Let Us Adopt You
After reuniting with Bariya, Sabrina pressed her case without leaving the slightest room for argument.
"There's no telling when those hyena whelps will come for the little one. We have to get back to the estate as fast as we can."
Bariya had to admit she was right. She had yanked out Darius's hair and kicked him to her heart's content; he would be hunting them even now, teeth clenched.
"I'll do that."
"Good. Then I'll take the little one back to the estate first. The rest of you can catch up on your own."
With that, Sabrina shifted back into her white tiger form, gathered up Bariya and the tiger Blackie, and tore toward the estate at a dead run.
Watching them vanish in the space of a breath, Sirka burst out laughing.
She's less worried about the hyenas than about Bariya changing her mind.
If the hyenas showed themselves, all the better—she could tear them apart and be done with it. Breaking Bariya's stubbornness would be twice as hard.
Fortunately, they met no hyenas before Sabrina reached the Caliph Estate.
A distance that would have taken more than another full day by carriage was covered in a matter of hours, and Bariya could only marvel.
"Lady Sabrina, you really are fast."
"When you're grown, little one, you'll be every bit as fast."
Sabrina set her down, returned to human form, and said it as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. Bariya did not doubt her for a moment.
"Young Miss!"
The moment they caught sight of Bariya, everyone in the estate came rushing out. The first to reach her and seize her hand tight was Tyreen.
"Young Miss, Young Miss… I am so glad you've come back safe…"
Tyreen clasped the child's small, roughened hand and let the tears fall in heavy drops. She had worked so hard, while Bariya was at the Caliph Estate, to plump those hands back into a child's soft roundness—and in only a few days they had cracked and dried out all over again.
"Tyreen, you're crying?"
The tears soaking the back of her hand left Bariya genuinely flustered.
"I—um—I'm sorry, Tyreen."
She hurriedly patted the woman's shoulder as she apologized. One runaway wildcat had put so many people through real heartache. She ought to have trusted them a little more. The years she had spent at the mercy of the hyenas were so long that fear had seized her before she could think.
I won't ever let that happen again.
This was not some pitch-dark storeroom, and there were no hyenas turning up at every chance to browbeat her. So Bariya had to change as well.
"I'm home!"
When she called it out, bright and brave, Tyreen, Knight Commander Rowin, and everyone behind them who had been wiping their eyes answered in joy.
"Welcome home, Young Miss!"
Bariya sat in a chair, humming a little tune to herself, while Tyreen neatly tidied the hair that had been hacked off any which way.
"It's gotten quite short. Don't you mind?"
In the scramble to escape Lioric Leotel's grasp, she had lashed out with her claws and taken her own hair along with them. Length that had once fallen to her waist was now a bob, but Bariya could not have cared less.
"Nope. I didn't grow it out because I wanted to."
After her mother, Claire—who had always trimmed it for her—went far away, there had been no one left to cut it. Living only in her beastkin form had made cutting it impossible, and so the length had been forced upon her.
"And I like short hair better anyway."
Bariya studied herself in the mirror with satisfaction. For hair cut so suddenly, the short style suited her remarkably well, and her neck and shoulders felt light. She was in a fine mood.
"Long or short, it suits you beautifully. You should wear it however you like, whenever you like."
Tyreen smiled fondly at Bariya's reflection.
"There. All finished. Shall we get you washed and changed?"
While the other maids cleared the fallen hair from the floor, Tyreen helped her bathe.
"Ahh, now this is the life."
At the warmth of hot water—something she had not tasted in a long while—Bariya went boneless with pleasure. On the run she had gotten by on grooming alone. Now that she was used to life at the Caliph Estate, her skin itched if she did not take a proper hot bath on a regular schedule.
So this is what luxury tastes like.
The thought that only those hyena bastards had been enjoying something this good sent her temper flaring all over again.
Once the pleasant bath was done, she put on a child's robe and stepped into the dressing room—and nearly jumped out of her skin.
"…What is all this?"
