A Wish and a Promise (1)
Even if he wakes, the pain from his wounds will only torment him. It would be better if he stays unconscious.
I rose slowly from my seat.
The pharmacist flinched so hard he toppled backward.
“And you.”
“Eek!”
He thrust his hand into the air and blurted out an answer to a question I had not yet asked.
“I—I’m very good at making cold medicine too!”
That was not what I intended to ask.
Of course, cold medicine mattered, but still.
I opened my eyes wider.
“What you saw today is a secret. Understood?”
“Y-yes! I will engrave it in my heart, again and again!”
The pharmacist pressed himself flat against the floor, bowing his head low.
“So you can make cold medicine.”
“Yes, yes. All the maids working at the Medical Bureau say mine is the best. It works quickly and reliably.”
“Then give me that.”
“Yes, yes!”
The pharmacist scrambled over to the dispensing table and moved with such frantic speed his hands seemed to vanish.
Soon afterward he offered me a murky potion tinged with red.
“Um, I heard His Highness the Third Prince is still very young. Since this medicine can be given to children, I added a little strawberry syrup.”
What a pointless gesture.
After accepting the medicine I glared at him again.
“Let me repeat myself. If what happened here today becomes known outside these walls…”
The pharmacist reacted with impressive speed once more. Before I could finish speaking he had already thrown himself flat on the floor again.
“I—I am a man who knows the value of his own life! I absolutely, positively will not breathe a word of today’s events to anyone!”
His reaction was more violent than I had expected, and for a moment it left me slightly off balance.
Well, after witnessing that scene with his own eyes, it was only natural.
“If any rumors surface, I will come for you first.”
“Y-yes. I will keep it in mind.”
Leaving the pharmacist behind—he was pressing his forehead to the floor as though he had come face to face with the emperor himself—I hurried away.
I had only meant to walk a little faster, yet before I knew it I was running, breath ragged.
That was how I raced toward the Third Prince’s Palace.
With every ounce of strength I possessed, with everything I had.
“Huuuuh…”
Edwin was still lost in fever, unable to regain his senses.
I pried open the boy’s lips and forced the medicine down his throat.
“Nanny, if he chokes—”
“Don’t worry. I may not be skilled at nursing, but I have plenty of experience feeding medicine.”
“Pardon?”
Contrary to Catherine’s concern, Edwin swallowed every drop without spilling a single one.
All I could do now was hope the pathetic pharmacist’s boast had not been empty.
“Your Highness Emilia, you’ll catch his cold if you stay so close.”
“No! Ria is staying right beside big brother!”
Even before I arrived, Emilia had been glued to her older brother’s side, refusing to budge an inch.
Whose stubbornness had she inherited, I wondered.
As I sighed, Catherine lifted the princess into her arms.
“Uuuuh! Ria wants to stay with big brother!”
“Your Highness Emilia, let’s go have a snack. The kitchen prepared the honey cake Your Highness loves.”
“What? H-honey cake?”
Emilia’s brows crumpled like discarded paper.
Honey cake, or her ailing brother?
The princess chewed her finger and muttered.
“I shouldn’t… Ria has to protect big brother…”
“I will guard His Highness Edwin, so please go on.”
At my words the princess’s face blossomed like a flower in full bloom.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Yay! Then Neiche will guard big brother instead of Ria! You must guard him well, understand?”
“You needn’t worry.”
With that, Emilia left the room nestled in Catherine’s embrace.
A heavy silence descended. Only the prince’s breathing filled the room.
It sounded noticeably easier than before he had taken the medicine.
When I laid a hand on his forehead, the fever had dropped considerably.
So the pharmacist had not been exaggerating.
I let out a small sigh and leaned back in the chair.
Outside the window, the sunset had already begun to fade.
Spring colds were remarkably persistent.
Even after taking the medicine, Edwin suffered for several more days.
His cough had completely subsided, yet every night the fever rose and fell in waves.
As a result, Catherine and I had to take turns nursing the prince each day.
One dawn, after another day or two had slipped by and everyone else was asleep, Edwin slowly lifted his heavy eyelids.
His entire body had felt as though it had been beaten black and blue, but now the pain was gone.
Through his hazy vision he saw someone sitting beside him.
A figure seated with moonlight at their back, watching over him.
“Emma?”
Whether from lingering sleep or the remnants of fever, Edwin called the name of someone he could never meet again.
“Emma? Emma, is that you?”
The prince’s sorrowful eyes quickly grew wet.
“It really is you, Emma, isn’t it?”
Edwin reached out with desperate fingers.
“Why… why did you come only now? I kept praying and praying.”
