#VI. Daughter of the Fairy

 The afternoon sunlight scattered in the garden was as modest as the marigolds growing between the wild grasses. He stared at the parchment left by the steward and fell into thought. ‘Princess.’ The daughter of the late King Elender. Alexander’s sister. If she were alive, the child would be a maiden of twenty-five. Like the portrait hanging in the room that Ella had lost her way and entered. She would be a maiden of exactly that age.

 Larque mulled over the word “princess.” Elender didn’t even know if the child the royal consort had conceived was female or male. He died without ever holding the bloody lump, and the same was true for Alexander. He stared at the portrait before him. She was a woman as elegant as a magnolia leaf with her white fingers quietly gathered. Larque looked at her kind eyes. Her two pink eyes sparkled transparently like colored minerals.

 “Lisbeth.”

 He read the letters written at the bottom of the portrait. It was an elegant handwriting. It was exactly the same handwriting as that of the late king he had seen somewhere. Larque raised his gaze and stared at the woman in the canvas. It was a painting so well preserved that it was hard to believe it was more than 10 years old.

 Above all, the smile. A smile as vivid as that of a living woman. Larque raised his hand and pressed his temple. The resemblance was undeniable. The slope of the eyes. The movement when the lips were pulled. Even the tiniest muscles when creating an expression were so similar, let alone the features…… There was no need to mention it.

 He compared the royal consort in his memory with the portrait and recalled his woman. Five years since birth. During his short childhood with a stubby height, they had only briefly met and exchanged greetings, but the royal consort was a woman who sparkled quite clearly even in that distant memory.

 ‘Young master. Will you marry the princess when she’s born?’

 The royal consort whispered, looking down at the young Larque. He tilted his head back and looked at the woman. The royal consort had twisted up her bright golden hair like summer sunlight and pinned it with a hairpin carved with laurel leaves.

 ‘To speak of marrying an unborn child to the young master. Royal consort. I haven’t even held the child yet.’

 The king, standing beside her, grumbled sullenly. The woman turned her gaze and looked at the king. Larque just stared at her blankly. Her white, fluttering neck reminded him of white crape myrtle blooming in summer. The king deeply kissed her neck where a few strands of her twisted-up hair had fallen. She hugged her roundly protruding belly and looked at Larque again, moving her lips.

 ‘Wouldn’t the young master be a good match as a spouse for our princess?’

 ‘Well.’

 The king replied in a low voice and embraced the royal consort’s waist. The couple exchanged loving gazes and whispered, then rubbed her belly together. At that time, the royal consort was convinced that the child in her womb was a princess. No one else referred to the child she had conceived as a princess.

 Perhaps because they already had a son, the king and royal consort casually called the child in the womb ‘princess.’ It was an incomprehensible belief. But no one could argue against the royal consort’s conviction.

 Larque didn’t answer when asked if he would take the princess as his spouse. To take an unborn child as a spouse. He might not have known about marriage, but he wasn’t so young as to not understand the meaning of a spouse.

 As he looked at the royal consort’s round belly, he suddenly met her eyes. Pink. Deep and profound eyes. Like a mirror. It was a fragile beauty that seemed it would break at any time. When he blinked gently, the royal consort smiled. The woman, who had a young son with the king, was kind to any child of that age. Suddenly, she gestured. Larque slowly approached and stood before her.

 ‘Would you like to greet the princess? Since you’ll have to marry the princess someday, it wouldn’t be bad to greet her first.’

 Larque didn’t answer and looked up at her curiously. The royal consort slightly blushed her red cheeks and then kindly stroked his head.

 ‘Hand.’

Larque gave his small hand to the royal consort at her words. She then placed the child’s hand on her belly. The king just watched him silently. Whether his mood had soured at his wife who had decided on a spouse for their unborn daughter on her own, he simply kept his mouth shut.

 Larque quietly observed the king’s face, which had softened its usual stern energy, and slowly rubbed the royal consort’s belly. It was a strange feeling. Having never caressed a pregnant woman’s belly like this before, he was stiff with tension.

 ‘Say hello. Young master.’

 The royal consort’s languid voice came from above his head. Larque took courage at those words and greeted the princess in the womb.

 ‘Hello, Princess. I am Larque of Durac. Someday, someday I will take you as my spouse, as Her Highness the Royal Consort says.’

 The royal consort laughed at the five-year-old child’s lisping voice. His tiny white hand stroked the woman’s belly. Is this what a greeting is? Young Larque breathed heavily, unable to control his churning insides. The royal consort raised her hand and stroked him gently like a mother. He looked at the woman’s lowered eyebrows and red lips and withdrew his hand.

 Someday he would take the princess as his spouse. It was a thought floating in the mind of a five-year-old child, but it was quite a clear goal. Suddenly, his gaze became entangled with the king’s deep purple eyes. The royal blood that did not distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate flowed in the king as well. The man who had inherited the genetic characteristics of the first queen intact stared blankly at Larque. Larque looked at him nervously. He was a man with heavier features than the current Alexander.

 A solid and cool knight with no gaps to squeeze through. Suddenly, he withdrew his gaze. Larque watched as the king embraced his wife’s belly with his large hand. The face that was always solemn with military discipline looked just like a young man of that age. Loving his wife and waiting for the birth of his young daughter more than anyone else. And thus, a man who had lost everything. Awakening from his thoughts, Larque stared at the portrait of the late king seated next to her. The kind smile of the couple in the canvas vaguely rewound the end of his childhood.

 “Elender.”

 The man’s outline, drawn hazily, pressed on his pulse. In fact, all this man had passed down to Ella was silver hair like a blessing, just that one thing. He unfolded the dried parchment. Larque thought of the night when Ella had startled and fallen on her bottom. The palace that Ella had mistakenly entered was unfamiliar even to Larque, who was quite familiar with the royal palace.

 And there, a portrait of Ella was hanging. It was impossible. Why, why was a portrait depicting Ella hanging in an unfamiliar bedroom? Before answering Ella, who asked why her portrait was there, he needed to know himself.

 So he mobilized the steward of his confidants. First, the portraits of Sirena and Alexander. Except for just these two, the rest of the portraits decorating the walls of the royal palace were all painted by one person. And the court painter who painted those portraits was no longer in the royal palace.

 According to the testimony of servants who had worked in the royal palace for a long time, before retiring from his position as a court painter, he painted a portrait of the missing princess on the orders of the late king. A portrait of the missing princess? Like Elender, the painter had never met the princess either.

 Even if she were alive, she would have been a newborn baby, and since one cannot infer an adult appearance from a baby, he had to paint the picture relying entirely on imagination.

 Did they say he used the royal consort as a model? The portrait he painted before his retirement was most similar to the current Ella. Was it a coincidence? Was it a coincidence that Ella, who resembled the royal consort, resembled the portrait of the princess modeled after Lisbeth? He rolled tobacco leaves and put them in his mouth. After lighting the end and inhaling deeply, he closed his eyes.

 The edge of the east. The painter’s hometown was a remote countryside. Though he had passed away quite some time ago, his son managed his deceased father’s paintings and lived in Lier, so he didn’t need to send confidants all the way to the edge of the east. The deceased painter’s son referred to his father’s last work as a portrait of the missing princess. To call it a portrait when drawing someone you’ve never seen or met. Larque twisted the corner of his lips.

 Could Ella be the princess? Could that bloody lump that was in the royal consort’s womb really exist? Isn’t it simply similar? But, but if that bloody lump is not Ella, how could they be so alike? He opened his eyes. Kylaq was a clan with distinct physical characteristics as much as the family’s genetic traits were unique.