At the boy’s sudden whining, Griselda stood frozen, staring at him blankly. Winfrid faced her with a strange smile on one cheek.

“What are you doing? Not coming closer.”

“……”

“Come on, you need to open my mouth. Touch the inside of this tongue with your fingertips. Roll around the molars gently and look down my throat. Hmm?”

“……”

“Why. Now that you’ve received an order, you don’t feel like doing it?”

“……”

“Well, how strange…”

“……”

“It’s something you’re good at, isn’t it.”

Winfrid sneered at her mockingly. Although it was the same cold laugh as usual. Griselda couldn’t understand for a moment why it flew towards her heart like an arrow. What… could it be. This shock is like a small lightning bolt, like a speck of dirt on an apron.

Griselda couldn’t say anything for a moment. Without knowing the cause or meaning, she was just somewhat dumbfounded, bound by Winfrid’s mocking gaze. She looked into the boy’s eyes. No. Only the eyes were visible. His gaze, touching her face as if observing, was strangely lax under his messy blonde hair, casting a mysterious light.

Like some scholar.

A light that was both dark and blue. The calm, heated light of metal.

Eyes that seemed to have been seen in some distant foreign land, not of this earth. It was strangely exotic. Among the three siblings, his eyes alone had always been a deep, dark navy blue. Unlike his siblings who were pale like cats even at night, Winfrid’s eyes appeared pitch black as if they had been dark since birth.

That color seemed to silently reveal Winfrid’s unique origins, and Griselda once disliked only those eyes among all the parts of her beloved child’s body. Don’t cry, Lord Winfrid. Don’t cry with those eyes. Only I should know your secret…

While hugging the crying child and patting his small back, she would try to soothe her own unpleasant feelings.

“I have a confession to make, Griselda.”

The boy, thin as a pole, calls to her.

Winfrid’s eye level, his upper body, lowered slightly. His outstretched hand gently grasped Griselda’s hand. Griselda, unable to suppress her bewildered feelings, stumbled along as Winfrid led her. Suddenly, she felt a chill. The boy’s body temperature covering her hand was as low as a snake’s.

“You see… Actually, from some point on, I found you so unpleasant that I had trouble controlling my emotions whenever I saw you.”

Winfrid, sitting on the edge of the table, slowly pulled her closer, embracing her waist with both arms. Griselda’s view was filled with Winfrid’s golden crown and white forehead. Normally, she would have habitually stroked his hair. But now, somehow her shoulders were stiff and her hand wouldn’t rise.

Winfrid first pressed his forehead against her stiff chest.

“The unknown is uncontrollable, Griselda. Such things usually bring fear. And I found that extremely irritating. Whenever I faced you, I clearly felt an unpleasant feeling, but I couldn’t grasp its cause or identity…”

“……”

“Can you believe it? That ‘I don’t know’? Me…?”

“……”

“So I tried to distance myself from you as much as possible.”

There was a hint of the boy’s characteristic cynicism mixed in at the end. He said he had tried to distance himself from her. Nevertheless, Griselda wanted to find reassurance in Winfrid’s words. This child was just displeased, she thought. Not for any other reason… He was simply displeased.

In fact, since she didn’t know the root cause from the beginning, Griselda couldn’t understand the subsequent fruits either. The anxiety she felt. For a moment, she didn’t know why she was trying to comfort herself over something so anxiety-inducing. She doesn’t know. An ominous feeling remained in one corner of her heart like an unpicked thorn, but of course, she didn’t have the capacity to pay attention to that far.

She just buried it near the root, thinking how upset he must have been.

I’m sorry. The apology came naturally. It’s alright, I’ve realized everything today and no longer have the heart to distance myself from you. Winfrid mumbled against her chest. It was an uncharacteristically small, fragile voice.

How upset he must have been.

Pretending to care for the child, she repeated it to herself several times, and amusingly, it was Griselda who truly felt relieved. And so she truly felt sorry for Winfrid. She should have known and served him first. Wasn’t Winfrid always a child who grasped the sword before the shield?

Meanwhile, lacking strength in his arms, he picked up books and contemplation instead of swords. But this time, when that method didn’t work, he was wounded directly on his sickly bare flesh. His proud self-esteem was scratched. That was an internal injury that Griselda had failed to notice. She placed both hands on the boy’s head resting in her arms. How upset he must have been.

The moment her touch reached him, Winfrid let out a long, deep breath. Her bodice seemed to dampen slightly from the boy’s breath as he clung to her like when he was young. Turning his head, he now rested the side of his face on her chest. As if about to search for milk and latch on, he burrowed into Griselda’s chest with one cheek and jawline. Griselda’s shoulders jerked. Again, as if a thorn was stepping on her foot.

“How… how troubled you must have been all this time. It’s my fault for causing you such negative emotions due to my inadequacy.”

“What?”

At Griselda’s words, spoken with a somewhat urgent feeling, Winfrid let out an incredulous exclamation. Just as she thought her chest might lighten, Winfrid’s face and upper body pulled away. His brow, clearly crumpled and cooled off, became visible.

