Her reaction exceeded all his expectations. Gray tilted his head, studying her with open curiosity.
"You don't know him? The Duke of Carlisle, ruler of the North." He paused. "Perhaps he's not well known in the capital?"
Juliet laughed — a silent, airless thing.
All Lionel had ever told their relatives about her was that she lived in the capital. Nothing more.
"No," she said quietly. "You won't find a single person in the capital who doesn't know who he is."
"Then why do you look like that?"
"I'm just… a little surprised."
Juliet tried her best to smile. The muscles of her face obeyed, but barely.
"Yes. We were surprised too." Gray rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I'd wager the bride comes from some famous family as well — she *is* marrying a duke, after all. But so far, no one seems to know which family she belongs to."
Juliet said nothing.
*Certainly.*
The woman Lennox Carlisle married would come from a prominent house. Someone with a name, a lineage, a position — not a woman with nothing and no one.
And the Duke of Carlisle would, of course, forbid anyone from speaking her name. On pain of death, probably. That was the kind of man he was — meticulous, absolute in his commands.
Unlike how little he'd care about *her*. Even if she were torn to pieces or taken from the streets the day after they parted, he wouldn't have blinked.
"Juliet?"
She hadn't realized her head had dropped. When she still didn't respond, Gray called her name again, more cautiously this time.
"Juliet, did I say something wrong?"
He cocked his head to the side, alarm creeping into his expression.
"...No." She forced a smile. "Sorry, I need to step away for a bit. I forgot something."
She turned before he could respond and walked quickly in the opposite direction, her pace just short of running.
She moved past the campfire, past the clustered tents, past the murmur of conversation — forward, forward, until the sounds faded and she was alone. Her feet carried her to the luggage van without conscious decision.
Without thinking twice, Juliet climbed inside and found her suitcase.
Then, without even understanding what she was doing, she began rummaging through her things.
The previously neat folds collapsed into disarray — sleeves tangled with stockings, a pressed collar bent against a shoe. But the mess before her was nothing compared to the chaos churning inside her skull.
*Wedding.*
There was only one person of marriageable age in the Carlisle family.
But only a few days had passed since she'd left the capital. A week? Perhaps ten days?
*Who will he marry? Dahlia?*
**Knock-knock.**
Someone rapped against the van door from outside, severing her spiraling thoughts.
"Juliet? Are you in there?"
"...Yes."
Juliet squeezed her eyes shut and drew in one long, deliberate breath. She held it until her pulse slowed — or at least until it no longer hammered visibly in her throat — then opened the door.
Helen stood there, worry etched across her face.
Gray hovered behind her shoulder, peering over it with an anxious expression that told Juliet everything. He'd been worried. He'd gone straight to Helen and told her everything.
"Juliet, are you alright?"
"Yes. I just had a headache, so I came to find some medicine." Juliet smiled as if nothing had happened and waved the small bottle she'd grabbed from her suitcase. "See?"
"Oh — I see."
Helen's shoulders dropped with visible relief. She stepped forward and pulled Juliet into a warm embrace.
"I'm sorry I couldn't keep my promise. But we'll definitely have some fun together when I'm finished with my business. Alright?" she murmured against Juliet's hair.
"Yes. I'll be fine." Juliet patted her aunt's back gently. "Don't worry about me."
---
Isaac, Helen, and Gray left.
The procession had originally planned to continue toward Carcassonne, but the rain had returned — heavier this time — and the road dissolved into a slick, impassable mire.
"As soon as the rain lets up and the road dries a bit, we'll set off immediately," Walter said, approaching Juliet with the stiff formality of a man delivering a military report.
Walter was, in practice, the one who oversaw nearly all of the guild's operational affairs on Helen's behalf. A man of logistics and schedules, not idle conversation.
It wasn't necessary for him to report to Juliet, but Helen had apparently asked him to explain — almost to the minute — why they hadn't yet departed.
Juliet told him it was fine, that he needn't keep updating her, that he must be terribly busy. He nodded politely and walked away.
Five minutes later, he was back with another update.
While waiting for the rain to subside, Juliet sat in her van beneath the canvas awning, watching the grey curtain of water sway across the camp.
