Chapter 126
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The Last Dance Before Midnight
A masked dragon asks the lanternwright for one slow dance
Ferda moved, holding Waldrova’s hand.
For now, the only words that came to mind were “a quiet place.”
Ferda was heading toward that quiet place.
They arrived at the castle garden.
The place, beautifully illuminated by moonlight, was suitable for a clandestine meeting.
Perhaps because everyone was in the middle of enjoying the ball, there was no one in the garden.
A dry spring breeze touched his skin.
His forehead was cold.
Cold sweat had beaded on it.
Waldrova carefully released Ferda’s hand and walked ahead.
She walked about four paces forward, then crouched down and buried her face in her knees.
Like a young lady sobbing bitterly.
“……Sniff.”
The sound of her sniffing back stained the silence.
The Shadow Circle stirred at that sound.
The regret that had been separated from the Shadow Circle stirred in Ferda’s chest.
Ferda wanted to look away from that sorrowful sight, but forced himself to watch.
Just as this woman had faced her situation, I must not avoid it either.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry for making you sad.
Strangely, the words did not feel awkward coming out.
The sound of sniffing and swallowing past his throat only tightened it.
“Mr. Ferda……”
Waldrova was the first to speak.
“Please speak.”
“……Did you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“The voices.”
She rubbed her eyes with both wrists.
“The voices whispering about me.”
Voices whispering?
Ferda hadn’t heard them.
“You didn’t hear them calling me a murderer and whispering about me……? You didn’t hear that?”
Ferda clenched his fists.
Waldrova’s hearing was far sharper than a human’s.
To her, who could hear even the fluttering wings of a tiny gnat vividly, that sort of muttering would surely be audible.
Anger enveloped his entire body.
How dare they make such remarks in the Grand Duchess’s territory?
Who the hell was it?
It didn’t matter what family you belonged to.
If I find out, I’ll kill you with my own hands.
-Don’t hesitate.
-They insulted your woman.
The voice rang in Ferda’s ears.
The Shadow Circle itself did not move, but it was urging Ferda to act.
That meant this would lead to regret.
‘Is this a dangerous thought?’
Ferda forcibly calmed himself.
If he let his emotions seize him, it would lead to a mistake, and mistakes would grow like a snowball rolling down from the top.
By watching himself from a distance, if only briefly, he regained his reason.
‘They may be immature, but they can’t be fools.’
It would be fortunate if slandering the host ended with merely getting their heads chopped off; it could even lead to the destruction of the domain.
If they had been young ladies and young noblemen unable to distinguish right from wrong, they would not have been brought to a gathering attended by every noble.
To say nothing of the fact that she was a dragon.
A dragon they would never have a chance to see even once in their lives, and an evil dragon known for its ferocity.
They could not possibly have had the nerve to say such things.
So he answered this way.
“I didn’t hear anything.”
Waldrova was rubbing her chest in relief.
“That’s a relief. I must have heard things again.”
“Again……?”
“It’s just…… Whenever I go somewhere with people, I always hear voices. They curse me, calling me a murderer, a mass murderer…… and scream.”
She took a deep breath.
“Still…… I thought it might be a little better than before.”
Ferda did not know it, but Waldrova had been helping build the village.
There had been no problems then.
Because she had been an ordinary armored knight wearing ordinary armor and wielding monstrous strength, not Waldrova.
They respected and admired the armored knight like a knight from a story.
“But it wasn’t.”
The armored knight and Waldrova could not be the same.
The labels of her past clinging to her could be felt in the gazes of others.
Murderer, mass murderer, a flame that burns everything.
Evil dragon, evil dragon, evil dragon……
“That isn’t true. People do not curse you, Your Highness. That happened so long ago that humans can barely remember it.”
It had happened a full 150 years ago.
Unless they were high-ranking mages like Erdes, very few people who had survived from that era remained alive.
“I know. I know they can’t say those things to my face. But…… if……”
Her voice shook with moisture and emotion.
“If someone really did say something like that to me, I……”
She swallowed a sob, unable to finish her sentence, and faltered.
Swallowing the choked sound again and again, she said,
“That’s why I only meant to watch from afar.”
Ferda could clearly picture it before his eyes.
Her watching from outside the window, from far away so she would not be noticed.
