Chapter 298: Dream
He carried her by the waist—a simple thing, and somehow it left him breathless.
He set her on the bed gently, drew back the blanket, and lay down beside her with her head resting in the crook of his arm. The candle on the nightstand held its small territory against the dark.
Foreplay. The word surfaced with the confidence of a man who had theorized extensively and performed rarely. He should say something. Something warm and easy, the kind of thing that worked the way conversation worked in his imagination—gradual, liquid, dissolving the particular tension that had settled in his chest the moment she bolted the door.
Anna’s voice came quietly from the curve of his shoulder: “When you pushed me out of the way, in the balloon—did you think you might die?”
He hadn’t expected that. “I didn’t think at all. I just did it.”
“You are going to rule Graycastle,” she said. “You’re the witches’ hope.” A pause. “I am not worth that much.”
“That’s not how worth works,” he said. “I can tell you now—even if it had been slower, even if I’d had time to decide—I would have done the same thing.”
“So there’s nothing I can do to stop you.”
“No.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then: “Tell me about your past. I want to know more about you.”
He breathed in slowly, buying time. The 4th Prince’s memories were there if he needed them—palace anecdotes, courtly embarrassments, the sort of careful self-revelation that didn’t actually reveal anything. But he found he didn’t want to use them. Not tonight.
“I grew up in a very large city,” he said instead. “Larger than King’s City, probably. Larger than anything in Graycastle.”
“King’s City is already enormous.”
“Larger than that.” He looked at the ceiling. “I was ordinary. Reasonably clever in small things but not—gifted. I worked hard at school, which teachers read as natural ability, and I let them believe it. I was also the one who drew the graffiti on the classroom walls that no one could quite clean off.”
She made a small sound against his shoulder. “They wouldn’t have blamed you.”
“They didn’t need to. They only had to tell my parents.” He smiled at the ceiling. “I learned young that accountability takes many indirect forms.”
He talked for a while—his teachers changing as the years passed, his grades that were solid without being exceptional, the small humiliations and minor victories of a childhood without drama. He altered nothing that mattered and changed everything that was impossible to explain. It felt like coming back to himself after a very long time playing someone else.
Is this the moment?
He turned his head.
Anna’s eyes were closed. Against his side, her chest rose and fell in the slow, deliberate rhythm of someone who had been awake for too long and had finally allowed themselves to stop. Her lashes lay still against her cheek.
He looked at her for a long moment, then laughed—quietly, so as not to wake her.
Of course. She’d spent two nights in the mountain camp barely sleeping, standing watch against anything that might come for them. Then a morning racing back on the cloud gazer while it was barely light. Then the night after, sitting against the wall of his bedroom until he woke. The accumulated weight of that had simply taken her the moment she let herself relax.
Whatever she had come here intending—and whatever courage it had taken to intend it—she had run out of wakefulness before she could get there.
He moved carefully, so as not to disturb her. Kissed the edge of her lashes. “Good night,” he said, softly into the dark.
Sylvie woke with her mouth open and an undignified sound escaping it.
The days since the reconnaissance felt like something she had read about rather than lived through—the Devils in their city of black spires, the fight in the sky, the desperate flight back along the Redwater. Even the Army of Judges, for all their numbers, hadn’t made her feel this way. This was different. Different was an insufficient word.
“Good morning.” Wendy was already dressed, carrying a basin of water.
“Good morning. You got up early.”
“I’m old,” Wendy said, and smiled with it rather than against it. “I don’t need as much sleep anymore.”
“Mm,” Nightingale said from somewhere behind Sylvie, “dream-fogged.” She rubbed her eyes. “I’ll need a nap.”
“Didn’t you sleep well?”
“I had many dreams.”
Sylvie pressed her lips together. She had seen—through habit, through her ability working even when she wished it wouldn’t—Nightingale on the third floor of the castle the previous night, moving back and forth in front of the Lord’s door for what had seemed like a long time. She couldn’t see through Nightingale’s fog, but the back-and-forth was visible enough. The witch had come back late.
“Last night, you didn’t—”
Nightingale turned.
The look she gave was not threatening, exactly. It was more economical than that: a slight narrowing of the eyes, the quality of attention one gave a problem before deciding it wasn’t interesting enough to pursue further. The image of her in the sky—moving through the fog like something the air had decided to harden—was still vivid in Sylvie’s memory. If this woman came to Sleeping Island, she privately doubted even Lady Ash could match her.
