Husband and Wife, Just Like This
A dark bathroom door attached to Yuno’s bedroom slammed open roughly, and a masked assassin burst out.
An assassin?
This was the worst possible situation.
My arms were holding Yuno in a princess carry, which meant I couldn’t draw a weapon or block the attack.
And right at my feet, Celine was so frightened that she’d clung to my leg like a cicada, making it impossible for me to even take a step properly, let alone dodge.
If I try to move away right now, Yuno in my arms and Celine hanging onto my leg will both be badly hurt!
But if I didn’t move...
All three of us would die.
I had no choice.
Forget self-preservation. The people I had to protect were glued to my body.
“Ghk!”
Without hesitation, I forced one foot forward, twisted my body hard, and offered my back to the assassin’s blade.
I threw my own frame over Yuno and Celine, shielding them with my body.
Clang—!
“Ahh!”
The recoil from my violent turn sent Celine flying off my leg.
She also flung the cup of warm milk she’d been holding straight to the floor.
The glass shattered, sending fragments scattering everywhere.
And then—
Thud—!!
“K, ghk...”
The assassin’s sword punched through my broad back and sank deep between bone and muscle.
Don’t scream...!
Even if pain like a burning brand was slamming straight into my brain, I had to endure it.
Even if hot blood soaked the floor, I couldn’t look away.
That would only make the enemy happy.
I couldn’t fall.
Yuno was in my arms.
So, with the blade still lodged in my back, I bent my knees and tried my best to lower her to the floor as carefully as possible.
Crash!
But the pain tearing through my muscles and the force of the impact made it impossible to do gently; I ended up dropping Yuno hard to the floor instead.
“Ah—!”
Yuno rolled across the floor with a pained groan, but I had no time to check on her condition.
“You rat bastard...”
I clenched my teeth against the pain and, with both hands finally freed, seized the assassin’s blade with my bare palm as he tried to pull it out of my back.
Rip—!
I heard the skin on my palm tear, but I didn’t let go.
The assassin panicked and struggled to wrench the sword free.
Normally, I should have tried to subdue him alive and dig out the mastermind behind this.
Who sent him, why they had targeted us—those were the questions I was supposed to force out of his mouth.
That would have been the sensible thing to do.
But right now...
I didn’t have a single shred of reason left in me to ask about some hidden hand.
“Die, you son of a bitch!!”
With my blood-soaked bare hand clamped around the blade, I wrenched my body around and yanked the assassin violently toward me.
Then I raised my empty fist and started driving it down over his mask.
Thud!
Crack!
Pow!
Pow!
“Kuh! Ngh—!”
I smashed him without mercy, not caring whether I was caving in his throat, his nose, or his temple.
The pain in my back blurred my vision and blood seeped from my mouth, but I didn’t stop until he could no longer even remain conscious.
The sound of bones collapsing and brain matter bursting filled the room.
“Ra, Lassen...?”
Blinded by rage, I beat the assassin until his face was so pulverized it could no longer be called human, until he was completely dead and his breath had gone still.
Flop.
The assassin’s corpse collapsed to the floor in a heap of blood and pulp.
“Haah... haah... cough.”
Only then did I finally drag in ragged breaths and turn my staggering body to look around the room.
“...Ah.”
“Ghk...!”
Yuno, who had been flung to the floor like she’d been dropped, had fallen shoulder-first without being able to defend herself, and the poor arm that had just barely started knitting together was broken again.
She was biting her lip so hard it looked like it might split, writhing in pain.
And in the corner of the room—
“Ah... ah... hic!”
She hadn’t been burned, but when Celine had been thrown by my recoil, she’d stepped onto the shattered milk glass, and her small white palm had been cut deeply, red blood dripping down from it.
“Mi-Miss Celine... are you... all right...?”
Ignoring the pain in my back, I staggered toward the injured little girl and reached out to her, worried.
But—
“Sob... hic...”
