Chapter 7: The Witch’s Love Potion

 

 

 

Chapter 7: The Witch’s Love Potion

 

A tower loomed against the blue sky. In this tower said to be where a witch once imprisoned a princess, a witch was locked away instead.

Light-pink hair fluttered in the breeze blowing in through the open window.

The Witch stared out at the sky through the tiny window at the top of the tower. They must have assumed she would never be able to get down on her own from such a height—there weren’t any bars on the window.

In her hand she rolled the apple they’d provided for her lunch. The slightly sour yet sweet smell offered mild solace to the Witch.

The forest dominated her view from the window, but unfortunately, she couldn’t see the lake. If she couldn’t go back again, then there was no need to concern herself with maintaining the property anymore, but she still worried about the field. She felt miserable for failing to fulfill her grandmother’s dying wishes.

This tower built in the corner of the royal family’s gardens seemed to have once been a witch’s hermitage.

There was nothing to stave off boredom in the room, but she had discovered a large soot stain where a witch’s cauldron had once sat on the floor.

CREAK!

The door opened behind Rose while she was looking up at the sky. This chamber only had one door.

“Are you behaving yourself?”

“Yes. I have nothing better to do.”

The imprisoned witch—Rose—kept her response brief. Her gaze never left the scenery outside the window.

Two men had entered the room—Marjan’s second prince Yašm and the Royal Knight Geones. Yašm locked the door from the inside and hooked the key to his belt.

“Why don’t you just come clean already?”

“I have already told you that isn’t something I made.”

Rose shot Yašm an annoyed look. She recognized the bottle he held.

He possessed the same item the public called “the Witch’s Love Potion.”

∴ ∵ ∴

ROSE had been at the hermitage when they arrested her.

At the time, she had been sitting on the floor whipping up a Potion to Remove Stubborn Stains from Pots when she heard the bell announce a visitor. She hadn’t seen Harij in a while, so she stopped in the middle of her work and rushed to get him with the boat, thinking he had come to visit after work again.

It wasn’t Harij waiting for her at the dock—but Yašm escorted by Geones, looking unsettlingly more civil than she had ever seen him before.

“Witch, I need to ask you something.”

“Please pay the equivalent price if you seek the witches’ knowledge.”

“Unfortunately for you, it isn’t the witches’ wisdom I seek. I want to inquire about something else.”

He spoke as if she didn’t have a choice in the matter. The foreboding aura caused Rose to stop her boat just before the dock. She answered his query from there, oars in hand.

“What might that be?”

“Do you recognize this potion?” Yašm asked, pulling the counterfeit Witch’s Love Potion from his pocket.

Rose stiffened for a fraction of a second after seeing the same bottle from three days ago—and instantly realized her undoing.

She didn’t come wearing the hood she used to hide her expressions and reactions, because she entirely expected her guest to be Harij.

Yašm didn’t miss the tautness in her cheeks, even if it was only there for a passing second.

“I am not the one who made that love potion.”

“I have to wonder about that. Why would you be so tense if it has nothing to do with you, hmm?”

He had her there. Rose cursed herself for her negligence.

Rose hadn’t seen Harij as close to anyone as he was with Yašm. And that was why, deep down, she had come to trust Yašm. She believed him an ally among the humans.

“Also…”

A strong wind whipped across the lake, causing waves to strike the boat. Rose tightened her grip on the oars to stabilize the swaying dinghy.

Yašm’s low voice curled toward her in the air like a whisper. “…When did I mention it was a love potion?” His gaze became razor-sharp, and his aura grew tremendously intimidating. “I was going to let it go if you didn’t recognize it, but…you have left me no choice. You are coming with me, Witch.”

Geones had already left his station behind Yašm and was running at Rose when the phrase “Capture her” reached her ears. He leaped agilely onto her boat, snatched the oars from her hands while she was still in a daze, and rammed his fist into her stomach. She lost consciousness from the strike.

By the time Rose regained consciousness, she was already imprisoned inside that tower. She had nothing better to do in that high tower from which escape was impossible.

“It shouldn’t be possible to legally detain a witch.”

A witch was different from a normal person, a witch was different from a country, and a witch was different from the law. Witches had been self-governing, independent beings since ancient times. They lived by a different set of rules from humanity. Humans couldn’t punish them by their laws even when the witch had hurt someone—such was the binding agreement they had since millennia past.

“That’s true. But as annoying as it is, chalking this up to my being infatuated with you won’t risk breaking our promise with the witches. I can just tell the world that I locked you up because I had fallen so deeply in love with you, I couldn’t bear to let you marry my own knight. That should do the trick just fine.”

Rose’s eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets after hearing his outrageous scenario. She had never heard a worse joke in her entire life.

“It seems you sold this foul tincture en masse to the nobility under the pretense that it’s a love potion. Witch, just admit it, what kind of poison is this? What’s your motive? Why would you indiscriminately harm people? You will never leave this place until you confess.”

“How many times must I tell you it wasn’t me for you to believe it?”

“Then why do you only target the nobility? Is it love that drove you to forget your pride as a witch?” Yašm snorted at the baffled look on Rose’s face. “Some of the people who fell ill were once Harij’s potential marriage candidates.”

Ha. I see. He might not view me as human, but he’s happy to pin me as a jealous woman. Rose wanted to laugh in his face. If she was ever drunk on jealousy, her methods wouldn’t involve such cheap knock-offs. She would whip up her best love potion yet, fill it with another man’s body fluids, and serve it to each and every single one of those girls.