Something was wrong. Why was the dressing room packed to the walls? A few of the garments she had seen in Madame Renouage's atelier were there, but there were also a great many she had never laid eyes on in her life. Every last one of them looked expensive enough to set her hands trembling. There was nothing but the very finest.
"T-Tyreen. How did all of this happen?"
When Bariya, rarely, stumbled over her words, Tyreen smiled a knowing smile.
"The Madam gave orders that every plain, unadorned garment be cleared out of your wardrobe and replaced with nothing but the good things."
"…"
Bariya fell silent for a moment before an order whose intent she could feel all too clearly, then asked again.
"Then… the white dress I was wearing when I left home…"
"It happened to be covered in stains and difficult to launder, so we disposed of it."
Which was to say, they had thrown it away.
"…There was a lot of expensive stuff in the pockets of that dress."
"Of course. Not a single thing was left out. It's all right there."
On the display cabinet Tyreen indicated, the spoils Bariya had brought back from the auction house lay in a gleaming row.
Thank goodness. My secret stash is intact.
"Then what would you like to wear today?"
"…I'll wear this."
Everything she might have chosen was lavish, so Bariya simply took the pale green dress nearest at hand. The color was fresh and bright as a new sprout, but a single enormous jewel sat planted squarely in the ribbon at the collar.
That can't possibly be fake.
"Blackie, how do I look?"
Dressed, with her hair set, Bariya scooped up Blackie, who lay curled on her bed. He had been throwing a brief tantrum; now he blinked at her.
"Mrr?"
"You have to ask who I am? People really do have to live a little polished, I suppose."
To be fair, when she first met Blackie she had spent days huddled breathless in a corner of a carriage, wandered the back alleys, and rolled through the auction-house prison until she was thoroughly coated in dust.
"Come on. You're coming too."
Bariya gathered him into her arms and headed for the sitting room. Tyreen, walking beside her, looked puzzled.
"If you leave him in the room, we'll see to his meals."
Bariya had not yet told anyone he was a beastkin, so Tyreen believed Blackie was a baby tiger the young miss had picked up outside.
"And he does look as though he could use a bath…"
Tyreen shot him a sidelong look. Dust was already on the brand-new pale green dress. Blackie could hardly have stayed clean while Bariya was tumbling through the dust. He had been shut inside that hidden space even longer than she had.
"Now that you mention it, Blackie does smell a little."
"Mraaang!"
Thoroughly offended at being told he smelled, Blackie bristled until his fur stood on end.
"Shall I bathe him while you're out?"
"No. He has to stay with me. And if anyone's going to wash him, it had better be me."
He carried a Poison Pheromone, after all. But Tyreen, who did not yet know this, simply took it that Bariya was attached to the baby tiger and said nothing.
The sitting room did not hold only Sabrina and Sirka.
"Clan Head!"
Baden, who had been pacing in a fret, ran to her the instant she stepped in and swept the child into his arms.
Squeak.
Caught in Bariya's arms and then crushed against Baden's solid chest, Blackie let out a noise like something dying.
"Little one. You really came back."
"I'm sorry. For running away."
At Bariya's adorable apology, the anxious Baden burst out laughing. Not a flight—a runaway from home. He liked the sound of that better. Twice, of course, would not do.
"First, sit, little one."
He scooped Bariya up, settled her on his knee, and sat down on the sofa.
"What is this? You're not coming over here this instant?"
"Father, not right now."
At that, Sabrina and Sirka, seated on the opposite side, immediately flashed their eyes.
Baden had only just returned from Aldros and barely been reunited with Bariya, and the look on his face was pure sorrow—but he could not go against Sabrina. In the end he rose with a reluctant shuffle and sat down beside her.
Now facing the three of them, Bariya swallowed hard.
Sabrina called her name.
"Bariya."
"…Yes."
Am I about to be scolded?
The air in the room certainly suggested as much. She had done wrong; a scolding would be no more than she deserved. But her guess missed the mark by a very long way.
At Sabrina's proud, ringing declaration, Bariya thought she might faint on the spot.