Chapter 46
With all kinds of worries gnawing at her and a report that seemed to have been edited down to the point where more was missing than remained, Sylvia was in the middle of burying herself in the papers when word came that Heston was calling for her.
“Our Sylvia’s a busy girl these days. First Summers, now Heston.”
Ignoring Kalli’s deliberately teasing tone, Sylvia jumped to her feet and hurried out. She needed to get there as fast as she could and lift even a little of the burden from Heston’s shoulders.
Which made sense, really, because these days Heston truly was snowed under. He was dealing with Princess Catherine’s orders while also investigating the fake holy relic and Courtney Merino’s death.
Diligent as ever, Heston would call Sylvia over whenever there was progress and give her a brief report. Sylvia had been a little surprised that the princess, who had always been so cautious, was treating her as one of her inner circle. But it turned out that all of it had been Heston’s decision.
Not long ago, Heston had been explaining what drug Courtney Merino had fed Sylvia and how she had obtained it, when the door had suddenly flown open and Princess Catherine had walked in.
After confirming that Heston was there with Sylvia, she had asked, stiff-faced, that they speak in the adjacent room for a moment. Some of their conversation drifted through the door and reached Sylvia as they spoke.
When the princess’s rigid voice carried words like “others” and “classified,” Sylvia couldn’t help pacing the room in growing agitation. But Heston’s response had been unyielding.
These were facts I learned because of Sylvia in the first place, and it was thanks to her that we were able to contain the situation. It makes no sense for her to be treated as an outsider in this matter.
After that, the princess seemed to wash her hands of the issue. Sylvia thought Heston was foolishly honest and stubborn for the sake of protecting a friend and ending up irritating his fiancée. But because he was that kind of person, she had never been able to let him go, not for all those long years.
Sylvia soon reached the door of the room where Heston was staying and knocked softly. But unlike usual, there was no pleasant, low “Come in.” Instead, silence stretched on. After a moment with her hand resting against the door, Sylvia tried the handle and let herself inside.
The bedroom was set deeper in, reached through another door, and beyond this one there was only a small sitting room at most, so she didn’t think she was intruding on his private space. She only meant to wait inside until he returned, since he seemed to be a little late.
But when the door opened and she saw a shoe jutting out from the far end of the long sofa, Sylvia couldn’t help freezing in surprise. Heston was there. He was sleeping, right there on the sofa.
“...Heston?”
Even at her careful call, there was no answer.
Sylvia stood by the door, glanced out into the corridor, then looked back toward the sofa. It was turned away from the entrance, so all she could see for the moment was the back of the sofa and the shoe sticking out from it.
“...”
A more proper friend would have turned around and left then and there. But the instant she realized Heston was sleeping there, time seemed to slow all at once, and Sylvia could no longer suppress the fierce, aching urge to see him like this. After all, in all the years she had stayed by his side, she had never once seen him asleep.
If she let this chance slip away, she might never get another. There was no reason at all to be seeing this now, not when she was supposed to be putting away her feelings for Heston, but Sylvia couldn’t stop her heart from growing restless, as though she were running out of time.
Tap. Tap.
Walking carefully over the carpet, Sylvia moved closer and closer to the sofa.
Because of the armrest, Heston’s neck was bent at an awkward angle, and he had one hand over his forehead as if the bright sunlight streaming in was bothering him. Sylvia carefully sat on the stool opposite him and turned her back to the light, casting him a little shadow.
And then she realized something.
It wasn’t really that she had been curious about Heston asleep so much as that she simply wanted to be with him in this rare moment of vulnerability. The air in a room where someone slept always felt a little heavier, a little more languid than usual, and Sylvia only wanted to share that space with Heston.
Because one arm was raised over his face, half of his sleeping features were hidden. Sylvia looked at the straight line of his nose, somehow so much like the man himself, and at lips that were a little fuller than most men’s. The sunlight filtering through the lace curtains had fallen across his cheek, carrying its peculiar pattern with it.
Then his hand dropped from his forehead. Sylvia jumped and turned her head away completely, and Heston, bracing himself on one elbow in the cramped sofa, finally realized there was someone there in the most unexpected place.
“Sylvia?”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah.”
She should have brought a book or something and pretended to be reading. She had no idea what to do with her eyes.
“When did you get here? If you were here, you should’ve woken me.”
“Not long ago. And you looked tired.”
“Did I?”
