The Hand That Caught the Fist That Crushed the Assassin’s Face
What she’d done for me through the night was appreciated, of course.
I want to get up, but...
If I tried to spring up here, I’d probably break a bone again.
I was barely managing to keep my own body together; there was no way I could afford to shatter this woman’s bones all over again.
In the end, I gritted my teeth through the ache crawling along my back and carefully lifted my uninjured right hand, tapping Yuno lightly on the shoulder.
“Yuno. Wake up.”
“......Mm.”
At my call, Yuno frowned and slowly opened her eyes.
Her hair was a mess, disheveled from sleep. She hadn’t even managed to wash properly after tending to me all night, and fatigue clung to her face like grime. Half-lidding her eyes, she stared blankly into space, then murmured in a voice that sounded cracked dry.
“......Morning has come, has it.”
She looked more absent-minded than usual.
The sight of her made me snort with laughter before I could stop myself.
“You were whining that you couldn’t sleep unless you were in my arms, even though we’d agreed to sleep in separate rooms. And now look at you—sleeping so soundly you nearly dribbled all over your own chest.”
At my teasing, Yuno’s dull gaze suddenly sharpened.
Her ears turned red, and she tried to deny it clumsily.
“Who said I was sleeping...! I was merely keeping watch without closing my eyes, worried that you might overheat and die through the night, that is all... I-I mean. My eyelids merely grew heavy for a moment.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Thanks to your splendid all-night nursing, my eyes are wide open.”
I brushed off her excuse and, taking care not to jar my shoulder, shifted the splinted arm away and sat up.
“Anyway... is Lady Celine all right?”
As I rubbed my shoulder and asked, Yuno, who’d been standing awkwardly beside the bed, froze.
Her eyes narrowed, and a faintly sulky look bloomed across her face.
“......What a tearful display of paternal affection. From a man who didn’t even have a proper conversation with Lady Celine.”
“Huh?”
“Last night, in all that chaos, I was stopping the blood pouring from your back with my own hands soaked red. I even forgot the pain of my broken arm.”
Yuno fixed me with a pointed look.
“And yet the first thing out of your mouth after opening your eyes wasn’t a question about your wife’s arm? I truly have an extraordinary husband.”
I stared at her, dumbfounded.
Was she still half-asleep?
No, wait... is she pouting?
She was openly expressing her hurt because I’d asked after someone else before asking after her.
“......Hahaha!”
I couldn’t hold it in and burst out laughing.
My back wound tugged hard enough to draw a grimace between my brows, but I still couldn’t stop the laughter spilling out of me.
“Do you really have to make such a big deal out of it to feel satisfied? Fine. It was my mistake. Thank you so much for your care, my lady. And how is your broken arm, if I may ask?”
When I asked in an exaggerated, sly tone, Yuno coughed awkwardly and jerked her gaze away.
“......It is bearable. Compared to the hole in your back, it is no worse than a mosquito bite.”
Paradoxically, under the threat of assassination, our bond seemed to deepen.
But our brief laughter didn’t last long.
The sulk faded from Yuno’s face, and a heavy, serious shadow soon settled over it.
“As for your question... Lady Celine is unharmed. The cut on her hand is nothing more than a slight scratch. But, perhaps because of the shock from yesterday, she’s trembling and can’t bring herself to step out of her room.”
Yuno bit her lip hard.
“In front of that child’s eyes, you crushed a man’s face beyond recognition, pounding it into such a ruin that no shape remained... How deeply do you suppose that image has carved itself into a child’s mind? She’ll need treatment for a while.”
I, too, fell silent with a bitter taste in my mouth.
I had only been flailing to save my own life—and theirs—but the fact remained that my actions had left an indelible trauma on a child. There was no excuse for that.
“But right now, the truly serious problem is...”
Yuno turned toward me.
“It’ll be faster if you see it with your own eyes than if I explain it a hundred times.”
