"Yes — and it made me curious about what strawberries actually smell like."
Roy grinned at her words and held out the berries resting in his palm.
"Try one. You'll find out."
Juliet bit into the fruit. She couldn't detect any particular fragrance, but the taste — bright, sweet, edged with tartness — was wonderful.
*So it wasn't a joke after all.*
Elsa's remark had lodged itself in the back of Juliet's mind like a splinter she couldn't quite reach. Now, chewing thoughtfully, she cast a discreet glance at the golden-haired girl from Roy's pack, who was riding somewhere farther back in the convoy.
The strawberries lifted her spirits more than she'd expected. Feeling revived, Juliet turned her attention to Roy, who rode alongside the carriage with the easy, unhurried grace of someone born in a saddle — or, more accurately, born to run on four legs beside one.
She began asking questions.
"What does the Silver Forest look like?"
"Do your people have cities?"
"What are your robes called?"
Roy answered each one with patient calm, his golden eyes warm with amusement at her curiosity.
Then Ethelid materialized beside the carriage — appearing so suddenly that Juliet suspected he'd been eavesdropping — and joined forces with her, adding his own barrage of inquiries with the relentless precision of an academic conducting fieldwork.
Roy, assaulted from both flanks, soon raised his hands in surrender and steered the conversation elsewhere with the deftness of someone accustomed to tactical retreats.
"What about you, Juliet?"
"There's not much to tell..."
She couldn't speak about her life in the North. After a moment's consideration, she chose something light — a memory with no sharp edges.
"During the summer social season, the capital hosts a ball called the Lovely Blue Bell."
---
The grand ball lasted seven nights, each one stretching deep into the small hours. It had been the Empress's favorite event since her girlhood — a tradition she'd championed and protected with fierce, almost personal devotion.
In theory, any adult man or woman could attend. In practice, the halls filled primarily with young aristocrats who had just come of age — fresh-faced, nervous, glittering with the particular radiance of people experiencing everything for the first time.
"It was always a ball with a light, youthful atmosphere," Juliet said, her voice softening with the memory.
Elaborate masquerade masks were not only permitted but encouraged. Guests wore costumes more colorful and extravagant than any formal banquet would allow. Vases overflowing with bluebells lined the walls, and hundreds of blue-tinted lanterns cast the entire hall in a cool, dreamlike glow.
It was less a serious affair of state and more a lavish theme night — designed for youth, designed for romance, designed for the particular magic that only summer evenings and masks and flickering blue light could produce.
The person who received the bluebell wreath became the Bell of the Day. And by tradition, every guest at the ball was obligated to fulfill the Bell's single wish.
A deliberate rule. A *very* deliberate rule.
A masked ball for young, unmarried men and women on a warm summer night — with a built-in mechanism that practically *demanded* a confession of love.
"I've heard of that ball," Gray said, drawing his horse alongside the carriage with an expression of scholarly gravity. "They say tradition holds that any couple formed at the Blue Bell Festival is destined for a happy future."
It was nothing more than superstition, of course.
Or rather — it was the Empress's way of bestowing her personal blessing on young love. A gentle, sentimental wish wrapped in the language of fate.
Roy, who had been listening in silence, tilted his head and asked with deceptive casualness:
"...Juliet, have you ever been the Bell of the Day?"
"Oh — well..."
She started to answer. Then stopped.
---
The memory surfaced before she could prevent it — vivid, warm, edged with pain.
Seven years ago. Her first and last appearance at the Blue Bell Ball.
She had received the wreath of bluebell flowers that night.
*"That's how it's done, isn't it?"*
The man who had arguably behaved more rudely than anyone else at the entire ball — who had arrived late, spoken to almost no one, and regarded the festivities with the bored contempt of a wolf forced to attend a tea party — had taken the wreath and tied it around her wrist with careless, offhand ease.
Just like that. No ceremony. No grand gesture. As though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
He hadn't thought about what it meant. He never did.
Juliet smiled — faintly, involuntarily, before she even realized her lips had moved.
*If the old tradition were true — if the couple formed at the Blue Bell Ball really did live happily ever after — then she and he would...*
*No.*
*It's just a stupid superstition.*
Juliet blinked slowly and let the thought dissolve like mist in morning light.
---
## — Carcassonne —
Upon arrival in Carcassonne, Juliet was confined to the house until her recovery was complete. Helen's orders. Non-negotiable.
The Red King Lionel Lebatan's mansion was an elegant estate distinguished by its crimson gables, but in practice, it hummed with constant activity — guild members coming and going at all hours, couriers arriving with dispatches, doors opening and closing in an endless rhythm of commerce and purpose.
Juliet, forbidden from joining any of it, resigned herself to unpacking.
