“Blair.”
Headrin, watching her with a frantic edge to his gaze, urged her toward him and gripped her slender arm. He bit his lip, startled by the tremor in his own voice.
Her arm felt impossibly fragile beneath his palm, as if the slightest increase in pressure might shatter her.
Headrin fought to dampen his volatile emotions, loosening his grip as he spoke.
“……You are ill. Please, calm down and stop—”
“No. I don’t want to.”
Before he could finish, Blair pulled her arm away, bracing herself against him. Headrin’s eyes flickered with agitation.
Blair held his gaze, her expression unyielding.
“If I recover my memories and find this is an unjust accusation, I will clear your name. But if it is the truth, I will resent you for the rest of my life.”
She refused to be a prisoner or a culprit anymore. She would not remain captive to a past she couldn’t recall, nor would she suffer the weight of a truth she couldn’t fathom.
“I was sad, too.”
“…….”
“I had a hard time, too.”
“…….”
“Doubting the person who loved me so much, and then my mother… confirming that truth… it was terrifying.”
As she spoke the words she had swallowed in her past life—fearing the consequences of standing against him—her long-repressed sorrow finally surfaced. Tears she had desperately held back now spilled over her cheeks.
Blair swallowed the rising sobs, refusing to let her grief muffle her words.
“But I don’t want to live in the dark anymore, ignoring everything just because it’s difficult or frightening.”
Even if this relationship were doomed to fail, she refused to run away in this lifetime as she had in the last.
Headrin’s fingertips trembled as he watched her tear-filled eyes. He clenched his own hand into a fist to stop it from moving of its own accord.
He had seen her on the verge of tears before, but this was the first time she had truly wept in his presence. Her act of defiance was equally jarring.
Looking at her, the fight drained out of him. He had no strength left to resist.
“……I was in the wrong.”
His low, muffled voice echoed through the quiet room.
“I forgot that our contract is predicated on cooperation. And that cooperation requires trust.”
“…….”
“From now on, I will not doubt or interrogate you as I did today.”
Blair gazed at him blankly, stunned by his sudden, calm apology.
She had confronted him to break the cycle of their previous life, but she hadn’t expected him to yield so readily.
As relief washed over her, a haunting thought crossed her mind.
*If I had stood up to you back then, even in my fear…*
*Would our ending have been different? Would we have been spared this long, agonizing detour?*
It was a question with no answer.
“Rest now. You are exhausted.”
Blair lay down as he suggested. She had been out for the first time in an age, met a stranger, and collapsed—the strain of her argument with Headrin was the final blow.
Headrin watched her pull the covers up before standing to approach the fireplace.
Just as Blair peeked out from under the blanket, watching his back with curious eyes, his voice drifted toward her.
“Are you afraid when the fireplace is lit?”
Blair couldn’t answer immediately.
She had developed a phobia of fire because of the incident, but she had never dared to admit such a weakness aloud. She had tried to bury it, knowing how much Katrina detested any mention of that day.
“For now, just sleep.”
Headrin lit a piece of paper with a lighter and tossed it into the grate.
He kept his eyes fixed on the bed, ready to extinguish the flames at the first sign of a panic attack, but soon, he heard her breathing settle into a steady rhythm, broken only by an occasional, dry cough.
Once the firewood caught, Headrin tossed a few more logs onto the flames and sat beside the sleeping woman.
The heat began to permeate the room, bringing a faint flush of color back to Blair’s pale cheeks. She looked so much like a young girl.
She looked exactly as she had the day they first met.
Watching her, he felt a ghost of the past stir, and Esmeralda’s voice from years ago suddenly surfaced in his mind.
*‘That isn’t the child’s fault. Blair is a good child. Regardless of what kind of person her mother is. Don’t you think so too?’*
The memory of that first meeting flooded back.
* * *
To be precise, it was one week after they had first crossed paths.
A week after the New Year’s Festival, Headrin visited the Empress’s Palace again. He had brought the rabbit-fur earmuffs Blair had lent him.
Headrin held them out to Esmeralda. She tilted her head, confused.
“My, where did you get something so cute? Surely you didn’t prepare this little trinket as a gift for me.”
“Her Highness the Princess lent them to me. I brought them because I thought Your Majesty should return them.”
“Blair did? When?”
