Chapter 38
Among them was also Utter.
He was always like a chihuahua barking at her, not realizing his own size whenever he saw her.
But now, all that wariness had disappeared, and he looked at Ilena with pitiful eyes brimming with tears.
“Our Highness! Last night! I knew it! I never doubted you!”
“……Everyone?”
Last night? Before Ilena could even answer, people burst out with tear-soaked voices.
“This is all your doing, isn’t it, Priestess?”
“Eh?”
“You brought the rain down for us, hic! For His Highness! For love…… sniff!”
The elder, overwhelmed by his own words, hastily covered his mouth as if to stop his sobs of emotion from spilling further.
“Well, that’s……”
It seemed they had completely misunderstood something.
But Ilena didn’t even have time to correct them.
Drunk on emotion and a touch of frenzy, people began to shout one after another.
“Truly, the power of love is great!!”
“To think the priestess of the enemy nation would bring rain to our South! Even war cannot stop love!”
“Our plan worked! Age and experience triumph!”
“No, wait, that’s not what—”
“Long live the Priestess!!”
“Long live the great Prince Iago!!”
“No, please, let me just—”
“It’s no use, Ilena. They won’t hear you right now anyway.”
Iago leaned in and whispered softly into her ear.
Ilena finally gave up trying to explain, lowering the hand she had been waving in protest.
“Hurrah!!”
“The age of the desert is over!!”
She simply stared blankly at the crowd cheering for her and Iago.
Her chest ached as though dozens of needles were poking and twisting inside.
“But it wasn’t me who brought the rain……”
When she had first heard of the rain, Ilena hadn’t been able to recognize the emotion that had gnawed at her heart.
Now, she realized.
It was guilt.
Amidst the pink desert and the people shouting with joy, Ilena forced a smile and waved her hand, hiding her inner turmoil.
The North. The Royal Annex of the Kingdom of Manoa.
Seven people gathered in the drawing room beside the King’s bedchamber.
The first to speak, swaddled in a thick gray blanket, grumbled.
“Damnably cold.”
The faint light of dawn filtered through the window, dimly illuminating the man’s face.
He was the King of the North, Berian Manoa.
Beside him, the crown prince Friedhen pulled his cloak tighter and complained as well.
“You’re right. The moment the priestess left the North… At this rate, we won’t last three months.”
“That’s exactly why we’re here,” said a rough-looking man with a cold tone, making Friedhen flinch and stammer.
“I-I know. Just breaking the ice, you know. Ice breaking.”
“Last night, the priestess made it rain again.”
The only man who still kept his hood on ignored Friedhen entirely, his low voice cutting through the room.
“They say it was enough to make flowers bloom in the vast desert again.”
The words made the others shift uncomfortably, clearing their throats.
“So her mind hasn’t been completely broken after all.”
“Sending the priestess South might have been too hasty. We were too blinded by the orichalcum mine……”
Berian stroked his plump chin, fattened over the last decade.
“What’s done is done. Besides, gaining a mine isn’t exactly a bad deal, even so.”
“That’s true. Worst case, we can always bring her back and—”
“Ahem!”
Friedhen had started to joke lightly, but a woman quickly hushed him.
He looked utterly aggrieved.
“What? It’s only us here.”
“And do you think a leaking bucket won’t leak outside too?”
The red-haired woman snapped sharply. Judging by Friedhen’s confused expression, he clearly didn’t get her meaning.
“…I mean you should watch your mouth anywhere.”
With a sigh of exasperation, she glanced at the hooded man before continuing.
“So, what do we do now?”
“What else?”
Berian also glanced nervously at the hooded figure as he answered.
“We bring her back. The South just fixed what was broken, for free. We should thank them properly.”
“Oh, in a month? The contract still has time left, right?”
Friedhen’s foolish question made the King smirk.
“Indeed. On paper, yes. But rumor has it something interesting is going around the South these days.”
“Rumor?”
“That the reason the priestess brought rain to the enemy desert… was because she’s fallen head over heels for that ruthless Black King.”
“Ha! That Ilena?”
Friedhen scoffed.
“…Well, she did act a little strange toward the end. But no, never. You know that.”
He shook his head with arrogant certainty.
“From the day we awakened her power and brought her to the palace, she never once disobeyed. Always kind and obedient……”
He chuckled smugly.
“Like the sunshine of a tropical isle.”
Then, a cold voice sliced through the air.
“Better to cut the root of unease before it grows.”
It was the hooded man.
At once, Berian and the others scrambled to agree with him.
“Yes, yes, quite right.”
“You never know what might happen.”
Everyone seemed to be watching him nervously.
Friedhen frowned, muttering as though throwing a stone.
“But how? That’s what matters.”
Then, under his breath:
“…Cutting roots, huh. As if I don’t know what you mean.”
“Since the contract isn’t over yet, we’ll make her walk back of her own accord.”
Berian quickly cut him off, smiling.
“On her own? How?”
The King’s face stretched into a broad grin, teeth showing.
“There are always ways. After all… the easiest people in the world to move are the kind-hearted ones.”
Ilena followed Iago into his office, oddly feeling like it had been ages since she was last here.
In truth, only a day had passed.
“Maybe because too much happened in just one day.”
She sank into the sofa and immediately asked the question that had been nagging her.
“Did I cry in my sleep or something?”
“No.”
Iago, sitting across from her, answered firmly.
It was rare for him to look so serious when it was just the two of them.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Well, because I was awake all nigh—”
He coughed sharply and hurriedly corrected himself.
“Because you’d been swimming all day, you were exhausted. You fell asleep without dreaming, remember?”
“…True.”
But if not that, then what? How else could it have rained when the sky had been nothing but heavy clouds?
While Ilena sat with a confused expression, Iago remained unusually calm.
After a moment’s silence, his lips finally parted.
“After receiving the reports from my ministers, I thought about it all night. It’s still just a theory, of course.”
Suddenly, he rose, pulled out a large map, and spread it across the desk.
It depicted an oval-shaped main island with a great mountain in the center, and two smaller islands attached to the southeast.
Ilena studied the unfamiliar shape and asked,
“This is…… the map of Mai Island?”
It was her first time seeing the island drawn out.
“So the Kingdom of Lihyu was this big……”
Nearly half the island was occupied by Lihyu, centered around Mount Aufus.
Meanwhile, the Kingdom of Manoa in the North was so small, it could barely be considered a region.
“Correct. Look here—the capital of Lihyu is in the South, slightly to the west.”
Iago pointed with his baton as he explained seriously.
“This season, strong northeast winds blow through the capital. They go this way.”
He drew a line northeast from the capital, and it landed directly on the Kaumana Desert.
“There’s something that puzzled me before.”
“What was that?”
“After you came, the clouds over the capital never spread to other regions.”
“……!”
Ilena began to understand what he was getting at.
He lowered his gaze back to the map.
“The Kaumana Desert, where it rained, is at the kingdom’s far north. Meanwhile, Akaha Beach, where we vacationed, is at the far south.”
“…And the moment I left the capital for the South, rain fell in the North.”
Ilena snapped her head up from the map, just as Iago looked up at the same time.
Their eyes met, and both spoke at once:
“It seems the range of the priestess’s power is limited.”
“My ability has a fixed range.”
Iago nodded.
“Yes. All this time, I thought the North simply refused to share the priestess’s blessings with other nations. But that wasn’t it.”
Ilena stared at the map, her mind racing.
With this theory, everything made sense—
Why the North never shared her blessings with other countries suffering from abnormal climates.
Why rain poured down in the North the moment she left the capital.
The clouds lingering over the capital had simply drifted northward with the wind once they moved outside her sphere of influence.