Her luggage was modest — a single case of belongings she'd carried since leaving the capital. She opened it on the bed and began sorting through the contents, and that was when her fingers closed around something unexpected.
***Thump.***
A round, black sphere rolled out from between her folded clothes and settled heavily against the mattress.
*What is—*
"Oh!"
Recognition struck like a bell.
"The village — *Kanavel!*"
She'd forgotten about it completely. In the chaos of the serpent, the rescue, the fever, and the long journey to Carcassonne, the strange stone she'd found on the cave floor had slipped entirely from her mind.
When they'd been pulled to the surface, all the mana stones she'd collected had tumbled from her pockets and scattered across the mountainside. All of them — except this.
She held it up to the light.
*Wait.*
*Wasn't it smaller?*
In the cave, the stone had been small enough to slip into her pocket without effort. Now it barely fit in her palm — noticeably larger, noticeably heavier, its surface still perfectly smooth and impossibly dark.
Juliet turned the glittering sphere slowly, examining it from every angle. She reached for it with her senses — probing for mana, for divine energy, for any trace of the forces she'd learned to recognize.
Nothing.
No magical resonance. No sacred vibration. It was, by every measure she could apply, inert.
*Then what is it?*
"Miss Juliet — where did you find that?"
Ethelid's voice came from the hallway. He'd been passing her open door and had stopped mid-stride, his gaze fixed on the black sphere with sudden, sharp interest.
He stepped inside, leaned closer, and studied it for a long moment. Then he glanced at Juliet and lowered his voice.
"If you wanted to, you could sell that for a very decent price."
Juliet's eyes narrowed with suspicion.
"You know what this is?"
"It's a monster egg."
Silence.
Juliet stared at him. Then at the sphere. Then back at him.
*A monster egg.*
So she'd lost every mana stone she'd gathered — every last one scattered and gone — but had somehow walked away with a *monster egg* nestled between her spare stockings.
"Isn't it dangerous?"
"The more dangerous the creature inside, the higher the price," Ethelid said, his tone carrying the measured weight of someone who had appraised such things before. "You'd need a specialist to give you an exact valuation, but... I suspect whatever is in there is rare enough to fetch a considerable sum."
"What makes you think so?"
"Don't you remember what lived in that cave, Miss Juliet?"
*The snake. The very, very large snake.*
A shudder passed through Juliet at the memory — the moss that wasn't moss, the floor that breathed, the hiss that vibrated through stone and bone alike.
If Ethelid was right, then the egg would hatch into a serpent monster. But something about that conclusion didn't sit well with her. An instinct she couldn't articulate whispered that whatever was growing inside this shell was not necessarily what had guarded it.
She'd heard that all monster eggs appeared identical in their embryonic state, regardless of species. Before hatching, there was no reliable way to determine what lay within — even if the egg had been found in a specific creature's nest.
A snake's lair didn't guarantee a snake.
Juliet turned the sphere over in her hands, the dark surface catching the light like polished obsidian.
*What are you?*
"Do you want to sell it?" Ethelid asked.
"...Probably."
"A wise decision. Shall I take you to the auction house?"
"There's an auction house here?" Juliet looked up with genuine interest.
"Not exactly an auction house. More of a black market." Ethelid settled against the doorframe, arms crossed. "Sacred artifacts, magical instruments, rare materials — you can buy and sell nearly anything there. Monster eggs appear from time to time as well."
He paused, then lowered his voice to a conspiratorial murmur.
"Although the old man has been having considerable difficulties with the market lately."
By *the old man*, he meant Juliet's maternal grandfather — Lionel Lebatan, the Red King.
Juliet raised an eyebrow. It was hard to imagine a problem that a man of her grandfather's influence couldn't resolve with a word and a look.
"What kind of difficulties?"
"Small fish have been swimming into the market and muddying the water."
"Small fish?"
"Fraudsters."
"Ah."
Ethelid explained. In recent months, a wave of scammers had infiltrated Carcassonne's black market, peddling low-quality goods at inflated prices and selling counterfeit sacred relics alongside fake magical instruments — all presented as genuine.
The damage wasn't merely financial. The people who'd been deceived had begun protesting — loudly, publicly, and with increasing fury. The market's reputation was eroding, and with it, Carcassonne's standing as a center of legitimate trade in rare goods.
"We've been trying to root them out," Ethelid said, "but the counterfeits are sophisticated. It's nearly impossible for an ordinary person to distinguish a fake artifact from a real one at first glance."
Juliet considered this, turning the black egg absently in her hands.
*If even Grandfather is struggling, these swindlers must be remarkably clever.*
The thought settled into the back of her mind — not urgent, not yet, but present. A puzzle waiting to be examined.
She looked down at the egg one more time. Its dark surface stared back at her, revealing nothing.