Chapter 37
For the First Time in My Life
Once, long ago, I saw Shade walking through the corridors of the Lundra Royal Palace from behind.
I was so small then that I barely reached half the height of the maid beside me. Holding her hand, I was playing with water at the garden fountain. Or perhaps I was sitting on the edge of the fountain basin, eating cookies—honestly, I don’t remember exactly.
What I do remember clearly is that it was a day filled with beautiful sunlight. The light shattered into fragments as it danced in the fountain spray.
I was about to call out Shade’s name when the maid stopped me.
“Why? Can’t I call Brother and play with him?”
“His Highness the Crown Prince is on his way to a meeting with the officials. Look—see? Just like that.”
Shade turned the corner of the corridor, heading toward the meeting rooms. The hallway he entered curved away from the sunlit area, and the light no longer reached his back.
“So… I shouldn’t interrupt him, right?”
“How about going to see Prince Daymond instead?”
“Daymond is probably playing with a pretty older sister and a scary older brother.”
I only learned much later that Shade had been around fourteen years old at the time, a student in the academy’s elementary division.
Shade was always busy. Whenever I went to the Crown Prince’s office, he was always writing something or talking with someone.
He held meetings several times a day, and sometimes he even had two lunch appointments in one day. After lunch, he would meet other people again for tea.
It was an open secret that Shade didn’t enjoy desserts—and it was also a fact that no one really cared about.
I was the first in the family to learn that Shade drank alcohol.
One day, I burst into his room without knocking, and a sweet yet head-tingling scent filled the air.
I had never seen alcohol inside the palace before, but instinctively I knew this was the “alcohol” the maids talked about.
“Oh? Daisy?”
Shade smiled lazily. He had one arm resting on the table, his head laid atop it.
I don’t know how it was possible, but that day Shade looked both languid and sharp at the same time.
Several black bottles lay scattered beneath his chair, yet he walked toward me without staggering.
He crouched down to match my height and gently pushed me out of the room.
—It’s a secret.—
Through the closing door, Shade smiled with his eyes and raised his index finger to his lips.
Shade never staggered when he walked. Shade, the first son of the King of Lundra, the Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Lundra, always walked straight ahead with his back held perfectly upright.
Had I dreamed of Shade? My older brother.
Even in my feverish, half-delirious state from the cold, I knew for certain that Shade had appeared in my dream.
Since I had stood shivering in the rain, catching a cold was only natural. It was the first cold I had ever had in my life, which until then had been free of minor illnesses.
Cedric, who had been soaked just as much as I was, didn’t catch a cold. He said the downpour I had been caught in wasn’t cold enough to make both of us ill in such a short time.
According to Daymond, the reason I felt such severe cold so quickly was, paradoxically, because of Yuri’s magic that had helped me.
The spell Yuri had cast slightly lowered the temperature around me compared to the surroundings, and as the rain cooled the air further, I ended up exposed to even colder conditions.
Yuri had also cast magic so that Cedric could walk through the air above the lake, and she later withdrew the spell she had placed on me.
I suffered for two full days. My first cold was unfamiliar.
I had a fever, and my body felt chilled to the bone. I chuckled quietly to myself, thinking that even in summer, one could feel cold without magic.
More unfamiliar than the cold was myself.
I thought about my name—Daisy Lund. A name given to me by the dragon and the Kingdom of Lundra.
I had lived a life of restraint. No one had ordered me to do so, nor had anyone told me it was better that way.
If I wanted, my family might have turned a blind eye to some degree of arrogance. But I never chose that path.
My earliest childhood memory was from atop a carriage.
On national commemorative days, the Lundra royal family toured the streets. Riding in magnificent, ornate carriages and waving, we were loved by the people of the kingdom.
That day, I wore a voluminous pink dress and a large striped ribbon in my hair.
Cradled in my mother’s arms, I waved along with her when, through an open window, a beautiful rose suddenly flew in.
I reached out and grasped the red rose.
