He'll Come Crawling Back Soon
"Kyle. Today's schedule..."
Only after the words had left her lips at the breakfast table did Elysee remember that no one stood behind her. Every servant in the dining hall lowered their eyes at once. Their backs stiffened, a silent admission that they had failed to pretend they hadn't heard.
"...Take it away. I have no appetite."
The untouched plate was removed.
For ten years, her morning routine had been settled by simply speaking to the presence at her back. Sword training at this hour, meetings with retainers at that hour, the exact route of travel. The answer had always been the same. Yes. One word, and the day turned smoothly on its axis.
Today the day refused to turn.
He will come crawling back soon.
Elysee reached that conclusion as she sat in the chair of her office. He was a commoner. He had nowhere to go. The northern winter froze anyone without distinction, and the southerners would fleece a man the moment they heard a northern accent. Once his few silver coins ran out, he would understand how lavish the grand ducal annex had been, how generous the punctual salary, how excessive the simple duty of standing behind her.
Three days. Five at the most. When he returned to beg, she could decide then whether to take him back.
Of course she would not accept him easily. She would make him kneel. She would ensure he could never do anything like this again, firmly...
The quill above the documents dried without leaving a single stroke. Firmly, how exactly? Should she humiliate him even more? The man who had packed his bag that night after hearing those words.
Elysee set the quill down. She opened the desk drawer. The wolf fang strung on a leather cord lay exactly where she had left it yesterday. She reached out, then stopped before her fingers touched it. If she picked it up, her hand would tremble again.
The grand duke's daughter does not tremble. That was what she had been taught.
At noon Rolf came to report.
"We caught up with him on the road last night, Your Highness, but we could not bring him back."
"Six knights and the head butler went out, and you returned empty-handed?"
"We attempted to bind him with the contract clauses, but he evaded every one. The handover protocol, the effective date of resignation, the penalty clauses. He had memorized the entire contract."
"...And?"
"I offered conditions. Triple the salary, private quarters in the main castle. And formal knighthood."
The hand lifting the teacup froze.
"Knighthood?"
"Yes. I promised recommendation for formal investiture under the grand ducal name. He refused."
"What authority do you have to promise investiture..."
"Since I possess none, it was merely a promise." Rolf stopped there. Then, like the old fox he was, he wrapped the blade in the softest cloth and offered it. "However, he asked me something. Why it had not been possible three years ago."
The teacup struck its saucer with a sharp ring.
"...You told him that?"
"Not I. He already knew. He said he overheard it in the corridor. Investiture is denied. Do not record the reason. Those two sentences."
So he had heard. He had been standing outside that door. For three years he had carried those two sentences while standing at her back.
"Your Highness. May this humble servant offer one presumptuous word?"
"...Speak."
"The price of holding him rises every year. Three years ago a single letter of recommendation would have sufficed. Yesterday even triple salary was not enough. Next year..." Rolf bowed deeply. "Even if you offered the entire North, it may not be enough."
She went to the training grounds in the afternoon.
"Your Highness, who shall be your sparring partner today..." The attendant knight's voice trailed off.
Sparring partner. That, too, had been fixed for ten years. In the beginning the sword instructors had faced her. From the year she turned fifteen, it had been Kyle. The reason was simple. The instructors had never tried to defeat the grand duke's daughter, and therefore had been useless. Kyle had been different. He had met her blade from exactly half a step above her. A place where it seemed she might win, seemed she might win, yet never did. When her temper flared and her sword grew fierce, the wall grew exactly as solid as her fury. People said she had become the youngest Aura User thanks to talent, but Elysee knew the truth. It was because she had spent ten years hammering against that wall.
Come to think of it, it was strange. How could a permanent knight, a commoner who had begun as an apprentice, receive an Aura User's sword from half a step above?
"...Your Highness?"
"Today I will train alone. Set up the wooden dummy."
The wooden dummy did not fight back. It never grew angry. It never grew harder. After thirty exchanges the dummy's head flew off, and because it felt like her own neck, Elysee threw her sword. The attendant knight picked up the fallen blade and stood there, not knowing what to do. The hands that had cleaned that sword for ten years were elsewhere. Even the angle at which it was sheathed was different.
The sight of such details still haunting her was unbearable. Elysee left the training grounds.
That night a letter arrived from the crown prince. The handwriting was sleek and refined.
I shall overlook the disturbance at the banquet. I have long heard that the North maintains free-spirited customs. Still, until the wedding, let us both strive so that no unsavory rumors arise.
— Crown Prince
One line after another was silk, yet needles hid beneath the silk. Elysee burned the letter in a candle flame. Needles could be ignored. Yet while the final line turned to ash, something cold crawled down her spine. The things that caught the crown prince's interest usually had short lifespans.
She had to find him quickly. Find him, and then... what she would do still refused to come to her.
Around midnight Elysee sat at her desk and unfolded a sheet of letter paper. She had meant to write a formal notice bearing the grand ducal seal for the search. Instead the pen moved on its own and wrote other words.
To Kyle.
After the first line, there was no second. What could she possibly write? Come back? Orders no longer reached him. I'm sorry? An apology on paper was too cheap. Do you remember those roasted chestnuts? ...That was cowardly. It was a cheap trick to repay ten years of debt with a handful of chestnuts.
Five sheets of letter paper were crumpled and discarded. On the sixth, only one line remained.