“I didn’t know that.”

“Quit your lying.”

Rose was a witch. Witches didn’t lie. But this man had no way of knowing that. Witches loved to talk in vague riddles to obscure the fact that they only spoke the truth. To a human, witches came across as shady. Humans only ever trusted other humans.

Perhaps it was foolish to think I could coexist with humans. Apathy formed in her heart, a heart that had been stabbed one too many times.

“You seem to have already made up your mind to doubt anything a witch says.”

“I have always, always believed witches to be suspicious creatures.”

You locked me up based on your personal beliefs? Rose wanted to roar with laughter. Speaking objectively, wasn’t a man with the authority to easily imprison a person with a single word much more frightening than a witch who needed to go through tedious steps just to cast a simple spell? Humans were such contrary creatures, spouting how scared they were of witches when they didn’t fear the royal family.

“Six nobles have fallen ill with symptoms caused by this so-called Witch’s Love Potion thus far. Strictly speaking, I can’t legally keep you here, but there’s no way I’m letting you go free under these circumstances. And don’t expect Harij to save you.”

Rose snorted. He didn’t need to tell her that.

She didn’t think for even a second that Harij would come to her rescue. If anything, she felt it obvious he wouldn’t.

It was none other than Yašm who’d imprisoned Rose. Harij was a Royal Knight, and Yašm was his prince and current master. He had sworn fealty to his master—he made no such vow to protect his fiancée.

Thus why Rose only looked up at the sky and not down. Should she spot a certain someone among the guard detail outside—were it Harij himself keeping her locked in this tower—Rose knew she wouldn’t be able to live another second.

“Hey… Hey, Witch! Are you listening to me?”

Yašm was fussing about something or other by the door, but Rose had utterly shut him out. His hatred for witches must have run deep, or maybe he was just scared of getting cursed, because he wouldn’t take a step closer to her. He kept his bellyaching to his spot right beside the only way out.

Seated next to the window, Rose wiped off the apple with her robe and took a bite. A yellow hole opened up in the crimson apple.

What if Harij is down there?

Just thinking about it gave her the chills. She was a thousand times more afraid now than when that thief had come close to killing her. Did Harij also believe Rose capable of indiscriminately hurting many nobles with falsely advertised potions?

It was more painful to disappoint him. Harij surely held Rose in high estimation. He endeavored to trust the witch who called herself the Good Witch, and Rose herself.

Rose bit into the apple again. She concentrated on chewing to pretend she wasn’t affected by all this.

You needn’t fear being cursed, boy. Rose internally mocked Yašm, who was blabbing on and on about something from the safety of the doorway. I don’t have a single secret potion on me to curse you with.

She wasn’t dumb enough to think she could escape the tower alone, or that she could take Yašm and Geones down barehanded. It was obvious Rose wouldn’t be leaving this tower until her name was cleared.

It was difficult to prove that she hadn’t done what he blamed her for. And it deeply scarred her to keep insisting on a point he refused to believe no matter what she said.

Surely no one will ever believe me. She didn’t just start thinking that way since being thrown into the tower. That negative thought had been with her since the day she heard those men celebrating her grandmother’s death. “It’s for the better if the witch is dead!” Those words would disappear and return, fade to the back of her mind and come forward again, all along quietly tormenting her. As someone who was just drifting through this world, Rose couldn’t change a thing. The townspeople and the servants at the mansion decided to trust the Witch because of what Harij told them.

No one was willing to listen to what a witch—to what Rose—had to say.

“I really wanted to get married,” Rose quietly muttered as she stared up at the cloudless sky.

“What was that? Did you finally answer me, Witch?”

“No, I wasn’t talking to you.”

“What did you just say?!” Yašm shouted in anger. But Rose had already zoned him out again. She traced her lips with her fingertip.

Her own words startled her. It wasn’t as if she had been especially looking forward to the wedding ceremony. She simply thought it was an event that had to be cleared to marry Harij. Having to wear a dazzling dress made no sense to her, and the high heels were torture.

But it was only now that she realized she was actually looking forward to all of it.

A teardrop slid off her chin and splashed on her hands. Once the tears started, they wouldn’t stop. Rose ripped bite after bite off the apple. No matter how hard she concentrated on chewing so she wouldn’t gag, the waterworks wouldn’t cease.

Rose finally let go of the apple. It fell from the open window. She frantically dabbed at the waterfall of endless tears with her palms.

“…!”

Then she heard it—a slight gasp that sounded like someone stifling their pain. Rose stilled.

She recognized that voice—it was the one her ears loved to hear the most.

Holding her breath, she nervously looked down from the open window.

“Shh.”

A man was right there—clinging to the tower wall sheerer than any cliff.

It was Harij who signaled Rose to be quiet with that breathy utterance.

Forgetting even how to breathe, Rose blinked in disbelief. Her mind had a hard time processing the fact that the very man she had just resigned herself to never seeing again was right before her eyes.

Harij seemed to have scaled the tower by sticking something like an iron stake into the bricks’ gaps for footing. Tears spilled from Rose’s eyes when she blinked. The droplets landed on Harij’s cheeks.

As if powered by those tears, Harij slammed his hands on the windowsill and swung himself up and onto the frame. He hopped down from the sill into the tower.