The sight of her becoming an outsider in the place he had wanted to create for her.
“I only wanted to see you standing in the banquet hall, Mr. Ferda…… but…… then I suddenly saw you ask that…… person named Olivia to dance.”
Just as he thought.
That was what had set it off.
“Princess Arken means nothing to me. Asking her to dance was merely my duty as the host.”
Ferda spoke firmly.
He hoped she would feel the sincerity, but it was not enough to soothe her sadness.
“But you and Mr. Ferda looked so good together.”
“Olivia Arken means nothing to me compared to you.”
“No!”
Waldrova flared up and raised her voice.
“The Imperial princess is smart, elegant, noble, smiles often, and is the kind of woman everyone envies!?”
“……”
“Look! Look at this fool who says she finally worked up the courage! Wearing a mask like this…… unable even to show her face to people…… not even showing it to her fiancé…… and even vulgarly becoming jealous……. And……”
Waldrova covered her eyes with her hand.
“And all she can do is cry like this……”
“……”
“And I danced so foolishly that I stepped on Mr. Ferda’s feet so many times……”
The reason for her sadness was not that Ferda had betrayed her or anything like that.
It was self-loathing born of blaming everything on herself.
The scandal between Ferda and Olivia was her fault for being pathetic.
Her inability to dance was her fault too.
Her self-esteem, driven to rock bottom by being isolated in a severed world, grew worse each time her mistakes piled up.
Ferda knew that she was in pain.
It was Ferda’s job to embrace that pain.
‘In a place where even taking one step forward is difficult……’
Ferda had dragged her out.
To stop useless rumors, he had burdened this woman, who knew nothing, with a terrible emotional burden.
I am the worst fiancé.
“Ior’s words were right. I’m a child who ruins everything I do.”
“That isn’t true. It is not true that Your Highness ruins everything.”
“You don’t have to say something you don’t mean.”
“I mean it sincerely.”
Ferda took one step forward.
“You said, Your Highness. You said you didn’t know what would happen if you let go of this hand.”
“……”
“I didn’t let go. And neither did you. So what happened?”
“……”
“You didn’t run away, nor did you let out an undignified scream.”
“……”
“You ruined nothing. As the great dragon and as the Grand Duchess, you maintained your dignity.”
Apparently, those words comforted her.
Her sobs gradually subsided.
“Still, perhaps our dancing really was foolish.”
“Uu……”
“But at least no one could have thought Your Highness was a fool.”
“……Why?”
Ferda answered matter-of-factly.
“Because I was flapping about like a chicken in a burning coop.”
“Pfft……!”
A laugh burst from her tearful voice.
After it grew quiet as though her breath had stopped, Waldrova turned her head.
He could see only a white mask, but he knew there was no longer any sadness behind it.
“We must both have looked foolish.”
“Indeed.”
“A fool and a fool.”
“Yes.”
The sobbing vanished, and before he knew it, laughter was spilling out.
The gloomy atmosphere disappeared.
Waldrova rose, and Ferda gently approached her side.
“Mr. Ferda……”
Ferda turned his head.
She was looking up at him with her small frame.
“Do you…… want to see my face?”
Very much.
“It’s just the two of us here…… and since you always want to see my face…… I think it might be all right to show it to you today……”
With a shy gesture, she tried to remove her mask.
Beyond it was the face of Waldrova that Ferda had only ever imagined.
Her appearance, visible to the naked eye rather than in his imagination.
“No.”
Ferda reflexively caught the hand trying to remove the mask.
Waldrova was startled.
“Why?”
Why?
Ferda’s body had moved first, too, so he did not properly know why.
He thought about that question as well.
Then he found the answer.
“There are still tears left, aren’t there?”
“Probably……?”
“Then you mustn’t.”
Their first meeting had been when she was crying.
Ferda did not want the face he was seeing again to be filled with the image of her crying.
“I suppose I must look awful when I cry, don’t I?”
The mood grew dejected.
That wasn’t it.
If the reason had been that she looked ugly crying, or something like that, he would have beaten himself to death.
Ferda racked his brain.
He was wondering whether there was an appropriate excuse, when he suddenly remembered something Zed had said.
“My knight said that if the first thing you saw was someone crying, then the second thing should be their smile. Weren’t you crying when we first met?”
“Oh…… yes, I was, wasn’t I?”
