It took three days for the last of the fever the board game had left behind to burn itself out.
The physician who’d recommended a light walk to help me get my strength back nearly had a fit when he saw me come back unconscious, and proceeded to lecture me at length.
“Extended time outdoors is absolutely forbidden. If you feel even slightly dizzy, or the least bit overheated, you are to stop at once and come straight back. Promise me!”
He looked ready to keep me shut inside forever if I didn’t swear to it, so it took several rounds of nodding before I was finally granted permission to go out.
A cool breeze swept lightly through my hair.
Fresh air for once. I feel almost human again.
In my past life I’d loved nothing more than lounging around at home. But lying in bed with no electronics to speak of, even a view as ordinary as this one felt strange and new.
The wind blew gently, brushing the leaves, and from the little fountain came the faint sound of running water. Nothing else stirred. It was perfectly quiet.
This palace had never seen much foot traffic to begin with. It was an annex where a sickly prince was kept, more or less in quarantine, so there was no reason for it to be lively.
Maybe that was why the stillness put me at ease rather than unsettling me.
Peaceful. I like it.
Ever since I’d started trusting Ivan, daily life and mealtimes had gotten a great deal easier.
The fundamental problem wasn’t solved yet, of course. But having someone beside me who’d help if things turned dangerous was its own kind of reassurance. The ordinary life that should have been mine all along finally felt like something I could get a hand on, bit by bit.
“It’s a little overcast. I’m glad the sun isn’t strong, but it may rain, so it would be best not to wander far.”
“Okay. I’ll just walk around here.”
Ivan matched his pace to mine, quietly, one step behind.
Not so close as to crowd me, but close enough that he could reach out and catch me whenever he needed to. Oddly enough, the distance steadied me.
He’d been checking that the ground ahead was level when he suddenly lifted his gaze, his face brightening.
“Your Highness, look over there. The flowers in the bed have come in beautifully.”
“Oh... so they have.”
I turned my head and saw a flower bed running in a long stretch beside the low wall.
I stepped closer to the blossoms spilling over one another, and a soft scent brushed my nose. What kind of flower was this?
Watching me sniff away at them like a dog on a scent trail, Ivan laughed softly and offered a suggestion.
“Once the rain passes, you might come out and have your snack here. Reading outside would be pleasant as well.”
“Would that be all right? I don’t know if Fabian would allow it.”
“Sometimes bending the physician’s orders a little is necessary, for the sake of one’s peace of mind.”
That got a small laugh out of me. It had been quite a while, I realized, since I’d laughed without acting.
I shouldn’t let my guard down like this.
Everything felt unnervingly calm. As though nothing at all would happen, and these unhurried days would simply go on.
Flutter.
The instant that thought crossed my mind, a small white butterfly spread its wings and drifted lazily up into the air. My eyes followed its path without thinking, slowly, and then something caught my attention.
“That’s...”
A tree standing tall in the middle of thick undergrowth. Something was sticking out beneath it.
Rustle, rustle.
I waded through the grass toward it, and the small shape lying on the ground came into view.
Downy white fur, long ears, round black eyes, a ribbon tied at the throat. The sight was familiar enough that a small “Oh,” slipped out of me before I knew it.
A stuffed rabbit?
Why was this lying out here, of all places? I picked up the light little body, and Ivan, who’d been watching, spoke up as well.
“Have you lost a toy at some point? You had only to say the word and I would have found it for you.”
“No. This isn’t mine.”
“Pardon? Then who on earth could have...”
I was wondering the same thing. In an isolated annex like this one, I was the only child young enough to be playing with a plush toy.
It wasn’t that I thought nobody collected them as a hobby, but there were a few things about it that didn’t add up for something belonging to a servant.
The material looks pretty expensive. Would anyone bring something like this to work?
If it was precious to them, they wouldn’t have brought it along. And it was too clean, too — it looked newly bought, barely handled.
A gift meant for someone, maybe? I was turning the toy this way and that, wondering if an owner’s initials might be stitched into it somewhere, when it happened.
Snag.
“...?”
Something alien snagged against my fingertips.
What was that? To check the strange sensation again, I gave the toy a slight pull without thinking, and felt resistance.