He did seem genuinely exhausted; she could see him pressing at his temple. Sylvia knew he was prone to headaches when he was tense, so she went to the desk at once, found some medicine, and handed it to him with a glass of water.
“How much have you been sleeping lately?”
“I’m sleeping fine. Don’t worry.”
“You’re not secretly dealing with insomnia too, are you?”
“No.”
“You lie all the time, so how am I supposed to believe that?”
After taking the medicine and water she handed him, Heston gave a faint smile and gently brushed her hair back.
“And yet you believe me all the time.”
“What’s the point of lying about useless things? What’s the use of having a friend, anyway? It means you get to worry about each other as much as you want.”
Even as she said it, she tilted her head away and slipped past his hand. Heston drew his hand back with a somewhat bitter smile, but Sylvia was already moving farther away so the atmosphere wouldn’t turn awkward, and she didn’t see the expression on his face.
“I don’t want either of us ever having anything to worry about. Things like that are too painful.”
His quiet voice came from behind her. For someone so practical, he sometimes said things that sounded almost dreamlike.
“How could anyone live without ever worrying about anything? That just means you don’t trust the other person,” she said. “Do you say this kind of thing to the princess too? Keeping everything to yourself all the time, and then you fought with Her Highness because of me last time, didn’t you?”
“No.”
Lying with a straight face, Heston stood and went to the desk. She heard the glass cup being set down. Sylvia thought it might be better to sit across from him, like someone being questioned, in case Princess Catherine suddenly barged in again.
“No, my foot. You should’ve talked it over with Her Highness properly in the first place. A husband and wife aren’t supposed to hide things from each other.”
“We’re not husband and wife.”
“Fiancés are basically the same thing.”
“They’re completely different.”
This was the first time Sylvia had seen Heston deny something so absolutely, like a child refusing to admit anything at all.
Sylvia had always believed that someone as stubborn as Heston would naturally carry himself toward his fiancée with the same sense of duty a husband should show his wife, so the way he insisted so firmly that a fiancée and a wife were different felt a little unlike him.
If everyone in the world ignored marriage and drifted from person to person—two years with this one, three years with that one—Heston was the kind of man who would somehow still find a priest, swear a sacred vow in a temple, and spend his entire life sleeping beside only one person.
Was Heston, too, like those many men and women who didn’t want to be bound, men who went to weddings feeling not joy but a crushing sense of duty?
Her nose wrinkled. For the first time, Sylvia found him irritating.
“You’re going to regret it if you keep this up.”
“I already...”
Sylvia was imagining Heston drinking himself into oblivion after losing Princess Catherine when he started to speak, as though some emotion he could no longer hold back had burst loose, only to trail off and shut his mouth again. Sylvia’s eyes widened; for a second she thought he was actually going to say something like “I already regret it.” But he smoothly stitched the awkwardly cut-off words into something else.
“I already... think it’s too late.” Heston frowned as though his head hurt. Considering the force behind those first words, what he actually said now sounded miles away from them, but Sylvia decided not to pick a fight over it.
She couldn’t be petty, not like her father. She couldn’t sit and hope, counting the days, merely for Heston’s engagement to collapse in disaster. She truly had no desire to sink that low.
Sylvia focused on the papers Heston handed her.
They contained everything, like branches spreading outward from a tree, showing just how deeply this matter was entangled with the prince—no, with the people around him. Sylvia flipped through page after page, and then gave a sigh before she realized it.
“Why?”
Thinking she might have found one of his own mistakes, Heston asked immediately. But that wasn’t what Sylvia was worried about. What troubled her was Heston himself—this investigation, where the target had been narrowed so clearly and so ruthlessly.
“Do you really have to go this far?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Levis. Your twin brother.”
Heston looked at her as if to say, Why would that matter? Sylvia set the papers down with more force than intended.
“Levis is going to think you betrayed him.”
“No, he won’t. I didn’t invent a crime that doesn’t exist.”
“Have you forgotten that letter? When you told him you were engaged to Her Highness, he told you to go die, remember? If he reacted like that just from hearing about the engagement... then if he finds out you’ve prepared all this, he’ll hate you terribly.”
Heston laughed then, as though he didn’t understand why that was supposed to be a problem.
“Of course Levis... wouldn’t welcome any of this.”
Sylvia watched as Heston’s long fingers took back the papers he had given her.
“But no matter what I do, there’s nothing I can change for Levis. He has to prove his own choices, or bear them himself.”