“Beauty no longer needs maple leaves?” Fulin felt fog roll across her thoughts, and in Lance’s skin she asked again, “What does that actually mean?”

The Marquis’s tone flipped like cards at a table. “Put simply, she’s turned into a city of flowers.”

Yuna’s brows knit like winter twigs. “Our homeland became a city of flowers? Even in winter’s frost?”

The bodyguard’s eyes lit like lanterns at dusk. “A fellow townsman, no wonder your bearing shines like moon on water.”

“May I ask your father’s honored name?” he said, his words fluttering like a loose banner.

Yuna shut her eyes like shutters in a storm and let the bodyguard’s flirtation drift past like smoke.

“Hey.” Lance’s single note dropped like a pebble in a well.

“S–so sorry!” The bodyguard’s head hit the deck with a thud, like a hammer striking a plank.

It looked painful, like iron on bone.

After Lance tilted two fingers like a lifting wind, the Marquis’s private mage helped him up with hands gentle as quilted snow.

The mage’s voice carried the ache of rain. “These days, Maple City’s debutantes are petals on a stream, and this guy’s taken more than a few cuts.”

“That’s right… drifting and fickle,” the Marquis exhaled like smoke from a brazier. “A Maple City of water and flowers won’t need old, austere maple leaves.”

Boredom on the road cracked like thin ice, and Fulin’s interest surfaced. In Lance’s mask, she asked, “Sounds like she’s got a story?”

“It isn’t a story,” the Marquis said, eyes on a white world like blank parchment. “It’s just a slice of history.”

He said Maple City sits in the Doran Kingdom’s crownlands, its soil rooted with the royal house, so everything—culture and custom—grew stiff and conservative like cedar in frost.

“Back then she was beautiful and solemn, like a princess-knight in maple-leaf skirt-armor; with wolves at the gate, she sang clear as a bell,” he said, voice a low drum. “She held to iron and blood, to maple leaves falling forever, to the kingdom’s thousand-year rhythm like a river’s refrain.”

Wealth kept fattening the kingdom, and eight years ago a bloom-mad wind swept the city like spring rain; the Golden Flower Marquis arrived on that tide.

“But then he wasn’t a marquis,” the Marquis said, memory turning like pages. “He was a small noble—baron or viscount, I forget—who brought a flower only Mubay City had then.”

“Tulips… right.” Inwardly, Fulin saw Tulip Manor rise like sunrise, the first fields bright as yesterday’s dream.

“Yes, tulips,” the Marquis nodded, a candle flicker in his eyes. “He carried tulips into Maple City.”

The small noble did more than ferry seeds; by trade he was a gardener, hands stained like dark soil.

He crossed tulips with local wildflowers, weaving roots like threads, and bred a new strain with a quiet scent and bright, wide petals.

Hardy as weeds and flamboyant as banners, she drew nobles eager to show off like moths to a torch.

From that point, the wind in Maple City shifted like a weather vane.

“At first they planted her because she was costly—like gold on a sleeve,” he went on, palm sketching the air like a quill. “Then they fell for her beauty, drunk on her passion, her pride, her promise of love.”

Hopelessly, people loved her as if she were a flame behind glass.

After he bred the hybrid tulip, she covered Maple City in less than a month, like rain racing across tiles.

Within a year, she spread across the whole Doran Kingdom like fire in dry grass.

“That small noble struck it rich,” the Marquis said, words clicking like beads. “He won both fame and coin—so much it stunned the city.”

For his service to the kingdom’s coffers, the king granted him a marquisate, a crest painted the hardest-to-cultivate gold.

On a road paved with tulips, he became the Golden Flower Marquis, while Maple City turned from a solemn princess into a rouged courtesan, a siren in silk.

He finished the tale of a nouveau noble’s rise like a curtain falling.

Silence pooled like ink, and thought weighed the air like wet wool.

“Doesn’t sound like a happy tale,” Lance said, his tone guarded like a shield.

Catching the chill in Lance’s voice, the Marquis shook his head, breath a thin cloud. “It’s not a tale. That’s how the Golden Flower Marquis rose these seven years.”

“No, I mean…” Lance set elbows on knees like propped spears, then lifted his head. “You only mentioned the Golden Flower Marquis.”

“It should be how the Golden Flower Family took root in Maple City. You telling me it was one man’s push?” Lance let the absurdity dangle like a crooked sign.

