Chapter 2.3
Unable to find anything meaningful to follow up with, Azelin unconsciously reached for the ring on her finger.
It was the magic ring that draped Rozalia’s illusion over her. In an age when magic had all but vanished into legend, no one could possibly imagine a trick like this, swapping one person for another. So as long as she didn’t take off the ring, there was no way to be found out.
Which made it even stranger when the Marquis’s gaze drifted naturally to her hand, causing Azelin to startle and drop her hand below the table. A guilty conscience at work.
“A-anyway! I’m tired, so I think I’ll rest now.”
“What a shame, but I suppose that’s all right. Honestly, just knowing you waited for me at all already makes me happy.”
His bright, genuinely-touched smile made Azelin realize her mistake a moment too late. Calculating for Rozalia’s typical behavior and her unflattering description of this meeting, the more authentically ‘Rozalia’ thing to do would have been to leave without waiting a single second past the agreed time.
But what was done was done. Azelin turned away abruptly with the most shameless expression she could arrange and let out an airy scoff. She wanted to run to her room, but as the stand-in Princess she couldn’t afford to look like she was fleeing from the Marquis.
So she imitated Rozalia’s unhurried walk as best she could, she’d done it enough times that she managed it without awkwardness, but before she had taken three steps, a natural, smooth hand settled on her shoulder and stopped her.
He had come close enough to be nearly embracing her from behind, then bent his head to meet her eyes.
“Thank you for giving me your time. I mean it.”
The soft words were threaded through with an almost unbearably sweet feeling. The fine hairs on her neck rose, and a tingle ran down her spine.
Azelin met his eyes, hers trembling, then squeezed them shut and pulled herself out of his reach, a little roughly. Forgetting she couldn’t look like she was running away, she hurried her steps just to escape faster.
She tumbled into the bedroom of the villa he’d arranged for their meeting, locked the door firmly, and slid down it until she was sitting on the floor.
Her heart was pounding rapidly.
Whether from the terror of navigating the worst assignment of her life with almost no information, or from some other problem she didn’t want to think about, the hammering of her pulse wouldn’t settle.
“Your Highness… this plan was insane, wasn’t it?”
Azelin murmured her regret into her knees, pulling her head down against them, all the messy thoughts swirling around. In all the chaos of it, one thing at least was perfectly clear.
She couldn’t pretend not to notice. Every glance, every word, every small gesture he made was saturated with feeling.
The Marquis of Calveron was genuinely, sincerely in love with Rozalia. Painfully, regrettably so.
* * *
To trace the root of all of this was to answer the question: why had Azelin become Rozalia’s secret lady-in-waiting in the first place?
The eldest daughter of a minor provincial noble family, one that had already fallen far enough that the title of ‘noble’ had become a hollow joke, Azelin of the Brisserne family had come to serve as Rozalia’s lady-in-waiting through luck so improbable it defied explanation.
It began when Azelin, passing by chance, helped Rozalia, who was being harassed by a man with wandering hands and worse manners.
The slight complication was that Azelin was in the middle of a midnight escape from her father’s surveillance at the time, just as Rozalia herself had slipped away from the Imperial Palace incognito, which dulled the romance of the encounter somewhat, but the fact that Azelin had saved Rozalia’s life remained unchanged.
The man clinging to Rozalia had no idea how powerful and dangerous the woman he’d fixated on was. He wouldn’t let her go when she said it was over.
Azelin, who had been on the verge of being sold off to a rich, elderly man through her father’s arrangement, saw herself in Rozalia as she struggled against the man grabbing her, and so, for the first time in her life as a well-kept young lady, she committed a somewhat violent act and swung a travel bag at the back of a stranger’s head.
“You know, I think I like you.”
That was the first thing Rozalia said to Azelin, who was trembling uncontrollably, convinced she’d just killed someone, as she gazed at the unconscious man on the ground.
* * *
Fortunately, the man Azelin had struck had only been knocked out, not dead. The Imperial household’s secret guard showed up shortly after to collect him, and he was dragged off somewhere.
Rozalia declared that Azelin was now her savior, since she’d rescued her from a man who had said he’d rather kill them both than let her go, and announced, with a strangely delighted expression, that she would grant Azelin any wish.
When Rozalia said she could have money, or someone she wanted gone taken care of without a trace, Azelin asked to be taken to the Imperial Palace.
“That’s a boring solution.”
“Any kind of odd job is fine. Just let me stay at the Imperial Palace.”
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