"What's the matter, disappointed? Wanted to play with me and now you can't?"
"Don't talk nonsense. Who'd play with you? I have never played with you. Not once."
A vehement denial always sounds like an emphatic yes.
"But talking with me right now counts as playing, doesn't it?"
"Th-this counts as playing?"
Cassion stammered the question, looking genuinely shaken. You'd think play were some grand, momentous thing. No — surely not. Play was just play... Could it be?
Cassion's childhood flashed through my mind unbidden. Surely not. Surely.
"Your Highness, what exactly do you think playing is?"
"You think I don't know what playing is? Of course I know what playing is!"
"Then what is it?"
"Hide-and-seek, war games..."
"And have you actually played them?"
Cassion's eyes snapped up in a glare, his mouth trembling at the corners. So he never had played them — he simply hated admitting it.
Oh, you poor thing.
Eleven years old, and he had never once played properly. And I had been all set to up and marry him.
I had no conscience at all back then.
I allowed myself a brief moment of self-reflection, then checked the time. Fortunately, nothing urgent awaited me today.
I had even come away with a gift from Karman. Perhaps it was time, just this once, to indulge my conscience.
"Tayo, Your Highness. Let's go out and play."
For all that I was the one proposing it, I had lived every bit as far from play as he had. The only friend I'd ever had was Bella, and the most I'd ever managed with her was a little playing house.
Not that I could play house with Cassion.
I might have been able to talk my way through it, but he would likely have recoiled in horror.
While I was still pondering what on earth one did to play with Cassion, he climbed into the carriage.
"Your Highness, over here, please."
I patted the seat beside me, addressing Cassion, who had been about to take the seat facing mine.
"Why?"
"Because you get motion sickness sitting backward."
Even with that perfectly clear explanation, he only gaped at me blankly. In the end, I was the one who moved. I reached out, took his arm, and pulled — and Cassion, caught off guard, came along with hardly any resistance at all.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" Cassion bristled.
"That was rudeness with a side of consideration. Sorry about that, and you can skip the thank-you. Holsman, let's go!"
Before he could open his mouth again, I rapped on the driver's window. The four horses gave a short whinny and shot straight ahead.
The sudden launch pitched my body sideways — whereupon my phenomenal reflexes kicked in, and my arm shot out. Cassion, lurching just as violently, toppled with a thump straight into my embrace.
"Oh dear, how rude of me again. Or was it Your Highness's fault this time?"
Somehow we had ended up in a full embrace. I could feel Cassion's body going rigid as a board inside my arms.
"M-m-m... move. Move aside."
I had braced for him to explode at me, but instead he kept his head ducked low and murmured it, barely audible. The nape of his neck was scarlet.
All I'd done was catch him so he wouldn't get hurt, yet somehow the awkwardness proved contagious. Deliberately stiffening my voice, I straightened us both out.
"Sit up properly, please."
I wedged cushions in snugly against his sides so he couldn't pitch over again, then drew back to put a proper distance between us. His embarrassment had warmed me right along with him; I opened the window and fanned my flushed cheeks with my hand.
That day, I had genuinely tried to play like an actual child — and my plan failed in spectacular fashion.
Because Cassion's condition took a sudden, steep turn for the worse.
I fed him the painkiller Rebert had on hand as a stopgap, entrusted him to Flac's care, and returned to the estate. I would have liked to stay at his side through the night, but since my visit to the palace was on the official record, I had no choice but to leave one for my departure as well.
His bloodless white face haunted me the entire ride home. Turning my back on Cassion at the palace was getting harder every time.
Once home, I sat down with Loomdrax to go over the running of Phoenix Bank, and let Cho know I'd found a buyer for our timber. By the time all of that was done, dinnertime was long past.
Will Cassion be all right?
The image of him crumpling as though seized by a convulsion, drenched in cold sweat, flickered before my eyes.
Marriage matters, certainly — but nothing matters more than a person.
Cassion was my benefactor. In my single-minded drive to become head of the family, had I been leaving him to fend for himself? No — clearly, curing Cassion's illness had to come first.
"But you can't cure a disease you haven't even named!"
Even Doctor Dallas, famed throughout the kingdom for his skill, hadn't managed to identify what ailed Cassion. I'd had Cho pull together information on rare diseases, but nothing on record matched his symptoms.
His symptoms really are impossible to pin down.
One day he collapsed burning with fever; another, he coughed up blood; today, he shook with chills.