Supported by Yuno, I left the bedroom with only a light shirt thrown over my upper body, my torso wrapped in layers of bandages.
And the moment I stepped into the mansion’s corridor—
“......What the hell is all this.”
The corridor of the Calista mansion and its wide garden, a space where only a few quiet servants of Lady Erpe should have been moving about, was now packed full of armored soldiers.
They stood in perfect formation at every corner of the hallway, by every window, even beneath the garden wall, their hawk-sharp eyes sweeping the surroundings without missing a gap.
They were armed men bearing the insignia of the Valerian imperial household.
“It seems it came directly by the Emperor’s command,”
Yuno whispered beside me.
“After receiving word of last night’s disturbance, His Majesty personally dispatched a detachment of the Imperial Royal Guard—the empire’s finest force—to this mansion. Ostensibly, of course... for protection.”
Yuno turned her head and looked straight at me.
“The assassin from yesterday was just the pretext the imperial court used to forcibly pry open the gates of this private estate.”
The Emperor had not been content merely to confine me in this mansion.
He wanted to plant his own eyes and ears here, and seize control of even the breaths taken within these walls.
“The real surveillance has begun, Lassen.”
Yuno tightened her grip on my sleeve.
“On all of Calista House—on you and me, and on the blood relatives of Grand Duke Sabre... imperial surveillance.”
I stared blankly at the dozens of guards visible through the window.
The sunlight striking their armor made the mansion feel as if it were ringed by the iron bars of a colossal cage.
“......Ha.”
Looking at the manor sealed up under such tight watch, I let out a hollow laugh and muttered bitterly, “Well, at least no rats will be getting in... so I guess it’s safe.”
“Yes, it has become the safest fortress against enemies from outside.”
At the same time.
“And the most expensive prison in this empire.”
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Overnight, the Calista mansion had been transformed into a completely different place.
The Imperial Royal Guard, in dark armor marked with the Valerian imperial crest, had practically occupied the corridors, the garden, and even the space in front of the dining hall.
The one responsible for bringing those uninvited guests, Captain Botis of the Imperial Royal Guard, radiated the most arrogant, most unpleasant air of all.
If he were human.
He might have at least tried to hide it.
Instead, he flaunted his disgust openly.
“Hmph. So this is the grand duke’s main estate? I expected more. It’s embarrassingly modest.”
Rattling the sword hilt at his waist, Botis strode into the first-floor reception room of the mansion.
As a matter of course, Lady Erpe was the one to receive him.
“By His Majesty’s command, I am Botis, captain of the Imperial Royal Guard, and from today onward I will be in charge of guarding this Calista mansion.”
Botis announced it without even bowing to Lady Erpe.
“......Thank you for your hard work, Captain Botis. I can only be grateful for His Majesty’s deep benevolence.”
Lady Erpe clenched her skirt and hid the trembling of her hands as she struggled to maintain her composure.
The assassination attempt had left little Celine too shocked to leave her room, and now the Emperor’s blatant military interference had piled on top of that, pushing her mind and body to their limits.
“We are grateful for your protection, but this is still the private residence of a noble house. I would like to arrange the mansion’s rules so that the patrol routes and meal times of the Imperial Royal Guard do not overlap with the servants’ movements...”
“Hey! Squad Two, there!”
The moment Lady Erpe opened her mouth, calmly trying to draw a line around the mansion’s order, Botis whirled and shouted ostentatiously at his men passing down the corridor.
“Hold your ground and don’t let so much as an ant get anywhere near this mansion! The safety of this house moves only under His Majesty’s will and my orders. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!”
It was a command so obvious it would have been better not given at all.
It was nothing more than a show, tossed over Lady Erpe’s words without even listening, an order meant only to prove who truly held power inside this mansion now.
It was a petty little contest of egos, and a thoroughly deliberate one at that. Lady Erpe’s eyes trembled.
Only then did Botis turn back to her as though granting her a favor, smiling with shameless confidence.
