Thalia, who had been furrowing her brows at the suspicious competition, suddenly stepped between them. At that, the girl who had been examining the medicine bottle with sparkling eyes was startled and recoiled.
As she looked at her with a suspicious expression, the girl, letting out an awkward smile, spoke stammeringly.
"It is probably a medicine Your Highness will never need in your lifetime."
"So, what kind of medicine is it?"
When Thalia asked again irritably, the girl turned to Tiuran with a troubled expression. However, Tiuran also merely averted her gaze with an awkward look.
Annoyed by the attitude that seemed to be keeping secrets from her, Thalia snapped at her in a sharp tone.
"If you don't answer, I'll report that suspicious deals are taking place in this house."
The faces of the three women turned pale at first.
Eventually, one of the girls confessed in a creeping voice close to her ear.
"This is.. a love potion."
Thalia looked at the girl's face with surprised eyes.
The girl, her cheeks flushed red as if embarrassed, added in a sweet voice.
"It is absolutely not a dangerous drug. It is just... you could say it is a medicine that gives a little courage to girls suffering from the fever of unrequited love."
Just as she let out a hollow laugh at that foolish excuse, Thalia turned her head toward Tiuran and approached her suspiciously.
"Did you really make such a medicine?"
"...It is nothing more than a drug that creates the illusion of being in love for a short time."
Tiuran, who had been touching the corners of her mouth in a perplexed manner, let out a deep sigh and spoke.
"When you take this medicine, your mind becomes hazy, your heart rate quickens, and your body starts to heat up; additionally, you feel a very strong attraction to the opposite sex nearby."
Thalia swallowed hard and stared blankly at the medicine bottle held in the girl's hand.
Noticing that she was interested, Tiuran quickly added.
"However, the effects of the medicine completely disappear after about half a day. It also leaves no significant aftereffects."
Thalia tried hard to hide her disappointment.
"Then it's meaningless. It'll go back to normal in less than a day, so why bother going through all that trouble?"
As she spoke sarcastically in a colder voice than usual, the girl, who had been watching her, retorted in an irritated tone.
"You know, medicine could be the catalyst that leads you to really come to like it."
"Don't you think that the other person might come to hate you when they find out you secretly gave them medicine?"
"As long as I don't get caught!"
Thalia raised one eyebrow at the audacious answer when she heard heavy footsteps behind her.
Thalia turned her head sharply, spotted a guard coming across the yard, and frowned. He spoke in an irritated tone.
"Your Highness, it would be best to depart now. If we linger here any longer, people will flock here again."
"Okay, I'll just go."
Thalia, snapping curtly, clutched Tiuran's robe and headed toward the carriage. Then she opened the door and sat down on the thick sheet laid out on the seat.
As Tiuran boarded following her, the carriage soon began to move.
Thalia enthusiastically stroked Khan, who was burying his face in her lap and acting spoiled, then quietly opened her mouth.
"Do you usually make that kind of medicine?"
“...I sometimes make it when asked.”
"Yes?"
Khan suddenly lifted his head and stared intently up at her. He seemed to sense something like the longing in her voice.
Thalia cleared her throat as if suppressing it and added curtly.
"Be careful from now on. You could be branded a heretic if you manufacture and sell reagents not authorized by the church."
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
She wore a soft smile on her lips. Thalia, who had been staring intently at that face, soon turned her gaze to the window.
Beyond the fields where twilight had already begun to descend, an old Eastern song was faintly echoing.
***
It was about fifteen days after the spring festival ended that news arrived that a peace treaty would be signed.
When Thalia first heard the news, she didn't think much of it. This was because rumors that the war might end had circulated several times before, but they had always fizzled out.
However, this time it seemed different. Following reports that talks had begun between the Imperial delegation and the Northern Confederacy, a message even arrived stating that Barcas would soon be returning to Kalmor.
Thalia was engulfed in a sense of happiness bordering on a thrill.
Barcas is returning. It has been almost half a year since she last saw him.
Just repeating that fact made her heart swell with emotion, as if it would burst. How anxious she had been all this time. Even though they were stationed in the outskirts of Balto rather than on the front lines, there was no telling when or how the war situation might change so rapidly.
The imperial court could order him to advance, or launch a massive offensive from Balto to recapture the outer castles.
Whenever she thought of such a possibility, Thalia would be plagued by a terrible depression. She probably would have gone mad long ago if Khan hadn't stayed by her side.
However, those painful days would come to an end soon.
From the day she received the message, Thalia checked the date several times a day, counting down the days for his return. However, her excitement and happiness soon faded little by little. At some point, her physical condition began to deteriorate.
At first, she thought it was just simple fatigue. Her arms and legs felt incredibly heavy, and no matter how long she slept, she rarely felt refreshed, but since she would invariably feel sluggish during the change of seasons, she didn't think much of it.
Thalia let it slide. However, at some point, symptoms that were difficult to dismiss as simple fatigue began to appear one by one.
Her appetite dropped noticeably, and there were frequent days when she couldn't even eat half of her meals; her headaches and dizziness also worsened. Cold sweat would pour down for no apparent reason, followed immediately by chills. The most unbearable part was the tingling pain. Especially at night, the inside of her calves would itch, and her joints would throb, making it difficult for jer to lie still.
Tiuran frequently massaged the patient and periodically cast healing spells to alleviate the symptoms, but there was no significant improvement. On the contrary, as time passed, strange symptoms only increased one by one.
Waking up in the early dawn to the sensation of her skin stinging violently, Thalia was startled to see the ceiling completely covered in red butterflies.
It was only a few seconds later that she realized what she was seeing was a hallucination. The symptoms, which had subsided for a while, had started again.
Thalia sat on the edge of the bed, catching her breath. She didn't know how long she had been doing that, but a warm breath suddenly rushed over the back of her neck.
Thalia flinched, lifted her head, and took a deep breath as she met a pair of blue-gray eyes staring intently at her.
At Khan's warm embrace, the strength gradually drained from her stiff body. She surveyed the room with one cheek buried in Khan's thick neck. The swarm of thousands of butterflies had also vanished without a trace.
Thalia, who had been scanning the bedroom where the faint dawn light had seeped in as if on guard, soon got up and walked to the window.
As she pulled back the curtains, she looked down upon the inside of the castle, where the darkness had not yet fully lifted. She opened the window wide.
She tilted her head back and took a deep breath of the cold dawn air. Just then, someone in a black robe quickly passed by. Thalia, who had been mindlessly following the shadow with her eyes, suddenly narrowed her brows. Although the figure was wearing a robe, she could recognize who it was immediately.
'Is she Tiuran?'
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