The Hero’s Name
Leaving at dawn, Sylvia had slipped out of the duke’s mansion before the sun was even up, as if she were running away.
The road to the Imperial Palace was packed even at that hour, clogged with people because of the dispatch. Not only those leaving on the mission, but also the crowds come to see them off lined the capital’s alleyways, lending the whole thing the air of a festival.
Someone who recognized the crest on the carriage Sylvia rode in cried out, “It’s a carriage from the Appleton ducal house!” The cheers that followed rang so loud in her ears that Sylvia had to wince and close her eyes for a moment.
“Amazing,” Alicia said, sounding freshly impressed as she held Sylvia’s luggage and peered through the curtained crack in the window. The guards saluted Sylvia’s carriage, and people craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the mage’s face through the glass.
Sylvia fought back her drowsiness and deliberately blinked her eyes wide.
“They’re not really cheering for me anyway. They’re cheering for our family.”
“Still, if His Grace Heston’s name can draw this much attention, there must definitely be people who remember you too. You were right there beside him the whole time, after all.”
“Who would remember that? Even you don’t remember which Supporter it was who accompanied Sir Ruelion when he recovered the Holy Relic twenty-eight years ago.”
“The one whose name started with S... no, wait, was it T...?”
Amused by Alicia scrunching up her face and trying hard to recall it, Sylvia snorted and turned her gaze back outside.
So Heston really did become a hero.
It had already been five months since the Holy Relic had been recovered, and though even the Lockwood carriage wasn’t part of this procession, people kept chanting Heston’s name over and over, making sure everyone knew they had not forgotten their hero.
But just as Sylvia had said, not a single person spoke her name. In fact, when they spotted the Appleton carriage, someone even shouted the name of Sylvia’s older brother, Erhart. As if Erhart weren’t probably sleeping soundly right now, locked away in the icy castle in the north.
Maybe Father was right after all.
That Heston had become a hero and was now engaged to the princess, while she was nothing at all. That a Supporter was, in the end, nothing at all. She hadn’t wanted to admit that to herself like this.
The coldness of dawn was like bitterness, and she couldn’t seem to stop herself from chewing over those words.
Because the knights’ order at the end of the long procession did not allow servants from the family to enter, Sylvia had to part with Alicia at the gate. Carriages for the knights and Supporters who had gathered for the dispatch were lined up at the entrance, and they had to get out quickly under the guards’ direction.
Alicia set the luggage down and, even in that brief moment, pulled Sylvia into a tight hug.
“Come back safely!”
“It’s not like I’m going somewhere dangerous. Still, thanks.”
Alicia rubbed her face against Sylvia’s shoulder, which carried a faint floral scent, then stepped away. Sylvia waved to her, took up her luggage, and followed the guards inside. Familiar faces nodded greetings to her as she passed.
Sylvia dropped off her bags, straightened her uniform, and was about to take her usual place near the front of the line when she caught sight of Princess Catherine and Heston and stopped in her tracks.
Right. It’s not me.
The awkward realization arrived one beat too late.
From a distance, Princess Catherine wore a black mantle trimmed in gold, the kind mages wore, and a large insignia marked her left breast to show that she was leading this knight order.
“Sylvia, is it true? That this time, Owen, not Heston, was assigned to you for the dispatch?”
As if they had all been waiting for her to appear, the Supporters grabbed Sylvia’s arm the moment they saw her. Sylvia nodded, dragging her eyes away from Heston’s face as he listened attentively to the princess.
“Yes.”
“Good heavens, that’s too much no matter how you look at it. He’s not just some Supporter, either—he’s a partner who swore before the divine.”
“Exactly. How much of Heston’s achievements were made possible by Sylvia’s part in them? And they treat you like this?”
The words sounded sweet for a moment, but Sylvia knew perfectly well they were only saying such things because they were fellow Supporters.
She lifted one shoulder in a practiced show of composure.
“Well. That isn’t really for me to judge. I don’t want to complain about the orders from above.”
“But—”
After giving them an awkward smile, Sylvia looked around and, failing to find what she was after, turned back to the other Supporters.
“Have you seen Owen?”
Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen him since the last time he’d been locked up.
She had felt put out by the fact that he had hidden his identity from her, then forgotten all about him the moment she heard he had been thrown out of Heston’s Supporter position.
Patricia, who was usually attentive to the state of affairs within the knights order, seemed not to know much about Owen either, and the first expression that crossed her face was one of regret.
“I don’t know. The last anyone saw of him was when he took Count Bronovich’s carriage after the disciplinary punishment ended. After that, it seems he hasn’t been showing up at the order at all.”
“Well, I suppose he and his family have a lot to talk about.”
Someone said it mockingly. Uncomfortable, Sylvia turned her head to see who had spoken.
The man met her eyes and shrugged as if to say, What are you going to do about it?
It’s not really any of my business, but...
Just as Sylvia was about to turn back forward, it suddenly struck her that Owen had been imprisoned precisely because he had stepped into matters that weren’t his business either.
Should I have taken off even his underwear?
With that thought came the memory of Owen lifting her face and looking at her carefully, his gaze resting on her chin as if he were inspecting some delicate injury.
Her chin felt absurdly itchy all of a sudden, and she raised a hand to scratch at it—only for her palm to sting, sharp as if it had been grazed by something razor-thin.
“Ah!”