Even if it was only in a dream, please appear at least once.
Then Emma took his hand without a word.
“It really is you, Emma.”
Edwin clutched the cold hand tightly, as though he never wanted to let go again.
The two of them remained like that for a long while, hands clasped in silence.
“Emma.”
The prince slowly opened his mouth.
“I’m sorry.”
For being unable to do anything while she lay dying after drinking the poisoned cup sent by the second consort.
“I’m truly, truly sorry.”
Because he was a prince who possessed nothing and could only ever be protected.
Because he was a coward who could not even shield his little sister.
Tears poured endlessly from Edwin’s eyes.
“It was my fault. I was wrong.”
The young prince’s voice cracked and broke.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”
“What exactly are you sorry for?”
Only then did Emma speak for the first time.
Her voice was far lower and colder than before.
But Edwin was not rational enough to notice the change.
“I… I made Emilia sick. Just like I did to you, Emma.”
The prince squeezed his eyes shut as though the memory horrified him.
“And I couldn’t do anything in front of older brother Lloyd. Charging at him was useless.”
Edwin bit his lip.
“I’m sorry. Even though you made a wish for my happiness, I don’t know what to do.”
Whenever he tried to seize happiness, the misfortune swirling at his feet would surge forward as though it had been waiting.
“Emma, what is happiness? I don’t understand. What must I do to become happy?”
His small shoulders trembled faintly.
“Mother left. You left too, Emma. Everyone by my side leaves me.”
And that strange woman would leave as well, she had said.
Even though she always claimed to be on his side.
“…That woman and Ria will leave someday too.”
Edwin murmured while gripping Emma’s hand with all his strength.
“I’m scared, Emma.”
Of being left alone. Of having no one beside him.
But what frightened him most was the realization that he lacked the power to protect even the person staying with him right now.
“…If I had been smart like my oldest brother, or strong like my second brother, no one would have left, right?”
His face flushed bright red as the fever rose again.
“Why am I—why on earth! Cough, cough!”
When the prince began coughing violently, Emma rose from her seat.
Startled by the movement, Edwin cried out in panic.
“No! Don’t go! Don’t leave me alone, Emma!”
“Shh—”
A cool hand settled over the prince’s burning forehead.
The refreshing touch made Edwin close his eyes without thinking.
“I will not leave.”
“Really? You really won’t go?”
“Yes.”
“Really? You promise?”
“…Yes. I promise.”
When Edwin asked again in a trembling voice, she gave a slow nod.
“So sleep a little longer.”
As though the words were a spell, the prince slipped back into slumber, his expression finally at peace.
Beneath a touch that was cold yet gentle.
It would have been better if I had never remembered at all.
“This was Emma’s last wish, she told me.”
“A wish, you say?”
“Yes. Emma said she wanted me to be happy. That must have been her final wish.”
I lifted my hand from Edwin’s forehead where he lay sleeping.
“Why did it have to be you, of all people?”
At first I assumed it was merely a coincidence of names. Later I even prayed it was.
But in the end I could not deny the truth.
That she was the same Emma I had known.
Countess Emma Conrad.
Edwin’s deceased nanny, and the woman who had once raised me in the orphanage.
A woman whose original surname had been Roiche, not Conrad.
“…Did you have to lie even to me just to die in such a pathetic way?”
The last day I saw Emma remained painfully vivid.
She had told me she was returning to her hometown to live with her true family.
Therefore I must not come looking for her anymore.
No—I must never come looking for her again.
“If you wanted to sever ties with me, you could have simply said so.”
I would have accepted it gladly.
Yet the gift I gave her had been kept even after her death.
“…Damn it.”
I cursed softly as I stared at the pearl bracelet gleaming on Edwin’s wrist.
It was a cheap trinket I had bought in the marketplace with the first payment I received from the assassination guild.
A truly impulsive purchase.
Even though I believed we would never meet again, the thought of her had made me buy it.
And then, after the day I promised the former leader that I would never see Emma again.
The day I encountered her once more by chance.
To the woman who clung to me and wept, I handed over the bracelet.
“Kyla, what is this?”
“…It is a token. Bring it to me and I will grant you three wishes free of charge.”
At my words she stopped crying and laughed with genuine delight.
Her eyes were those of a mother watching her grown child do something endearing.
“You’re still as blunt as ever. You could have simply said it was a gift.”
Emma, seeing my awkward expression, laughed for a long time before wiping away her tears.
“Then may I make my first wish?”
“Speak.”
“Will you keep coming to see me in the future? You don’t have to show your face.”
Emma already seemed to understand exactly what kind of life I led.
“Simply knowing that you are living safely is enough for me.”