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Chapter 14
The detached palace was as quiet as ever.
A sharp, high-pitched voice echoed through the eerily still corridor.
“Your Highness!”
Clatter clatter!
“Your Highness~!”
Clatter clatter!
“Your Highness the Prince!”
Thunk.
A pink head peeked through the heavy door.
‘Where on earth did he go?’
Rolling her eyes around, Abel quickly spotted a slender shadow.
“Ah, there you are. Hehe.”
“You…”
“What brings you to the drawing room today? I thought you’d be in the library!”
As if it were the most natural thing in the world, Abel plopped down on the sofa across from him without asking.
The prince didn’t scold her for that—but he did point out something else.
“Do you think this is your family’s front yard?”
“Wow, wouldn’t that be nice? If it were, it’d be a lot less tiring coming here.”
At her breezy reply, a fine crack appeared on the prince’s pale face.
But of course, she was well past the point of being bothered by reactions like that.
“Prince, do you know how much trouble I went through to get here today? Ugh, words can’t even explain.”
Thunk—her familiar bag landed on the old table.
Ignoring the prince’s reaction, Abel began pulling things out.
“These are cookies I baked today. These are the cards I brought last time. And this is…”
As always, those indifferent green eyes didn’t spare even a glance.
But also as always, they didn’t stay focused only on the book.
“You come and go as you please, and now you just stop showing up…”
His tone was almost like a child sulking.
As if he was a little… disappointed.
Of course, ‘disappointed’ meant he’d been expecting something.
And there was no way Abel, who had chased after the First Prince for nearly a month, wouldn’t notice that change.
“Prince, prince!”
“What.”
“Did you miss me?”
Her nose twitched adorably, and her gentle eyes deepened with warmth.
As Abel leaned in, Chesar leaned back in his seat.
“Nonsense.”
“Yeah, yeah. I missed you too.”
“I never said I missed you.”
“Right, so you were upset I didn’t come, huh?”
“You only hear what you want to hear.”
Though the prince shot back coldly, he didn’t kick her out.
If this had been the first time, a cushion would’ve flown across the room already.
Sensing that the atmosphere wasn’t as chilly as before, Abel tried to chat warmly.
“Did you hear? There’s going to be a kingdom-wide festival soon. The Founding Festival!”
“I know. I can’t go, though.”
“Hmm…”
The coldness returned.
Unconsciously, the boy shut his book completely and asked bluntly,
“What, are you gonna sneak me out or something?”
“Nope. I’m going with my dad and little brother. We’re gonna have so much fun.”
An unexpectedly firm reply.
“Prince, no matter how much I like you, I’m not gonna drag you to every event—”
“Get out!”
Ah, there it was. A cushion came flying.
Not surprising, and Abel wasn’t about to obey just because he yelled “get out.”
“Prince, I told you before—you shouldn’t throw things at people.”
“You’re the one who said you’d obey my commands.”
“Only if they make sense…”
“What?”
“Did I say something?”
Her smile was so innocent it was almost infuriating.
Once the little back-and-forth of “Get out!” and “No!” ended, Abel began to speak again, pretending to be casual.
“What if I got hurt, huh? What would you do?”
“You didn’t even get hit.”
“What if I did? What if I got hurt and stopped coming here? Would you like that?”
The moment she said it, she realized it might be too soon to make such remarks—but she kept her face calm.
‘…Would he actually like that, though?’
The bond between Abel and the First Prince wasn’t that strong yet.
In fact, calling it a “bond” felt like a stretch; there was hardly anything between them at all.
Abel Delaphion kept charging forward, while Chesar Lagracio kept shutting her out coldly.
‘We’ve gotta at least become friends before anything else.’
Faced with that daunting emotional distance, her peach-colored lips pouted.
“I went through so much just to see you a little sooner.”
And at this age, I’m already worrying about money!
“Suffering, huh?”
“Yes! Real suffering.”
“Then why…”
A short pause.
His green eyes dimmed, losing focus.
Like he was both seeing and not seeing her. Like a flickering candle in the wind.
“…Why didn’t you come?”
His young voice scratched slightly, fragile.
‘Wait—is he actually…?’