Half-mad with frustration, I made for the study and started digging through the medical texts. It was the medical corner I'd assembled for Rebert's sake, and it was still immaculate.
I suppose Rebert hasn't had a spare moment to read, either.
I'd heard he was compounding medicines and running experiments around the clock. I piled the medical books into a small mountain on the long table and began to read, and whenever I found a disease whose described symptoms resembled Cassion's, I copied its name down onto paper.
The list simply kept growing longer. And so I spent two days shut up in the study.
"My lady, you're going to collapse at this rate."
I ate my meals in the study and catnapped in the study. I buried myself in the books like a student on the eve of a decisive exam — and Cassion's illness stayed wrapped in fog.
It was a mistake from the very start, a laywoman like me setting out to find his diagnosis.
But I had watched Cassion suffer any number of times, had seen him collapse just two days ago — how was I supposed to sit on my hands?
I shut the book and sighed. Jenice came over and draped a blanket around my shoulders, nagging away as she gathered the books I'd finished and returned them to their shelves.
Her scolding reached me as though from a great distance. I pressed my fingertips into my gritty, aching eyes, fighting to stay conscious, and reached for a new book — and the world went blurry.
"Jenice, something's wrong with me."
"My lady? What is it?"
I rose from my chair and lifted my head. Jenice's figure had gone hazy. My head spun — and in the very instant I registered the dizziness, my body toppled backward.
"My lady!"
Jenice shrieked and flew toward me. With a tremendous clatter, the world upended. I wanted to say, Jenice, I'm fine, but no sound would come.
Blink. Blink. Darkness crept slowly across my vision. And in that moment, I saw the ceiling of the study for the very first time in my life. With perfect, terrible clarity.
"...You really have been pushing yourself, my lady. You've always been diligent, but these past couple of months, you've been living as though you'd crammed two days into every one."
"Still, she slept well enough, didn't she? Ate her meals properly, too."
"That's right, Ms. Cho. She ate well and she slept well — until these past few days, anyway. Lately she'd tell me she was turning in for the night, then get back up the moment it was dark and keep scribbling away at something. And these last two days, she didn't sleep a wink at all."
It was Cho and Jenice's voices I was hearing. At first they reached me muffled and indistinct, but as time passed they sharpened until every word rang clear. After that, I could even feel the weight of everyone's gazes settling on my face.
No one else was speaking, but I sensed several other presences in the room besides Cho and Jenice.
"Ah — from now on, pl-please... tell me first."
The voice, drowned in tears, belonged to Rebert.
"I understand, Rebert. But more importantly — what did you feed our lady? Why won't she wake up?"
When Jenice rebuked him, I could practically feel Rebert shrinking where he stood. I ought to have told her to go a little easier on him, but for all my crystal-clear consciousness, the words refused to come.
Though I had, incidentally, just learned something surprising: Jenice knew my every move. Even the things I did after everyone believed I'd gone to bed.
How does she know all that?
I had always wondered how Jenice managed to be so impossibly well informed.
But why am I still so drowsy? I wish somebody would just wake me up.
There was the naval battle, the tasks to settle before the family council, the investigation into Cassion's illness — my list of duties was a mountain range. Wishing with everything in me that someone would shake me awake, I waved my hand.
"The young lady moved!"
Yes, Jenice, I'm awake.
The trouble is, I can't actually move. Terribly sorry, but would somebody give me a shake?
I stretched out my hand, praying that someone would seize it and pull me up.
"When you're ill, it's only natural to want to be babied a little."
A hand closed firmly around mine. Between the calloused, weathered palm and the knuckles jutting out like knots, I knew at once it was Cho.
Perfect, Auntie. Now pull me up just like that!
"When I was a child and I was sick, my parents used to hold my hand like this. Being ill all on your own is a lonely thing, you see. This just lets you feel that someone is there beside you."
But contrary to all my hopes, Cho simply settled down beside me, explaining all of this to someone else. The mattress dipped toward her, and my body rolled along with it.
"Look at that. She's come looking for human warmth. She puts on such a brave face and carries on as though nothing could touch her — but Diana longs for the comfort of another person, too."
My body had listed only because her weight was bearing down on the mattress — and Cho came out with that fanciful interpretation of it! The delusion that I was seizing on my illness to act spoiled!
"Our young lady has been longing for someone's embrace?" Jenice asked, thunderstruck.