Since Helen and Isaac's departure, the atmosphere had grown unnervingly quiet. It struck her as strange. Only a handful of people had actually left the large procession, yet somehow, with them gone, nearly all the lively conversation had drained away — as though they'd taken the warmth of the camp with them.
"...What are you doing?"
And oddly enough, Theo turned out to be the one most sensitive to this stillness.
Barely an hour after his relatives had departed, he appeared at her van and dropped into the seat beside her without invitation.
Juliet blinked in mild surprise.
"Just sitting."
Theo's brow furrowed, as though her answer personally offended him.
"Want to compete?" He crossed his arms. "This time, let's make it a bet of *two* wishes."
*In this rain?*
But Juliet didn't say that.
"No."
"...You're afraid you'll lose, aren't you?"
Juliet glanced at him — a brief, flat look — and replied with perfect indifference.
"No. I'm letting you win."
"What?" Theo shot to his feet as though she'd slapped him. "*Why?*"
He seemed genuinely unable to process the idea that she would surrender without a fight.
"If you keep doing this," he sputtered, jabbing a finger toward the paddock, "you could lose Apple!"
"You can have her. She's not mine anyway."
"..."
Theo was speechless.
She was technically correct — Apple belonged to the Marigold Guild. But the *principle* of it seemed to wound him deeply.
"Hm. That's no fun at all," he muttered, waiting for some reaction from her. When none came, a flush of embarrassment crept up his neck.
In the end, he snorted with displeasure, cast one final look at Juliet, and stalked off, grumbling something under his breath about the *fickle and incomprehensible nature of women*.
Left alone, Juliet drew her knees to her chest and rested her chin on them.
She found it oddly touching that he'd bothered to approach her at all.
Theo had assumed Helen and Isaac's departure was the cause of her low spirits. A reasonable guess — and a wrong one.
Juliet's mood had nothing to do with her uncle or her aunt.
She slowly closed her eyes.
*I want to go home.*
She had fled to the other end of the continent so she wouldn't have to hear his name, wouldn't have to know anything about him. And yet even here, at the farthest edge of everywhere, she could not free herself completely.
A soft, bitter laugh escaped her lips.
*No matter where I go, I will never be able to outrun him.*
She wanted to go home — but it didn't have to be the Montague mansion. If there existed a safe place in this world where no one would look for her, where his name would never reach, she wanted to find it and stay there forever.
Any place could be home, as long as she would never hear another word about him.
*Wait. Does that mean I can go back now?*
Even if she didn't know when the Duke of Carlisle's wedding would take place, the ceremony would most likely be held outside the capital — in the North, perhaps, on Carlisle lands. If that were true, she could return to her mansion immediately.
But after a moment's consideration, Juliet shook her head in quiet disappointment. The only thing she knew with certainty was that he intended to marry *someone*. Everything else — the where, the when, the who — remained conjecture, unconfirmed by anything solid.
Deciding to wrench her mind away from these spiraling thoughts, Juliet picked up a book and made her way to the conference tent.
---
A few hours later.
The tent was colder than the van — a damp, creeping chill that seeped through the canvas walls and settled against her skin.
"Oh—"
Juliet flinched as a drop of water slipped through a seam in the tent roof and landed on the nape of her neck. She looked up from her book, though *reading* would have been a generous description of what she'd been doing.
"Miss… Juliet?"
At that same moment, a voice called her name — a little awkwardly — from the tent's entrance.
It was Ethelid, the wizard.
He stood at the threshold holding a mug of something, an expression of stiff embarrassment frozen on his face.
"May I come in?"
Juliet nodded. The tent had been set up for the guild leadership's meetings; it was hardly hers to grant or deny access to.
Ethelid stepped inside and, without preamble, set the mug on the table beside her.
**Clink.**
"Help yourself. I thought you might be thirsty."
"Thank you."
It was a cold drink — pale and creamy, like sweetened milk. Juliet, suddenly aware of how parched she actually was, lifted the mug without hesitation.
