Kelart noticed that something was wrong on the third day.
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It was not any one specific thing, but a string of subtle, almost negligible abnormalities—
Calca had drifted off twice while receiving southern nobles, signed the same unimportant purchase order three times while reviewing documents, stared blankly at her soup bowl for a long time during dinner, and had not even heard what Remedios said.
"Hehehe..."
Kelart stood in the shadows of the palace corridor, her arms folded across her chest, chestnut hair falling over her shoulders, her trademark smile resting on her lips.
But that smile did not reach her eyes.
Something was wrong.
As Calca's trusted confidante for eleven years, she knew the Holy Queen better than she knew her own sister, Remedios.
Calca was not the sort of person who easily showed her emotions.
Or rather, she had once been, but she had changed over the past half month.
The woman who charged down a high slope on the battlefield and told senior ministers in her study, "Do you object?" would not become so absent-minded just because of a victory.
Unless something had happened that Kelart did not know about.
Kelart decided to speak with Calca.
Not as the High Priestess of the Temple, not as the Holy Queen's right hand, but as a friend.
When that word crossed her mind, the corner of her mouth twitched slightly.
She rarely acknowledged that she had friends.
Calca was her sovereign, her sister was family, and the people of the Holy Kingdom were those she needed to protect.
But the role of "friend" was too personal, too soft. It did not suit someone like her, someone accustomed to hiding her true thoughts behind a "Hehehe."
Yet now, she truly knocked on the door to