Mira spoke too little, like a winter sparrow saving every chirp.

Adelaide soaked in the tub, watching soap bubbles on her arm quiver like glass beads about to crack, and drifted into thought.

This was their second month on the northern frontier, a frost-bitten edge of the map. Normally, even strangers under one roof would thaw and talk. Mira, however, grew quieter each day, like a lake sealing over with ice.

When Adelaide was too weak to move and needed close care, Mira still offered embers of conversation. The healthier Adelaide got, the longer Mira trained alone in the back yard, and the fewer words she spent, shadows lengthening with the sun.

It left Adelaide sulky, like rain trapped under a low sky.

Still, a more immediate worry tugged at her, like a kettle beginning to boil.

For one, the rack in the bathroom held only the clothes she had just taken off, bare as a winter branch.

Adelaide pressed her forehead, thinking, then called toward the door, “Mira, the water’s cooling—throw some wood on the fire, will you?”

As expected, Mira didn’t answer; only her footsteps receded like beads rolling down a hallway, proof she was headed to the boiler room.

As always, if words weren’t necessary, she let silence stand like a stone.

Adelaide waited for those steps to fade far away, then rose from the tub with a splash, water chiming like beads on her skin.

She moved as fast as she could, and water sloshed out, spreading across the floor like spilled moonlight.

She cracked the door, poked her head out, eyes flicking left and right like sparrows. Once sure Mira was gone, she pattered toward her room, feet tapping like rain.

She wasn’t sure if it was the heart overdrawn weeks ago or her focus snagged on Mira. Her thoughts kept slipping their leash like kites losing their strings. Forgetting a towel had happened more than once.

Of course, it wasn’t a big problem. If she asked, Mira would hand her a towel, no question. But that meant opening the bathroom door, and beside it sat a wash mirror. On that fogged glass, every corner of the bathroom would bloom like a pale garden.

The thought of Mira seeing her blurred reflection through that milky, steam-veiled mirror made Adelaide…

Words could tease; those never rattled her. But if she showed anything more than a wrist before Mira, her mind scattered like startled birds.

They were both girls; there was nothing to fuss over, she knew. Still, she chose to fetch the towel herself, like a thief slipping through lamplight.

Luckily, Michelle’s place wasn’t like Adelaide’s home in Balad. By no means poor, yet a common house wouldn’t have a noble manor’s Magic Crystal Stone heated water. For a hot bath, you fired the boiler and kept feeding wood, like tending a restless hearth.

It took Adelaide time to adapt to this common rhythm, but it gave her a perfect excuse to send Mira off. With that, she could sidestep the awkward scene like stepping around a puddle.

At least, that was the plan, smooth as ink on paper.

She hadn’t expected to underestimate Mira’s speed, quick as a thrown knife.

She stepped out of her room and was meters from the bathroom when the living room door swung open. Adelaide turned and saw Mira at the threshold, eyes landing on her as she was, like sun catching a deer in a clearing…

Her… current state?

“Huh—eh?”

Adelaide made a dumb little sound, brain stalled, and clutched the towel over her front. She bolted for the bathroom, but her foot hit the water she’d splashed earlier. She slipped and toppled backward, like a felled sapling.

“Sis—!”

That irrational choice almost earned its matching ending. If Mira hadn’t caught her at the last moment, Adelaide’s skull might have found something sharp. Fade to black. Thank goodness Mira was fast—

No—like hell “thank goodness”!

She wore only a small bath towel. Bare back felt Mira’s arms cinch her shoulders and waist, firm as a safety rope. The towel barely shaded her most private places. Her proud softness spilled to either side under gravity, with beads of water tracing paths. A hint of pale pink teased the towel’s edge like dawn behind clouds.

Adelaide froze, like a deer in moonlight.

Mira’s skin against hers sent her heart, meant to be resting, pounding like a drum ready to burst. Blood’s pulse roared in her ears like surf. A delicate blush spread over her pale skin, a blossom too vivid with so little fabric to hide it.

Mira froze too, caught in the same spell, like frost twinning itself.

She looked at Adelaide in her arms. The curves usually hidden by posture and loose clothes lay revealed, like hills after fog lifts.

Like a watch with rusty gears, she moved her gaze away, stiff and ticking, bit by bit.

In that instant, Adelaide thought the head-on-something, fade-to-credits ending might have been kinder, like a curtain falling.

“Mm… Northern stews are special.” Adelaide spoke, then lifted her head, careful as a cat, to peek at Mira across the table. “Chili, rare in Balad, gets used everywhere up here, sparks in snow.” She hurriedly looked away, though Mira only watched her plate like a quiet lake.

“Mm.”

“It’s to warm the body, right? In the cold, you crave the spice, the heat that draws sweat like summer rain.”

“…Mm.” Mira’s gaze drifted too, like a leaf in current.

