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chapter 9
Mounier Tamiren
Adeline murmured to herself.
“I don’t clearly remember my mother’s face.”
It was truly regrettable. Things that didn’t need to be remembered came back vividly, like black ink drawn on a blank sheet of paper, yet her mother’s face alone was blurred, like watercolors running on wet paper.
At first, it was unbearably sad. Even if she remembered her mother’s face, she thought she might not even have the right to mourn someone she had already forgotten.
“When people say I look like my mother, I just look in the mirror and accept it.”
Even whispering the word “mother” in her heart made her chest burn as if consumed by fire. To say it aloud was unthinkable. No matter how much she screamed or raged, the dead would not return.
How much pain must she have endured? Losing her precious daughter, the one she cherished more than life itself, only to be separated and then cruelly murdered.
Adeline no longer bit her blankets and cried herself to sleep like she did as a child. She didn’t bang the bed with her fists or thrash about until exhaustion took her. She didn’t sit dazed, muttering like a madwoman.
No more tears came.
“If there really is a god watching over humans from that sky… I must make my mother happy, no matter what.”
The Lion King said nothing.
On the road back to the capital, they stopped in front of a small town to give the weary travelers a rest. The road was wide, and they were traveling at a fairly fast pace. But at that moment, a child, no older than ten, ran into the path of the carriage. The suddenness left the coachman powerless except to pull the reins.
The child could have died. If the Lion King hadn’t been riding outside the carriage, if he had been even slightly further away, if he hadn’t dashed like the wind to save the child…
The child’s mother came running, screaming as if her breath would give out. At first, the child, confused and clinging, was spanked on the bottom by her mother’s sharp hands and burst into loud crying.
The mother, hugging her small child tightly, collapsed onto the dirt ground and wept bitterly. Adeline quietly watched the scene from inside the carriage, silently, through the open window.
Once inside the city, most went to bed early. Exhausted warriors went straight to their beds after dinner and snored through the halls. But Adeline sat by the fireplace, lost in thought.
“I’m curious about your mother too.”
The Lion King suddenly spoke, holding a cup of warmed milk. Adeline smiled faintly and asked him:
“What kind of person do you think she was?”
“What use is guessing? She must have looked like you, that’s all I know.”
“Still, try. I want to hear it.”
The fire in the fireplace crackled as he added a short log and sat down on the floor.
“She must have been beautiful.”
“They said my face is strange.”
“She must have been strong.”
Adeline sat in her chair, looking down at him. Shadows from the fire danced across his eyes. His lowered eyelashes trembled slightly, and he smiled, loosening his lips.
“I don’t know how to put it into words. Honestly, if your mother were alive, I would have persuaded her to stay in my mother’s desert home.”
“What? Why?”
He said something unexpected. Adeline looked at him, her curiosity piqued.
“I swore to protect you. That means I would also have to protect your mother. But since this isn’t my land, I don’t know what could happen or who might be friend or foe. The safest place I know on this continent is my mother’s home, so I would have asked her to stay there.”
“That’s… so absurdly sweet.”
She understood why women liked him so much. Adeline didn’t voice her thought; he would just nod and forget it anyway.
If she had been an ordinary princess, loved and raised normally, she might have fallen in love at first sight with a young neighboring king and followed him around daily.
No, she thought, she probably wouldn’t have acted so cute. If it were her, she would have used every trick to win him. She would defeat her rivals cruelly, set traps, and wait for him to walk right into them.
Imagining it, she thought that life might be fun. Pushing and pulling, living as if only her love mattered, as if it were the only important thing in the world. She let out a hollow laugh.
“Maybe I need to be reborn.”
“What?”
“Nothing. You wouldn’t understand.”
It was a thought she couldn’t share with him. As she looked away, the Lion King leaned toward her.
“You have a strange habit.”
“What habit?”
“Sometimes you get lost in thought, imagining the most interesting things—but you never tell me.”
He was right. Adeline pursed her lips, then let out a small laugh.
“You don’t want to tell because it’s embarrassing?”
“What? What kind of imagination could be so embarrassing?”
“Just kidding.”
Ending the conversation with a vague smile, Adeline exhaled a long breath. Silence filled the room. Sparks from the fire popped as new logs ignited. The flames danced over the logs, growing taller and brighter.
Flames are beautiful. Simply staring at them feels mesmerizing.
Adeline brushed her warm cheek with the back of her hand.
“Just say what you want to say.”
