Adelaide’s suggestion was simple—step out and let the night wind rinse the heart.

It was late. On most nights, Mira would refuse; the desert’s day-night swing cut like a blade, and Adelaide caught cold like dew on silk. Tonight, she only nodded in silence. She turned away, palm brushing her chest, and a sigh of relief flashed across her lips, a moth-wing flicker swallowed by the carriage’s shadow. She never caught the glance gliding off Adelaide’s lashes.

As expected, she still wouldn’t speak the thorn in her heart, a knot hidden under snow.

A fine sting threaded Adelaide’s wrist like a thin needle, yet she smothered the urge to ask, a tide held behind a dam. She only watched Mira rummage a trunk for a winter coat, sand-dry impatience rustling in the dark. When Mira found nothing and glanced back, Adelaide swung the coat from behind her back, a small cloud unfurling on her shoulders.

“Since it was with you, why didn’t you say so?” Mira’s voice brushed like a cool reed over water.

“Because you fussing over me is too cute, and I zoned out like a sun-drunk cat.”

“…”

Seeing Mira’s speechless face, Adelaide tucked away her teasing smile and cleared her throat, a feather of sound in the quiet. “Anyway, you don’t have to worry about everything. It makes me look useless, like a kite with its string cut.”

She meant it. She had put the coat on in front of Mira for this—her body lagged behind Mira’s, behind most people, like a candle in wind. But being cared for in everything didn’t feel like an older sister; once upon a time, she had been the one sheltering Mira like a roof in rain.

She pictured that black-haired little Mira, obedient under her spoon, being fed cake and pudding, sugar lanterns in a dusk-lit room. Adelaide set a quiet vow in her chest, like a stake in the sand: from now on, anything within reach, she’d do herself; she’d turn the river back to its old course.

Yes. She was the elder sister.

“I didn’t mean it like that—!” Mira’s voice spiked like a plucked string, then snagged and fell. She lowered her head, shadow pooling like ink. “I just…”

I don’t know what I can do for you.

Her whisper was too fine to catch, half-swallowed by the whoosh outside the carriage. Drowning in her own little dream, Adelaide missed it. “Hm? What did you say?” Her question drifted like a leaf.

A brief hush. Mira stepped past it and slid on her black wig, a night veil over night. “Aren’t you wearing yours?”

“At this hour? No one’s going to see.” Adelaide laughed into the wind, then caught Mira’s wrist like warm rope and pulled the carriage door open.

To prove she was the well-traveled elder sister she claimed to be, the first thing Adelaide dragged Mira into blindsided her.

“Waaah—” Adelaide’s delight blew downwind like a bright kite-tail, while Mira sat in front of her stone-faced, folding herself small like a hedgehog in frost. The two of them shared a plank barely longer than their knees, shooting down a dune pitched close to forty-five degrees, starlight slanting like thrown knives.

“What are we doing!” Mira raised her voice as speed piled up like rolling thunder. The wind in her face turned wild, and the grind of sand under wood rattled like bones.

“Sandboarding! Like skiing, but the snow’s made of gold dust.” Adelaide’s laugh skipped like a pebble over water.

“I meant—why now?” Mira clawed hair from her eyes, a black stream whipped by the gale.

“I wanted to try skiing with you when we reached the north. When the general ran into us, I was a bit regretful.” Adelaide’s tone climbed like a lark, high and bright. “But this is fine too. You won’t find dunes this high anywhere in the Empire.”

She had barely finished when they hit the dune’s steepest throat. The plank lunged, and Adelaide whooped like she was on a roller coaster, a comet-tail of joy. “Whoaaa!”

“W-wait, we’re going too fast—eek!” “Waaah!”

The plank smacked a small sand swell, and both their hips floated for a breath, as if a hand under the night tossed them skyward. Their twin yelps rose in perfect harmony and snapped like twigs.

For Adelaide and Mira—people who could almost pinch time by the edge—this wasn’t true speed. But perched on a slab they couldn’t steer, with gravity as judge and rope, fate felt different, like dice thrown into a well.

In that weightless beat, Mira’s muscles cinched like bowstrings. Adelaide, behind her, wrapped her arms around Mira’s waist on instinct, a belt of warmth against the cold slip of air.

Crack.

They dropped back to the plank. The wind still hissed in their ears like a snake, the sand still sang its dry, gritty song. Only their posture had changed, closeness ringing like a struck bell.

Realizing the distance between them had vanished like a mirage, Mira twitched to pull away. Even in the thin moonlight, a flush climbed her neck like dawning peach. Adelaide stared at the scarf-soft skin so close to her lips, and the itch in her little fangs flared like nettles. The iron band in her mind tightened in the same breath, and she crushed the sudden urge to bite like a spark under heel.

“H-ha… see? This pace is fine.” Adelaide tried to prove there was nothing to fear, and maybe to give herself a step back. She let her hands slip from Mira’s waist, fingers unhooking like leaves from a branch.

