Cold Fury - 3
Mirajane's send-off was over almost before it began.
She would have liked to act familiar with me, no doubt, but this was a public occasion rather than a private one — she couldn't very well fall into easy conversation with anyone. She was the Imperial Princess, a figure no one approached lightly, and she had already gotten the proper farewells out of the way in advance.
Adele, walking beside me, glanced over. "Did you say your goodbyes?"
"I saw her yesterday evening," I answered with a small nod.
Her smile dimmed for a moment, but it wasn't long before it settled back into place, and her lips parted again.
"I see."
She looked like a woman with plenty left to say. She seemed to want to go on, this and that, but mindful, perhaps, of where we were, she slowly closed her mouth.
Not that I was any different. I had things I wanted to say to Adele too — though it would be no good news for her, but then, I hadn't come to the North in the first place without a purpose of my own.
That aside, the only real difference in Adele today was that she looked inexplicably pleased. She'd been wearing a faint smile every time her eyes found mine, and it seemed something good must have happened, so I ventured carefully,
"Did something good happen today, perhaps?"
"Something good?"
"You've been smiling since a while ago."
When I nodded toward the face wearing that soft smile, Adele started and touched her own lips. She had been fingering the corner of her faintly upturned mouth even before this; now she let out a hollow cough.
Were the tips of her ears flushed red, or was that my imagination? One hand over her mouth, Adele studied me for a long moment.
"You're imagining things."
By the time the hand left her mouth, the soft smile had been wiped away, and her usual cold expression was back in place.
It had been a smile that lingered far too long for me to have simply imagined it. She was probably just embarrassed — or it was something that had nothing to do with me at all. She was hiding it so earnestly that pressing her felt unkind, so all I could do was nod and let it go.
"...Wait. Was I smiling?"
When our eyes met again, Adele hesitated, lips parting uncertainly. That cautious question carried a different air than usual — less the woman who was always so composed, and more someone, well, embarrassed. I couldn't tell at what, exactly, but one thing seemed certain: that smile had come without her willing it.
I weighed my answer for a moment, then spoke with deliberate calm.
"You were smiling. And it suits you — the smiling, I mean. More than always looking at everything so coldly."
"...Spare me the unnecessary commentary."
It wasn't unnecessary, though. I'd said the same thing often enough across the many loops I'd spent at Adele's side — because on her, even a faint smile like the one just now suited far better than those cold eyes forever sweeping her surroundings.
It was something I always thought: there was nothing rough about Adele's looks, nothing of the wolves that guarded this northern frontier. If anything, she was pretty and delicate, closer to the nobles of the Central region — an oddity, perhaps, given that her life had begun here in the North. A woman better suited to a wolf-fur cloak than a dress, to a sword than to flowers or tea. That contrast was a charm only a woman like Adele could carry.
Whether it grated that I'd said smiling suited her better, Adele knitted her brows faintly and strode on ahead.
With Mirajen gone back to the Imperial Palace, the North had grown quiet again. The palace would no doubt be in an uproar over recent affairs, but there was no one who would dare say a word to Adele about it. Save perhaps the Crown Prince, the North would stay quiet for a while yet.
Which was exactly why I had made up my mind. If I left now, there would be no noise to fight through — and I needed the room to sort out my thoughts on what remained to be finished in the South.
"Grand Duchess, there is something I would like to discuss. Do you have a moment?"
Adele stopped dead and looked at me steadily. She studied me with a curiously complicated expression, shook her head once to herself, then answered quietly.
"Follow me."
Even as I raised the matter with Adele, I realized how careful my manner had become.
To her — who didn't know that I would be joining the Saintess in the South — my announcement that I was leaving the North could only sound like I meant to go looking for Theresia. Adele had heard my story before, and she had warned me about it more than once.
"If you ever do end up going — don't go alone. It's too dangerous."
That Theresia was calling to me was obvious. Unless she was a fool, flaunting her existence like this in the North — where I was — could only point to one thing. If I went south, I thought I might well come face to face with whatever she truly was.
"So. What is it you wanted to tell me?"
Adele asked it lightly, setting down her teacup. Wondering what kind of tea it was, I stole a glance — black tea sat before her. Come to think of it, she had always been fond of the black tea that came from the Central region. I smiled briefly at the old memory, then smoothed the amusement from my face under her steady gaze and spoke slowly.
"It's already been three weeks since I came to the North."
"Has it? It doesn't feel as though it's been that long."
"Do you remember what you said at the very beginning? When you took me on as your adjutant?"
Something seemed to surface at that; Adele took a sip of her tea, then nodded.
It had been an absurd offer, one framed so as not to be too appealing. I had no way of knowing how much I had actually satisfied her — though I suspected all along that she hadn't meant it in earnest.
"...Right. I said I would watch and judge the work you did."
"And how did I measure up, then? As your adjutant, I mean."
"As an adjutant..."
Her blue eyes swept over me once, and then Adele huffed a short laugh and spoke.
"A pity, really. If you hadn't been hurt, I'd have kept you at my side. But showing favor to an adjutant who came back wounded by the barbarians — that would be its own problem, wouldn't it."
"I see."
"Then why ask? You should still have plenty of time left here in the North."