The Lion King moved closer and sat beside her, tilting his head toward her, ready to listen.
Adeline reached out her hands toward his head, instinctively touching his damp hair.
“Adeline?”
“Stay still.”
Her fingers slipped through his wet hair like a feathered bird fluttering between strands. The Lion King, who had frowned at the ticklish sensation, eventually relaxed, smiling as he rested his head on her lap.
Adeline untied the leather strap holding his hair, ran her fingers through, drying the damp golden strands, which shimmered even in the firelight.
“This is nice,” he murmured.
“What is?”
“Having someone touch my hair.”
It was natural for a king, far from home, to appreciate such a simple comfort. Adeline suddenly spoke.
“Are you okay?”
“About what?”
“Mounier Tamiren.”
He turned his head to look at her. It was a strange coincidence. On the way back from Nova to Marma, her eyes had caught the name Mounier Tamiren in a newspaper—a girl said to have died falling from the tallest tower in Sol-Marma, the Lion King’s fiancée.
When it was revealed that Tamiren was actually the head of a southern human-trafficking syndicate, Adeline had looked at the Lion King instinctively.
He hadn’t reacted, keeping his usual expression.
What had he thought then? Tamiren was supposed to be a sacrifice offered by the emperor, not truly betrothed.
“What was her relationship to you?” Adeline asked.
“I never asked, and he never explained,” she realized.
After a pause, the Lion King finally spoke:
“Why didn’t you ask anything?”
“About what?”
“About Mounier Tamiren. You must have heard she died because of me.”
“I didn’t think it was my place to ask.”
The Lion King fell silent again. The awkward silence wasn’t uncomfortable, but it lingered. They didn’t avoid problems—they faced them, looking each other in the eyes.
“Mounier Tamiren was not my fiancée.”
He explained simply:
“The King of Marma offered me four women. Three of them sent invitations immediately, trying to bind me somehow. But she showed no interest in me at all.”
“She disliked you?”
“Even her name—I only learned after she died. She had a lover.”
Adeline was at a loss for questions, and he explained further:
“All I received was a written request that I reject her on her behalf. I don’t even know why she died.”
That’s why he hadn’t paid respects. Adeline understood. No obligation existed to mourn someone whose name she barely knew.
She deleted Mounier Tamiren from her thoughts. The enemy she would face was not the poor girl, but the Tamiren family.
“The Tamirens were heads of a human-trafficking syndicate?”
Her words lingered in the room. The Lion King rested on her lap again.
“The wealth is obvious. They were close to your father too.”
“They built their castle with gold from selling people,” Adeline muttered.
“I don’t know why they offered their only daughter to me,” the Lion King added.
“Honor.”
Indeed, only honor was lacking. After amassing wealth for so long, gold alone was not enough. What humans crave most is often beyond gold. For the Tamirens, it was honor. And so they waited, then discovered the Lion King. Marrying their daughter would elevate them to the family of a king.
Adeline thought about the depths of human greed—an endless labyrinth, an unfathomable pit.
“Adeline, you should meet your chef,” the Lion King said.
“The chef? You mean Ringo?”
“If he’s Ordo’s, he must have known about this.”
She nodded without averting his gaze.
“You’re right.”
After finishing their southern journey, Adeline wrote a reply to Ringo. She had received three letters from him but was only now responding—and had Naby write it for her.
One line:
“Come immediately.”
They stayed in a remote area half a day from the capital. On the way back, they traveled swiftly along the fastest route.
Ringo appeared at the inn where Adeline and the Lion King were staying, exactly one day later.
“How could you do this to me?!”
Ringo whined excitedly, saying how long he had waited, how he cried into his pillow every night, and how he’d never felt such anxiety even at his first love’s failure.
“Stop lying, you fool.”
“Wow, the princess is scolding me now.”
Ringo recounted what had happened while she was away: Colin had grown closer to the maids from the queen’s palace; her palace guards had halved in number; Richard disappeared into Cesare’s palace; and a few expensive decorations were missing. The culprit was unknown.
“I don’t care about that.”
“Then?”
“Mounier Tamiren.”
Adeline mumbled while eating the food Naby brought.
“All you know about Tamiren in Ordo.”
“Oh… that? Tamiren?”
Ringo squinted, rolling his eyes awkwardly.
“Princess… how much did you find out?”
“More than you think.”
Ringo had known nothing. Perhaps even before she left for the southern journey, she had discovered Tamiren’s role as a trafficking syndicate head.
“I’m sorry,” he