“Ah, what was it the lady was saying? Please, don’t trouble yourself. As for our men’s lodging and meals, the Calista House can handle all of that.”
Watching him play at being an occupying force rather than the army that had come to protect them, Lady Erpe could only swallow a deep sigh.
The Guard’s blatant interference soon began tightening the noose around both me and Yuno as well.
Whenever I passed through the corridor, or took a walk in the garden, Botis would appear out of nowhere, bored and looking for amusement, and loiter in front of me.
“Oh, well, if it isn’t General Lassen—the great Holy Spear of Europia, or should I say the dog of Valerian who sold out his homeland?”
Every time he ran into me, Botis made no effort to hide his thinly veiled inferiority complex.
“General? The war’s over already, isn’t it?”
“Ha! A traitor like you truly sleeps warmly. No matter that you’re a prisoner of the defeated kingdom, to sleep every night under the blanket of a beautiful former queen... Your body is certainly living the good life for the price of betrayal. Your back must be begging for mercy by now.”
Even with Yuno standing beside me, he spat out filthy sarcasm riddled with sexual harassment without the slightest filter.
I could feel Yuno’s shoulders stiffen, but I kept my expression blank and only stared at Botis in silence.
I expected a man like this, but still...
I knew Botis’s nature all too well from the original novel.
He was the textbook definition of a bully who only preyed on the weak while groveling before the strong.
A man who always wrapped his behavior in grand justifications of righteousness, but in truth was intensely jealous of anyone with even the slightest superiority over him.
A man who could only feed his pitiful self-respect by latching onto someone else’s flaws or weak points and dragging them through the mud.
From his point of view, I must be a jar full of honey. It never runs dry—there’s always another flaw to lick at.
My accomplishments far surpassed Botis’s by a mile, but I was the traitor with labels plastered all over me.
Even if he openly despised and insulted me, no Valerian noble would ever defend me.
If anything, it would only make him look like a model of loyalty, so there was no easier target in the world for Botis to kick around.
I’d never expected anything from trash like him to begin with, so instead of being hurt, I simply dismissed him as no more than a buzzing fly and ignored him.
“......Ignore him.”
Yuno, standing beside me, gripped the hem of her dress tightly and murmured in a low voice.
As the former queen of a defeated kingdom, she was silently enduring the arrows of insult hurled at her from every side.
“As one who bears the shame of being a father-killer, the sneers of some lowborn man’s three inches of tongue are... bearable.”
I glanced at her pale profile and gave a quiet nod.
It’s tolerable if it’s just mouth running...
The real problem was that the mansion’s household and finances were falling apart, literally collapsing in real time.
The Imperial Royal Guard, supposedly the empire’s elite, had long since tossed aside anything resembling manners.
Using guard duty as their excuse, they drifted in and out of the kitchen day and night, blatantly helping themselves to premium ingredients and drinking the Calista family’s fine wine as if it were water.
What is this, a pigsty?
They also started barking at innocent servants for the state of the corridors, nitpicking every bit of cleaning, and making a point of causing trouble wherever they could.
Lady Erpe, the mistress of the house, was already too busy caring for Celine—who woke screaming night after night—to have the mental space to clean up this mess.
Even I and Yuno were starting to feel steam rise in our heads.
Hold it together... I have to hold it together.
I carved the character for endurance into my mind a hundred, a thousand times over.
But Botis tested the limits of my patience every single day.
The room Yuno had once been assigned still hadn’t gotten the blood out, because of the traces left behind when I’d fought for my life while smashing an assassin’s skull.
With no other choice, Yuno and I were still sharing my guest room—and my bed.
Click—bang!
“Ah, how rude of me. I do apologize for barging in!”
Late at night.
Just as Yuno and I were on the verge of falling asleep, the guest room door was shoved open roughly and that bastard Botis stormed in without warning.
Ha...
“Hold it together, Lassen...”
Yuno clamped down hard on my hand.
She caught the fist that had crushed the assassin’s face.