It felt strange. Cayden couldn’t imagine Assad going around looking for people who would remain at the campsite, worried that he might face some low-quality ostracism, and giving them intense warnings.
Sen stared at Cayden across the fire. But she hesitated to speak again. As if she had never been speaking fluently before. However, before the silence grew too long, she finally added a few more words.
“Affection that a person holds for another person cannot be hidden. You can easily tell just by looking at their eyes. So… I don’t believe rumors floating around the palace.”
“……”
“Before the sun rises, you’ll meet Crown Prince Assad again. I’m sure of it.”
Cayden couldn’t deny the firm belief in Sen’s voice. He couldn’t consider Sen’s words as an ordinary joke, nor could he question them.
“Affection that a person holds for another person cannot be hidden. You can easily tell just by looking at their eyes.”
Sen’s voice echoed in Cayden’s mind.
Assad cherishes me. He doesn’t love me, but he wants to be with me.
Cayden had to ruminate on a certain fact that he already knew but had been denying all along, something he had desperately tried not to look back at.
In the prolonged silence of the night, Cayden thought about Assad for a long time.
The night deepened. There was no way to know how much time had passed. The only certainty was that the desert sky had changed to an even deeper color than before.
Sen, who had spent an exhausting day, kept nodding off while feeling the warmth of the fire, and eventually fell asleep with Cayden’s coat draped over her.
Cayden just stared at the burning flames. Hoping they would burn away the noisy thoughts that tormented him.
The light of the magic stone thrown beyond the low sand dune was gradually dimming.
There was still no news from Amina. Cayden began to think that Amina might not come. He wasn’t trying to judge that Amina herself had encountered a problem. He thought there was a higher probability that there was an issue with her horse rather than with her.
“…I should blow it.”
Cayden lifted the whistle hanging around his neck. His heart raced at the thought of what was so difficult about blowing the whistle, what was the problem with asking Assad for help. It pounded loudly like a cart with a missing wheel. His already empty mind turned even whiter.
Cayden hesitated for quite a while. He wandered among the tension.
But eventually, he put his lips to the air hole of the whistle. As Assad had instructed, he blew three breaths into the whistle that made no sound. He hoped the sound would reach the scouts who would be flying in the sky.
“…That was simple.”
To think he had feared something like this. It was so easy that he felt like laughing at the absurdity.
Raising his head, Cayden’s eyes blinked slowly. He blankly gazed at the night sky shouldered by high and low sand dunes, at the stars that sparkled even more brightly in the darkness.
“The desert is a place more beautiful at night than during the day. Someday, Cayden, you will also sit on the sand and face that night.”
In front of a painting hung in the art gallery of the annex palace, Amun had said this to Cayden.
Cayden slowly engraved in his heart that night more beautiful than the day. Amun was right. The desert night was beautiful. Cayden only now realized this fact.
There would be no chance to meet Amun again. Knowing this, Cayden still wanted to convey to Amun the beautiful scenery he was facing. His heart fluttered with the desire to boast that he now understood what Amun had meant by beauty.
But appreciating the beauty was only momentary. Cayden had to hastily rise from his seat.
Beyond the low sand dune that barely concealed him and Sen as they crouched, there was a strange sound. It was a somewhat busy commotion. The feeling that something was rapidly approaching was also chillingly palpable.
It had been only about 10 minutes since he had blown the whistle. The protagonist of that sound couldn’t be Assad.
Cayden felt around his waist. He found the dagger Amina had given him and gripped it in his hand. Once removed from its sheath, the blade was extremely sharp. It flashed eerily in the moonlight.
‘If it’s Amina, that would be fortunate…’
Cayden had to deliberately ignore the uneasy feeling tickling his throat.
He carefully crossed the dune. Hiding his body behind a pitch-black tree that stood firmly in front of the sand dune, Cayden composed his fear.
He had never fought before. The dagger in his hand also felt very unfamiliar. The only thing he could rely on was what Amun had taught him: how to plunge a blade into an assailant’s solar plexus and kill them instantly. Even for that, he had received a failing grade from Amun, who commented that his hand movements were truly a sight to behold.
