Chapter 1: Flight

The carriage raced along smoothly, with only the occasional jolt of stone under the wheels. Outside the window, the fields were growing steadily more desolate, and it was roughly three days to the border town of Andria.

The compartment was warm and comfortable, but the atmosphere inside was even stiffer than the frost outside. Astaroth felt as if every turn of the wheel was hammering at his taut nerves.

He stole a glance at Lilith across from him.

She had turned her head toward the window, her long black hair hanging like strands of seaweed and covering most of her face, making her expression impossible to read.

That silence was more frightening to Astaroth than any scolding.

Ever since that disastrous birthday ball and their escape into hiding, Lilith had been in terrible shape.

Even after they had gotten away, the two days they had spent alone on the road had seen her speak to him barely at all.

He wanted to ask why she kept going quiet, wanted to check whether she felt unwell or was hurting anywhere, but he was afraid of provoking her needless anger. After all, most of this was his fault.

A deathly stillness hung over the carriage, making him restless and unsettled, more unnerving than the church's holy light itself.

A horrible thought kept circling in his mind: she must be regretting it.

Regretting bringing along a burden like me, this idiot who always ruins everything.

Maybe once they reached Andria, she'd ditch me as dead weight.

Those thoughts gnawed at him like mad things.

No, he had to do something now, anything, to calm down his overactive brain.

His fingers idly rubbed at the velvet cushion on the seat... ah... that soft, yielding feel... probably prepared by Baron Carlson, who had been utterly bewitched by Lilith.

What a hopeless fool, actually believing that lie about "lying low and coming back later."

Still, this cushion was nice...

As he thought that, he kept rubbing it.

So soft, so springy, the fabric so smooth, like stroking the softest belly of a docile cat.

Ah... human nobles really did love these flashy but wonderfully tactile things.

He secretly pinched it with his nails, feeling that full, resilient bounce, and some strange, faint satisfaction briefly pushed back the panic in his chest.

Once was not enough, then again... he seemed to have found endless amusement, his fingertips lingering there without wanting to leave.

If he could have hugged it and buried his face in it, that would have been even better, but not now. Lilith would only think he was even dumber.

All he could do was keep one eye locked on his sister's statue-still profile while, behind his back, like some pervert, he repeatedly kneaded the innocent cushion.

"Brother."

Lilith suddenly spoke, her voice calm, yet it split the carriage's gloom like lightning.

Astaroth jerked so hard he nearly jumped out of his seat, his hand springing off the cushion as if burned. He straightened at once and put on a sycophantic smile. "Lilith, I'm here."

Good, she'd spoken. What would she say?

She turned her head. In those violet eyes there was no anger, no accusation, only a deep, unreadable calm.

"What are demons like? When we get there, will I be able to learn how to sense and use magic power?"

"..."

In that instant, Astaroth's fingers froze on the cushion. Beneath his fingertips, the velvet softness strangely overlapped with the odd, warm texture of the Mother Tree fruit's shell from that night sixteen years ago.

His thoughts were yanked back at once to the starting point that had decided the fates of both him and Lilith...