Hill whipped his head around and looked at the flag again... No way, right?
Damboro and Scarlet might have become something like affectionate rivals over the past century—occasional violent storms amid a long stretch of steady rain—but they had spent more than a thousand years trying to destroy each other!
Earl Ster had fought the Desert Kingdom for years, with assassins coming from the desert to kill him every year. But if he ever had to flee to another country, he would rather take a detour into the desert and fight for a place to survive than follow the coast to Scarlet!
Surely he was reading too much into it?
Ellie seemed like a cheerful, lively, and resilient girl. She couldn't be so foolish that she would send her family to the gallows over a game of romance, could she?
The Ster Family was firmly in the king's camp!
Hill shook his head. It was probably impossible. They both just happened to have golden hair.
Perhaps he had seen too many lovesick fools in Toril, and his imagination had run away with him.
Besides, maybe this member of the royal family simply had some secret dealings with the Ster Family?
Even the most brutal wars never stopped great nobles from trading in private. As long as there was money to be made and they weren't selling their country's special resources, nobles had never thought much of it.
When nobles engaged in cross-border trade were accused of colluding with the enemy, it sometimes wasn't because their dealings had only just been discovered. Someone simply needed a public charge to pin on them.
Hill slowly returned to his carriage. His expression was calm as he counted each step... Yet for some reason, he suddenly felt a trace of something unsettling in Basia