To Kyle.
She stared at those five syllables for a long time, then burned even that in the candle flame. She did not even deserve to write it. She had never once called his name, yet here she was stealing the chance to do so on paper.
On sleepless nights the same memory always returned.
It had been the winter she was twelve. The day her heir lessons had dragged on for six full hours. Imperial studies, family history, etiquette, swordsmanship. Every time young Elysee's head drooped with drowsiness, the tutor's switch struck the desk. The grand duke's heir does not doze.
That night Elysee hid behind the greenhouse at the edge of the garden and cried. No one must see her tears. The grand duke's heir was not permitted to cry.
When the sound of footsteps in snow reached her, Elysee held her breath. A boy her age wearing apprentice clothes stood there holding an armful of firewood. The orphan apprentice who had entered the household that year. His round eyes widened. He had seen her. Tomorrow the entire castle would know. That the grand duke's daughter had been sobbing behind the greenhouse. It would reach her father's ears, the tutors would whisper...
The boy set the firewood down, removed his outer apprentice robe, and spread it over the snow-covered stone steps.
"Please sit here. If you stand on the snow, your feet will freeze and it will show when you walk later."
"...What?"
"I did not see you crying. I only came to carry firewood."
The boy truly carried firewood. He walked back and forth between the greenhouse and the shed several times, never once looking in her direction. Only when he set down the last load did he leave something beside the stone steps. A handful of roasted chestnuts, still warm, clearly stolen from the kitchen.
Elysee sat there until she had eaten every chestnut. By then her tears had stopped. He was the first person who had seen a child who was not allowed to cry and pretended he had seen nothing.
The next day she searched the apprentice roster and found the name. Kyle. No surname.
The following winter the roasted chestnuts were there again. On days when heir lessons ran long, if she went behind the greenhouse she would find a paper-wrapped bundle of chestnuts on the stone steps. The winter after that. And the one after that. Neither of them ever spoke of it. Elysee ate them as if she did not know, and Kyle left them as if he did not know.
Last winter had been the final time. She had not known it would be the last. It was the winter betrothal talks had begun. She had been too busy to visit the greenhouse, and the chestnuts must have grown cold and been buried in snow.
This winter there would be nothing behind the greenhouse.
When that thought came, Elysee realized for the first time that in ten years she had never once said thank you. Not for the chestnuts, not for the robe, not for the sword that stayed half a step above hers, not for the ten years at her back.
What had she given him instead?
On her sixteenth birthday she had left him standing outside the banquet hall the entire evening. A commoner inside the hall would lower the tone. During the hunting season when torrential rain fell, she had made him stand in the downpour for three hours because there was only one umbrella. She had even mocked him, saying it was pathetic that he never caught a cold. After tea parties she had sent the leftover sweets through a servant. The scraps. She had believed that was kindness. She had truly believed it.
And his name. She had never once spoken it in ten years. She had been afraid that if she did, it would be noticed. That she had searched the roster. That she still remembered the warmth of those chestnuts. That on nights when the presence behind her was missing, her sleep grew shallow. All of it.
So she had called him you. Hey.Escort. To the boy who had spread his robe for her, she had said someone like you. To the hand that had left the chestnuts, she had treated him like something to be discarded when worn out.
Elysee stared at the ceiling in the darkness. Who had discarded whom?
The knock came at dawn.
"Your Highness. It is Walter. The tracking party has returned."
Elysee opened the door wearing only her robe. Walter knelt on one knee. He looked as if he had ridden through the night.
"Did you find him?"
"...We confirmed his trail as far as Trent. He joined a merchant caravan heading south as an escort and departed by carriage at dawn yesterday."
"Trent..."
"Yes. The border. Kyle has... crossed out of northern territory."
"............"
"There is one more thing to report. When we tried to stop him on the road, Raimund drew his sword."
Elysee's eyes narrowed.
"Was anyone hurt?"
"No one was injured. That is the problem."
"What do you mean?"
"Raimund drew his blade and charged, but in the next instant he was sitting in the snow. The sword was in Kyle's hand. I have seen swords my entire life, yet... I did not see how he did it. Six of us were watching, and none of us saw it."
Elysee recalled the wall half a step above her. The wall that seemed she might overcome, seemed she might overcome, yet never yielded. The wall that had grown only as hard as her rising anger. The youngest Aura User had hammered against it for ten years and never broken through. Had that truly been the wall's full extent?
Did I not even know his sword?
"...I understand. You may withdraw."
The border. The northern grand duke's authority was absolute within northern lands. Beyond the border it was different. A knight order crossing without warrant was a provocation against the imperial family, and the man who would soon become master of that family was her fiancé. He had left the land where her hand could reach.
"...What is the caravan's destination?"
"It travels the merchant routes across the South, so it is difficult to pinpoint. And, Your Highness, one more report."
Walter hesitated. It was not the silence of wondering whether to speak, but the silence of a man who knew the words would cause pain no matter how he delivered them.
"Speak."
"The tracking party observed him from a distance on the road. He was riding in the luggage compartment of a carriage. However..."
"However?"
"He never once looked back. Not even on the hill where the border post was visible. Not until the end."
Elysee remained silent for a long time. Then, just before she closed the door, Walter heard it. The voice that had only ever given commands spoke something that was not a command for the first time.
"...I should have given him at least one reason to look back."