Part 2: I'll Call Your Name (3/7)

"Sis, what took you so long?!" Alexa snapped. She was in a foul mood, furious that the maids had dressed her in something she couldn't stand.

"Why would anyone put me in something this frumpy!"

It was practically a shriek.

"Alexa, you mustn't take your anger out on other people. At the very least, tell them what it is you actually want."

At Diana's gentle reprimand, Alexa shrank back and pushed out her lower lip. Then her gaze swung to Giscard.

"Why did you bring that slave along again?"

…

"Sis, are you doing this on purpose just to make me angry?"

"You know that isn't it."

Of the whole family, Alexa had been the most fiercely opposed to Diana taking Giscard under her wing. Their father was always too busy to care, and Emil — after raging at first over being robbed of the boy who would have been his slave — had bowed his head to the words "your father's promise."

But there was one who would not bend to their father's decision: Alexa. Enraged that her sister had been taken from her, she made no attempt to hide her open hostility toward Giscard.

It was only natural, Diana supposed. The girl had lost her mother, and Diana had become her stand-in; of course she felt unsteady. She sighed and laid a hand against Alexa's forehead. The fever had broken completely.

"Alexa. Once you're a little stronger, let's go down and visit our territory."

"Huh?"

"We'll be able to stay together the whole time we're there. I worry the city might be making you soft."

"What are you even saying? I'm going to hold tea parties just like Marcella does."

…

"A city lady — that's what I have to become. Stay cooped up in the territory and people start calling you a country girl."

"And once you're a city lady?"

"Then I'll marry a prince."

Alexa's grand dream was, indeed, very grand indeed.

"Sis, you'll help me, won't you?"

At that, Diana forced a smile.

"Of course I will. But only if you eat properly and stay healthy. Now, none of this sulking — let's send word to Father and have new dresses made. Being fitted for a ball gown would be fun in its own right."

"Really?!"

Alexa, who yearned so badly to be grown up, lit up like a struck spark. She flung her arms around Diana's neck, and a smile settled over Diana's face. Nothing else mattered.

Anything at all was better than watching them die.

Diana knew that cold world well — the one where no one would accept her, where she was treated as something foreign, where everyone itched for her death yet could never quite manage it.

It's all right. I can endure this much.

Because the life without you was the real hell.

Diana patted Alexa's back. When the girl sprang up, Diana's body swayed, her balance slipping for an instant — she hadn't been sleeping properly of late. Giscard was watching.

The day had looked ill-omened from the morning on — and so, it seemed, it truly was.

"You will show respect to Mirva."

That damned Mirva. Emil had already had his say about her, and now her father too had summoned Diana under some thin pretext to deliver the same lecture.

"I have shown more than enough respect."

"She keeps the household running in your place. How grateful are you for that?"

So that was what he wanted to talk about. Why did everyone in this house keep circling back to Mirva? Its men, it seemed, were simply weak to the woman. Was it because she was still flamboyantly pretty? Diana fought to hold down the irritation boiling up inside her.

"Father, I have told you time and again that I am capable of it. If only you would give me the chance—"

"All this fuss over a mere necklace — you went far too far! Whatever the provocation, you should never have shamed her in front of the maids!"

Diana flinched. Even knowing it had all begun with the necklace, he had not one thought to spare for what that meant? Was this what her father was?

"You bought Her Majesty the Queen's gratitude and won Princess Ionia's favor — and that makes you insufferably arrogant. You are still far from ready. You are nothing, I say."

…

"Besides, quarrels between women are beneath contempt. Fine — even if the Queen raged and cast us out, it would have been no great matter."

No great matter, he said. Diana knew her father's temperament all too well. He would have thundered about the disgrace to the family. She had resolved beforehand to bear his anger whichever way it fell, and so she could do nothing but absorb the Duke's fury, helpless before it.

"If House Brien cannot manage even that much, then it has no business keeping its seat as the kingdom's First Duchy."

What on earth had Mirva done — what games had she played — to talk her father around like this? Diana believed that if the Duke ever learned what the woman had actually done, he would hardly let it pass. He would not cast her out, no — but he would, at the very least, rage.

"Father, you told me that the mistress of this house is me."

"You are still a child."

"Only recently I aided Her Highness Princess Ionia and won Her Majesty the Queen's favor. It was I who did."

