A Love That Cannot Be Kept
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Once the excitement faded, shame came for her, as it naturally would.
She couldn’t understand why, of all places, she had gotten so aroused with Owen there of all people.
Was that what happened after sex? No, that couldn’t be right. If it were, then half the people in the notoriously debauched 1st Knight Order would have been panting all the time.
No, the truth was probably that she had simply gone mad because the night she’d spent with Owen the day before had been too good.
“I should just die. I should die.”
Every time she buried her face in her knees as she squatted there, her pink hair fluttered around her.
With her head thumping so hard against her crouched knees that she was half serious about beating herself senseless, Sylvia finally lifted her reddened forehead and decided that, at the very least, she needed to show some intention of cleaning up the mess she’d made.
The Princess had personally invited her to a tea party, and she had blown the whole thing apart—literally. Sylvia had toppled the table over completely. The clatter of dishes still seemed to ring in her ears.
If word of that reached her father’s ears, who knew what would happen.
At the very least, I need some proof that I was unwell.
Since the Imperial Palace had its own physicians assigned specifically to members of the Knight Order, Sylvia turned her steps that way.
Even now, her head still swam with aftereffects. She lifted both hands and rubbed her temples hard, only for someone behind her to seize her arm roughly and spin her around.
Her body lurched as she was whirled about, and she found herself looking into blue eyes so deep they seemed to take her in completely.
“Heston, why are you here……?”
“Are you all right?”
His chest, which wouldn’t even have gone rough after fifty laps around the training grounds, was rising and falling with rare agitation.
He pulled Sylvia in close and looked her over from head to toe, turning her face and shoulders this way and that as if searching every inch of her body.
Feeling herself helplessly handled by Heston’s hands, Sylvia suddenly remembered they were still in the Imperial Palace, where eyes and ears were everywhere, and shoved him away.
It was bad enough that she had already made a scene at the Princess’s tea party. If anyone caught sight of her now, flirting with her own fiancé here of all places?
Just imagining it made her feel sick.
“What’s with you? Of course I’m fine.”
“I heard you were hurt.”
“From who?”
Her voice had shrunk to almost nothing. Had rumors about her disgrace already spread?
Fortunately, Heston quickly eased her worry.
“From Rose. She said you seemed ill. That you could barely stand.”
Sylvia let out a breath of relief. Only then did she understand how Heston had been able to appear so suddenly.
“You came as Rose’s escort. I thought you…….”
I thought you’d heard it from Her Highness.
She swallowed the rest before it could slip out.
Meanwhile, Heston, as though frustrated by his friend’s refusal to put him at ease, closed the distance he had reluctantly opened.
“So your body—”
Heston was so broad that even his shadow was vast. The feeling of being swallowed up inside it was always strange, and Sylvia retreated again by the very amount he had advanced.
She would never tell Heston the truth about how her body felt right now. Even if it meant reaching the Princess’s ears, she would send Heston away with the claim that she was fine.
“I’m all right. I was just dizzy for a moment, but it must be a hangover. I drank quite a bit last night.”
“How much?”
As expected, Heston’s face darkened with disapproval. Knights of the 1st Knight Order who fought alongside Supporters as partners taking good care of their Supporter’s well-being was no different from doing their duty properly, but Heston was especially particular. Sylvia supposed it was one of those habits older brothers had when they grew up with a younger sibling who’d been sickly as a child.
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I was on my way to see the physician anyway.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No. Rose is waiting for you. Just go. I said it’s nothing to worry about.”
“How could I not worry about you?”
Heston frowned, looking genuinely troubled. His soft sigh weighed on her heart for a fleeting second.
“If you drank too much, you should have stayed home. There was no need to come if you were called.”
He said it in a tone that made it sound as though the fact that it was the Princess—his own fiancée—who had called her mattered not at all. Sylvia wanted to mutter that it wasn’t as though that were even possible in her home, or anywhere else, really, but she held her tongue.
In his familiar way, Heston supported her.
“Let’s go.”
His steady profile seemed to say he meant to stay by her side without budging until she had been examined and properly tended to.
But how could he? He belonged to another woman.
This wasn’t right.
More than the fear that this might reach the Princess, something else angered her more.
Heston couldn’t be doing this. He couldn’t look at her as though she mattered more than his fiancée, more than his sister. If he had decided not to choose her, then he should have let her go.
He should have been cold to her from the start.
She pulled herself free of his hands and composed her expression. Then she said firmly, “I can’t go with you.”