“……Did you not hear?”
“Hear what? Blair didn’t say a word.”
The Princess was always desperate to impress her aunt; he had assumed she would have boasted of that day to gain favor.
He recalled the words Blair had whispered as she turned away from him:
*‘I’ll keep today a secret.’*
She had kept her word. She hadn’t told a soul, not even Esmeralda. Despite the opportunity to receive the praise she so craved, she had remained silent.
Headrin was stunned.
“Did something happen with Blair?” Esmeralda asked, her expression sharpening with curiosity.
Headrin explained what had occurred. He told her how Blair had followed him to the garden when he went to catch his breath—though he lied about the circumstances to protect her from his aunt’s worry—and how she had given him the earmuffs, insisting he cover his ears.
As he spoke, Esmeralda’s face softened into a smile. She looked as though the two children were the most endearing sight in the world.
When he finished, she handed the earmuffs back to him.
“Then you should be the one to return them.”
“Pardon…?”
“A person who has received a favor should visit and express their gratitude properly. Are you trying to pass that duty off to me? You’ve grown up, and now you’re using me as your errand boy.”
There was a playfulness in her voice, but he knew she was serious. It was true; expecting his aunt to deliver his thanks was beneath his station and unkind to the girl who had helped him.
Yet, he didn’t want to visit Blair of his own volition.
She was the daughter of that Imperial Consort.
His aunt was a woman of infinite benevolence, capable of embracing even that child, but he was not. If he could, he wanted to avoid her entirely. He feared the possibility that the innocent girl might look at him with a familiarity he couldn’t return.
“By the way, did you actually wear these? You must have looked adorable. Won’t you try them on for me?”
While he was lost in thought, Esmeralda approached him, holding the fur earmuffs with a mischievous glint in her eyes.
Headrin felt a surge of indignation.
“I did not! I only carried them.”
Esmeralda giggled, setting the earmuffs down with a look of regret. When she looked back at him, her expression had turned sober.
“Headrin. Do you dislike Blair?”
Headrin couldn’t answer.
He didn’t dislike the child herself. He disliked her lineage. If forced to choose, it felt like dislike. But he wasn’t skilled enough at lying to deny it, and he wasn’t willing to admit to a prejudice he knew his aunt would find small-minded.
“Blair isn’t noisy like the children you disdain. She doesn’t hate you or insult you, does she? And she even helped you, didn’t she?”
Headrin remained silent, staring at the floor.
“……But is she not that woman’s daughter?”
“You shouldn’t think like that. That is not the child’s fault.”
“…….”
“Blair is a good child. Regardless of what kind of person her mother is. Don’t you think so too?”
Headrin couldn’t argue. While he found it impossible to see Blair as separate from Katrina, he knew in his heart the Princess was kind.
Because of his status, he felt obligated to despise her, so he had been desperately trying to convince himself that his resentment was justified.
“I am sorry that you all have been swept up in the narrow-minded politics of adults.”
Esmeralda smiled bitterly, and Headrin kept his head bowed.
His aunt was a good woman. She had raised him with care after he lost his parents; she was the only mother he had known.
And so, because he could not defy her, he took the earmuffs and visited the Imperial Princess’s Palace himself.
The guards at the palace seemed flustered by the unexpected arrival of the Duke del Marc.
“I received a favor from the Princess during the New Year’s Festival, and I have come to express my gratitude.”
Just as he was speaking to the guards, a small shadow fell from above.
He reflexively looked up. Blair stood on the balcony, rubbing her eyes as if she had just woken up.
She blinked, dazed, before suddenly smacking her own cheeks with both hands to wake herself. Then, their eyes locked.
Her disheveled platinum blonde hair shimmered in the morning sun, and her purple eyes widened in a face already flushed by the chill.
A small sigh escaped her parted lips, and her face contorted into a look of absolute distress.
“Nanny!”
He heard her voice faint and frantic as she scrambled back inside. *‘What do I do! Duke del Marc is here! I haven’t even washed my face yet…’* She didn’t seem to realize the balcony door remained open.
Headrin chuckled, the sound soft in the morning air.
Her wide-eyed panic, the way her face had crumpled in such candid distress—it was a winter morning that made him feel, for the first time, that perhaps he had been right to listen to his aunt.