"How many times must I repeat myself? Unless it ends in a betrothal, it serves no purpose whatsoever. A single word of praise from that quarter, and you grow insolent and slipshod. I did not raise you to be this way."

Diana's breath caught in her throat.

"Then do you wish me to see the betrothal through, no matter what it takes?"

The Duke gave her no answer. He wanted to make Diana Queen. If she truly became engaged to Ferdinand — would anything actually change?

"I know you suffer for it."

…

"It will all be yours in the end regardless. Try to keep a kinder heart about it."

Diana swallowed down a nameless disappointment. Her father and Emil were the same. To her, this was a matter of real consequence — but so long as they themselves lost nothing, she was expected to let it slide.

Leaving without a word of farewell was, for her, the deepest revenge there was.

She shut the door and forced down the feelings brimming inside her — and found Mirva standing just outside it. The moment the woman beamed at her, radiant and honeyed, Diana nearly lost her composure. A reassertion of position, then. She had come to see for herself, up close, what state Diana had been left in.

"My lady. Might any misunderstanding you held of me have since been cleared up?"

The tender voice could not have been more saccharine. Glancing at the maids, Diana saw them all watching the pair of them.

"A misunderstanding? If you call what you did a 'misunderstanding,' then you are telling me my judgment was wrong."

She knew this was the moment to bow to Mirva. But Diana could not bring herself to.

"Insolent chit."

Mirva spat the words and swept away. The maids standing behind her darted anxious looks at her face.

"That little brat, honestly."

Mirva muttered through gritted teeth. The Duke of Brien would be kept very busy in the days to come. Just wait until then, she thought, and ground her teeth to powder.

Giscard searched the grounds. Finding one small girl in a sprawling ducal residence was no simple task.

"So she caved and groveled to Lady Mirva in the end."

"And here I thought the young miss was somebody. Turns out she's just a child."

"She's only twelve, after all. She was never going to beat Mirva."

"The miss is too young to know how the adult world works. Mirva, on the other hand, is... well."

The maids were giggling behind their hands, mocking Diana where they thought no one could hear.

"She'll be feeling wretched after His Grace dressed her down today. Where do you suppose she's gone off to?"

"Right? She's such a delicate little thing — I do worry about her. She's barely slept lately, what with nursing Lady Alexa night and day..."

"Well, the master considers that nothing more than her duty..."

Having caught the voices of those few soft-hearted maids, Giscard found himself, without quite meaning to, wandering in search of his master.

His master was a fool, exactly as the maids said.

She genuinely had no idea what went on inside this house. Knowing nothing of any of it — not one thread of the truth — she was fighting tooth and nail to protect an ice as thin as paper.

Pathetic, that girl too.

That girl had pitied him — of course she had. Finding someone whose lot was worse than her own; she must have been mining it for a sense of superiority.

When she can't even bear a slave's touch. When she's every bit as trapped as I am.

Giscard thought back to Diana's face today. And he remembered, from before, the face she had made when the prince of Farnborough took her hand and shook it.

It was only hair, not even a hand. And yet she had flinched away so visibly — all while playing at being good.

Diana Brien.

By now she was probably crying her eyes out somewhere.

Giscard kept looking for his master, on and on, until he had reached the lampless reaches of the residence. This was the back garden, ground crossed only by laborers. With the night grown dark, his sight barely carried.

Even so, Giscard made a circuit of the place, just in case. After a long while of wandering, he finally found that foolish girl.

It wasn't as though she could have hidden. The moon was bright, and her hair shimmered with its light. Giscard regarded the girl with an expression caught somewhere between disbelief and exasperation.

Her exalted ladyship was lying down. Simply lying on a backless bench, of all things. Her neatly kept hair spilled over the edge any which way, a loose waterfall.

At first he thought she had fallen asleep — understandable, since the girl hadn't stirred an inch. Moonlight caught her fine, even features and drew them in clean lines. Giscard approached, watching her as he came.

"So this is where you were."

"Mm."

Silver-grey eyes blinked at him, slow and unhurried.

"What were you doing?"

"Stargazing."

Giscard looked up. With no lights nearby, the stars showed themselves clearly. But beside them burned a brilliant moon.

Giscard's gaze kept swinging between the moon-bathed girl and the sky.

"Why are you out here like this at this hour?"

Diana answered with a vacant look.

"I just... like looking at the stars."

…

"When my mother was alive, she used to bring me here sometimes, and we'd watch them together."