Heston frowned as though her words made no sense. Whenever he wore that expression, she found herself starting to explain as though she were the one in the wrong.
“Of course not. You came with Rosaline, so you should go with Rosaline. You shouldn’t have come to see me—you should have gone to see the Princess again if you had time.”
“You’re hurt. How am I supposed to just stand around…….”
Cutting off his gentle protest with more force than she felt, Sylvia turned away.
“Whether I’m hurt or not doesn’t change anything. You need to keep your distance from me. We’re not children anymore.”
“Are you angry?”
Heston asked carefully, watching her back as she moved farther away.
As though there were only one reason she would say something like that if she weren’t angry.
It was an unfair thing to say. Every time she tried to put distance between them, he would close it again like this. As if asking why they had to do it at all. Each time she tried to put away this hopeless, one-sided love, he came after her like this.
He hadn’t changed. Sylvia still vividly remembered him standing beside the Princess in ceremonial dress the night before.
Standing side by side, like a matching pair in every shade that mattered, they had looked so alike that Sylvia had thought Heston had gone forever to the far side of a river she could never cross. Yet here he was, returning to her side as if nothing had changed at all.
“I’m not angry. I’m saying that since we’re not children, we need to follow the rules society actually uses. A grown woman and a grown man—especially when one of them is already engaged—shouldn’t be this close to someone of the opposite sex.”
“Sylvia. We’re practically family. How many years have we spent together? How could that be cut off in an instant?”
Heston sounded as though she were the one being unreasonable. Sylvia shook her head with a calm face.
“Don’t you remember the vow you made yesterday?”
At her words, Heston fell silent.
‘Before the name of God, I swear to place you first.’
He seemed to remember what he had said yesterday before the priest, when he had taken Princess Catherine’s hand. Heston would never guess how completely that sentence had shattered Sylvia’s heart when it left his lips.
“Sylvia, that’s……”
Heston began to explain something, then stopped. Sylvia gently pushed his hand away.
“If you truly place one person first, then you have to put someone else behind them. No matter what kind of relationship you have with that person.”
For a brief moment, their palms brushed before parting. Heston looked down at his hand, then lifted his head. Because he had been uncharacteristically emotional today, Sylvia thought for a moment he might be hurt by her words and push back.
But after a short silence, Heston raised his head again, and his usual composure had returned so completely it was hard to believe he had ever seemed confused at all.
“Right. You’re right. I have the Princess.”
Then he stepped back two paces.
“I’m sorry. Rose must have spoken too seriously, and I got alarmed. You’ll handle your own body. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
Now that he had withdrawn so cleanly, it was Sylvia who tasted bitterness. She forced a smile onto her face.
“Yes. Go see Rosaline quickly.”
“You should send Rose a short note once you get the results, too. She was very worried.”
When she nodded without answering, he looked at her for a moment longer, then turned away awkwardly. A passing group of knights spotted him almost at once and bowed in greeting.
Feeling sure her face was a mess, Sylvia lowered her head quickly before she could run into anyone.
She hurried into the building where the infirmary was housed and gripped the wall, bowing her head low.
Idiot. Idiot.
She wiped away her tears roughly. What a pathetic thing this was.
She had pushed the weapon into his hand and urged him to stab her, and when he actually had, she was sitting there hurt and crying like a fool.
‘Right. You’re right. I have the Princess.’
That line rang through her head again.
Until the day of the betrothal, she had no certainty at all that Heston truly loved Princess Catherine. The engagement had come far too suddenly. But that evening, through the way Heston looked at Princess Catherine, she had caught her first glimpse of that feeling.
It had only happened once, for a very brief moment.
When it seemed Heston was overdoing it while accepting the endless toasts being offered, Catherine laid her hand over his where it rested on the table and gazed at him warmly.
Heston turned to her with some surprise, and perhaps embarrassed to show affection where others could see, started to hide his hand below the table. But then the Princess smiled softly and said something, and whatever he found in that smile made him stiffen. He stared at her for a long moment, as though dazed.
And then, slowly, so carefully, Heston’s hand touched her cheek.
Sylvia had fled the banquet hall with a bottle of liquor because she had seen that.
The kind of affection that was impossible to conceal.
“Why is it that I……”
Why can’t I be the one to get that look?
Even knowing how childish it was, Sylvia couldn’t bear the hurt of it anymore. She didn’t know why the things she had desperately wanted in life had never been permitted even once, and she wept a little from a strange sense of deprivation.
Just a little. Only a little.
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