Chapter 3
There were no maids or servants in sight, nor anyone disembarking with piles of luggage, which made it even harder to guess who the ‘distinguished guest’ Prince Lakan had spoken of might be.
Eris was beginning to grow uneasy.
If she failed to carry out this assignment properly, she would have to return every last coin of the advance she had already received.
‘Wait. Did he never expect me to succeed in the first place?’
But why? Was this some elaborate prank devised by a bored nobleman with too much power on his hands?
She had just about convinced herself that she had fallen victim to one of the prince’s whims when—
“Excuse me.”
“…Huh?”
With so many people crowding the harbor, Eris had failed to notice someone approaching from behind.
She spun around in surprise and found herself facing a man who stood more than a head taller than she did.
“Are you Miss Eris Blaine?”
His voice was refreshing and clear like a running stream, yet carried a subtle weight beneath its pleasant tone.
“…And you are?”
Eris answered warily, lifting her gaze higher. Only after tilting her head back at an almost ridiculous angle was she finally able to see his face properly.
Under the blazing June sun, the man’s silver hair glittered like countless fragments of a jewel.
‘No way.’
While Eris could only stare blankly at him, his red lips curved into an easy smile.
“A pleasure to meet you. I’m Ciel von Silverion.”
A strong jawline carved as cleanly as a statue, a sharp nose, red lips, smooth pale skin, and blue eyes clearer than the early-summer sea.
It really was him.
The boy Eris had known eight years ago had shed every trace of childishness and returned as a fully grown man, standing right before her.
“What are you doing here?”
The pudding slipped from Eris’s hand before she even realized it. Ciel’s brows drew together briefly before his gaze dropped to the ground.
“My apologies if I startled you. But… have we met before?”
Ciel personally bent down to pick up the fallen pudding, then looked directly at Eris.
His mysterious blue eyes, as though shattered stars had been scattered through them, held no emotion whatsoever.
Something about that struck Eris as so strange that she forgot all sense of courtesy and simply stared at his face in silence.
As the seconds passed, the only thing that appeared on Ciel’s face was growing confusion. There was no delight at seeing her again, nor even resentment.
He was genuinely treating her as though this were their first meeting.
“Is there something on my face?”
“Ah….”
Ciel swept a large hand over his chin. Only then did Eris hurriedly lower her gaze.
‘…He doesn’t remember me? Or is he pretending?’
No matter how closely she looked, it didn’t seem like an act. And that made even less sense.
The Ciel von Silverion in Eris’s memories had been an innocent boy whose every emotion showed plainly on his face.
Then had someone beaten him so badly somewhere along the way that he’d actually lost his memory?
“I mistook you for someone else. I thought you were an old friend of mine. Please forgive my rudeness.”
Still, just because he didn’t remember her didn’t mean they had been close enough for Eris to boldly demand, How can you not remember the woman who taught you swordsmanship?
If anything, they might have been closer to enemies than friends. So Eris decided to pretend she didn’t know him either and offered an apology.
“It seems there’s someone in the Kingdom of Celis who looks like me. Now I’m curious. I’d like to meet him and see just how similar we are.”
When Eris gave him an awkward smile, Ciel glanced down at the pudding in his hand.
“Hmm. I’m afraid this probably needs to be thrown away.”
“Ah, yes. I suppose so.”
“If you tell me where you bought it, I’ll get you another one. It seems I startled you into dropping it.”
“No, that’s all right. It was my own fault, so please don’t worry about it.”
Her heart, which felt as though it had fallen to the ground along with the pudding, was still pounding violently inside her chest.
“You are Miss Eris, the one who will be escorting me during my travels, correct?”
Eris swallowed hard and cautiously glanced at Ciel’s expression.
“Yes, that’s right. So… are you, by any chance, the distinguished guest who was supposed to arrive today…?”
Far too many thoughts were crowding her mind at once, leaving her unable to finish the sentence.
She must have looked like an idiot. Eris belatedly bit her lower lip.
“Yes, that’s me. I intend to stay in the Kingdom of Celis and travel around for approximately three months.”
Even so, Ciel answered her calmly, a pleasant smile still on his face.
The vast Tervanne Empire possessed a history as long as it was rich, and with it came more noble families than one could easily count. Yet out of all those countless nobles, it just had to be a Silverion standing before her.
House Silverion was one of the Five Great Houses that stood at the very pinnacle of the Empire’s aristocracy.
Eris belatedly regretted how casually she had dismissed the possibility when Prince Lakan first told her about the assignment.
Surely it won’t be a Silverion. Why would anyone from House Silverion come all the way to this kingdom just to travel?
“What could there possibly be to see in this tiny kingdom that you’d stay for three whole months…?”
“Pardon?”
“…Ah, nothing.”
Realizing that her inner thoughts had slipped straight out of her mouth, Eris hurriedly shook her head.
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