Adelaide tried hard to keep the conversation afloat, but both faces still held a blush, proof the ripple hadn’t faded, like water after a stone.

Thinking of that scene made Adelaide bite her lower lip, like holding back a rising tide.

Yes, the air between them was still awkward, a room with mismatched music. What could she do? Adelaide had no answer. Getting Mira to share a table had taken a mountain of effort. That was already her testing limit. If she pushed more, she feared triggering Mira’s stress, like touching a trap. Once, she’d pouted to be spoon-fed porridge. After that, Mira spent days in the back yard, slicing logs between sword drills. Firewood piled into a small hill, a mute apology.

With that lesson, Adelaide sensed an invisible line, annoying as a gnat. And that… incident had shoved her dangerously close to it, like toes at a cliff.

So she gave up for now and looked down at her plate. She jabbed a fork into something potato-like that was actually an herb, then bit it, like chewing bark.

Ginger and cassava tangled on her tongue. Adelaide winced, instinctive as a cat to bitter herbs. She disliked fibrous foods. But for the pepper and spice, she swallowed the odd medicine like strong tea.

After all, this was a flavor you couldn’t taste in Balad, rare as rain in a drought.

Spice like this was scorned by Balad’s high-end chefs who served nobles. Chins tilted sky-high, they claimed heavy seasonings stole a food’s true soul. Such flavors were for the lower class, they said, like street smoke.

Adelaide had believed that at first. Then that Dream shoved alien memories into her head, including savoring foreign foods. After that, her house chefs’ dishes felt missing a star. She began craving a sprinkle of mysterious red, a sting over foie gras, like a comet on silk.

But she knew craving common food was shameful for a noble, and she smothered the want like a candle. Just once, out shopping with her little maid Anisa, she met a traveling vendor selling spicy stir-fried mountain fungi. She couldn’t resist. After asking Anisa to keep it secret, she bought a portion, warm as contraband fire.

That was her only taste like the Dream before her identity was exposed. Later, she tried to sneak a second, but the vendor had left Balad. She remembered it for a long time, a spice ghost that visited at night. She kept thinking: when I become king and no one can scold me, I’ll bring that vendor back. He’ll be my personal chef, and whenever I wish, he’ll cook me fire.

Back then, Adelaide never imagined that small wish would come true before the dream of becoming king, like a sprout shooting up before the oak.

Since neither Mira nor she could cook, their meals came takeout from restaurants, gathered like warm parcels. At first, Adelaide had a physical aversion to those health-herb laden dishes. Later, Mira seemed to switch places. Every plate carried a bold seasoning, and Adelaide was delighted, like embers glowing under snow.

She wouldn’t say it out loud, pride a stiff collar. Still, it made Mira’s attempted medicinal diet much more bearable, like honey on bitter tea.

Yes, only bearable. She would never sink into such crude tastes like the failure in the Dream. So she thought, while taking a small bite of stew dusted with red flecks. The sting on her tongue drew a faintly blissed expression, like sun through clouds.

Across from her, Mira watched. Adelaide’s refined manners contrasted with the punch of the food, and Mira’s mouth curled a tiny arc, like a moon sliver. It flashed and was gone. She looked away.

“Tomorrow I’m going to shop. Do you want anything?”

Adelaide surfaced from her taste-borne trance and looked, surprised, at Mira starting a topic, like a bell in quiet.

“Eh… nothing, really.”

“I’ll go to three places. About two hours. Don’t unlock the door.” Mira spoke and pushed an irregular crystal from her pocket toward Adelaide. “If anything happens, smash this Magic Crystal Stone,” a warning like shattered ice.

Adelaide thought for a beat, then smiled. “Got it. I’ll stay home like a good girl, Miss Kidnapper~”

“…”

Adelaide lied again. She did not stay home like a good girl, a fox slipping the fence.

Ten minutes after Mira left, a mysterious lady stepped out of Michelle’s house. She wore loose pale-gray leather. Light brown hair fell from a wide-brim hat. Her eyes were deep amber. Of course, it was Adelaide.

In theory, the Douglas Family had struck her name, but the white hair and red eyes from her parents wouldn’t vanish. So she went out in a wig and colored lenses, like clouds over a red moon.

Compared with her old stealthy black cloak that failed again and again, seen through at a glance, this plain outfit was simple and effective. She walked unhindered to her destination: a shop like a miniature palace, windows glinting like ice.

Crossing the threshold, a glittering array of jewels spread before her eyes, a river of light that made her blink.

Only for a moment. The surprise faded like a ripple.

As the flagship of the northern capital’s most famous jewelry brand, the decor carried a trace of Balad’s style. Adelaide thought that, light as a brushstroke, then walked to a case. Inside sat a deep-blue gem. Under several Magic Crystal Stone lamps, it cast rainbow projections, like a captive aurora.