“Don’t make unfunny jokes. You’ve always been good at saying presumptuous things, then and now. Both achievements and failures are mine alone, how dare you claim any share in them. The nerve…”

With that, he shook his head with a long sigh.

“Let’s… try to know our place if possible, shall we? I am the second son of House Valdemar… and you are a servant nurse.”

Winfrid trailed off the last part in a mumble as he got up from his seat. How frustrating…. With that, he abruptly left the sick room. Griselda followed his back with bewildered eyes.

“Where are you going?”

“Father’s library.”

“Pardon?”

“……”

“Why so suddenly…?”

“My teeth have grown in, so I must go my own way.”

Winfrid didn’t particularly stop his steps. Without even slowing down, he headed straight for the stairs. And without looking back at her even once, he said:

“There’s no hope for me.”

Whenever she recalled Winfrid going down the stairs with an unusually adult-like back, the skin that had stepped on a thorn at that time hurt. Come back. Griselda counts milk teeth with a prayer. Come back here. No. Please.

To your childhood.

Griselda clenched her fist holding the milk teeth tightly.

She thought that the reason for feeling so anxious after seeing the back of the child who had suddenly grown tall was just an inevitable longing for the child she had separated from her arms after a long time. Griselda shivered for a moment. Then she suddenly came to her senses.

Look at me.

After putting the memories held in her hand back into the jewel box, she hurriedly got up from her seat. Wiping her tear-stained eyes that had somehow become wet, she tidied her headcover while composing her emotions. Finally, she picked up the water bottle she had placed on the floor.

In fact, she had been on her way to draw well water to wash the princess’s body.

On summer afternoons when the scorching sun was at its peak, Duke Gustavus’s stone fortress would transform into a giant furnace. Even now, as she hurriedly left her quarters and walked through the corridor to finally leave the fortress, the dry air outside was rather cooler. Summer. It was a season that became a torment for the princess just by sitting still and breathing heavily, as sweat would cover her entire body.

After the incident a few years ago, whenever her clothes became hot and damp, the princess would turn pale and become unable to move. As if even the touch of clothes on her body was terrible, she would spread her arms as if flapping them, with a corpse-like complexion, just opening and closing her mouth. Gri, Grisel…. With a non-existent mind, she would try to call out to her nurse with all her might, but even that would remain unfinished. That appearance was just like a robin with its white quills completely paralyzed. A robin stumbling soon because it couldn’t even fold its stiffened wings.

It also seemed like the appearance of the princess consort when she was alive.

When the eyes that resembled her father’s so much faded, all that remained was her mother’s madness-filled figure. Poor thing….

To Griselda, it seemed clear that the princess would soon die alone. The princess would turn seventeen this coming October, wouldn’t she? When Griselda spent her honeymoon with her husband, she was fourteen and a half, so the princess was already more than two years older compared to her at that time. In other words, Princess Valdemar was already well past her prime.

Even the guards who had stood in front of the door to prevent the escape of an innocent prisoner had fulfilled their duty and left. Recently, the chamber door was always left open except for the night when the princess slept. As if welcoming any guest, any knight at any time.

However, there was no sign of her soul’s illness improving.

Due to the strange rumors circulating throughout the continent, there was no one coming to propose marriage. The princess who ate her husband. The mad princess. Half of the rumors were lies and half were truths. How could it be our young lady’s fault that her husband ended up like that? The devil.

While drawing well water, Griselda thought of the fortress’s heir. At times, she couldn’t help but wonder if the one who killed the princess’s husband might be the devil of this fortress. She still couldn’t forget the ominous figure writhing in guilt to the point of losing his mind.

However, it was indeed not Griselda’s place to know in detail. She was satisfied with taking care of her child and herself. Above all, she had no energy to spare for concern. She was devoting all her mental energy, even in her sleep, to protecting the suddenly uneasy mother-child relationship. She felt deeply sorry for the princess who was paying the price for a sin that wasn’t even her own. However, she should refrain from getting involved in unnecessary matters and possibly adding fuel to the fire.

Wasn’t it a cursed family anyway?

There was no way for her to intervene, and even if she did, the princess’s fate, already twisted by evil influence, wouldn’t change now.

All she could offer was sympathy.

“Shall I carry it for you?”

A familiar training instructor approached and spoke to her. Lost in thought, she hadn’t realized she was already in front of the training ground. Griselda wiped the sweat from her forehead while listening to the distant clanging of metal. It must be time for the knights’ training….

The devil must be somewhere around here.

“I need to go to the chamber, will that be alright?”

Griselda whispered, trying to keep her voice low so it wouldn’t be heard from afar.

“Oh my.”

The instructor stepped back with an awkward smile.

“The princess would surely be disgusted. How dare I enter the chamber with these muddy feet.”

“If you’re lucky, it’ll end with just disgust…”

At Griselda’s joke that sounded like the truth, the instructor let out a groan and averted his gaze. It was an understandable attitude. The sight of a paper-thin girl, who should be in full bloom, discovering a strange man and letting out a low scream for a long, long time… before finally fainting, was tragic enough to crush even the hearts of those watching. The area in front of the chamber had become one of the few places where even knights accustomed to blood and sweat didn’t know how to behave.