I Will Not Be a Southern Lady's Dog
I seized Elysia's arm as she stood frozen in shock and hauled her into my room, all but throwing her through the doorway.
Thud!
The door slammed shut behind us, and a suffocating, icy silence settled in the space between.
I stood still and looked down at her. The only thing in my eyes was cold killing intent.
"Zenon had mages from the Magic Tower tailing me."
I watched her shoulders tremble, then whispered in a low voice that pressed down on her like a weight.
"They dared to threaten the heir of the Grand Ducal House, so I dealt with them myself. ... Got anything to say, Elysia?"
Whether she grasped what dealt with them myself actually meant, Elysia's face went deathly pale, and her lips began to shake.
She must have sensed at once how badly the ground had shifted beneath her, because she flipped her entire demeanor on the spot. Every trace of the arrogance and terror from a moment ago vanished, and she arranged her features into the most fragile, wounded expression she could possibly muster.
Tears welled almost instantly in those transparent green eyes. She gathered her trembling hands over her heart and began to plead, her voice a mixture of grievance and sorrow.
"Caelus, so that's... that's why you were so angry with me...? I didn't know..."
A single tear slipped down her cheek.
"I really didn't know anything... I was so stupid.... I'm sorry.... I never even dreamed the Magic Tower's mages would dare do something like that to you..."
She poured out tears without pause, pressing her innocence for all it was worth.
"But... but Zenon has received House Hartelion's patronage for so long... he would never plot something like that against you, would he...? He has no reason to... maybe there was some kind of misunderstanding..."
Elysia sobbed pitifully, playing the part of a wide-eyed, blameless victim who knew nothing at all.
Well. I was well aware Zenon would never have laid out the details of a scheme like that for her. The man had his own neck on the line — he wasn't stupid enough to dump the plan on a noble girl with nothing but flowers in her head.
So the grievance and the sorrow themselves were probably not a lie.
But so what?
I looked down at her with eyes like ice. His fiancée could have died, and this woman was tripping over herself to defend Zenon and wrap him in excuses. She was shoving the blame onto me — maybe it had all been my misunderstanding — and trying to cry her way out of the room.
Disgust surged up from somewhere deep, and I grabbed Elysia's jaw in a rough fist.
"Ghk...! C-Cael...!"
"A misunderstanding?"
I spat the words as if I were chewing them.
"You're saying it was a misunderstanding that Zenon tried to kill me? Are you trying to tell me the heir of the Grand Ducal House fabricated a lie to frame a Magic Tower mage, Elysia?"
"Th-that's not... it hurts... please..."
"That mage you're so desperate to protect unleashed his underlings and tried to take my head without anyone knowing. And you still want to make excuses for that snake?"
I put more force into the hand locked around her jaw.
"Did you think I'd just let it slide if you cried and played the victim? Did you think I wouldn't know what you've been doing behind my back?"
Elysia's pupils shook wildly. Whether it was the shock of realizing I knew about her relationship with Zenon, or panic at the fact that her tears no longer worked on me, I couldn't have cared less.
I shoved her jaw away as if I'd touched something filthy and flicked my hand clean.
She parted her lips, scrambling for some excuse, and I recited the lines for her, sliding a hand into my pocket as if I already knew every word she was about to spit out.
"So what were you going to say? 'You don't trust me, your own fiancée? After everything we've been through together...' Something like that, right?"
Elysia's mouth snapped shut. She bit down on her lip, eyes still swimming with tears.
"The pattern never changes. It's boring. Save those tears for Zenon, why don't you?"
At the mockery in my voice, Elysia trembled, her fists clenching at her sides. I stepped toward her with a look of pure disgust, the way one looks at an insect.
"W-what are you doing..."
She barely managed to move her lips, trying to edge backward — and I shoved her hard in the shoulder.
"Ah—!"
Elysia went down in a short, ugly scream and landed on her rear in an undignified sprawl. Thrown onto the dormitory's cold marble floor, she winced, her brow twisting with pain, a few more tears leaking out.
I looked down at her where she lay. There was no warmth of any kind left in my eyes.
"If you've got nothing else to say, get out. You're fouling the air in this room."
"H-how can you throw your own fiancée on the floor like this...! If House Florence finds out about this...!"
She was barely managing to scream, dragging her family into it out of shame and terror. I bent down and whispered, cold, against her ear.
"I'd think twice about running to both families and making a scene like last time. Seems you've forgotten that mage is nothing but a dog living off House Hartelion's patronage. I'll show you, right in front of your eyes, exactly how a mutt that dares to bite its master gets slaughtered."