“Then this time, it should be your smile.”
“I-I see.”
After hearing that, Waldrova stopped trying to remove her mask.
Perhaps it was because Ferda had looked so desperate.
Even so, she was terribly curious about the reason.
“Then what happens when you see a smiling face?”
Ferda answered.
“They say you’ll live together for a hundred years.”
He had expected her to be happy or embarrassed, but what came from her lips was disappointment.
“Only a hundred years……?”
“Pardon?”
“If love only lasts a hundred years…… that sounds too sad……”
What a foolish thing to say……
That was what he thought, but he had briefly forgotten that Waldrova’s sense of time was different.
A hundred years was no different from a lifetime to humans, but to her, it was probably like a year.
So to Waldrova, it must have sounded like saying they would be together for only a year.
Perhaps she thought that this was unacceptable; her voice grew serious as she asked,
“Then, you see.”
“Yes.”
“If I smile more brightly, could it last longer than a hundred years?”
Ferda was momentarily at a loss for words.
Waldrova continued asking in an innocent voice.
“Would a thousand years be possible?”
His head shook rapidly.
“No, even a thousand years is too short. I think it would need to be about ten thousand years.”
“……It should be possible.”
Ferda answered, dazed.
But Waldrova seemed to brighten.
“Then I’ll prepare so I can smile really brightly. I…… I want to live with you for ten thousand years, Mr. Ferda.”
A woman who would stare only at your finger if you pointed at the moon.
Even in such an utterly foolish state, Ferda found her unbearably adorable.
The Shadow Circle no longer moved.
Instead, the Red Circle was spinning wildly of its own accord.
Ferda had to suppress this feeling as much as possible so it would not run wild and ruin the mood.
It was painful.
It was unbearably painful to be this happy.
Ferda had never imagined he would feel this way.
Perhaps her heart had reached him; the smiling woman suddenly turned her head and looked up at the sky.
“The moon…… is beautiful.”
“They say the moon is at its largest tonight.”
“I-Is that so?”
It suddenly became awkward.
It did not seem as though this was what he had intended to talk about.
He must have caught her foolish illness.
“Moonlight Step……”
“Yes.”
“I heard it’s most beautiful when danced under the moonlight……”
“Is…… that so?”
Even a fool could understand what she meant.
Waldrova’s fingers fidgeted.
Ferda’s hand, hanging at his side, kept moving too.
It was difficult for either of them to bring it up abruptly.
Naturally, it was Ferda’s role to ask her to dance.
However, there was a reason he could not rashly ask her.
Ferda was awkward at dancing.
Olivia was so practiced she could dance while humming a song, but he was not.
For Ferda to dance beneath this moonlit sky, he needed music at the very least.
Just as she seemed to be hoping for another opportunity,
Ferda, too, did not want to make a mistake with the chance he had seized.
It was then.
The beautiful sound of a violin drifted on the night breeze.
Ferda subtly turned his head toward the source of the sound.
There he saw a tall, slender figure playing the violin.
It was Zed.
He was playing the violin with consummate skill.
But that alone was not enough to set the melody in motion.
Soon, the sound of a flute joined in, filling the gap and blending into a duet.
A woman sitting beside Zed was playing an instrument.
‘It’s Garnet.’
The music they created in harmony was a waltz called “Moonlight.”
The dance derived from that piece was the Moonlight Step.
His timing was incredible.
They had been talking about Moonlight Step just moments ago, and now they were suddenly playing Moonlight.
‘So he heard everything.’
Come to think of it, wasn’t this the place they had hidden away to blackmail the young ladies and young noblemen?
Naturally, they had heard Ferda and Waldrova’s conversation.
‘Does it matter?’
Rather than feeling offended, Ferda focused on the message Zed was sending him.
As a knight, he had pushed Ferda forward.
Ferda had to seize that opportunity.
“Your Highness Grand Duchess Waldrova.”
A chance to make up for the mistakes they had both made.
“Would you please dance with me?”
And a chance for them to be together.
Waldrova answered brightly, like the morning sun.
“Yes……!”
Their hands clasped together once more.
Excitement settled in.
The beat of his heart merrily heightened the mood, and his fingers savored the feel of her skin.
Beneath the moonlit sky, the two danced, giving themselves over to the lovely melody.