Seeing her calm air, like someone used to such things, the clerks glanced at each other, puzzled. Only the seasoned owner sensed a big client. He hurried over ahead of them, swift as a hawk.

“Welcome, miss. This is our shop’s crown jewel, the Heart of the Ocean, mined in the Mannia Range thirty years ago—”

It was a golden chance to boost sales, and the owner leaned in like a gull to a gleam. Then his pitch snagged like a fishbone.

The tale he’d polished stuck in his throat, because Adelaide turned her face, and her gaze cut through him like a blade under velvet.

Under that wide-brim hat, her features surfaced like moonrise over black water. The Heart of the Ocean beside her seemed to dim, as if a cloud crossed it.

It wasn’t only that he’d never seen a girl this beautiful, though that truth rang like silver on stone.

Most people got trapped by her white hair and red eyes, like moths circling a lantern. Strip those labels away, and Adelaide was no less than Mira.

Compared with the matronly noblewomen who drifted through this shop, she and they were sky and mud, two worlds cleaved by a cliff.

Yet the true magnet was the sand-hued gem set in her plain bracelet, a seed of light hidden in rough bark.

It was the Dream Eater Spider’s Magic Core.

When Skela had handed her the core, her mind was flooded with Tessmi’s Lament, a tide that left no shore for schemes.

She buried it anywhere like a stone tossed in reeds, and left it to sleep. Now, with time in her hand, she saw its edge.

Like now. She fed a thread of magic into the core, like water into dry earth, and spoke in a gentle breeze of a voice.

“This gem’s a bit too pricey. But I think your company’s running a discount, isn’t it?”

“Dis…count?”

“Yes. Say…” Adelaide smiled like sunlight slipping through leaves. “Ten percent.”

Her voice stayed soft as silk, but the words were a knife under that silk, cold and clear.

Even with the math slapped across his face, the owner stared, dazed as if in fog, and answered anyway.

“O… okay. Ten percent…”

He nodded mechanically, a puppet on invisible strings, while the core on her wrist glowed a faint beige, like dawn through mist.

“May I try it on?”

“Of course… no… problem…”

He broke his sentence three times, his eyes trailing her face like a tide pulled by the moon.

Yes. Adelaide was hypnotizing him.

With only a remnant core, she couldn’t drop people into dreams like a Dreamfeast Spider casting web over prey.

But to plant a suggestion in ordinary folk without magic resistance was easy, like writing in fresh snow.

She watched his sleepwalking steps as he went for the key, feet soft as clouds on a roof beam, and she nodded, satisfied.

The new trick worked better than she’d thought, and it saved a mountain of coin; her mood rose like a kite in wind.

She wasn’t pinching coin because she couldn’t pay. On her wrist, she carried the Black River Chamber of Commerce’s unlimited red card, a scarlet leaf.

In theory, she could buy the entire shop like scooping water with a net. In practice, Samir would foot the bill in the end.

But she wouldn’t do that. Big purchases leave tracks in wet clay, and she didn’t want Rockridge and the others to sniff it out over a gift.

Yes, testing the core was a by-the-way. She slipped out while Mira shopped, a fish sliding past reeds, to prepare for Mira’s birthday.

The awkward air between them had become a tight collar; every breath felt like frost against skin.

Two months from now was Mira’s birthday. Adelaide weighed gifts like stones in a hand, seeking one that could crack ice.

The Heart of the Ocean was her choice. Aside from a freak like her who loved viscera and blood and Blood Magic, what girl hates a bright jewel?

Her hand skimmed the glass case over the gemstone, a wing brushing a lake. She pictured it resting at Mira’s throat like a blue flame.

A small smile tugged her mouth, a bowstring easing.

Pick something common, and her sincerity would look thin as paper. She wanted the best, a star instead of a candle.

What Mira wanted, at the very least, was…

Her fingers on the glass froze like a winter branch. The thought landed, heavy as rain.

What Mira wanted most… did she not already know?

She gripped the bell hairpin in her pocket, the metal cool as river stone. The bracelet bit her wrist, a circle of thorns.

Not yet. Now wasn’t the time to return it. The resolve rose like a wall, steady and stubborn.

She would wait until she mended their bond back to childhood warmth, until the frost between them thawed to spring.

Then she would pin the hairpin in Mira’s hair herself, like setting a blossom behind an ear.

Adelaide drew one slow breath. Her thoughts settled like dust after a gust, and she lifted her head.

A light tap landed on her shoulder, a raindrop on a leaf. She thought the owner had returned with the key.

She turned—and met a woman, swathed in a thick robe and sealed in full armor, like iron under snow.

Adelaide’s eyes widened. Two months ago, she had seen that face, stern as a carved mask, that carried its own thunder.

“As a ‘hostage,’ you do live well, Miss Douglas.”