Celine saw the assassin’s body with its face blown apart.
And more than that, she saw me, this monstrous thing staggering toward her with blood pouring down my back, my hands and face smeared with it.
The child was terrified all over again.
She dodged my outstretched hand and backed away with a face gone pale as paper.
My goodwill had created fear.
The moment I stopped my helplessly extended hand...
Rustle.
Yuno, dragging her broken arm behind her, crawled over through the blood and grabbed my rough hand tightly with her uninjured right one.
It was as if she were trying to hide my ruined hand from Celine’s frightened eyes.
Yuno frowned through the pain, her brow creased, and said to me in a trembling voice, urgent and sharp:
“You idiot... this isn’t the time to worry about other people. Worry about yourself first... You’re bleeding too much from your back...!”
“Ah...”
Slap.
The instant she finished speaking, my body, which had reached its limit, collapsed and fell to the floor.
That night.
The Calista Residence in the very heart of the capital, a place no one dared lay a hand on, was thrown completely into chaos by an assassin’s intrusion.
And the three people in Yuno’s room were hastily hauled away for treatment, each carrying their own deep wound: a broken arm, a slashed hand, and a massive stab wound driven into the back.
The life I had dreamed of living in peace at this estate had begun to crack.
* * *
In the imperial office of the Valerian palace, Valeran—the man who would become emperor—was leaning back in his chair, idly stroking his chin with a relaxed air.
Chancellor Morax was bent at the waist, reporting the commotion that had taken place at the Calista Residence the previous night.
“...Thus, an intruder entered the Calista Residence last night. It is presumed that the assassin was aiming for the fallen queen of Europia, but he was discovered by Lassen, who was nearby, and slain on the spot.”
Morax added one more point to his report.
“The killing was so brutal that the assassin’s facial bones were completely crushed into a pulp, making it impossible to identify him precisely. However, based on the remaining skeletal structure and traces left behind, it has been confirmed that the assassin was female.”
“Female, you say.”
A deep, satisfied smile spread across the mouth of King Valeran as he listened.
“Crushed until her face couldn’t even be recognized, hmm? That’s just like Europia’s Holy Spear. Those teeth are sharp enough to protect even the bones he’s been handed. No wonder he brought Europia straight to my feet.”
I didn’t expect him to crush her face himself.
King Valeran lifted the teacup on the table and rolled it slowly between his fingers.
The female assassin who had slipped into the Calista Residence the night before had been none other than a killer personally inserted by King Valeran himself.
Recently, in an effort to secure a line into the war hero Lassen and Grand Duke Sabre, the high nobles of the capital had been competing to send over visits and gifts to the Calista Residence.
It had not been difficult to take advantage of that opening and infiltrate an assassin.
A female killer disguised as a maid or a guard would have little trouble deceiving the strict mistress of the house, Lady Erpe, and slipping deep into the inner chambers.
“Your Majesty. However, even if the assassin’s identity remains unknown, if the Calista family begins to investigate the mastermind behind this...”
“Let them. Even if they dig, the tail has already been cut off.”
Valeran snorted.
He hadn’t sent anyone truly skilled.
He had never intended to kill Yuno for real.
Yuno was still a piece with plenty of value.
That was why Valeran had sent an assassin destined to fail.
“The Valerian Empire I will soon proclaim must remain a great empire that endures a thousand years in the history of this continent.”
A vast ambition burned in Valeran’s eyes.
“If I am to rule an empire that lasts a thousand years, then the first thing that must be established is a justification for force. I am to be emperor now. No matter how much Grand Duke Sabre gets on my nerves, if I send soldiers into a noble house and place it under surveillance without cause, I won’t be able to avoid the nobles’ backlash.”
Valeran drained his tea in a single swallow and smirked.
“But look at this. An unsavory assassin has invaded the residence where the queen, a gift from the empire, is staying. And she even slipped through the estate’s defenses. What an appalling and dangerous affair.”
