Don't Touch Me
Today, just as I had the day before, I spent time alone with Charlotte, sketching out plans for our future together.
For the past several days Lirith, Grace, and Emma had kept inserting themselves into every conversation, so the two of us had never managed a private word.
I suspected the constant interruptions came from a lingering sense of being left out—after all, the moment I recovered from my episode I had immediately proposed to Charlotte. Still, once a little time had passed they seemed to take the hint and graciously stepped aside so Charlotte and I could have the evening to ourselves.
And so, after another warm, intimate stretch of hours with her, I returned to my room in high spirits and settled in to sleep.
However.
Wreeeeeng!!
KABOOOOOM!!!
The shrill blare of the magical alarm and the thunder of explosions ripped me awake.
These sounds… don’t tell me…
They were identical to that night.
The night Lee Hye-yeong—that insane bitch—had torn through our mansion in a frenzy.
I knew the alarms installed throughout the estate only triggered when they detected a certain threshold of mana. Ordinary training or household magic would never set them off. And it was far too late at night for either of those.
Either we were under large-scale magical assault, or a host of enemies was pouring in… or, just like that night, a powerhouse of considerable strength was unleashing mana, and the wards had registered the anomaly.
In nearly twenty years of this life spent inside these walls the alarm had never once sounded. The first person to make it scream had been Lee Hye-yeong.
So the only person capable of setting it off again…
Had she come back for me? Had she stormed the mansion once more?
I needed to grasp the situation at once. If she had grown stronger and returned—
We were finished.
I had not yet married Charlotte; the Imperial family and the Grand Ducal house had not yet properly joined forces. I had never imagined she would reappear this soon.
Of course nothing ever went smoothly.
Still, nothing was certain. I opened the door to find out exactly what was happening.
And there they were.
“Young Master… / Young Lord…”
Grace and Emma stood guard outside my room. Where I was thrown into confusion by the sudden chaos, their faces showed no real panic. The fact that they remained composed while the alarm howled and explosions shook the walls meant they already knew the cause.
So I demanded an explanation.
“What the hell is going on? Is it an intruder!?”
“Young Master, please calm down first!”
Emma offered no answer, only tried to soothe me. Did my expression look that terrible? Of course it did.
“No—how am I supposed to calm down when the alarm is screaming like this!”
“Th-that’s…”
Even when I raised my voice and asked again, neither of them spoke.
“Don’t tell me… that bitch has come?”
I had prayed it wasn’t so. Yet it seemed Lee Hye-yeong, that madwoman, had finally tracked me down again.
No. I wasn’t ready. Had she somehow learned I was marrying Charlotte? Was that why she had returned so soon?
“Huff… huff…”
My breath locked in my throat. At a moment like this I needed to follow Emma’s advice and stay calm… I had thought promising myself to Charlotte had let me overcome the fear and grasp a little hope, but the mere idea that the bitch had come back plunged me straight into panic.
Seeing my sudden collapse, Grace spoke urgently.
“Young Lord! There is no need to fear. If you mean the Hero—it is not her!”
“Huff… it’s not that bitch?”
“Yes. So please compose yourself.”
Grace had understood exactly whom I meant by “that bitch” and gently reassured me that Lee Hye-yeong had not appeared.
“Then why is the alarm going off this loudly? And I clearly heard something explode just now…”
Was there some other lunatic who would rampage through the Frigid Grand Ducal mansion? It wasn’t only the alarm. An explosion had definitely sounded. A blast of that magnitude meant a clash on the same scale as the night Grace and Lee Hye-yeong had traded blows.
“Th-that’s…”
“Young Master, please go back inside for now…”
“Why do you keep refusing to answer me!”
If it wasn’t the Hero, they could simply tell me the cause, couldn’t they? Any other intruder we could handle without trouble.
“Are you absolutely certain that bitch hasn’t broken in? If you keep hiding it from me I’m really going to lose it!”
Were they lying just to keep me calm? I didn’t need that kind of lie. I snapped at them to tell me the truth right now.
“I-it’s because of the Young Lady.”
Emma’s answer lay completely outside anything I had imagined.
“Wh-what? Because of Big Sister? What are you talking about?”
What did that even mean? The source of this uproar was Lirith?
KABOOOOOOOM!!
Before I could even sort my thoughts another enormous explosion tore through the night.
“Then that means Big Sister is fighting someone! She’s in danger!”