The moment she took a sip, a sweet, fragrant taste spread across her tongue — cool and smooth, with a faint herbal undertone she couldn't quite place.
"This is delicious." She looked at Ethelid with genuine curiosity. "Did you make it yourself?"
Finding something this refreshing on the road, in the middle of a rainstorm, was no small feat.
"Oh — no, it wasn't me. It was—"
Ethelid began to turn, raising a hand to point toward a wagon parked some twenty paces away. But midway through the gesture, his eyebrows shot upward.
*What the — ?*
His gaze sharpened. Someone behind the distant wagon was trying — and failing spectacularly — to hide. A shock of bright red hair poked out from behind the wagon's corner as its owner, unable to contain his curiosity, leaned out to watch them.
Ethelid's expression flattened. Feeling slightly stung at having been sent on this errand only to be abandoned, he realized he would have to navigate the rest of this conversation alone.
After a long pause and a quiet sigh, he turned back to Juliet.
"...Yes. I made it myself." His voice was carefully neutral. "Do you like it?"
"It's wonderful. Thank you."
Juliet nodded warmly and handed the empty mug back to him.
Ethelid set it aside and settled into the chair beside her.
"One more day and we'll arrive in Carcassonne."
"Yes, that's true."
"Which means we can finally sleep in a proper bed instead of a rattling van." A small, hopeful smile crossed his face. "That's something to look forward to, isn't it?"
Juliet's lips curved faintly at his words.
Ethelid wasn't naturally skilled at conversation — he grew tense around other people, his sentences turning stiff and overly formal. But since being introduced to Juliet, he had tried to be polite and courteous, and he hoped — quietly, privately — that he'd managed to leave a decent impression.
Now, watching her, he waited.
Fortunately, Juliet did not send him away. She regarded him with a neutral expression for a moment, then simply lowered her gaze back to her book.
Ethelid noticed she hadn't turned a single page in hours. She was simply staring at the same spot on the paper, her eyes unfocused, seeing nothing.
*Should I do something?*
He was somewhat skeptical about the impulse. He liked the Lebatan family well enough, but that affection was grounded in the employer-employee relationship. The same applied to Juliet — she was his employer's niece, nothing more. His attentiveness toward her was a matter of professional courtesy, lightly seasoned with social obligation. There was no reason to pay her any special attention.
And yet, despite this perfectly rational conclusion, a minute later Ethelid emptied his pockets onto the table.
"What is this?"
He hadn't truly expected it to work, but Juliet's gaze lifted — caught by one of the items he'd laid out.
It was an ordinary-looking leather bracelet, indistinguishable from a dozen others, save for the small green crystal set into its center.
"A magical tracking device," he said.
"I see." Juliet examined it more closely, recognition dawning in her eyes. "So the crystal is a mana stone. But what do you need it for?"
The mana stone allowed a wizard to cast a spell that could track a specific target through the bracelet for a limited duration.
"Because the forest is dangerous," Ethelid said simply.
"You're truly very talented." Juliet's admiration was sincere.
Such a device would be invaluable in the northern territories, or near the capital, where forests teeming with monsters bordered civilization. Of course, using it required a wizard capable of casting the spell onto the mana stone — but as a method of tracking, it was remarkably innovative.
*Could the Magic Tower have developed something like this?*
***The Magic Tower.***
Juliet looked at Ethelid.
"I'd like to ask you something."
"Ask away."
"Were you in the Tower as well?"
"I was."
"Then why did you leave?"
"..."
Ethelid's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes shuttered closed. He smiled — a practiced, pleasant smile that gave nothing away — and began gathering his things from the table. The tracking bracelet disappeared back into his pocket.
"I need to bring this to Theo."
"Why are you leaving so suddenly? You gave me permission to ask."
"I gave you permission to *ask*," he said lightly, already on his feet. "I never said I'd *answer*."
Juliet fell silent, regarding him with a look that hovered between sullenness and reluctant amusement.
Ethelid laughed — a quiet, genuine sound — and turned toward the tent's exit.
***That was when they heard it.***
"Help! ***Somebody help!***"
A scream tore through the camp from somewhere outside — raw, ragged, and unmistakably real.