“Darling, I’m home. I’m sorry it took me so long to return to you, love.” Harij pulled Rose into a tight embrace before he finished talking.

Rose moved her lips, but no words came out. Why did he have to make a joke now of all times? For the life of her, she could not understand his comedy.

Rose wasn’t the only person shocked by Harij’s sudden arrival. Yašm and Geones, who had his hand on his sword, stared at him wide-eyed.

“Wha?! Harij! Are you a lizard?!”

“What are you talking about? I’m human from head to toe,” Harij dryly retorted with an exasperated look.

“Yeah, right. Says you,” Yašm muttered, clutching his head. “You aren’t even supposed to be in the capital right now—”

“I wasn’t. I hurried back because I didn’t sense the same emergency there that you sent me to handle. I immediately handed in my leave of absence notice upon my return, so I’m currently off-duty. So, let’s talk, Yašm. I’m quite pissed with you.”

Yašm gulped as if he had firsthand experience with Harij’s wrath. “Talk about what?”

“Why did you confine my fiancée in this place?”

“I had good reason to.”

“And I’m asking you what exactly that is.”

“I did it because I learned the Witch’s Love Potion was behind the case I had you looking into for me.”

“I see—Rose.”

“Er, uh, yes?”

Rose had been listening to Harij’s conversation with Yašm in a stupor as he held her close, so she jumped when he suddenly brought her into it.

“Five people—”

“There’s been one more since you left, so six.”

“Six people have collapsed. Is it true the Witch’s Love Potion is responsible?”

Rose opened her mouth and realized she was about to shroud her answer in vague wording again. This wasn’t the time or place for her to spin her words like a witch. She tried to be as clear and concise as possible.

“I don’t know. The one thing I can say for certain is that I’m not involved in this Witch’s Love Potion case.”

“Okay.”

His strong arms tightened around her.

Rose thought she might break down crying any moment now.

That was the most reassuring answer and the most reassuring embrace she had ever received. Harij believed her. He listened, when she had long since given up hope of anyone ever believing her or that her words would ever reach anyone.

Rose was a witch. Witches didn’t lie.

And that was precisely why Harij could believe her without a shadow of a doubt. He transformed her greatest weakness into her greatest advantage.

It never occurred to her that her weakness could lead to being trusted by the people she cared about most when it counted.

Rose’s voice had reached Harij.

“…I know this is a dumb question, but what happened to the guards?”

“They’re all my colleagues. They decided to take a little walk after hearing me out.”

“You’re really something, you know that?” Yašm raked his hand through his hair. He was clearly exasperated with Harij for bringing his personal feelings into this and with the knights who went along with him.

“You’re really something, you know that?” Harij tossed his own words right back at him. He said it in the exact same tone and manner. They sounded so alike, it attested to how much time they had spent together like brothers and best friends.

“Someone you picked as your knight would obviously stop at nothing to protect the woman he loves. Am I wrong?”

Yašm had no way to rebut that one.

Yašm’s knights held to the same noble principles he did. He surrounded himself with like-minded people. In other words, as hard as Rose found it to believe, Yašm would do the same for someone he loved.

“…Ugh! Stop trying to one-up me! What are you even doing here?!”

“One of my servants immediately notified me when Rose didn’t come home. I left clear instructions for what they should do if anything happened to her.”

Rose looked up at Harij’s face from the gap between the arms wrapped securely around her. He looked terribly haggard since the last time she saw him. Not only did he waste energy on the wild goose chase Yašm sent him on, but he was also doing everything in his power to protect Rose.

“Harij, do you understand the severity of the situation? Six people have fallen ill—from the witch’s potion!”

“Rose said it wasn’t her doing. Therefore, your accusations have no merit. She is innocent.”

“This is ridiculous! You seriously take her at her word?”

“I have no reason not to believe her.”

“Why not?”

“Because I love her.”

Harij’s voice brimmed with unwavering sincerity, leaving Rose no choice but to cover her face with both hands.

Yašm froze awkwardly, as if his head had just been dive-bombed by a bird flying out of the brush. Swaying, he yanked up his sleeves and showed his arms to Harij.

“…See what you’ve done to me, Harij? I’ve got goose bumps!”

“Oh, what, did I make you feel left out? Sorry I didn’t notice sooner. Of course I love you, too.”

It was Rose’s turn to get goose bumps—the kind that causes all the hair on your body to stand on end.

“Shut up! Stop clowning around! Just who do you think I went through all this trouble for to settle things quietly before the ceremony?!”

“Ahh, is that why you picked this spot? This forest is under the queen’s direct control and has been passed down from queen to queen over the generations.”

The current queen was Yašm’s mother. This was the perfect spot for the royal family to settle matters behind closed doors.

But now the situation was even direr if Harij had trespassed into the queen’s private domain against the prince’s wishes.

It was inevitable that his actions would be construed as unpatriotic, disloyal, and a dereliction of duty. Even Rose was able to predict this in this short amount of time. There was no way Harij hadn’t already considered the risks.

He gave “love” as his reason for crossing this precarious bridge.

Was love that powerful? So powerful it made the dutiful, steadfast Harij undertake a selfish and illogical course of action?

“Enough of this! Your believing in her doesn’t undo the harm caused by the potions this witch made,” Yašm ranted while he pulled the small bottle from his pocket, as if he just wanted to put an end to the conversation.

Harij stared hard at the item in his hands. “…Does that still have the potion in it?”