Sylvie closed her mouth.
“What happened last night?” Wendy asked, mildly curious.
“I heard her snoring,” Sylvie said. “All those days of running on no sleep—it catches up with you.”
“It must have,” Nightingale agreed pleasantly, and shrugged, and turned to dress—removing her nightgown with the same unselfconsciousness as always. The garments His Highness had designed for them lay folded on the chair: the undergarment that half the Witch Alliance had now quietly accepted despite early resistance, and which even Wendy had taken to recommending.
That man, Sylvie thought—not for the first time, and without quite knowing what the thought was leading toward.
But she knew what it led to: the memory of him throwing himself across the basket, not calculating, not weighing what a prince with a kingdom to win could afford to lose. Just moving. Because Anna was in the way of something that would hurt her.
There actually exists a noble who willingly takes an injury for a witch.
It was not that she had disbelieved it before. It was that she had not understood it as a lived fact until she saw it happen. And now the understanding sat in her chest and changed the shape of things around it.
All the Witch Alliance witches here were not tools to him. Not assets in a ledger. They were—she reached for the right word, and found the one that fit: companions. His reaction could not have been feigned; feigning did not move the body before the mind could stop it.
If Roland and Tilly Wimbledon could hold together—his territory and her island, his industry and her people—they might build something that didn’t yet have a name. A place where “witch” and “ordinary” described where you were born, not what you were worth.
She would write to Lady Tilly today.
Your older brother, she would begin, is genuinely a good person.
Chapter 298 Dream
“I see,” Roland put his hands around her, carried her by the waist and set her gently on top of the bed. This simple action was already enough to make him breathless. He opened the thin blanket, and went to lay on the bed next to Anna with her head nestled on his arm.
The next step should be… foreplay?
Roland discovered that he was much too nervous, it can’t go on like this, as someone known as an “experienced” person, I cannot make a fool out of myself in front of a little girl. Maybe I’ll be able to ease the mood with a light chat and then do the action, for example… maybe some lines from a porno?
As he was still racking his brain, Anna’s soft voice sounded in his ear: “That time in the hot air balloon when you pushed me out of the way, did you ever think about the possibility that you might die?”
Roland felt shocked; he’d never expected that she would ask him this question, “I just did it without thinking.”
“You are someone who will become the ruler of Graycastle, you are also the hope of us witches,” she whispered, “I am unworthy of you doing so much for me.”
“This isn’t a question of worth,” Roland murmured. “I cannot just stand by the side and watch indifferently as you suffer an attack. As a matter of fact, even now, after waking up and thinking about it carefully, I can tell you that in case it hadn’t happened so suddenly and if I had the time to think it over, I would still have acted in the same way.”
“There is nothing I can do to prevent you from doing it again, right?”
“Yes, there is nothing,” Roland said as he pinched her nose with his other hand.
Anna’s eyelashes fell, and after a moment of silence, she opened her mouth once more, “Can you tell me something about your past… I would like to know more about you.”
“Oh, the past,” Roland said, he took a deep breath then searched through the 4th Prince’s memories, while preparing to tell one or two entertaining anecdotes of his life in the palace. But before the words could leave his mouth, he swallowed them back down. His past wasn’t the life he had here, but the life he’d lived in another, very different world; so instead he said, “I used to live in a big city, in a tremendously big city.”
“Yes, Graycastle’s King’s City is several times larger than Border Town.”
“When I was born, I wasn’t any different from any other ordinary person, I was somewhat clever in trivial matters, but not so intelligent that I could do everything at ease. In regards to studying, I could be considered as hardworking, thus I would often receive praise from the teacher. But he didn’t know, that I was the one who had drawn the hard to erase graffiti on the classroom walls.”
“He certainly wouldn’t dare to blame you.” Anna murmured.
“Haha, that’s unlikely. It wouldn’t have been necessary for him to do anything to me, he merely needed to inform my parents,” Roland smiled, then shook his head. “At that time, they taught me to never start off leniently.
“Then, as I grew older, my teachers kept changing, from primary school teachers, to academic advisors, until I finally completed my studies having had neither good nor bad grades. Of course, compared to other people’s children, in the end, I still fell short by a bit…”
He half-closed his eyes, being able to speak about his experiences after altering them a bit and no longer concealing them, gave him a feeling of freedom he hadn’t felt in a very long time since he’d crossed over. Since his arrival, he had been playing the role of the Prince, but right now, he felt as if
he was returning to his past. As if he was only lying in a hotel room designed to fit a classic style, together with the girl he liked, making one another feel safe and warm. Thanks to this, his nervous mood also gradually relaxed.