Only then did understanding light in Morax’s eyes.
He had grasped the emperor’s sinister calculation.
“Ah...! Indeed. In order to protect the spoils Your Majesty has bestowed, strong imperial protection would be necessary.”
“Exactly. Dispatch the imperial guard to the Calista Residence at once. Their stated purpose will be nothing more than protecting the safety of the Calista ducal house.”
Legal surveillance, wrapped in the name of protection.
From now on, even the entry of a single ant into the Calista family, or a single letter sent out, would be placed squarely in the emperor’s palm.
Valeran, feeling pleased with himself as he issued his orders, suddenly stroked his chin again as he recalled one line from Morax’s report.
“However... there is one strange point.”
“What point does Your Majesty refer to?”
“According to Baron Eraf’s dispatch from Halo, Lassen and Yuno were clearly sharing a room and practically pressed against each other throughout the escort, were they not? Yet I’ve received intelligence that, from the moment they entered the capital residence... the two of them have been using separate rooms.”
Valeran frowned.
The emperor had ordered the marriage outright, and yet the moment they entered the mansion they started sleeping separately like monks.
“Perhaps... the influence of Lady Erpe, the mistress of the Calista Residence, was at work. If that fox of a woman noticed Your Majesty’s leniency, she likely advised Lassen to behave himself until the wedding was formally conducted.”
At Morax’s reasonable speculation, Valeran nodded as well.
But somewhere in the back of the old power-broker’s mind, a thoroughly vulgar and petty question was taking shape.
Still, no matter how much advice he was given, a man’s got the queen of Europia, supposedly a beauty, right beside him and he’s enduring night after night? Could Lassen be impotent? Or... is the queen just a pretty shell, a wooden doll with no charm at all to stir a man as a woman?
Valeran snickered as his imagination ran wild.
Then, all at once, a very provocative and useful piece clicked into place.
Lassen, the war hero celebrated for his vitality.
And Erpe Calista, the beautiful and intelligent lady of the house, left lonely for years while her husband, Grand Duke Sabre, wandered battlefields far from home.
Those two people were living under the same roof.
And on top of that, Lassen was even ignoring the young queen he had been formally gifted, sleeping in separate rooms instead.
...Yes. Now that’s a delicious rumor if I ever heard one.
Valeran’s lips twisted into something ugly.
“An illicit affair between General Lassen and Lady Erpe.”
“Pardon? Y-Your Majesty. What is this about...?”
“Merely something I imagined. But the crowd is always more thrilled by filth than by truth. If just one rumor wrapped in this sort of flashy language were quietly let loose in the capital... the morality of the common-born war hero Lassen would sink to the bottom, and the house of Grand Duke Sabre would be saddled with an unwashable disgrace.”
Valeran tucked that hideous, enticing rumor away deep inside his mind.
“I won’t unleash it now. But... should the day come when I need to tighten the leash around Sabre’s neck, there will be no sharper dagger than this.”
The emperor’s laughter made the candles in the office tremble uneasily.
* * *
“...Ugh.”
The moment I opened my eyes, a groan slipped through my lips.
The instant I tried to sit up and put strength into my muscles, a pain like a red-hot poker searing across my lower back slammed into me head-on.
It was the wound the assassin had driven deep into me with his sword the night before.
Fortunately, my muscles had been thick enough to avoid a fatal injury, and a competent physician from the imperial household had come to stitch the wound and stop the bleeding throughout the night, but there was no way the agony of metal tearing into flesh would disappear in a single evening.
“...Haah.”
I looked down at my chest and let out a helpless sigh.
Yuno’s left arm, splinted and bandaged, was resting squarely across my broad chest.
After treatment had ended the night before, she must have come over to my room, dragged a chair beside the bed where I was lying, and taken care of me there.
And then, unable to keep fighting off exhaustion, she had fallen asleep face-down with her broken arm still laid over my body.
Husband and wife, just like this.