A small sigh left the Marquis, soft as ash. He leaned back and watched the swaying lantern paint the roof like a tide. “No wonder they call you the Blazing Fire Knight.”

“That doesn’t take special talent,” Lance said, rare seriousness hardening like ice. “I just don’t think the Golden Flower Marquis could do it alone.”

The mage cast another warming spell, and heat rolled through the cabin like bread-fresh air.

The Marquis loosened like a thaw. Lance’s angle amused him, a spark on dry tinder. “So when you say he couldn’t make weather alone, do you mean he lacked the skill, or…”

“He just got lucky?” The Marquis’s eyes slid sideways like a blade’s shine.

“Of course not.” Lance straightened, spine a drawn bow. “If the Golden Flower Family rose, many hands pushed. Tulip seed mattered, but he needed help. Remember, he was a small noble.”

“How did he shove tulips into the public eye?” Lance asked, words striking like flint.

The warming spell sent sweat beading like dew along brows.

“Mmm…” the Marquis murmured, the name Lance Morrison rolling like a coin across the table. “You’re young, but your angle—and your eye—cut like a knife.”

The Feng Wolf Marquis hadn’t eaten his title for free; he rode Lance’s hinted road like a hunter on a track and recalled a city-shaking event.

“Seven years ago—”

“Eight,” Lance cut in, voice crisp as frost. “Yesterday closed Heavenly Calendar 1323.”

“Oh, right! Eight years ago—” The Marquis dipped his head in apology, then let memory flow like a river. “At a social function, the Silkworm Clan’s eldest son announced he was engaged.”

Fulin had already caught the scent like a fox. Lance asked, “He didn’t name the fiancée?”

“Right. Mr. Waltz didn’t name her, and the Silkworm Clan was the strongest of the five families then,” said the Marquis, voice steady as a loom.

“Still is?” Lance cut in, a blade’s edge on the word.

“Yes, still the biggest,” the Marquis said, the admission dropping like a stone.

“Their textile business covers the whole Doran Kingdom,” he added, plucking an example like a thread. “Your shirt or mine might be woven from Silkworm silk.”

“A powerful corporate clan… I can picture it,” Lance nodded, like a soldier measuring a wall.

“Because they were unmatched, the other four families—myself included—couldn’t match their door,” the Marquis said, pride and regret braided like rope.

“Heh, match their door,” the bodyguard snorted, laughter flicking like sparks. “To match that, you’d have to marry a princess.”

“So people wondered if the crown would grant Mr. Waltz a princess,” the Marquis went on, voice changing like sky before rain. “But almost at the same time—”

“The Grandi family, that is, the Golden Flower Family,” he said, “announced their daughter—Reina—awakened Battle Aura at eleven.”

Jeremy hopped like a monkey in a market, hands windmilling. “Awakening at eleven was nationwide headline thunder!”

The bodyguard’s expression tangled like vines. “A knight usually awakens around thirty-five, and Lady Waltz did it at eleven, which means—”

Lance took the thread and repeated Layne’s earlier words like a bell’s echo. “It means she could become a Sky Knight by forty, at the latest.”

“The kingdom hasn’t seen a Sky Knight in a long time,” Lance added, a quiet ember in the dark.

The Feng Wolf Marquis met Lance’s easy gaze and spoke with a knight’s weight. “To my eye, Blazing Fire Knight, you have that chance too—no, you’re already a fierce Charge Knight while still young.”

“You’ll be a Sky Knight one day,” he said, the vow ringing like steel.

The air thickened like syrup, and breathing felt heavy as wet wool.

Lance waved it away like smoke. “Spare me. Not the topic.”

“Back to the story.”

“Right.” The Marquis resumed, voice like wheels on gravel. “In short, young Lady Waltz’s talent made the Golden Flower Family everyone’s darling; once word spread, nearly everyone stretched out olive branches.”

“Olive branches?” Lance needled, a grin like a knife. “Not handkerchiefs?”

“Forgive my thin learning,” the Marquis reddened like wine and pressed on, blunt as a cudgel. “The stronger families wanted to marry into the Golden Flower Family. Even the royal house!”

“You too?” Lance nudged again, the question a flicked pebble.

“Let’s not,” the Marquis ducked his head, shrinking like a scorched leaf. He coughed. “A-anyway, they finally chose the wealthy Silkworm Clan.”

“So the Waltz couple were engaged eight years ago?” Yuna’s voice came cold as ice.

