Chapter 10

Varkan stood at the exact spot where the Princess had fallen moments earlier, his face drained of color.

The cliff was so deep that he couldn’t even see the bottom. His voice had torn through the space between the cliffs, echoed around the mountains, and returned to him.

Then—

“Huh? Grand Duke?”

A bright, perfectly carefree voice rose from directly below the cliff.

Varkan lowered his head further, and his eyes met the Princess’s blue eyes as she clung tightly to the rock face and looked up at him.

“……”

“……”

Whoooooosh—

The fierce northern wind swept between the two of them in the silence.

The Princess hadn’t fallen.

Barely a handspan below the edge of the cliff, she was precariously hanging from a protruding rock, gripping it firmly with one hand.

With her other hand, she was plucking out some nameless plant root growing from a crack in the cliff.

“Why are you here, Your Grace?”

Haah…

A short sigh escaped Varkan’s lips.

This should have been a moment of relief, yet for some reason, he felt even more frustrated.

Perhaps it was because the sight of the Princess disappearing beneath the cliff had overlapped with memories from his childhood that he desperately wanted to forget.

Varkan clenched his molars.

Things had been like this lately.

His life had been peaceful, with no particular emotional upheavals, but ever since that Princess appeared, his insides seemed to twist several times a day.

Even when the Emperor had dumped the Princess of an enemy kingdom on him, he hadn’t felt like this.

Yet today alone, the Princess had startled him several times, only to anger him again moments later.

Varkan’s jaw tightened, but he barely managed to suppress his frustration and extended a hand toward the Princess below.

“Just take my hand for now.”

What is going on?

And why is the Grand Duke here again?!

“Just take my hand for now.”

“……”

His large hand reached toward me.

Despite his words telling me to take it, Varkan’s voice sounded cold, as though he were suppressing something.

His jaw was rigid, and his eyes were filled with unmistakable irritation.

For some reason, the Grand Duke seemed angry.

Did he find out that I picked a bunch of poisonous plants?

I stared suspiciously at the hand Varkan had extended toward me.

What if I grabbed that hand and entrusted my body to him, only for the Grand Duke to let go?

I glanced down at the cliff beneath me as the wind howled around it.

Whooooooosh—

Indeed…

This is a great place to get rid of a troublesome person.

Besides, rather than entrusting myself to someone else and being hauled up, it was much more convenient for me to climb the cliff myself.

After thinking it over, I decided not to take his hand.

A brief silence followed.

Varkan clenched his teeth tightly before speaking again.

“Princess, it’s dangerous, so you should come up first—”

Oops. He’s getting angry again.

I quickly slipped the plant roots I’d just pulled from the crack in the cliff into the inner pocket of my cloak, hiding them as inconspicuously as possible.

Then I placed my toes into the cracks along the cliff face and climbed upward with practiced movements.

“Hup!”

With a light grunt, I pushed myself up onto the cliff and brushed the snow and dirt from my cloak.

Varkan withdrew the arm he had extended and stood there staring at me.

“Have you decided to die?!”

At Varkan’s strained voice, I opened my eyes slightly in surprise.

No, why on earth is he angry?

Looking at Varkan with an utterly confused expression, I asked,

“Die? Who? Me?”

I shrugged.

“Of course not. I’m doing everything I can to live as long as possible…”

“Then why did you jump off a cliff?!”

Varkan demanded ominously.

Ah. Did he misunderstand and think I jumped off the cliff because I wanted to die?

That was a little troublesome.

I’d merely gone a little way down the cliff because I’d lost my head after seeing a new species of plant growing there.

That’s right.

I hadn’t jumped off the cliff.

I’d simply stepped down about a handspan at a time, carefully using the rocks along the cliff.

Feeling a little unfairly accused, I looked at Varkan, raised my chin, and said,

“I didn’t jump off. I just went down for a little while. And I didn’t die, did I? As you can see, I came back up perfectly fine.”

I spread both arms wide to emphasize how unharmed I was.