I fell silent at the suspicion threaded through the question, but I couldn't hide it forever. There was little time left. Two days until the new year, and counting the return to the Central region and my rendezvous with Adrian after that, the margin I'd been given amounted to barely a week. More would have been welcome — but it seemed I had to say it now.
I met the gaze of Adele, who was staring at me blankly, and carefully opened my mouth.
"I'll be heading back soon."
Silence held for a moment. Then Adele, still fixing me with her eyes and her mouth pressed shut, laughed as though the whole thing were absurd.
"What?"
"I'll return to the Central region first, then go on to the South. I always meant to go south — but with the Theresia situation, I need to move a little sooner than planned."
"The South..."
As she murmured it, Adele's expression darkened by degrees. She dragged a hand down her face and looked at me in silence — probably working out what I meant by saying all this.
I held her gaze and waited a long while before her lips parted again.
"I told you not to go alone. Fiancée or not, you know perfectly well she'll be waiting for you. Don't you?"
"I'm not going alone."
"Then who, exactly, are you saying you'll go with?"
"...I'll likely be traveling with the Saintess. My original purpose was to visit the Temple of the Moon, after all."
At the word Saintess, Adele's eyes narrowed for a moment before she took a slow sip of her tea. The corner of her mouth, tilted ever so slightly, had curved into a sneer — the habit that showed itself whenever her mood turned sour. Was it a reaction to the word Saintess? Or, failing that, did she simply dislike the thought of me going south?
I was still trying to read her when Adele's voice came at my ear.
"You have a real gift for getting under people's skin."
"I'm afraid I don't follow..."
"I never asked you a single thing. I had no intention of stopping you from leaving, either — I knew it would sit badly with you. I could see how much you shied away from that sort of thing."
Her brows drew together, the crease between them knotting. Clicking her tongue as though the whole business were beyond her, Adele went on.
"I know nothing about you. That you're the eldest son of House Taylor. That you handle a sword better than I expected. That you owe the Princess favors I know nothing of — that's the whole of it. And even so, I kept looking after you."
I said nothing.
Her lips, which had parted briefly, closed again, and a small silence passed. Adele's face — a woman trying to say something — looked nothing but frustrated. She seemed to have plenty she wanted to say, and it wouldn't come together; she looked almost lost inside her own confusion. So I waited, until she could finally give voice to what she meant, whole.
And then the corner of her mouth twisted up, sharp and sudden.
"And now you're off to the Saintess. You throw a person's heart into this much of a mess, do only what you want, say only what you want — and that's it? I think you're far too selfish."
"I wasn't doing it on purpose—"
"If it wasn't on purpose, then what — are you playing some kind of joke on me right now?"
None of this was the reaction I had imagined. I'd expected her to question my leaving ahead of schedule, not to turn on me this sharply. Flustered — that much was true. The emotion threaded through Adele's voice was, more than anger at me...
...it looked, if anything, like hurt.
The feeling glimpsed between her wavering eyes was a tangle. She was irritated with me, yes — but the hurt ran deeper than the irritation. That I was only now bringing this up. That I was leaving the North for somewhere else. And — this was only a guess — that I would be going with the Saintess.
Only then did I notice Adele's lips. They had been chewed raw, already gone bloodless white. When the trembling in them finally eased, the bite marks stood out plainly where she had worried them.
"...Are you jealous, by any chance?"
The thought surfaced and slipped straight out of my mouth before I could stop it, and I flinched at myself. It was a thought born of a reaction so unlike her. She was acting this way because I'd said I'd travel with the Saintess — which dovetailed with how sharply she had always responded to any mention of the Saintess. She would surely deny it.
I was just opening my mouth again when Adele closed the distance in two strides and shoved me back against the wall.
Thud. A palm to my chest, and I gave ground with surprising ease. My shoulders met the wall at my back, and facing her like that, I felt my brow crease faintly.
"Did you say jealousy?"
"I don't think that's quite what it is, but..."
We stood close enough that our breath mingled — close enough to make out the fine creases of her eyes, close enough to see they had flushed the faintest red. Facing her at that distance, her scent was sweet. The rose fragrance I had always caught at close quarters brushed my nose, and at the strange feeling that rose in me for a heartbeat, I blinked.
"It is jealousy."
I stood there blankly, wondering if I'd heard her right — but Adele gave me no time to gather my wits and pressed on.
"Yes — I'm saying it because I hate the thought of you leaving the North. I haven't said everything I wanted to say yet. And who decided that? I never gave you leave, and here you are planning to walk out of this place anyway?"
"...Grand Duchess."
That slender hand closed gently around my collar. She gripped it hard enough to crumple the front of my shirt, leaned her face in toward my nape, and whispered — a voice small enough that only I could possibly hear it slipping into my ear.
"Two days. You're not so busy you can't even wait that long, are you?"
I gave a small nod, and Adele smiled, satisfied, and slowly let go. She smoothed the cloak back into place with a light sweep of her hand — and from then until she settled back into her chair, I couldn't manage a single word. Flicking her hand at me, she added:
"There's something I want to show you."
So stay.
At an announcement so perfectly, so utterly her, I smiled bitterly. Because it was absurd — because I could hardly begin to make sense of the situation at all.