In that instant, fire bloomed at my fingertips. I had pricked my finger on the rose’s thorn, and blood welled up.
My mother grasped the situation immediately. Before I could cry, she smiled brightly.
“Daisy, show the people the lovely rose you’re holding.”
Even as one hand gently soothed me out of sight below the carriage window.
I smiled. Everyone loved me.
I restrained myself, yielded, and took responsibility. In return, I was loved. I neither disliked nor felt burdened by that. Staying inside, closing my ears and separating myself from the world, was not particularly difficult. The palace was sturdy, and everything one needed was inside.
And yet, I came to like something that didn’t exist within the palace.
I had never loved before, so I didn’t know whether this was love.
The maids who read romance novels in the palace said that the hero defeats villains, crosses mountains and rivers, and falls in love with the princess.
I was neither a hero crossing mountains and rivers nor a princess meant to stay behind. I was a princess who had to return to her kingdom, a symbol that existed for the people’s peace. I didn’t even want to fight a fire-breathing villain.
Still, I knew that I liked him. Just as one keeps wanting to look at flowers, I kept wanting to see him. Perhaps that meant I didn’t love him—after all, liking flowers doesn’t mean loving them.
But being with him was fun. I laughed. Jokes came to mind. And that buoyant, fluttering feeling in my chest—
Once, I realized that if your eyes keep drifting toward someone, it means you like them. Because I already knew what “liking” felt like, I noticed it faster this time—almost the moment I realized that the person who crossed the lake to reach me was him.
From the first moment my eyes were drawn to him,
him who was expressionless and seemingly indifferent,
him who slowly began to smile,
him who noticed even the smallest things,
him who was as kind as he was neat—
This time, too, I decided not to be greedy. I had a place I had to return to.
Still, I chose to accept the change within me.
Change was something new. If I encountered something new, I decided not to fear it, but to accept it. Since this was the first time I’d ever liked something that wasn’t a flower, surely new things would happen.
Rachel’s voice from the lake seemed to echo in my ears.
Her concern for me had been sincere. Rachel, who had reached out with warm hands to me; Rachel, who once demanded the kingdom’s treasure and was now kind to me; Rachel, who seemed to like Cedric.
I closed my eyes and rubbed my face into the blanket. The rustling cotton brushed against my fever-warmed skin.
I would soak myself thoroughly in the monsoon rain and return to my land. I would sink my roots into the royal palace as Daisy who had been drenched by the rain.
Yes.
And Cedric came to visit me every day.
He spent the time he might have spent in the lounge instead in the small sitting room attached to my bedroom.
Cedric spoke to me without fuss, without excessive concern.
He would send a maid ahead to ask from outside the door whether he might enter, then ask from outside the bedroom if it was all right for him to read in the small sitting room. When I said it was fine, Cedric would read the book he brought for hours.
As my condition gradually improved, I opened the door and stepped into the small sitting room myself.
From then on, whenever Cedric came, I sat beside him and drank something warm. Today, the maid had brought sweet hot chocolate.
We blew gently on the hot chocolate together. I’d drink it once it cooled a little. With Yuri’s magic gone and my cold improving, I began to feel warm again.
Realizing that I liked Cedric didn’t change anything. I simply understood why my gaze kept wanting to settle on him.
I also didn’t think about why Cedric kept visiting me. I didn’t want to give a name to kindness. Perhaps it was because he now knew I might feel hurt otherwise—nothing more than the courtesy of a kind host.
I sat on the sofa that shared a corner with the one Cedric always used. Feeling the dull ache in my head and the lingering chills in my body, I fixed my eyes on him—not to observe anything in particular, but simply letting my gaze rest there.
“Princess.”
Cedric lifted his eyes from his book and looked at me. As his face turned toward me, the chain of his glasses glinted in the sunlight. Though the light streamed directly through the window, his expression remained composed, untouched by glare.
He slipped a hand into his jacket pocket, took something out, and placed it on the glass tray atop the table.
Tilting my head to look, I saw that it was a Prichtiri.