…

"She would tell me about the travelers who read the star that rises only in the north and let it guide them on their way."

…

"They must be free, unlike me."

…

"Oh — forgive me. That wasn't something to say in front of you."

Diana apologized without pretense. Then she sat up.

"Were you looking for me?"

At that, Giscard could not answer. The girl's face was bitter.

"Right. It was like that back then, too. You came looking for me."

Back then? What is she talking about? Just as the question formed, Diana spoke on.

"Do you want to look too?"

…

"It puts you in a better mood."

The smile lingering on that deathly pale face was desolate. Giscard could not bring himself to refuse it; he lay down as Diana gestured him to.

Night was all he had ever known — he had seen his fill of stars and moons a hundred times over. He was just wondering why on earth he had to do something so senseless when—

"Well? Isn't it pretty?"

All at once Diana's face popped into his line of sight. She was grinning like a mischief-maker, and with the moon hidden behind her, the whole outline of her body burned gold.

Giscard could not see the stars. He saw the moon and nothing else.

Or, to be exact — her hair, lit like moonlight. Just then it began to rain. Giscard startled and looked up, but the sky was still flawlessly clear. And the moment he understood what the rain was, Diana hurriedly raised her hand and covered his eyes.

He heard the small sound of her weeping. Even that was so frail it felt as though it would shatter if he crushed it right then.

When he tried to move her hand away, Diana said:

"Don't move it, you fool. It's just... I'd rather not be crying in front of you."

…

"I know crying is a luxury too, all right?"

After that the girl said nothing more. She simply wept, small and quiet. Now and then a tear fell, drop by drop, and landed on his face.

Her trembling, flickering hand stayed pressed over his eyes, and Giscard lay there listening to that sound and nothing else. He offered no comfort of any kind. The night wind was cool, and from the girl who wept in fits came, as always, the scent of flowers.

Having cried her fill, Diana felt strangely lighter. She was sitting beside Giscard now. When she had settled onto the bench, he had taken up a post in front of her, saying nothing at all. She didn't know whether he pitied her or scorned her.

It didn't matter. If anything, she thought she wanted him to pity her. Because then — just possibly — this man might never turn cruel.

"I've shown you a sorry sight."

Diana looked up at the sky again. It was as clear as it had been before. Her mother's warmth, the hand that had stroked her hair, the love — she ached for every bit of it. But Diana only wiped her eyes.

It would have been better to wake up back in the past, while Mother still lived. I would have dragged her out to see the stars even if it killed me. Useless thoughts. Diana bit her lip.

She was no longer the baby bunny her mother had cherished. She had to protect what was here. Don't be unhappy — this is happiness. In Lodbrok she had yearned for Farnborough, for the House of Brien, until the longing carved her hollow.

"I am happy now — that much is true. Wanting everything to be perfect is just greed."

Diana smiled, bitter at the edges.

"Happy?"

Giscard asked — a rare thing for him. His brows were knit as if he had heard something utterly absurd, and in that instant Diana realized that everything out of her mouth, in front of Giscard, was the idle grumbling of the well-fed.

"That's right. I am happy now. If I were truly wretched, the two of us would never be lying here watching the stars in peace like this."

For the two of them to while away an evening watching the stars — even in the royal palace of Lodbrok, that was a thing that could truly come to pass. Giscard was the unhappy one, and Diana the happy one. That was the way of it.

Diana murmured the words half to herself; they were never meant to make Giscard understand. Which was, in a way, why the two of them were not really talking at all.

And so Diana never saw Giscard's hand flinch. Crying like a child, then sealing his feelings away like an adult — perhaps because of that rift, the boy had no idea what he was supposed to do.

"Giscard."

…

"Thank you for coming to find me."

…

"If I'm not to be found anywhere in the mansion, then I'll certainly be here."

Giscard looked at that face — flushed red as a rabbit's eyes from all the crying — and nodded.

Then, as Diana moved to rise, he watched her for a moment, and suddenly his face hardened, as if he had made up his mind about something.

"My lady."

"Yes?"

"Lady Mirva will not be so easily driven out."

"...What?"

Diana had never spoken to Giscard about Mirva. And yet he seemed to grasp the shape of things well enough. It had been the same in her first life, too. But then — why? Why had Mirva been brought to the royal palace of Lodbrok, back then? Diana's next thought scattered like ash, lost to the words that had just left Giscard's mouth.