But Varkan didn’t seem to be calming down.

Looking at me as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, he ground the words out through his teeth.

“So Delmar teaches its royalty how to climb cliffs, does it?”

At that, I snorted.

“Yes, well. Let’s just call it one of my little hobbies!”

“A hobby? Digging up the ground and climbing cliffs?”

At Varkan’s incredulous expression, I grinned and took a step toward him.

“Yes. A hobby.”

“……”

“Everyone has a hobby, don’t they? Just like Your Grace was so devoted to hunting magical beasts that you were willing to leave the Princess of an enemy kingdom abandoned at your residence.”

At my pointed provocation, Varkan’s eyes narrowed further.

A brief silence passed.

Whoosh.

Varkan ran a hand through his bangs and steadied his breathing.

Perhaps trying to calm his emotions, he closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again.

Then he bent his enormous body toward me and spoke in a low voice.

“Princess.”

“Wh-why…?”

The shadow cast by his imposing physique seemed to swallow me whole.

Varkan’s throat rumbled like an angry beast as he spoke.

“Do not test my patience. Whether you jump off a cliff or throw yourself into the water is none of my concern, but I will not tolerate finding your corpse on my land.”

“…No, I wasn’t trying to die in the first place—!”

I snapped back, opening my mouth to argue.

But at that exact moment—

Whoooooooosh—!

A low, heavy wind began to howl from deep within the mountain range.

At the same time, the snowfall gradually intensified, beginning to blow diagonally through the air.

Wh-what?!

Startled by the sudden change in weather, I looked around.

The snowfall grew stronger and stronger, pouring down like a curtain and beginning to obscure our vision.

I hunched my shoulders and looked at Varkan.

“W-why is there suddenly a blizzard?! It was perfectly clear just a moment ago!”

As though the raging snowstorm were a familiar sight, Varkan calmly surveyed his surroundings.

“…The God’s Veil.”

“The God’s Veil?”

“It’s the reason there are so few magical beasts in the Fedrika Mountains.”

Varkan explained that deadly blizzards swept unpredictably through the Fedrika Mountains, and they were called the God’s Veil.

“What?!”

I opened my eyes wide as though I’d never heard of such a thing before.

Varkan tilted his head and spoke indifferently.

“Isn’t that why I told you it was dangerous?”

“N-no! I thought you just meant that I should be careful not to freeze to death because it was cold! That’s why I came thoroughly prepared for the cold!”

I’d also been told that magical beasts hardly appeared here.

And even if one did show up, I had assumed that the knights who had rushed ahead would take care of it themselves.

If things got really bad, I could always climb back down beneath the cliff and take shelter.

“But you never told me anything about a blizzard like this! I thought it would be safe as long as I was careful about the cold…”

“There is no safe place in the northern mountain ranges.”

“No, that’s not what I meant…”

Ugh.

I pressed a hand to my forehead and sighed.

Then I suddenly raised my head and looked toward the front, which had become blurred by the raging snowstorm.

“Th-then how are we supposed to find the knights who went ahead? They’re safe, right?”

I looked up at Varkan worriedly.

Varkan turned his head again.

He alternated between looking at the ground and the sky as he surveyed their surroundings.

“The knights of the Grand Ducal House are accustomed to the unpredictable environment of the Fedrika Mountains. They are thoroughly trained, and preparations have also been made at various locations.”

“That’s a relief, but… But I’m not!”

I spoke with a thoroughly miserable expression.

“You said you wouldn’t let me die within the Grand Duchy! You said there was no way I’d be found as a corpse!”

In this violent blizzard, I couldn’t even see a single step ahead of me!

Even if there were preparations in place, could we even move forward in this?

Oh, what a miserable fate!

I was going to die on a mountain again!

What kind of miserable fate did I have to be born with?!

I mumbled while desperately holding back my tears.

Then Varkan took a step toward me.

He looked down at me with pitch-black eyes that seemed to evoke an abyss, and slowly opened his mouth.

“…That’s why I came.”