“Don’t—wait—”

It turned out, letting go right then wasn’t wise.

They slammed into another rise, not a sand lump but a stone skulking under a thin blanket of grit. The long-suffering plank finally surrendered. With a sharp crack, it burst like dry bark, doing one last act of mercy—flinging the two of them skyward and saving them from its splintered fate.

“Eh—” Adelaide’s dazed syllable hung in the air. Then both of them hit the sand, throwing up two tan clouds like twin geysers.

“Ptooey, ptooey… Sis…?” Mira spat the desert from her mouth and stumbled up in a rush, panic flaring like a torch. “Adelaide, where are you?!”

No answer. Her pupils tightened like shuttered irises. She swept her hand and drove earth magic through the dune; the dust sheet peeled back like a curtain. Adelaide lay a step away, eyes closed, still as storybook glass—Sleeping Beauty under a dune’s veil—and Mira’s breath went heavy, a bellows in a forge. She ran the two steps, sand spraying like water.

“Adelaide—”

Before the name could finish, a hand caught hers. A sudden tug pulled her down, and she tumbled beside the white-haired beauty, the sand cool as silk under her shoulder blade.

She blinked half a second, and then Adelaide’s eyes opened, mischief curving her mouth like a crescent moon.

“Are you… okay?” Mira’s voice came out dazed, a stray thread in the wind.

Adelaide gave a small shake of her head and lifted their joined hands, a lantern raised in the dark. The red array circling their wrists unraveled into the air, fading like fireflies—the afterglow of a shock-warding spell. Mira had been too anxious to notice it bloom.

“See? I told you. You don’t have to worry so much.” Adelaide’s smile was a warm hearth.

“…Don’t do that again.” Mira’s words fell firm, a stone set in place.

Adelaide blinked her big eyes, a doe in moonlight. “But sandboarding feels so good. It’s like skimming over waves.”

“Adelaide.”

“Okay, okay. I hear you.” She lifted her hands in surrender like a waved flag, but she didn’t let go of Mira’s fingers. Instead she adjusted her posture, limbs loose, and lay back in the most natural, cloud-soft way.

“Then let’s do something not dangerous.”

“…?”

At Mira’s puzzled look, Adelaide pointed at the sky, her other hand snug in Mira’s. “You can’t see a sky like this in Balad, right?”

Mira followed her finger and looked up, eyes opening a fraction like petals at dawn.

The stars crowded their vision until it felt unreal. It was night, yet the far-off lights gathered so thick they pulsed like a field of fireflies. Their flicker almost dazzled, as if day had stitched a secret under the dark.

So this is what the sky is supposed to be.

Adelaide hummed in thought. “Mmm… let me see.” Her finger traced paths in the air, and faint red magic linked the stars like threads of pomegranate silk.

“That’s Sagittarius… and that cluster shaped like an apple must be Leo, right?” Her voice drew lines as if on water.

Mira didn’t answer, so Adelaide went on, a painter dotting light. “These few make the Water-Bearer in the book… though in person it looks more like a giant lobster, doesn’t it?”

Her long finger left glints behind, and the two of them lay halfway up the dune, necks tipped back like flowers to rain. The sea of stars filled their eyes, bright enough to ripple.

“I feel… a little mad,” Adelaide said, a small wave breaking.

Mira turned her face, watching her profile. “Why?”

“I always thought the stars matched the pictures in the books exactly.” Her laugh was a thin reed in the wind.

“Feels like you were cheated?”

“Yeah. All these years I believed it… Sigh. Blame that eave.”

She didn’t explain further. She didn’t need to. Mira knew.

The Douglas Family mansion had been flawless at a glance, but the architect had girdled the eaves with a ring of carved stone for beauty. From outside, the house was grand as a cliff. From inside, it turned the sky into a slit. Every morning and night, Adelaide pulled the curtains, and first light was a blade of shadow, not sun or moon. Look up, and seven-tenths of her view was swallowed by the eave; any mood for moon-gazing was crushed like a flower under a boot. As a noble girl, slipping out at midnight to stargaze wasn’t allowed; the rules hung like chains in a well.

So night came nightly, yet the night sky stayed a stranger.

Back when they both lived under the Douglas Family roof, Adelaide had complained to Mira more than once. Mira should understand; she wouldn’t pry—

“But they took the eave down later, didn’t they?” Mira asked, her voice soft as sand.

The unexpected turn made Adelaide pause for half a beat, a ripple cut short.

Mira was right. That hateful eave had been torn down later. On Adelaide’s birthday, to divert eyes, she lit a fire; the mansion was rebuilt from its bones, and all the sight-blocking ornaments—carvings and crowns—were discarded like shed bark.

“After that, you still didn’t really look at the sky?” The question fell like a pebble in a pond.