Is perhaps now the time for the next step?
Roland turned his head slightly, only to discover that Anna had already closed her eyes, and her chest, snugly placed at his side, was calmly moving up and down, looking like a kitten which had stepped into the land of dreams.
He just stared blankly at her for a moment, but soon after he couldn’t stop himself from laughing out loud.
So it was like this… she was also tired.
Think of it, to conceal their whereabouts; the witches had looked for a small hidden place within the mountain ridge two nights ago. But they still needed to guard against any possible beast or Devil attacks during the night, which had meant that they’d almost gotten no sleep during the night. And then, the next morning, even as the sun had only just lightened up the sky, they’d already continued their race on Cloud Gazer while heading back towards Border Town. At the castle, Anna had also spent the last night in his bedroom, constantly keeping watch over him. Thus, during the last two days and nights she hadn’t even had one moment of rest, making it very easy for her tiredness to overwhelm her the moment she let herself relax. It would be a wonder if she weren’t exhausted right now.
The other side’s reason for coming this day, might be because she was too anxious to wait any longer.
Although it was a pity, Roland did not care about this opportunity passing, after all, there were still many days ahead of them.
He moved closer, kissed Anna’s eyelashes, then whispered, “Good night.”
When the morning light fell through the window curtains into the room, Sylvie climbed out of bed unable to suppress her yawn.
The experiences of the last days seemed just like a dream, from the discovery of the Devils to the fight in the air, and lastly their escape back to Border Town, gave her the thought, that even if they had been encircled and chased by the Church’s Army of Judges, she wouldn’t feel as tense and exhausted like now.
“Good morning,” Wendy, having changed her clothes long ago was now carrying a basin of water prepared for washing their face and rinsing their mouth.
“Good morning,” she nodded, “You got up quite early.”
“I’m old,” Wendy smiled, “So the time I need to sleep has also become less and less.”
“Oh, it is already dawn?” Nightingale said sleepily as she rubbed her eyes, “It seems I have to take a nap at noon.”
“Didn’t you sleep well last night?”
“Yes, I had many dreams.”
Sylvie curled her lips disapprovingly; she had clearly seen that the other side had stealthily went off to the third floor of the castle, moving back and forth in front of the Lord’s door for a long time. However, because of Nightingale’s unique ability, she couldn’t see what Nightingale was doing. Anyway, it had already been late by the time she’d come back. “Last night, you didn’t…”
The moment she began to speak, Nightingale suddenly turned around, staring straight at Sylvie. Her slightly narrowed eyes made her meaning self-evident – thus, the latter had immediately closed her mouth. Everyone with eyes had been able to see the strength of the number one combat witch in the Witch Alliance. The image of her swiftly moving through the sky and killing the Devils like a wraith was still vivid in her mind. If she ever came to Sleeping
Island, Sylvie feared that even Lady Ash wouldn’t be her opponent. So, when she received the silent warning, Sylvie felt that it would be better if she didn’t act too curious.
“What happened last night?” Wendy asked in wonder.
“Keke,” she said, “I heard her snore last night, it must be because of the large amount of energy she’d used up in the past few days.”
“That must be it,” Nightingale agreed while shrugging her shoulders. She took off her nightgown, revealing her well-proportioned and harmonious body, and began to put on the undergarment which had been gifted by His Highness.
That said, by now, even Wendy had fully accepted this clothing, even going so far as recommending it to her.
Sylvie had no choice but to say, His Highness Roland was indeed a very fearful man.
But when she thought of him, Sylvie’s heart was also filled with warmth.
There actually exists a noble who willingly sustain injuries for a witch.
When she had seen Roland bravely dashing forward, with no thought to his personal safety, and push Anna’s body out of harm’s way, at the bottom of her heart, she felt touched. All the witches of the Witch Alliance weren’t some tools he intended to control. But they are important people to him, even… companions. His reaction at that moment couldn’t have been a lie; he is indeed standing on the side of us witches, just like Tilly Wimbledon.
If Roland and Tilly can stand together hand in hand, and unite the strengths of both cities, they might truly be able to create a new country. A place where witches and ordinary people make no distinction between what’s their’s and what belongs to the other.
She decided to write a letter to Lady Tilly.
“Your older brother, His Highness Roland, is truly a good person.”