So We Hold Hands Like This
Celine's letter to Sabre left the Kalista Mansion tucked carefully into the breast of the aide most trusted by Prince Michael — an officer of the 1st Knight Order.
Michael himself had guaranteed its removal and entrusted the escort to his own confidant, so even if cunning central nobles or imperial informants intercepted the letter for inspection along the way, they would not be able to scrutinize it for long.
And so, daily life returned to the mansion once more.
Enough time had passed since Michael took over the guard that I, from the perspective of someone now under that protection, could leave something of a midterm review.
While I was at it, then:
If the mansion under former Royal Guard Captain Botis had been a stifling, repulsive prison, the mansion under Michael's regime felt closer to a fortified castle.
Of course, in that we still could not come and go freely, it was no different from a prison.
But the nuance was different.
Where the walls Botis had raised were walls meant to cage us in and keep us from leaving, the walls Michael raised felt like walls meant to shut out external threats — to keep danger from coming and going.
Because from beyond those walls, arrows and spears might come flying at us at any moment.
They were days in which a strange sense of relief seeped through even the thorough principles and control.
But life inside that peaceful rampart did not last long.
A few days later, Michael returned from a brief trip to the palace and sought out the drawing room with a heavy expression.
Yuno, Lady Erpe, and I had gathered there for tea.
"......Tomorrow, a public execution is scheduled to take place in the Central Square."
Michael spoke without even sitting down, his voice stiff and rigid.
"An execution?"
Lady Erpe asked, puzzled.
"Botis...... the former Royal Guard Captain's execution."
"What?!"
I set my teacup down on the table with an involuntary clatter and shot back.
"An execution? No matter how much of a bastard he was, wasn't it just dereliction of duty and some thuggery inside the mansion?"
I hadn't thought he had committed a capital crime either.
Given Michael's temperament — strict to a fault about the codes of chivalry — I had figured the appropriate level of punishment would be something like stripping him of his knighthood, a dishonorable discharge, or exile to the frontier.
"I anticipated a stripping of rank myself, and submitted the charges to His Majesty accordingly."
Michael's fists clenched until the knuckles went white.
"But His Majesty...... the moment he received my report, ordered Botis's head cut off."
Lady Erpe covered her mouth with her hand, as if she could not believe it.
"Even so...... the Royal Guard Captain, executed? And Botis comes from one of Valerium's prominent houses, does he not?"
Botis's family was a power that had roots in the Benfisto region — the old name of what was now the capital, Valerium — and had guarded the royal house as the Valerian Kingdom expanded by absorbing surrounding territories over the ages.
The so-called Benfist Faction.
"Even if he truly had been judged guilty of a death-worthy crime, the Benfist nobles would not have sat quietly by."
"......Just as you say, my lady. They pushed back. But Father crushed the opposition."
Doubt clouded Michael's eyes.
Lady Erpe slowly stroked her teacup, trying to read the Emperor's intent.
"Of the Emperor's designs, there is only one we can parse at once."
She lifted her gaze toward Michael.
"It is to lend weight to Your Highness's choice."
"......"
"This is a criminal the heir himself denounced. And that criminal belongs to the Benfist Faction. His Majesty has used Your Highness's accusation as pretext to break the spirit of the established power brokers who might dare challenge the imperial authority...... and at the same time to burn into the eyes of the entire realm that Your Highness's authority stands above any faction."
Michael's head hung low.
He had already reached this cruel political reading on his own.
"......I cannot find peace of mind."
Michael confessed in a choked voice.
"Law and discipline have been carried out exactly as I wanted, and an evil man has been punished — the ideal result has been produced...... and yet I cannot erase this foul, nauseating feeling. That my justice has been twisted and used...."
The pure idealism of an upright knight, reduced to a tool in a power struggle — and the disgust that came with it.
I watched the still-stiff prince's torment in silence and felt a flicker of sympathy.
And then.
"And...... there is one more of His Majesty's commands I must convey."
Michael raised his head and looked straight at me.
"For the public execution of Botis to be held in the Central Square...... Sir Lassen. You have been named as the executioner."
"......What?"
What did he just say?
"Why? Why me of all people......!"
I shot up from my seat, shouting in panic.
"I do not know the precise reason either. It is simply Father's command. I am to stand on the platform and publicly announce Botis's crimes...... and you, Sir Lassen, are to stand beside me and cut the man's head off yourself. Someone from the palace will come for you early tomorrow morning."
In a near-frenzied state, I lifted the thick bundle of bandages wrapped around my right hand.
"No — look at the state of me! My bones are pulverized from beating Botis. I can't even hold a fork. And with this hand you want me to take up an executioner's axe and cut a man's throat? Does that make any sense?!"
At my protest, Michael let out a deep sigh.
"I told His Majesty as much. That Sir Lassen's right hand was crushed and the execution would be impossible. But......"
Michael's brow twisted in pain.
"His Majesty...... dismissed it, saying you still have one perfectly good left hand remaining."
"......He ought to grow old gracefully...."
The blasphemous words slipped past my lips before I could stop them.
Michael flinched, but could not bring himself to reprimand me.
He, too, was sickened by his father's handling of the matter.
I sank back into my seat and stared down at my trembling left hand.
Why go out of his way...
I turned the Emperor's intent over in my inadequate head.
First, diverting attention....
Set me up as the man who assaulted Botis out of personal grudge, and redirect the Benfist Faction's fury away from the imperial house and Michael — onto Lassen, the Europian traitor.
Make that vast noble faction and me eternal enemies, so that I would spend the rest of my life clinging to the imperial family's coattails?
And if it's for amusement...
Force the execution with the unfamiliar left hand instead of the shattered right?
I would fail to take the head cleanly — would hack through living flesh and end up drenched in blood. That much was obvious.