Yet when she looked down, her palm was white and clean, as if nothing had happened. So this pain was Owen’s? Until now, there had been no sign of the mana sharing, so Sylvia had thought it was over. In fact, hadn’t that obscene sensation she felt whenever Owen got aroused disappeared these past few days, too?
Of course, she had taken the medicine just in case.
What on earth is he doing with his body for his palm to hurt?
Had he fallen or something? No—if that were it, shouldn’t the place where he’d fallen hurt instead? The thought barely had time to form.
“Miss Appleton.”
A clear voice startled Sylvia. She looked up to find almost everyone staring at her, and at the center of it all was Princess Catherine’s face. Sylvia flinched like a student caught doing something wrong, and Catherine moved smoothly through the crowd to stand before her.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen you like this. When I received your letter saying you weren’t feeling well, I was terribly surprised. Did the gift I sent arrive safely?”
“The gift?”
“The dessert from Lavrang, of course!”
Sylvia searched her memory. Soon enough, she remembered the dessert Rosaline had brought her with both hands full, and how delicious it had been.
What is this? It’s so good!
When Sylvia had licked the cream from her thumb and asked, Rosaline had smiled kindly and said, “Lavrang.” Naturally, she hadn’t said a word about it being a present from the princess. Of course, Rosaline had always been known for forgetting things left and right, so it wasn’t necessarily that she had intentionally failed to mention it, but it was awkward all the same.
“Yes. Of course, I enjoyed it very much.”
She could feel a bead of sweat sliding down her back. But Princess Catherine did not chide Sylvia for looking so obviously forgetful and simply let it pass.
“I heard it from Heston! He said you like sweet things. Apparently, whenever he goes on a dispatch, Heston always makes sure to pack sugar cubes for you. I was so surprised when I heard that. I thought, how close the two of you must be.”
The princess’s face wore a gentle smile, but her words had a sharp edge to them. Why was it that you liked sweets, but Heston was the one packing sugar cubes?
Feeling as though she had committed some offense, Sylvia could not bring herself to answer and kept her mouth shut as if she had bitten into ice. For the first time, she was glad she wasn’t assigned to be Heston’s Supporter on a dispatch with Princess Catherine. If Catherine saw him even washing the water he would use, her painted smile would surely crack apart.
No, even without Princess Catherine, I’ll have to do it with my own hands from now on.
Sylvia tried not to wonder how Heston had ended up telling Catherine that she liked sweets in the first place.
“Heston really does take such good care of the people around him. He does the same for Rosaline, too. I’m practically family to him, so...”
At Sylvia’s voice, which seemed to dig itself into the ground, Princess Catherine set a hand on her shoulder as if to say that was enough.
“Of course, I know all about Heston’s nature. And I know all about Miss Appleton’s nature as well. It’s obvious from how well you’ve supported Heston until now. Which is why I feel especially sorry to be taking Miss Appleton away from him this time. So, I was thinking...”
She linked her arm through Sylvia’s as though they were close. Sylvia hunched in on herself, as if something ominous were approaching. Standing beside the tall princess, Sylvia looked even smaller, barely reaching Catherine’s shoulder.
“Could you tell me the basics of Support magic?”
Sylvia stared at the princess’s cloak embroidered with gold thread and the badge decorated with mana stones pinned to her chest, and only then caught up with the meaning of her words.
“Pardon?”
Was the princess seriously asking her to teach her Support magic? As though she meant to take Sylvia’s place. No—almost as if something like that could be learned in a few minutes and done with casually.
Yes. Even if Sylvia didn’t love Heston, that was clearly insulting. She pulled back and let her expression harden.
“If I may be so bold...”
“I know. But please, indulge me. I want to help Heston even a little, if there’s any chance he might be in danger. Of course, I can use other magic to clear his path, but restoring his stamina and things like that is Support magic. And if I learn it badly enough to end up hurting Heston instead, I won’t use it. So don’t worry—just teach me a few things.”
Sylvia tasted the bitterness of a carefully buried wound striking her at the nape of her neck. A mage can take on the role of a Supporter, but a Supporter can never become a mage.
It was common sense she knew, but had never wanted to acknowledge, and it felt as though that fact had been shoved brutally in front of her face.
Yes, of course she didn’t think Princess Catherine would fail to use the Support magic Sylvia practiced. The specific methods and the situations in which they were used mattered a great deal, but as Catherine had said, simple Support spells could surely be learned quickly enough to help Heston. Maybe not as well as Sylvia, his partner, but it would still be useful.
Besides, Princess Catherine was the imperial treasure, the heir who had inherited the power of a great mage of an emperor. Because she had been born a woman, she stood lower than the princes in the line to the throne, but if she had been born a man, she would already have been the crown prince. That was what everyone said.
And hadn’t she gone personally to the battlefield a year ago to show the empire’s strength to everyone with undeniable force?
So for Heston’s sake, for the empire’s sake, and especially if Sylvia harbored even the slightest respect for the princess, she had to teach her.
She had to do the right thing.
She was wearing this uniform in defiance of her father’s wishes under the pretense of serving the empire.
Some dull ache brushed one side of her chest, but before long she set aside her feelings and, in a dutiful tone, taught Catherine a few Support spells that would be useful.
Princess Catherine listened attentively, and before long her face brightened. She thanked Sylvia, gave her a light hug, and returned to the front.
It was a naïve, clear smile, one meant to please the man she loved.
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