Previously
Celios explains that the court nobility is divided over succession and that Sid Repos intends to marry Iris to solidify his legitimacy to the throne. Determined to avoid the ruinous marriage at all costs, Iris borrows noble attire from Celios and conceals her identity by disguising herself as a veiled pagan bride from Suyeo.
A King Is Born on the Road
Sid, who looked repulsed just sharing the same air with a pagan, spoke.
“I find it hard to believe you would take such pains to convert an infidel, Royal Aunt.”
“What choice have you but to believe it? It is the truth.”
A faint edge of mockery laced Celios’s voice.
Taking some measure of certainty from her tone, Sid drew his sword. The blade ground against the jewels adorning its scabbard, producing an unpleasant, grating screech.
In an instant, the flat of the blade rested on Iris’s shoulder.
“Show your face yourself, pagan.”
All around them, the maids drew tense, sharp breaths.
Iris recalled the pagan bride who had once been brought to the convent.
The priests had pelted the kneeling woman with question after question. Through it all, the bride had repeated only one phrase: that the gods of the pagans did not exist.
Iris spoke with measured courtesy.
“The gods of the pagans do not exist.”
Her response brought a scowl to Sid’s face.
“That is no answer to my command.”
“The gods of the pagans do not exist.”
“Insolent wench. I told you to show your face.”
“The gods of the pagans do not exist.”
Bewildered looks passed between the onlookers, none of them understanding what was happening.
A pagan woman concealed her face because she was considered a sinner, and renouncing the pagan gods was the rite of washing that sin away.
Therefore, before a pagan could show her face, the interrogator was required to formally acknowledge that she had converted and her sin was erased.
And in this moment, that duty fell to Sid Repos, the one demanding to see her face.
Should he grant that this pagan had converted, Iris would have no choice but to undo the cloth shrouding her features.
Yet for Sid, raised as royal blood and steeped solely in the worship of Luwan’s god, acknowledging that an infidel’s sins had been cleansed was practically taboo.
“I will never grant pardon to a wretched infidel. Perhaps I should simply sever your neck to see. Your eyes, your hair—and whose face you resemble.”
“The gods of the pagans do not exist.”
Watching her daughter give that exact response, Celios let out an involuntary scoff of amusement.
Pretending to be a pagan was the sort of foolish stunt an uneducated person might attempt. Yet regardless, the girl proved quite clever. And she had nerve.
Sid Repos, the king’s legitimate firstborn son, felt an eerie chill prickling at him from the woman’s unyielding retorts.
She had to be a pagan woman.
Yet what if she was not?
What if this was the hidden daughter of his royal aunt Celios, merely disguised as a pagan bride?
Sid found himself wanting to break the taboo and see the girl’s face that very instant. The forbidden nature of it stirred a strange, unsettled desire within him.
However, anyone who was Celios’s friend likely hailed from a family of considerable standing; laying hands on that friend’s son’s bride risked creating a political rival.
He knew the wisest course right now was to leave her untouched. Yet he could not fathom why such overpowering curiosity was seizing hold of him.
Was it because of that beautiful voice, which sounded almost sweet?
Without realizing it, Sid reached out and cupped her face through the worn shawl wrapping her head. Even through the cloth, the line of her jaw told him she possessed remarkable beauty.
As his fingers shifted with mocking familiarity, Celios snapped.
“What do you think you are doing!”
“…”
In the end, Sid withdrew his hand. He then mounted his horse to return to the capital.
* * *
Celios’s retinue traveled toward the capital alongside Sid’s party.
Thanks to her guise as a pagan, Iris was permitted to sit alone in an empty carriage for the journey.
The guard was so tight it made her question whether slipping away en route would even be possible.
Beyond the sunlight filtering through the frayed shawl, there was nothing in this world she could rely on. Even so, she had no choice but to risk her life.
It was not that she harbored some grandiose ambition to save Luwan; it was simply that enduring this meant living a meaningless existence until she reached twenty-five, where living and dying made little difference anyway.
She sharpened her hearing and focused on reading the road. During the three months before crossing the North Gate, she had learned that the map in her head did not fully align with the true scale of the physical world.