“I…” Adelaide wanted to say she had, yet she knew how strange that would sound. The eave was gone—and even if it weren’t, so what? She’d snuck out often enough, nights braided with mischief. Nothing had stopped her from lifting her chin and stealing a glance at the stars above the guttering lamps.

And yet, she hadn’t.

Even with no eave, even with plenty of midnight escapes, she had been busy with other things—studying Blood Magic, hunting materials, weaving contacts—stones on the road toward a crown. Those things pulled her gaze down, away from the sky, like weights on an ankle.

Do I really have no time, not even to look up?

After a small silence, Adelaide looked at Mira, pupils steady as a still pond. “Mm. I haven’t.”

She admitted it plainly, let the thought go like a leaf, and offered the same gentle smile that always belonged to an elder sister, warm as sunlight through gauze. She laced her fingers with Mira’s, sliding deep between her knuckles, and their hands locked like interwoven branches.

“So, sharing your first sky of stars, Mira, makes your sister very happy, like standing beside a lake of silver.”

Heat rushed up Mira’s face like a flare; if not for their ten fingers locked tight, she might’ve yanked her hand back on reflex.

“D-Don’t say weird things out of nowhere, like dropping a stone into still water.”

“Weird? … maybe a bit, like a thread stitched wrong.”

After a long beat, Adelaide went on, her words like wind crossing dunes.

“Sorry… I asked you out today to apologize, Mira, like setting down a lantern.”

“Apologize…?” her question trembled like a small bell in the dark.

She sighed, a breath drifting like a tired feather.

“This year, I can’t spend your birthday with you, like a calendar page torn by wind.”

Mira’s eyes widened, then the meaning rose like sunrise over a ridge.

Counting from the day General Slandor caught us, your birthday falls in a little over two months, aligned like rails with our arrival at the village.

In theory, once the convoy settled, Adelaide could celebrate for Mira, like pitching a tent after a storm.

That was her thought when she accepted the general’s offer, steady as a stake in sand.

Yet she miscounted a crucial factor, a stone hidden under the wheel.

Her body is frail, porcelain under frost, and she can’t walk close to a plague village, a swamp of miasma.

Even if Adelaide believed she’d be fine, Mira would bar that gate like iron.

Before they set off, Mira drew the lines in sand: Adelaide stays at the outer camp, while Mira alone handles security for the vanguard unit inside the village.

In other words, after they reach the village, they’ll be apart for quite a while, and the birthday plan dissolves like foam.

“I…” Mira bit her lower lip, holding back a tide.

“That kind of thing… isn’t important at all, just a leaf blown by wind.”

Adelaide shook her head, a willow refusing the gust.

“No, it matters; what could be more important than my little sister’s birthday, the first lantern in my heart?”

“You…” she breathed, the word flickering like a candle.

Mira flushed deeper, a rose in sudden sun.

“Say whatever you want, but you absolutely can’t enter the village with me; that line is etched in stone.”

“I know; I won’t ask that, like a hand raised then withdrawn.”

“But I still need to make it up—when you come back, I’ll have a little surprise tucked under a ribbon.”

Hearing that, Mira stilled like a deer in grass.

“Surprise? What—ah?!” Her question popped, then a knuckle flick landed on her forehead with a small tok, like a pebble skipping.

“Little dummy; if I say it, it’s not a surprise,” she said, smiling warm as spring thaw.

She finished, then gathered Mira into her arms, all gentleness like velvet.

“But not every surprise has to wait until you return; some bloom early like the moon sliding from a cloud.”

At first, Adelaide felt the same squirming as on that sand-slope, a fish testing the net.

In the next heartbeat, every hint of resistance melted like ice under sun.

Because she pressed a kiss to Mira’s forehead, a dragonfly touching water.

It was a brush-light kiss, familiar yet strange, like walking an old path under new snow.

No spotless little dresses, no mellow chimes to mark the hour, no cake a meter tall; only an empty night echoing like a hall.

Even if they weren’t dusted in sand, even if they weren’t reading time by the moon’s face, it still wasn’t a Douglas Family-standard birthday, like falling off the Family ledger.

But Adelaide did it anyway, keeping her promise like a seed kept warm in the palm.

At the stroke of midnight, Mira could receive, from the sister she loved, four years her senior, a kiss on the brow, a small talisman against the dark.

After eight years, Adelaide finally closed that ring of promise, like a circle drawn at last.

She felt the tremor against her chest, a sparrow beating its wings.

In her eyes was only the girl, face crimson, no longer resisting, nestling in like an ember that chooses the hearth.

Snow-white and ink-black hair intertwined; time seemed to rewind to the night before flames devoured the sky.

Yes; if they keep walking like this, everything will slide back onto its rails, like a river finding its channel.

Adelaide tightened her hold on her little sister and tied that thought like a knot deep in her heart.