That boom was the sound of Aura colliding with Aura. I had first heard it that night, and because Lee Hye-yeong had made such a spectacle of herself it was a sound I could never forget even if I wanted to. When Aura clashed hard enough to produce a detonation this loud, it meant Lirith was locked in a ferocious battle with someone…
There was no way she could be unharmed while fighting with that much noise. Of course Lirith was the next head of the Frigid Grand Ducal house and far from weak—but what kind of little brother would simply sit in his room and wait while his sister fought for her life?
“You mustn’t, Young Lord!”
“Grace, why are you stopping me? Come to think of it, why are you even here? Go help Big Sister right now!…”
Why did they keep telling me only to calm down and keep holding me back? What were they doing standing here? Lirith could be hurt!
I could not understand their behavior at all.
And what Grace said next made even less sense.
“…Her Grace is subduing the Young Lady.”
“Wh-what…?”
“The Young Lady has gone berserk, and Her Grace is restraining her…”
“No—why would Big Sister go berserk…?”
Camilla… no, Mother was subduing Lirith? Lirith had gone berserk? What on earth did that mean?
“We’ll explain later… Young Master, please just stay in your room for now…”
To my stunned face Emma and Grace still only repeated that I should go inside and wait.
“Young Master!”
“Young Lord, back inside for now!…”
“No.”
There was no chance I would obey the two who kept insisting I calm down and wait in my room. A mother-daughter clash between Camilla and Lirith—what in the world was happening?
Ordinarily Lirith only ever raised her voice to Mother when the matter concerned me. In every other respect, from childhood onward she had never once talked back to Camilla, who had raised her with iron strictness. For that same Lirith to go berserk and fight Camilla… it had to be about me. I couldn’t be certain, yet my instincts screamed it.
That was why I was already heading toward the source of the explosions. Grace and Emma tried to seize me by force and stop me.
So I—
Whoosh!
—roughly struck their hands away and snarled a warning.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Young Master…”
“Young Lord…”
KABOOOOOOOOOM!!!
Just from the fresh explosion it was obvious the situation was a complete disaster. And they wanted me to sit quietly in my room? Camilla or Lirith could be injured; I had to intervene. Even in a world where women were overwhelmingly strong, this was no ordinary mother-daughter quarrel that could simply be ignored. That was why I had no choice but to answer their restraint with ice.
At my cold reaction both of them looked lost and flustered. I knew they were only acting out of worry for me, and I felt a twinge of guilt, but—
KABOOOOOOOOOM!!!
—combat of this intensity would not have been out of place in a life-or-death duel!
Just as I was about to leave the two of them behind and move again, a voice called my name.
“Edward!!”
The speaker was Charlotte, who, like me, had been driven out into the corridor by the sudden midnight uproar.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m going to check as well.”
“Young Lord, you mustn’t! Your Highness, please stop him!”
“Your Highness, please restrain the Young Master!”
When I refused to yield, Grace and Emma turned to Charlotte and begged her to hold me back.
“Huh? Stop Edward… Ah!…”
Charlotte looked startled by the request, yet she quickly grasped that I was trying to walk into danger and began to bar my way.
“Um, Edward? Going toward that noise looks dangerous. It would be better if you stayed here.”
“No. I absolutely have to go, Charlotte.”
“Edward? Then at least let me come with you…”
Perhaps because my tone left no room for argument, Charlotte did not try to persuade me the way the other two had; instead she prepared to accompany me. Emma immediately cried out to stop her.
“The Head of the House and the Young Lady are fighting! You cannot let him go!”
“What? What do you mean? No… wait… I never imagined it would be this bad… Lady Lirith… Hoo…”
Charlotte was shocked by Emma’s words, yet something seemed to click; she murmured Lirith’s name under her breath and let out a long, heavy sigh.
Then—
“Edward, as they say… it really would be better if you didn’t go…”
“I have to go. Please don’t stop me, Charlotte.”
“You can’t, Edward!”
Charlotte, just like the others, tried once more to hold me back. I kept saying I had to go—why did everyone keep doing this? There was no way I could simply stand still in a situation like this. I had already lost count of how many times I had repeated the same words.
Charlotte planted both arms across the corridor that led to Camilla’s study—the source of the noise—and looked determined never to let me pass.
“Ah… seriously.”
“E-Edward?”
Whoosh!
Exactly as I had done to the two who tried to stop me earlier, I swept Charlotte’s arms aside. She clearly had never imagined I would push her so roughly; her eyes flew wide and she called my name in shock. But I could not afford to waste another second here.
“Charlotte… no, Your Highness—I’m sorry. I really must go.”
I apologized for the rudeness and started walking again.
“Edward!!”
“Young Master!!”
“Young Lord!!”
I ignored their cries and kept moving toward the sound.
I had to know.
I had to know why my big sister was doing this.