Yet riding on horseback for three months—and trudging endlessly on foot for the latter half—had allowed her to calibrate that sense of distance to some degree.
On the seventh day after leaving the convent, with three days left before reaching the capital, she resolved to make her escape.
As the short winter daylight faded and the party pitched tents to rest, Celios summoned Iris into her pavilion.
When Iris stepped inside, Celios spoke.
“Drop that filthy act now.”
At her mother’s word, Iris unwrapped the shawl she had been wearing. She then moved toward the chair a maid had pulled out for her and sat down.
A lavish, abundant dinner began to be laid out—far richer than anyone would expect for travelers on a long road.
Without thinking, Iris reached for the bell on the table to ring it, only to catch herself.
Belatedly, she realized that six years spent as queen were thoroughly ingrained in her body.
Regardless of her relationship with her husband, and whether she stood as host or guest, she had always been the highest-ranking woman in Luwan, taking the lead at every dining table. For a long time, ringing the bell to dismiss the servants had been her natural role.
Watching her daughter’s hand brush against the bell and pull back, Celios spoke.
“Do you fancy yourself a king already?”
“…I only ever took meals among the nuns, so I was unfamiliar with proper etiquette.”
Knowing nothing of what dining at a convent entailed, Celios looked displeased but did not pry any deeper.
Even after the meal, the urge to direct the conversation weighed on Iris, but she kept her lips firmly sealed.
Having returned six years into the past through the North Gate only a week ago, suppressing her demeanor as queen proved a grueling task.
Sipping her wine as the meal wound down, Celios spoke.
“You say dawn tomorrow will suffice?”
“Yes.”
“Even if you flee, where do you think you can go? Beyond here lies open grassland, where beasts of prey could pounce at any moment.”
“Once I evade those beasts, I intend to go to Asheri, the family of Her Majesty the Queen.”
“…Asheri?”
Celios knitted her brows.
Naturally, she was on poor terms with the current king and queen. While the queen might be preferable to the king, who had systematically poisoned Celios over many years to render her barren, relations between the two women were hardly warm.
The Queen’s House, Asheri, took it for granted that her eldest son, Sid Repos, would become the next king. Meanwhile, Celios had begun asserting her own daughter’s legitimacy out of sheer spite, so there was no reason for them to be cordial. What on earth the girl intended to accomplish by running into the arms of House Asheri was entirely beyond her.
She had assumed there was some grand scheme, yet running to Asheri—where Sid was due to stop briefly to pay respects to his maternal grandfather—was the best the girl could muster.
Disappointed, Celios scolded her.
“Talk sense. Do you truly believe they would ever take your side?”
“…One never knows.”
Celios found the thought utterly absurd, yet she could not help feeling intrigued by the strange composure her daughter maintained through it all.
When the meal concluded, Celios’s closest escort knight entered the tent.
“It is time to depart.”
Celios turned toward the knight.
Iris knew this escort knight was her father. Tears pooled in the eyes of her father, Peter Wick, so blatantly that pretending not to notice was nearly impossible.
In the end, Iris was the first to speak.
“You are my father, aren’t you?”
When Iris cut straight to the point without any preamble, Peter flinched.
Clearly incapable of lying, his ears flushed crimson in an instant, and his voice came out stiff.
“W-Well, one could say I am, or one could say I am not.”
“Under what circumstances would you not be?”
“Well… it could simply be my misunderstanding.”
He truly was hopelessly bad at lying.
Peter was entirely at a loss before this daughter of his, who threw him off balance just as much as Celios did.
He wanted to know how she had lived, and he wanted to tell her how bitterly he had wept the day she was sent away beyond the castle walls.
Yet carrying only the sorrowful expectation that Iris would resent him, he simply handed her a spear.
“This was crafted from the lightest wood among what we brought.”
Iris took the spear into her hands. Just as he said, it was relatively light and constructed to fold into three sections.
Holding the weapon, Iris offered a quiet farewell.
“…Until we meet again. Though it may be the last time.”
At those words, tears spilled from the eyes of Peter Wick, who had been trying in his own way to hide his fatherhood from the daughter he had finally met.