“What good does it do to carry around an empty bottle?” Yašm shot down Harij’s question as if it were foolish.

“Let’s have Rose look at it. She knows everything about potions.”

“You exaggerate; I don’t know everything—”

“You idiot! As if I’d ever give a witch a potion! That’s the same as handing a warrior a sword!”

“Exactly my point. We want the opinion of an expert. Or what? You want to stay here having a stare-off until morning?”

Yašm frowned with utter disgust and handed Harij the bottle. Harij held the bottle out to Rose.

Rose graciously accepted it and pulled out the stopper. For all his bellyaching, Yašm watched over her with bated breath. Geones moved in front of Yašm and, hand on sword, cautiously watched Rose.

Rose shook the bottle and fanned the scent up to her nose. She stared at it, stunned.

“This…is…”

She recognized it. Rose knew the smell of this potion well.

“Did you figure something out?”

Harij looked expectantly at her. But what flooded Rose’s heart was deep sorrow.

“…Each witch’s secret potion involves different steps and ingredients depending on the witch making it. Since every witch gradually adjusts the concoction passed down in their family to meet the place and time they live in…”

“So? Are you claiming that this potion wasn’t made by you, but by another witch?”

Rose frowned at Yašm’s question.

When Rose first heard about the Witch’s Love Potion incident from Tien, she didn’t believe for a minute that it was indeed one of the witches’ secret potions. But if what she smelled was true, then—

“This potion smells extremely similar to one I made.”

“Then that proves you’re the culprit!”

Rose firmly shook her head at Yašm, who had jumped to conclusions before she finished.

“The opposite, actually. I can’t reproduce a potion that smells exactly the same as a previous one—that is, unless I intentionally endeavor to replicate it.”

Like how no two plants or animals are exactly the same, every potion had slight variations despite following the same recipe.

Witches understood every difference, manipulated it, extracted the truth, and transformed it into magic.

“And I…” Rose stared closely at the potion inside the bottle. “I remember exactly who I sold a potion to with this same scent.”

Rose didn’t want to believe it. She looked at Harij, but even though he had been listening closely, he didn’t seem to understand why.

But once he realized she wasn’t seeking his aid with that look, he pondered it until his eyes went wide.

“…You can’t mean!” An astonished cry slipped past his lips.

“What? What does—” Sensing the sudden change in Harij, Yašm tried to ask about it but was interrupted by a noise at his back.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

All four people in the room jumped. The sudden knocking came from the only door in the room.

No one should have any business coming to the top floor of this tower.

“Who goes there?” Yašm asked, not hiding the leeriness from his voice.

“Oh my, is that you, Brother? It’s me.”

Her voice was as beautiful as a bell cricket singing on an autumn night. Shock instantly colored Yašm’s face.

“Lulu?!”

That was the name of Marjan’s fourth princess.

Harij pried the bottle from Rose’s hand. He moved in a flurry, paying no attention to how confused she was.

He seemed to have come to some sort of agreement with Yašm through eye contact when Rose wasn’t looking, since Yašm said nothing as Harij took action. If anything, he seemed to be buying Harij time as he spoke to Lulu through the locked door.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came when Mother told me she had opened up the witch’s tower for the first time in a long while. I didn’t think I would get another chance to see it if I didn’t check it out now.”

Her serene voice didn’t harbor an ounce of hesitation about doing whatever she pleased.

The knights guarding the tower below probably couldn’t do anything to stop the princess. Rose suddenly felt her body being tugged backward while she was intently listening to Lulu and Yašm’s conversation.

Before she knew it, Harij had moved from his crouched position beside her chair to wrapping his arm around her waist. She glanced up at him, a silent question in her eyes. Harij took one look at her and nodded.

“Cover your mouth. Don’t make a sound.”

My mouth? Rose did as he instructed and covered her mouth with both hands.

And that was when she experienced a floating sensation like nothing before.

This can’t be happening. No, it’s impossible. Only the Great Witches of yore were capable of flying through the skies. And yet, her robe flapped widely around her legs as it filled with whooshing air.

Yes, in other words, Rose was indeed plummeting from the sky. Heading upside down, toward the ground—she had been thrown out the tower window.

“~~~~~!!!”

Fear stole her voice. A deep-blue sky spread in front of her as she fell with her back toward the ground.

Ahh, my life’s over.

Feeling as if she were having an out-of-body experience, Rose had resigned herself to her bittersweet end when she was yanked by something that stopped her free-fall. She dangled there after being pulled into something hard enough it hurt.

“You endured that well.”

Trembling with her limbs still at gravity’s disposal, Rose looked sideways. She hadn’t noticed at first because all she saw was the sky, but it appeared she hadn’t been falling alone. Now that she thought about it, Harij had been hugging her the whole way down.

He must have jumped out of the window with her in his arms. A rope had been tied securely around his waist in case he needed to make a quick escape from the tower. She didn’t dare look up, but he seemed to have tied the other end of the rope to the legs of her chair.

The yank she felt came from Harij slowing their fall by tightening his grip on the rope. She didn’t want to think about what his palms looked like right about now.

Harij placed one foot on the tower wall and held the rope in one hand with practiced ease as he looked up at the tower.

Rose prayed Harij would help her out of her suspended position soon. The rope was considerably long, but they were still dangling in the air.

But Rose’s prayers went unanswered. Harij’s expression turned grim.