Cayden slightly cast his gaze toward the front of the tree where he was hiding. And, he met eyes with a horse galloping toward the light. The distance narrowed instantly to the point where the ethereal light of the magic stone he had lit completely illuminated the face of the black horse.
It was Assad’s horse.
Cayden blankly watched the man who jumped off the horse without even stepping on the stirrup.
The light of the magic stone also reached Assad’s face. It illuminated his platinum blonde hair, disheveled into a mess, the sweaty forehead visible beneath it, and his sharp golden eyes, with anxiety and thirst settling in them. It lit up Assad’s tightly closed lips and the pitch-black bloodstains on his cheeks.
“Cayden!”
Assad was calling for him. The man who had eventually come to find him in whatever state was calling his name.
Cayden had never heard a voice searching for him so desperately in his entire life. So he couldn’t say anything.
Assad came to find me.
Immersed in a great relief and joy that made his whole body tingle, Cayden realized this fact.
He moved his feet without realizing it. The thought of wanting to respond to the man calling his name made him walk.
Cayden emerged from the tree that had been concealing him. The dagger he had been tightly gripping with trembling hands stuck weakly into the sand.
Cayden couldn’t bring himself to say Assad’s, Amun’s, that difficult and complex man’s name. He couldn’t call out to him. Yet, Assad quickly found his companion.
Uttering a curse, Assad ran toward Cayden. The man with an impossibly pale face immediately embraced Cayden.
In place of the name he had been calling endlessly, anxiety-tinged relief arrived. Cayden was firmly trapped in Assad’s embrace. For a long time, he had to listen to Assad’s breathing pouring into his ears.
“Your Highness……”
“I…”
“……”
“Do you know how much I… searched for you?”
Assad posed a question for which Cayden didn’t know the answer. His voice was trembling.
“Wishing only that you would call me, that you would find me, I searched this damn vast desert.”
Assad didn’t know what to do, neither able to hold Cayden, whom he embraced, tighter, nor to let him go.
Cayden hastily embraced Assad in return. As if soothing a child, he slowly stroked Assad’s back with his hands. He caressed him.
“Why. Why on earth don’t you look for me? I thought and thought again. Is it because you hate me so much that you’d rather get lost in the desert? Perhaps you’re trying to find nomads and hide among them. You’re trying to escape from me somehow. Is that why you don’t blow the whistle? With all sorts of imaginings… I rode on horseback.”
In a lowered voice, Assad confessed his anxiety to Cayden. Words that didn’t seek Cayden’s answer continued slowly.
“None of it works, Cayden. You cannot leave me. No, you can leave. But know that you’ll be caught.”
“What does that……”
“I’m sorry, but I’ve mastered the art of finding you. Even now. I found you like this without that damn whistle.”
Assad’s arms embracing Cayden grew stronger.
“I can never let you go.”
Assad murmured. It was not a warning to Cayden, but closer to a pledge to himself.
Cayden couldn’t easily open his mouth. It was because the anxiety clinging to Assad’s heart was also transmitted to him. Assad’s anxiety, which he couldn’t hide and showed in its entirety despite his usual confidence, was both disconcerting and pitiful.
Why was Assad acting like this?
He couldn’t think straight at all. His mind wasn’t working properly. Until Assad’s breathing calmed down, and until his own mind calmed down, Cayden continued to pat Assad with his two hands.
It was after some time had passed that Cayden opened his mouth again.
“Running away… I never even thought of it.”
Cayden carefully spoke to the silent Assad. He continued his excuse, albeit slowly.
“I thought the hunt might not be over yet, so I couldn’t blow the whistle. I didn’t want to interfere with Your Highness’s work.”
“……”
“And it seemed like the people who remained at the campsite needed help more than I did. I was waiting for Lady Amina to come because I didn’t want to create unnecessary trouble. Although I took it out too late… I did blow the whistle.”
Trying not to stammer, Cayden conveyed his intentions to Assad.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
