——Originally, my mother was a commoner.
However, her extraordinary abilities as a saint were discovered, and she was adopted into the Count Peiz family along with her younger sister, the Duchess Sutherland, and later married into the king as an aristocrat.
Therefore, what drastically changed my mother's life, and changed her way of living, was the single fact of being a saint—it was for this reason that my mother was so adamant about being an excellent saint.
She understood better than anyone that being an excellent saint would save her mother, protect her future mother, and earn her the admiration and respect of many citizens.
It seemed that my mother and Colette were incompatible.
Colette had no desire to be respected as a saint or to attain a high position; she was the kind of woman who simply wanted to become an excellent saint so that she could heal my injuries and illnesses.
As a result, she did not have the strong ambition to succeed my mother and was never able to become a saint and follow in my mother's footsteps.
For this reason—coupled with the low level of Colette's original saintly abilities, my mother never accepted Colette, and deemed her unfit to be the next First-ranked Saint.
Naturally, I didn't just sit around and do nothing. I tried to get involved in various areas to help Colette become First-ranked Saint...but at some point, I no longer had the time for that.
This was because Colette's health began to visibly deteriorate around the time she became an adult at the age of 15.
Her once healthy skin turned pale, and she began to look down more and more often, clutching her chest in pain.
Colette was someone who rarely ever said things like "it's tough" or "it's painful."
Instead, she remained silent and tried to endure until the very last moment, when she suddenly collapsed unable to bear it any longer.
One day, when she was visiting the royal castle, she collapsed right in front of me.
I was shocked and had Colette examined by the Holy Maiden and the doctor who lived in the royal castle, but they couldn't find anything wrong with her.
If it's an injury, it would bleed, so the area to be treated would be obvious.
However, when it came to illness, it was difficult to identify the area to treat, and in many cases, it was not clear what was wrong.
Therefore, the saints would cast healing magic over the entire body of the patient, but no matter how much magic they cast on Colette, she showed no signs of recovery.
And the sensitive saints all agreed that casting healing magic on Colette had no effect.
Therefore, it was determined that Colette's condition was not due to illness, but rather due to physical condition.
However... Colette's condition seemed to be getting worse and worse.
Thinking back, although her poor health had become more noticeable recently, it seemed that the beginning of her illness coincided with the time when she became a aaint.
If that was the case, I began to worry that maybe she was straining herself in order to stand next to me.
So I asked Colette directly, but she didn't seem to understand the cause of her poor health and just shook her head.
Then, when Colette was 16 years old, an incident occurred.
At that time, she was feeling unwell for about half the month and spent her days confined to bed.
However, she seemed to be in a good mood that day, which was unusual for her, so she went out to town with me secretly.
Colette dressed up like a town girl and we walked around town holding hands, dressed in commoner's clothes.
Although Colette was the daughter of a duke, she didn't mind mixing with commoners, and she loved unusual and cheerful things, so she hoped that seeing these things around town would cheer her up, even if just a little.
"Oh, the flame of that candle is green! That's strange. Maybe it's a candle made out of leaves." (Colette)
"That's a very fantastic idea, but I think it's just a little adulterated to make it look green." (Laurence)
Even when I gave a boring, common-sense answer, Colette would just laugh and look for the next fun thing to do.
"Oh, there's a blue chick! It's a lucky chick! If I could get that chick, my cookies would never burn." (Colette)
"Do all the children of dukes think alike? The son of a duke I know had sparkling eyes and was looking for a blue chick in the same way... Though he was only five years old at the time." (Laurence)
At that moment, the conversation reminded me of Cyril and my heart ached, but I pretended to be calm and acted as if nothing had happened.
This was because just two weeks prior, Cyril had lost both of her parents, one after the other.
Despite this, he had been staying in a neighboring country with Savis for the past month and had not been able to attend his parents' funeral or pray at their graves.
The information I could read from the reports circulated to me was nothing more than a string of disembodied words, but they still conveyed the dire situation at Sutherland.
The Duchess of Sutherland, who took great pride in her role as a saint, the Duke of Sutherland, who tried to protect her at all costs, and the residents had come into conflict in the worst possible way.
Cyril usually treated his father with respect and courtesy, like a superior officer who should be obeyed, and his mother like a superior saint who should be revered.
However, on the other hand, they were aware that they were a family that had lived in the same house since they were born, and there must have been a love for family at the root of it all.
Therefore, the grief of losing both parents at the same time must be deep.
As I was thinking about Cyril's feelings and feeling aggrieved, I saw a familiar blue-silver hair in the crowd.
Therefore, I muttered, wondering what was going on.
"Colette, it looks like your brother has come looking for us." (Laurence)
At the same time that Colette looked up at the sound of my voice, her older brother, Duke Lloyd Alcott, appeared before me.