“…This is bad. It’s gonna snap.”

Before Harij’s ominous words reached Rose’s ears, he kicked off the tower, flipping himself over in the process. At the same time, he let go of the rope while shielding Rose’s head.

Rose’s view switched from the sky to Harij’s broad chest. Faster than she could think Oh, crap, the rope tied to the chair snapped, and she was sent plummeting once more.

Rose stretched out her hands to pillow Harij’s head.

“Wha—” His panic-stricken voice reached her ears. The next second, they crashed into the ground together.

Rose didn’t suffer much because they hadn’t fallen from that high off the ground, and Harij had shielded her from most of the impact.

But, in return, Harij took the full shock to his back. Her legs were weaker than jelly, so Rose rolled herself off him. The moment she pulled away, Harij scooped her up and hid behind a nearby tree.

He glared at her, more furious than any forest demon, before she could get a word in edgewise.

“That was dangerous!” Harij yelled. Although his voice was suppressed to a hushed shout, the same couldn’t be said about his anger. “Why would you put your hands behind my head?! Did you want me to crush them?!”

Rose was startled into shaking. She only understood what she had done after he pointed it out to her.

She stared dumbly at her hands. Those hands were her most important tool of the trade—and she only had two. Even if she managed to escape the tower safely, it would be difficult to continue making the witch’s secret potions and cast magic without those hands.

As someone who had lived her entire life as a witch, being a witch bore tremendous significance to her existence. She stubbornly clung to the ways of a witch because she didn’t know who she was without that identity. She took pride in being a witch. That was why she planned to remain one even after marrying Harij. And yet…

“…I wanted to protect you.” Tears spilled faster than the words. “I acted before I thought…”

Rose stared at her hands in disbelief. The reason her arms were still intact was simply that Harij had reversed their positions in midair.

“…Did you cast a spell on me?”

Harij looked at Rose as if he had been struck by lightning.

He must have sensed her confusion. He gently pulled her tighter against him.

“You already know that I can’t cast magic.”

“Then…how do you explain my behavior?”

“That’s what we call love, darling.”

Rose was stunningly convinced by the words of the man who had just undertaken a stupidly selfish and illogical course of action for the sake of love himself.

How scary love can be!

Rose shivered after experiencing the horrors of love herself. To make me act without logic or reason…why, that’s just like magic!

Rose thought of all the different stories Tien used to read to her as a child. True love was always tossed around as the sole power capable of breaking spells. Perhaps that was because love was the only magic humans were capable of.

“…I’m sorry. You must be hurt.”

She gently rubbed Harij’s shoulders where he took the brunt of the fall. He might have fallen in a worse position because of Rose’s thoughtless actions.

“The pain went away.”

“Because of love?”

“That’s right.”

“Guess you don’t need a witch’s help, then.”

“But I need you.”

Harij embraced Rose. She gently hugged him back. His arms wrapped even tighter around her until he suddenly went ramrod stiff.

“What’s wr—”

“Harij, you’re there, aren’t you?” asked a voice quieter than Rose’s own hushed whisper.

The speaker had neither shouted nor raised their voice, but their words sliced through the overgrown trees straight down to where Harij and Rose hid.

The owner of that voice—Lulu—looked down from the tower window at them while ignoring her brother’s attempts to pull her away. Even if Rose looked up, the shadow cast by the high sun obscured the princess’s expression.

“Come on out.”

She beckoned in a honey-sweet voice as if she were trying to lure out a lost cat. Her tone was that of someone far too used to ordering others around.

“That damn prince with a sister complex… He failed to slow her down.”

Harij clicked his tongue. While Rose maintained her silence as he cursed his boss, Harij pocketed the leather bag he had tightly covered with a cloth. Then he left Rose hidden in the bushes to go out below the tower alone.

“Did you call for me, Princess Lulu?”

“Why, Harij, whatever might you be trying so hard to conceal?” Lulu asked in a childish, cutesy voice, seemingly dissatisfied he hadn’t brought Rose out with him.

“My fiancée. I was lavishing her with my unending affections just now.”

“Oh my! Aren’t you the cutest? I must greet her.”

“She is too bashful for that right now, so you would do us a great service if we could save the introductions for another day.”

“Stay right there! I’m coming down!”

Harij clutched his head—Lulu refused to listen to his plea. She had already vanished from the window and was probably on her way down. Harij sent Yašm a killer smile when he poked his face out the window. Sensing his best friend’s seething rage, Yašm quickly departed from the window, too. He was likely racing down the stairs after his sister about now.

“Sir Harij…?”

“I’m sorry, Rose. You’re going to have to meet her after all.”

“I don’t mind… For that matter, why did you escape the tower in such a reckless manner anyway?”

Meeting Lulu posed no issues for Rose. She wasn’t feeling particularly bashful right now, either. Fleeing like that only worsened their position when she wasn’t guilty of anything.

“It wouldn’t have been wise to have you meet Princess Lulu under those circumstances. And it wouldn’t have looked good on Yašm for imprisoning a witch when you weren’t responsible for those cases, Rose. I’m sorry for putting you through something scary because of that.”

“I see… Well, I resent the last reason, but I will let it pass.”

If what Harij had said was true, then Yašm let them leave the tower because he believed Rose was innocent.

“Besides, without the queen’s permission, you can’t even come close to this forest, much less enter it. I let down my guard because most people avoid the area due to its shady history, but I should have guessed Princess Lulu wouldn’t mind that. I forgot how much she loves things like this.”