It stopped dead.
The rabbit halted in midair.
No. To be precise, it hadn’t stopped so much as it was being drawn taut by some invisible force.
Its head tipped back at an uncanny angle, as if the neck had been bent backward. It hung there unnaturally, like something hooked on a fishing line I couldn’t see.
A chill went crawling up my spine. And in the very instant the wrongness registered —
Crack.
The sound of something splitting rang out overhead.
“Your Highness...!”
Ivan’s voice broke out, urgent.
For a split second, time seemed to stretch out strangely. I knew I had to get clear, and still my body refused to respond.
When a person meets an accident they didn’t see coming, they freeze on instinct. All the more so when they’d been off their guard.
Judgment arrives too late, and the body simply stays rooted where it is.
Just like that. Helpless.
Thud!
A heavy crash of impact echoed out.
My eyes went wide and I dragged in a ragged breath. At the same moment my body was yanked backward and my vision swung wildly.
“Your Highness, are you all right? Your Highness!”
Ivan’s voice came from right beside me.
He’d thrown himself forward and hauled me out of the way just in time, and that was the only reason the falling object had missed me. Held against his chest, I gasped for air and stared at the spot where I’d been standing a moment ago.
A thick tree branch lay there, splinters scattered all around it, and beneath it a white shape was crushed past all saving.
The stuffed rabbit I’d been holding in my hands only seconds before.
“I’m all right. It just startled me a little...”
That was what I said, but the shaking in my body refused to settle.
The branch was a little thicker than a grown man’s thigh, and it had come down from a considerable height. If it had hit me square on, it would have been a fatal wound, no question.
“What’s happening over there?”
“Good heavens...! Your Highness, are you hurt?”
“Oh, dear, what on earth is this? Why would a perfectly healthy tree...”
People who’d heard the commotion came running, one after another.
They crowded in, hurriedly taking in the scene and reaching out to check me over, but I dodged every hand and clung to nothing but the hem of Ivan’s coat.
Even dazed as I was, the first thing that caught my eye was the break in the wood. Far too smooth to pass for a natural snap. As if someone had worked on it deliberately.
“Tsk, tsk. His Highness has had quite a fright. Take him inside, quickly. We’ll clean up here.”
“Yes, at once. Your Highness, shall we go back to your bedchamber first and check whether you’ve been hurt anywhere?”
Ivan rose to his feet with me in his arms, and the world dropped away beneath me all at once. I wrapped my arms quietly around his neck and looked back over his shoulder at the site of the accident.
If Ivan hadn’t saved me, the thing crushed under that branch wouldn’t have been a doll. It would have been me.
It was cleverly hidden under the ribbon, but there was definitely something at its neck...
In the split second the rabbit’s head snapped back, I’d seen it clearly. A thread, clear and taut, catching a glint of sunlight as it ran off in the direction of the tree.
It takes only the smallest scrap of information for the puzzle pieces to fall into place. Someone had tied the doll to the tree with that thread: a booby trap rigged so that the branch would come down the instant the doll was pulled.
It was never a lost belonging. It was bait, there for one purpose only, to be noticed.
Placing something appealing low down, at exactly a small child’s eye level, meant the whole thing had been designed around a specific target.
And in this annex, the only small child was... me.
The attempt didn’t end at one.
As if a falling tree branch had been nothing more than a warm-up, everything that followed grew far more brazen.
“Your Highness... how would you feel about reading here today? I’ll go and pick out several books from the library that look interesting.”
Ivan put on the calmest front he could manage, but I could tell he was on edge.
And it was hardly an unreasonable reaction. Every single time we went outside, some accident happened, large or small.
A picture frame that had been hanging perfectly well dropping off the corridor wall as I walked past, my foot slipping three steps into a staircase, that sort of thing had become routine. When the railing I leaned on to catch my breath for a moment simply broke apart, I very nearly laughed out loud.
Were they all just coincidental accidents, you ask? Not a chance. In a palace maintained as meticulously as this one, things don’t fall into disrepair this often.
Pick them apart one by one and each might look like chance, but the moment they start repeating, you can’t call it chance anymore.
Ivan’s probably worked it out too.
That the things happening one after another weren’t simple accidents at all.