Was the Emperor hoping to enjoy the spectacle of the former Holy Spear of Europia making a ridiculous spectacle of himself in the middle of the square?
Did he insist because he wanted me to kill Botis with my own hands?
Or had he already branded me the man who would kill Botis before the Benfist nobles — and figured he might as well enjoy the show while he was at it?
Either way.
There's no getting out of it....
My eyes drifted to Yuno, sitting beside me.
Naturally, by now.
The white fingers extending from beneath her splint were trembling.
Evening came before long, and Yuno and I stepped into the guest bedroom together.
As usual, I had half-peeled off my shirt and sat on the edge of the bed, practicing in the empty air how I was supposed to grip an axe with my left hand tomorrow.
"......Lassen."
Yuno called to me from the sofa, where she had been pulling on a robe.
"Yeah, what."
She spoke without looking at me.
"I had already heard...... that you personally executed Brother Jupiter."
My movement stopped.
"And...... that you failed to take the head in a single stroke — that you killed him with a short dagger, struggling and cruelly."
Something cold settled into a corner of my chest.
Well....
These past few days, we had weathered an assassin's attack together, endured Botis's petty tyranny, and grown comfortable enough with each other to trade jokes.
Perhaps, deep down, I had slipped into the pathetic, complacent delusion that we might actually manage to live like real spouses, or comrades.
Right.
No matter how thoroughly circumstance had locked us into one room, I was the traitor who had destroyed Europia.
I had cut off the head of Jupiter, Yuno's relative.
I had driven a blade through Uncle Chronos's heart.
I had killed her younger brother Hadeon as well.
I was her mortal enemy.
I forced the bitterness off my face and tried to answer in the most indifferent, cold voice I could manage.
"So. What — you're saying it's delicious, watching more blood stain the hands of your enemy? Cutting people down on a battlefield was my job anyw——"
"Are you all right......?"
Just as I was about to spit the barbed words, Yuno lifted her head and looked at me.
"About what...?"
Why....
Why is she crying...?
At me, her enemy — why....
"This time, too...... it is going to be a very hard stretch of time."
Yuno rose from her seat and came slowly toward me.
"I am asking whether your heart can bear it...... you, who will have to forcibly cut short a man's breath with an unfamiliar left hand."
She stood before me.
And she reached out with her uninjured right hand and gently took hold of my shirt collar.
Her fingers clenched the fabric so tightly they went white.
I was bewildered.
"......Why on earth would you worry about something like that."
Yuno's bloodless lips trembled.
"Because I...... killed my father that way as well."
"Ah...."
"When you cut a throat with a dagger..... the pain and terror of a life slowly going out — you feel it through your entire body..."
At last the tears spilled down her cheeks.
"It has only been a few days since I killed my father so hard...... and still, in my hand, that day's numbness remains. Not so much in the right hand that held the dagger and carved through my father...... but in this left hand, the one that had to clamp down on his thrashing head so he could not get away."
Yuno looked down at her own splinted left arm and sobbed.
"In this left hand that touched my father's cooling body heat and drying blood.... the sensation of that day still remains, and it aches so badly I could go mad. Even with the arm bone broken and a splint on it, it aches every night."
She lifted her head and met my eyes again.
"Lassen. Does your left hand...... ache now, too."
"......"
"That left hand of yours. The left hand that must lift the axe tomorrow...... I am afraid another nightmare will be added to it tomorrow. That is what worries me."
Why did you stop resenting me.....
As someone who carried the trauma of having to cut her own father's throat with her own hands.
She was equating her pain with mine — I who would have to carry out a brutal killing with an equally unfamiliar hand.
Why are you saying something like that to me....
A feeling no one else in the world could understand — one only the two of us could share.
Against all odds, a flower had bloomed on the cliff face.
A flower that would wither all too soon.
I stared blankly down at Yuno's tear-streaked face as she worried for me, then let out a hollow laugh along with—
"Haa...... honestly."
—a sigh.
I glanced back and forth between my heavily bandaged right hand and Yuno's splinted left arm and tossed out something rambling and aimless.
"Funny coincidence, isn't it."
"......What is."
"That we each hurt a different hand."
I lifted my good left hand and gently covered Yuno's right hand — the one still gripping my collar.
"No matter how wrecked we both are, we've each got one hand left that can still hold the other's. That's something."
A coincidence, I said.
At my sudden, ridiculous words, Yuno let out a small, incredulous laugh even through her tears.
"Pft...... You really. You must be afraid of tomorrow's execution, and uneasy. Judging by the nonsense you spit out in a moment like this."
"Well, if it shows, nothing I can do about it."
"Still...... I liked it a great deal."
Yuno eased her grip on my collar a fraction and let the warmth seep between our laced fingers.
"That way you put it just now. Being grateful that because we hurt different hands, we still have ones left that can meet."
With wet eyes, she offered me a faint smile.
"When another nightmare tries to soak into your good left hand tomorrow...... I am glad I still have a hand left that can hold on and endure with you."
Hearing Yuno's answer, a corner of my chest began to ache.
Did circumstance make people, or did people make circumstance?
Was it only because the Emperor had forced this grotesque situation of marriage upon us that Yuno opened her heart to me this far?
Or was her worry pure and genuine — human to human, two people who shared pain and trauma?
Just as Michael's ideals had been twisted, our sincerity could not escape being twisted either.
But......
In this moment, the body heat coming through the palm clamped tight around my hand—
Even if we were mortal enemies with a ruined homeland standing between us.
Even if tomorrow morning in the square my left hand would ache and another nightmare would be added.
So we, right now—
hold hands like this.
Even as enemies.
With the one uninjured hand each of us has left, we lean into each other's warmth and endure the night together.