“She’s full of curiosity, isn’t she?”

“She’s usually very mild-mannered for her age and is incredibly easy to get along with, but…when it comes to witches, she—”

She’s prejudiced against witches? Rose reached that conclusion relatively easy. She thought back to the contempt Yašm showed her when they first met.

“My, my, my… Harij, this just won’t do. You must always lend your hand to a lady. A knight must be a gentleman in all things.”

She had descended the tower awfully fast. The out-of-breath princess walked toward them. Rose stood with Harij’s help and removed her robe.

“It’s better if we hide the fact I’m a witch from her, right?”

“I’m sorry for putting you through this. That’s a big help.”

Rose literally stripped herself of her robe to lend Yašm a hand. She hid it under the brush and stepped out from behind the trees. The princess looked astonished to see Rose with her light-pink locks cascading over her everyday dress.

“…Wha?!”

“…Oh?”

The princess stilled when she saw Rose, and Rose did the same seeing her. The two girls froze like statues as they stared at each other.

“…Is something wrong?” Harij asked, worried that Rose couldn’t even hide her shock. Rose regained her senses with a gasp and took another look at the princess’s face.

Lulu’s appearance looked far younger than her commanding voice suggested. Rose thought she would be a little older from how she spoke, but she appeared to be around ten. And just like Billaura, she was a stunningly beautiful girl. Her milky-white hair shimmered like a pearl, and her long eyelashes of the same color framed her grass-green eyes. Her petite, round nose accentuated her youthful charm. Her rose-colored cheeks looked soft to the touch.

Rose understood why Yašm struggled to keep her in check. Surely no one could bear to refuse Lulu if she asked for something with that angelic smile of hers.

Yes, Rose felt the same exact way the last time she was faced with this girl.

“You’re—”

“L-L-L-L-Lady Witch!”

The princess was the girl who had fallen into the hunter’s pit. Comb out her messy hair, change her out of those muddy clothes, and return her dignity, and you have the exact same girl.

Lulu suddenly switched from confidently strolling toward them with an old maid trailing behind her to hiking up her skirt and racing at the speed of light in Rose’s direction.

“Wh-Why…today…are you in a place like this?! Why didn’t I? Go? Pick you up…?!”

She had spoken with such elegance earlier, but now she fumbled with her words like a toddler just learning to speak.

“…What’s going on here, Rose? Why does Princess Lulu know you are a witch?”

The princess knew this at first glance, even though Rose had taken off the robe that identified her as such. She knew because Rose had introduced herself to the princess as a witch without her robe on before.

“Um…”

Rose didn’t know where to start. At any rate, she didn’t need to bring up those love letters. If she had been the writer, she would never, EVER want those getting out.

“You…love them…that much…?” Yašm panted out after racing his way down the tower and to Lulu’s side.

“Obviously! Aahhh! It’s like a dream to be in your presence again… I couldn’t leave the palace thanks to my brother here, which must have made me seem so ungrateful, Lady Witch…”

“No way! Please tell me you didn’t go to see this witch on your own!”

“You aren’t one to speak when you seem to be acquainted with her yourself, Brother. You big fat meanie! You knew how much I longed to meet the lady witch you prevented me from seeing!”

Rose also knew exactly how much she yearned for this meeting. In Lulu’s sixth letter, she had detailed in four pages just how much she loved witches and how much their encounter meant to her.

In another letter, Lulu explained that she had fallen in love with witches because she had read and reread books written about them. She spoke about the many archives her family had on witches. That made much more sense now that Rose knew she was a member of the royal family. Any kingdom that lived alongside a witch needed to know about them.

“Ugh. I know, I know! You can stop now. You have already told me about it over and over and over and over again so many times that the blisters that formed on my ears the first hundred times have popped and reformed! I’m sick of hearing about witches!”

Apparently, Yašm’s hatred of witches could be attributed to his sister Lulu. There’s something excruciating about being forced to endlessly listen to something you aren’t interested in.

“O-Oh, that reminds me! Lady Witch, won’t you please take a brief look at the potion I failed to show you last time?!” Lulu requested with flushed cheeks as she undid her dress collar and plunged her hand inside. She didn’t seem to care that everyone was gawking at her in abject horror. Cheeks stained crimson, she pulled out a necklace and the item attached to its chain from her dress.

Yašm’s eyes peeled open when he saw what she had retrieved.

“Wha?!”

Lulu held it out to Rose before Yašm could stop her.

“Um…won’t you please look at this? It’s my attempt at replicating your Witch’s Love Potion!” she confessed in a voice that was all too innocent.

What she held out was a small bottle on a chain. Curiously enough, it was identical to the bottle Rose inspected in the tower.

Yašm flew into action. He grabbed Lulu’s hand and dragged her into the tower faster than lightning. Sensing their prince’s intent, Harij and the other knights followed him inside, confirmed no one else was around, and shut the door behind them. Then locked it tight so no one could enter.

“…LULU!”

“Eek! Y-Yes?!”

Lulu’s eyes were swimming with confusion from the abrupt change in her brother. Yašm was likely always the sweet older brother to her. She must’ve been startled by the impatience and anger she saw on his taut face.

“B-Brother? Whatever is the matter? You are scaring me…”

“You! What…did you just say you made?!”

“The Witch’s Love Potion.”