Abel narrowed her black eyes.
“Prince, do you know what kind of hardships and adversity I went through?”
Her eyes curved playfully, and the heavy mood lightened at once.
“I wanted to come every day, honestly. But things don’t always go the way we want, right?”
“Just get to the point.”
“I didn’t have any money.”
“…Start from the beginning.”
“Haha, I didn’t have money for the carriage.”
“Carriage? Money?”
A reflexive curiosity flickered on the boy’s face.
Abel, seeing how cooperative he was today, began explaining step by step.
“Families with some money would own a carriage. But my family doesn’t, so…”
“I heard your father’s a knight of the castle.”
“Yeah, so we have a horse. One.”
A fine horse bought with a junior knight’s salary.
Abel skipped that part and added kindly,
“But my dad needs the horse, and we don’t have a carriage. So I had to use the public carriage.”
“You mean the ones commoners ride?”
“Yep. They’re always packed.”
“Packed…”
The prince furrowed his brow, clearly struggling to imagine it.
“But you can’t just hop on a public carriage, right? You need money! And since I was coming back and forth so much, I ran out of allowance…”
“So you stopped coming?”
“Exactly. But that won’t happen again. Probably.”
She had sold a brooch and gotten a decent amount of money.
It wasn’t super fancy, but still—not an amount a child should carry around.
Her lips twitched at the thought of the pouch of money hidden at home.
“You always came that way?”
“Yeah. Oh, the first time I came to the palace, I rode with my dad on his horse.”
“…I didn’t know.”
“Of course not. I never told you.”
His already pale face darkened further.
Abel had intended to show off a little, but his unexpected reaction made her smile awkwardly.
“Aw, come on. No big deal. I even walked here once.”
“You walked? You walked here?”
“The roads aren’t that tricky. Once you know how to get to the detached palace, it’s easy.”
“Alone?”
Unfortunately, the young prince’s face became even more devastated.
“Yeah, of course. Obviously…”
His lashes dropped low, casting a thin shadow.
His lips curved into a self-deprecating line.
“Of course… you wouldn’t have anyone attending to you.”
‘Ah, and I ruined the mood.’
Just when he was starting to talk more, the mood had turned heavier again.
Twisting in discomfort at the gloomy air, Abel suddenly sprang up.
“Prince, let’s go outside and get some sunlight.”
“Sunlight?”
“People get depressed if they don’t get enough sun. Come on, quick! Quick!”
There was no helping the solitude of the detached palace—but vitamin D deficiency? That was fixable.
Normally, the prince would’ve bluntly told her to get lost, but this time he just blinked in confusion.
“Shall we go to that spot with the tree? That’s where we first met, remember?”
“…Not there.”
“Then where?”
When the prince stood up from the sofa, their eye level nearly matched.
It was the first time their gazes had met this closely since Abel had steamrolled into his life.
“Follow me.”
The prince, still shorter than Abel, walked ahead quickly.
But this time, he wasn’t alone.
They arrived at a field, a bit removed from the detached palace.
“Oh.”
Correction:
It was a stable, with no people—but there were animals.
‘How can it be this empty?’
Though the Delaphions only had one horse, they managed it themselves. But this was the royal stable!
The inside wasn’t particularly messy—but it wasn’t exactly spotless either.
The prince hesitated for a moment before stepping inside.
“These are horses the servants use from time to time.”
“Sorry?”
“It’s a royal tradition to gift a horse on a child’s tenth birthday.”
The prince stopped in a corner of the stable. There stood a brown foal.
“That’s when I first learned that.”
Chesar opened the gate and carefully took hold of the foal’s reins, leading it outside.
‘What, did he suddenly want to go riding?’
Neither of them was dressed for horseback riding, but Abel didn’t question it.
The kind of man who stuffed his son’s horse in the servant’s stable probably didn’t bother with riding gear either.
‘It looks kind of dumb.’
The foal didn’t look particularly smart—but it was pretty cute.
Abel reached out to stroke its brown coat. The coarse hairs brushed against her palm.
While she was petting it, the prince suddenly declared:
“I’ll lend it to you.”
“Huh? You mean that?”