The warning, edged with killing intent sharp enough to cut, stripped the last remaining warmth from Elysia's face.
Terrified out of my mind, I all but crawled from the room like a dog, then sat dazed on the hallway floor.
How did it come to this?
Unbidden, the memory of a banquet hall surfaced — the first one I had ever attended, at fifteen. The day I had fallen in love at first sight with a boy I had only seen from across the room.
When I had begged my parents and, on my own stubborn insistence, sent a marriage proposal to the Grand Ducal House, I had felt as though I had become the heroine of a romance novel. But after the talks were exchanged, the Caelus I met in person did not so much as glance my way. He ignored me completely, as if I were something less than human. That was the day I first learned how deeply Northerners despised Southerners.
The cold disregard only lit a stubborn fire in me, and I chased him all the more relentlessly. Caelus spent the whole time turning away from every effort I made — until, one day, the moment finally came when he looked at me for the first time. Sian had been comforting me while I cried over the endless neglect, and Caelus's gaze had lingered on me, just for a heartbeat.
Was it jealousy?
No. It didn't matter what it was. That fleeting instant of his attention had been thrilling enough. To catch that gaze and hold it again, I began turning my eyes toward other men. At first it was pure spite — a calculation. Provoke Caelus's jealousy, and he would have to look at me.
But the other men were nothing like Caelus. They were always warm, always kind, and I grew steadily addicted to the warmth they gave me. Then, three years ago, Caelus finally began treating me with kindness, as if he had become a different person entirely. I believed everything was perfect.
But exactly one year later, after a certain incident, he changed completely. I couldn't understand it. Why was he that angry with me? The other men never treated me that way. They never raised their voices at me. They never shoved me.
The more he did, the more naturally I found myself leaning on Zenon, Sian, and Theodore. And then, a few days ago at the banquet, he held the Saintess in his arms and draped his own formal jacket over her shoulders. How could he, with his own fiancée standing right there, take care of another woman in front of so many nobles? Shame and rage I had never felt in my life, and a jealousy I could not control, boiled up inside me.
Even so, Theodore got angry on my behalf. And watching Caelus — after being disciplined — follow my lead and choose magic as his minor, I was able to find my peace again. So he had been paying attention to me. I thought every problem had been solved, and everything had fallen back into its proper place.
I had been so sure....
So why is he angry at me over Zenon's business?
That was something Zenon did. It had nothing to do with me...!
Tears pricked at my eyes — grievance at being handled so roughly by my own fiancé, and fear of Caelus's rage.
What am I supposed to do?
Could Zenon and Sian protect me? No — I wouldn't be able to see Zenon for a while, so I had to go to Sian. Sian would take my side, the way he always did. And... once Caelus's anger cooled, things would be fine again. Two years ago he had been that terrifyingly angry, and it had passed, and we had even gotten engaged, hadn't we?
It had always been that way...
This time, too, he would eventually come back to me.
Thanks to Bella arranging everything in advance, I was able, on Sunday morning, to make my way to a villa owned by House Hartelion near the Academy, deceiving every watching eye without a single slip. A mother-and-son meeting, thoroughly disguised as the handling of family documents.
I opened the drawing-room door and stepped inside, and there she was — the beautiful blonde Grand Duchess, my mother. Every time I met those clear gray eyes, I was reminded all over again whose eyes I had inherited.
Mother, who had grown especially warm toward me after the tragedy two years ago, quietly set down her teacup and rose. She cupped my cheeks in both hands, her touch gentle.
"You look exhausted."
Her worried voice filled the drawing room.
"Caelus... you've grown so thin. Academy life would be hard enough on its own, and those old men on the Elder Council won't stop hounding you..."
She lowered her hands from my face and took my hands instead, stroking them.
"You don't have to talk about complicated things like the family's interests. Just being the heir of the North is burden enough for those shoulders. Can't you at least rest easy today?"
I held her hands firmly for a moment, then let go. I looked at her and spoke in a grave voice.
"Even if I wanted to rest, Mother, that is precisely why I cannot."
She had been overprotecting me ever since losing all her other children. But when she read the resolute determination in my eyes, she began to look at me not as a son she needed to shield, but as the heir of the house.
"...Then what is it you want to say, Caelus?"
"The elders expect me to use a political marriage with House Florence to go begging the South for grain, even if I have to grovel for it."
I spoke as if making a declaration, my voice set like iron.