Yašm brought the bottle he snatched from Lulu to Rose. He slowly held it out to her as she grimly stared at it in his hand.

“Witch, is this the same as the one I showed you?”

“Let me check.”

Rose graciously accepted the bottle and popped the cork the same way she had earlier. The smell confirmed it—Rose gave a firm nod.

“It’s the same.”

Rose’s answer nearly caused Yašm to faint on the spot. His face was bluer than the sky and whiter than the clouds.

“Wh-Whatever is the matter, Brother?” Lulu rushed to his side, worried sick.

“Why…why would you make such a thing…?”

“It was so mesmerizing and delightful when I was shown the original…I just had to try replicating it myself…”

“I want to imitate what I like.” “I want to make what I like.” Those are ordinary feelings everyone has at some point in their life.

“Who… Who dared to show you something like the witches’ secret potions?!”

“Who, you ask? You must keep this a secret between us, all right? It was Big Sister Billaura.”

“…Did you say…Laura?!”

The unexpected name brought Yašm to his knees this time. He fell back on his butt and hung his head.

“Big Sister Laura showed me, saying it’s her magical charm, because she knows how much I love witches. I was thrilled…and I wanted to show it off after I succeeded in making a good imitation… All my friends said they wanted one when they saw.”

It was easy to guess what happened from there. The relatives of those girls who had received Lulu’s homemade “Witch’s Love Potion” in secret likely confiscated the bottle, mistaking it for the real thing, and then used it to bend others to their desires.

Rose didn’t think it was inappropriate for the group of young girls to keep the adorable bottle filled with their friend’s attempt at imitating the witch she so admired. The same couldn’t be said for the adults.

“This is no good. No good. No good. This is no good, Harij.” Yašm clutched at his head as he crouched on the floor.

“Yeah, it’s bad.”

“It’s bad, isn’t it?! Really, really bad, yeah? We can never let word get out that the royal family was responsible for this…”

“Just don’t get any bright ideas about pinning the crime on Rose. I will never forgive you if you do.”

“Hariiij!” Yašm moaned pathetically. From that, it was easy to tell he had every intention of framing Rose. She glared at him through narrowed eyes.

“What is troubling you, Brother?” Lulu asked, staring at her sibling as if his behavior baffled her.

Upon hearing the absolute innocence in her voice, Yašm held his tongue. But his silence lasted only a fleeting moment. Resigned to the fallout to come, he looked straight into those grass-green eyes and gave her the cold, hard truth.

“Lulu…the potion you made caused six people to fall ill.”

“…Oh no! That can’t be true…,” Lulu gasped. A dark cloud fell over her face, which had beamed with pure delight after reuniting with the Witch.

“Fortunately, everyone has recovered. There haven’t been any noted aftereffects to date, either.”

“What a relief… But I never meant to hurt anyone…”

The old maid standing behind Lulu rubbed the princess’s back. Lulu’s voice grew hoarse as she was struck with the gravity of the situation.

“…Witch.” Yašm rose to his feet, his eyebrows furrowed together, and his lips flattened into a straight line. Then he stood before Rose, his expression pained. “I apologize for the rudeness I have shown you… But how could this happen? It’s just a fake made by a child imitating the real thing… So why?”

In response to Yašm’s grief, Rose looked at the potion bottle.

“It certainly is strange.”

She held up the bottle toward the shaft of light streaming in through the window. Nothing seemed amiss even under the sunlight.

Indeed…this “Witch’s Love Potion” was practically the real thing.

“This potion…was made using magic.”

While the potion contained within was incomplete and unrefined, it was a witch’s secret potion through and through. It wasn’t just colored water imitating the smell and color of the real deal.

Lulu, who was still crushed by the truth, slowly raised her head at Rose’s remark.

Rose walked right up to the girl, who was leaning on her maid for support. The witch grabbed Lulu’s cheeks and pulled them violently to the right and left.

The center of Lulu’s grass-green eyes sparkled.

“What are you—”

“Princess.” Rose looked directly into Lulu’s eyes and firmly declared, “You are a witch.”

Silence dominated the room for a brief moment.

Yašm broke the silence first.

“Witch! Have you lost your mind?!”

“Please don’t shout.”

“On what grounds do you base your claim that Lulu is a witch?!”

“I cannot view her as anything other than a witch after she successfully created a real love potion by imitating one of the witches’ secret potions.”

It was hard to believe, but Rose was convinced Princess Lulu was a witch.

What startled Rose the most when she smelled this potion, which she thought was a fake but turned out to be genuine, was that it had the same exact scent as the love potion she gave Billaura.

Only a handful of people would be capable of getting a glimpse at the witch’s secret potion Billaura secretly had on her. It wouldn’t be strange for there to be only one person in the whole world she would show it to.

“Are you certain Princess Lulu is the queen’s daughter?”

“You are stepping out of line with that question, Witch!”

“If you don’t want the insight of a witch, you should have said so from the start. I will politely refrain from speaking further on the topic.”

Rose was the only person present who understood witches. If he wanted to know the truth about Lulu, he needed to answer her questions.

“…Lulu and I share the same mother. And I often hear Lulu looks just like my aunt did at her age. We undeniably share the same blood.”

“Then it must have been an ancestor. I can’t say how long ago it happened, but it’s safe to say the blood of a witch mixed into the lineage of either Marjan’s king or queen somewhere along the way.” Rose turned from Yašm to Lulu. “Princess, did your books explain how to make this potion?”