“And a ‘de facto’ Lady Waltz then came to deceive the master—”

Crack!

Anger surged like lightning, and Yuna snapped the cup in her hand without thinking.

Shards skittered across the deck like sleet, and Yuna realized her lapse; she bowed her head like a wilted stalk. “Please forgive me!”

“It’s fine…” Lance said, boot-edge nudging the shards aside like a broom. “Head up. Clean it fast.”

He glanced at Jeremy snoring nearby like a log. “Before he wakes and cuts himself.”

“Right, that guy!” someone in the retinue chimed in, and laughter spilled like marbles.

“In short, likely because of that engagement, the Grandi family had money to plant and push the hybrid tulip…” the Marquis said, the thought drifting like a leaf.

“That’s how I see it.”

“No need to say ‘I think,’” Lance sank into the seatback like a man into dusk. He sighed, eyes on the lantern rocking overhead like a boat. “Because the fact may be exactly that.”

And so, the holes in “Lance’s” eight-year-old memory filled in like water seeping through cracks—the most helpless way, the most powerless way.

Eight years ago, Fulin hadn’t crossed over; she was burning late nights like candles, clawing from a grueling business unit to a quiet HR desk.

She could do nothing then, like a sparrow beating glass.

Fulin was helpless, a leaf in wind.

“Then why say ‘maybe’?” The Marquis borrowed Lance’s trick and returned the stone with a sigh like a tide. “Lady Waltz—of course…”

Lance heard the undertow in his words and pressed, his voice a drawn string. “Meaning what? That this eight-year thing also hid a plot against me?”

“Yes.” The Feng Wolf Marquis might be blunt, but he knew noble shadows like a hunter knows spoor. “Because you had the same potential, and they knew it, so—”

“So how did they plan to hurt me?” Lance crossed one leg over the other, the move a casual blade laid on velvet.

“They couldn’t hurt you directly,” the Marquis said, logic stacking like bricks. “You were the Golden Eagle Legion commander’s son; no noble wants legionnaires outside his gate at dawn.”

“So they used Reina’s hand?” Lance’s eyes stilled like a frozen pond.

“Yes!” The Marquis almost jumped from his seat, the word a spark. “They used that to strike your spirit, grind your will, keep you from training, steer you off the road—”

What he said matched “Lance’s” life, like a map laid over terrain: a boy turned second-generation wastrel overnight.

Some great wound gouged him eight years ago and drove him to ruin, until half a year ago when Fulin crossed and took the reins like a rider saving a bolting horse.

“Nothing gnaws like a childhood friend’s betrayal,” the Marquis said, his tone a scar under cloth.

“So after the battle in Golden Bay City, Reina planned to do it again?” Lance’s voice cooled like quenched steel.

“Hard to believe, but…” the Marquis shivered, human darkness a cold hand on his back. “Your fierce reaction to the truth last night said it all—maybe Lady Waltz has been deliberately tormenting you.”

“Just because the Doran Kingdom can’t have two Sky Knights?” Lance listened, the thought growing absurd like a kite in a dead calm.

"Because there's no precedent for this, but that's not the point..." The marquis let out a long sigh, his gaze sailing to the white sea on the horizon.

"Because the Heavenly Spirit Empire demands this: Sky Knights must ride to the front. They must take missions on a knife's edge, impossible and deadly."

"Our kingdom has raised many Sky Knights; they could've been great heroes, torches in the night." He exhaled. "But the mobilization turned our efforts to smoke on the wind."

"After all, their final fate was always—"

"Fallen in battle."

The silence after that rest beat hung heavy, like leaden clouds before snow.

"First, let me plant one flag: I won't die. Next—" Lance rose; under the lantern his shadow stretched taller, like a pine in moonlight. "My destination is the Sun Knight!"

Like staring into a blazing corona, no one dared lift their eyes to Lance.

He'd actually stood because the lantern was slipping. He tightened the hook, voice easy, a smile like spring wind. "I'm kidding—don't carve it in stone."

The marquis clutched his heart, leaping like a hooked fish. "By the Light Deity, I almost believed you!"

The others were the same, millstones sliding from their shoulders as they let out long breaths.

"Alright, no more old tales; let's close that book." After fixing the lamp, Lance sat again, like a sword settling into its sheath. He spread a blank sheet of parchment like a still lake before a storm. "Before we reach Maple City, let's plan how to win this damned Knight Festival."