“N-No. They mostly only covered the ingredients…”

“You managed to make a potion of this quality with just that knowledge?”

Rose was impressed. Details describing how to apply magic—the most crucial part of any witch’s potion—weren’t likely found in any book.

Witches were raised by other witches. Rose was astonished, for she had believed that the natural order of things. Was it really possible for a girl with no self-awareness that she was a witch, raised by people who knew nothing of her powers, to become a witch?

Whatever doubts Rose had were sidelined by the fact that Lulu had successfully created a genuine witch’s secret potion—without a teacher, completed recipe, or reliable textbook.

Rose could feel her incredible potential. If Lulu chose to live as a witch, she would surely become a great one not even Rose could compare with.

The royal family possessed a unique lineage to begin with. Each generation was made up of the most elite people in the kingdom uniting their families. No doubt there had never been a witch with a superior pedigree in all the land.

“Did the books mention anything about how you are supposed to give the love potion?”

“No… Most of the books about witches in the royal palace are about the witches themselves.”

In other words, Lulu didn’t even know how to administer the love potions. The six nobles likely collapsed because Lulu’s potion was the real thing. That was the same symptom Harij had experienced close to a year ago when he had to be carried to her hermitage—a symptom caused by incomplete magic. It was a type of magic poisoning resulting from not ingesting the user’s fluids. The magic that has nowhere to go is trapped inside the body, and the symptoms disappear with the effects of the magic.

“I highly doubt the princess will be tried for her crimes if you officially announce she’s a witch.”

A witch was different from a normal person, a witch was different from a country, and a witch was different from the law.

Witches weren’t protected by the law, and in return, they didn’t have any obligation to abide by the law of man. It was unheard of for a princess to be a witch, but she wouldn’t be punished if she professed to be one.

Yašm outright rejected the idea. “We could never allow that. Even if Lulu has the witch’s blood flowing through her veins, she also has the king’s blood in her. The fact that Lulu is a witch must be kept secret for the future of the kingdom!” Then he turned on Lulu and sternly told her, “You have to be punished. You understand that, right?”

Yašm’s voice petered off into a hoarse whisper, losing its authority and strength from moments before. He probably had no idea how to handle the situation after learning about what his beloved little sister had done.

“…Yes.” Lulu acknowledged her wrongdoing and was willing to accept the punishment that came with it. After a slight pause, she weakly muttered, “But…”

“What is it?”

“I have…a favor to ask of you.”

“Tell me.”

“…Please just don’t tell Big Sister Lauraaa…”

Everyone present gasped in surprise. The girl’s request was just that innocent and pitiful. Tears spilled over from Lulu’s eyes as if the dam holding them in had finally broken. Though she had managed to keep herself together until now, her face crumpled, and she sobbed. No matter how hard she tried to stop her tears, she seemed incapable of controlling her emotions once they were set loose.

She was probably filled with unending remorse over transforming her beloved older sister’s goodwill gesture into an unforgivable crime.

Tears flowed endlessly from Lulu’s grass-green eyes. Lulu, the girl who admired witches so much, who wanted to be just like them, had studied fervently on her own until she produced the Witch’s Love Potion.

No matter how much someone loves something, some just can’t put in the work or time for it. No matter how hard someone tries, some are just not talented enough to achieve it.

Lulu miraculously had both of those things going for her, and yet it was being born into the royal family that severed her future as a witch. Now she would never be able to go near the thing she loved with all her heart and had turned into her only hobby.

Rose squeezed the Witch’s Love Potion bottle in her hand and looked at Lulu.

“…May I call you Princess Lulu?”

“Y-Yes! Er, no, um, please call me Luu instead!”

“Very well. Luu, then.”

Lulu’s admiration for Rose hadn’t changed one bit despite the predicament she found herself in because of magic. Rose bent down to eye level with Lulu and nodded.

“I turned you down before, but I will take you on as my apprentice.”

“…Eh?”

“I may not be the best teacher, but I hope you will have me.”

Rose bowed her head. As if taken by complete surprise, Lulu stared long and hard at Rose’s cascading pink tresses. A twinkle unrelated to her tears glistened in those grassy eyes.

“Wait, wait, wait! Stop right there. What the heck happened in the past few seconds for you to say that? I never gave permission for Lulu to become a witch!”

“I heard your decision. This is my decision as an elder witch.”

Rose pulled Lulu against her chest and wrapped her arms around her shoulder to protect her from Yašm.

Lulu let out a tiny cry: “Hyaaaah.”

Rose was elated. Of course she would be—this was her first time seeing another witch who wasn’t her grandmother.

This new witch was talented, motivated in every way, and terribly isolated. Rose gained a desire to protect her as an elder like she had never felt toward anything before in her life.

“Mr.…Yašm?”

“Call me Prince.”

“Little Yašm.”

“L-Little?!”

“I am saying I will let you push the blame for this incident on me as you were hoping to do. Be grateful, boy.”

Rose was a witch. Witches guided inexperienced, younger witches.

Yašm stared at Rose with wide eyes. Rose quietly averted her gaze from Harij’s scowl and hugged her apprentice’s head.

I’m not used to this kind of thing. It’s not in my character to help others. But if this will stop my new apprentice and my friend—really more of an acquaintance—who married into a distant kingdom from crying, then I am content, Rose thought.

“Just this once, you hear?”