How to Become the Northern Heir's Knight
"Was it last autumn? You were trying to sneak a limited-edition dress in through a hole in the garden wall, and you got stuck..."
"S-stop...!"
The instant that hideous piece of dark history came out of Caelus's mouth again, she felt the blood slam into her face.
Of all the things in the world—why did she have to hear that shameful hole-in-the-wall incident from this man, the one story she would rather have died than let anyone else find out?
She really should have bitten her tongue and died that day.
She had only chosen the gap at the base of the wall because she was trying to smuggle the dress in without the old count noticing. How was she supposed to know she would wedge herself in halfway through? She couldn't call for anyone, and putting any real force into it looked likely to bring the wall down entirely, so she had been stuck there doing absolutely nothing—when, of all people, this infuriating bastard had shown up.
He had laughed himself sick at how ridiculous she looked, the same way he was laughing now, and then, claiming he would get her out, he had kicked her square in the ass.
Fuck.
Is this guy actually insane? Who the hell just sits there because they don't know how to push? I was holding back because if the wall came down the repair costs would come out of my salary, you mannerless Grand Duke brat...!
Of course, thanks to him restoring the wall with magic afterward, she had been spared the catastrophe of actually having the bill deducted. Still—why did a man who swung a sword also have to be infuriatingly good at magic?
Thanks to that, every time she saw him now she couldn't help going hyper-aware of her backside, and it was driving her out of her mind. If it weren't for his status as Lady Elysia's fiancé, as the Northern Grand Duke's heir... if they had been knights of the same rank, she would have beaten him like a dog a long time ago.
The more I think about it, the more this guy is a real piece of shit.
Unable to swallow her anger any longer, she hid her hand and, behind his back, put up her middle finger.
Eat shit, you infuriating Northern bastard.
She was sure she had cursed him silently, well out of his sight.
"..."
Caelus, who had been walking a circuit around her, stopped dead as if he had grown eyes in the back of his head, and looked straight at the hand she was hiding.
Did this bastard actually have eyes back there?
Cold sweat broke out as she tried to open her fingers, but it was already too late. Caelus's gray eyes narrowed, and he wore the same infuriating grin as the day last year he had kicked her out of that hole in the wall.
"I take it that in a count's household it's perfectly acceptable for a knight to curse behind their lord's back? Then again, after rolling under a lady whose head is a flower garden, expecting you to conduct yourself like a proper knight was probably asking too much to begin with."
Who did this bastard think he was, swaggering around as if he were such a magnificent lord?
Lady Elysia was such a good lord... wait?
Hold on.
She tried, out of sheer contrariness, to dredge up a single good memory to throw in the face of what he had said. No matter how hard she searched, she could not find one.
What flickered past instead were other things entirely. Lady Elysia announcing that she had to diet, that it would be a waste to throw away perfectly good desserts, and using Sienna as a human garbage disposal. The time she had been forced to cram thirty macarons down her throat, she had genuinely thought she was going to be sick.
God, I was so full and so sick of them I thought I was going to die...
No. Snap out of it. There had to be other good memories somewhere.
Next came the trip back to the count's estate, when the carriage wheels had sunk to the hubs in a mud pit. The horses were gasping, spent, and the lady had pointed at a rope.
"The horses don't have the strength... Sienna can do it, right?"
In the end she had wrung the aura out of herself and hauled the carriage in the horses' place, while the lady clapped behind her and declared that knights really were a different breed.
Ha, this is insane... Did I learn the sword so I could pull carriages?
How was that supposed to be a touching moment? There had not been a shred of a lord's grace in it, nor a knight's honor, nor anything else worth the name.
No—this was truly the last try. Somewhere in her memory there had to be at least one warm moment with the lady.
One dawn, Elysia had shaken her out of sleep claiming she had lost the key to her jewelry box, shoved a wire hairpin into her hand, and ordered her to pick the lock. After a night of bitterly lamenting her lot in life, she had finally thrown the box open at two in the morning. All that came out were a few pieces of fancy candy. And as she ate them, Elysia had remarked, perfectly at ease:
"As expected, our Sienna can do anything."
...Fuck. That crazy bitch, I swear.
A good lord? Honorable memories?
Bullshit.
That woman Elysia had clearly never thought of her as a bodyguard knight. She had thought of her as a sturdy servant. Fine. You were right, Caelus Hatelion. That woman was a flower-brained, selfish wench, and I was nothing more than the help who ran her errands.
I had been completely wrong.
I had only brought Sienna to the Academy Sparring Grounds to loosen up before the first lecture.
Don't tell me he's come to pick another fight.
At the familiar blond head coming toward us, I pressed a hand to my throbbing temple and started to draw up a faint thread of aura.
But then—
Thud—!
With the heavy sound of knees hitting the floor, Theodore dropped down without so much as a word of warning and seized my pant leg in both hands.
"What the hell is—"
"I was wrong, Your Grace! Please forgive this stupid bastard for the discourtesy he committed...!"
What the hell was this guy doing?
"Just as Your Grace taught me, I was far too arrogant for my meager skill. Your swordsmanship was an overwhelming wall that the South's shallow techniques could never hope to surpass."
Theodore clung to my trousers as if his life depended on it, hanging on with wretched determination.
"What...?"
My brain short-circuited. The supporting male lead... wanted to become my knight? Wasn't this the man who, in the original story, became commander of the Imperial Second Knight Order? And now he suddenly wanted to be a Northern knight? Why?
In romance fantasy novels, I had never understood those scenes where a heroine transmigrated into an extra insisted the male lead couldn't possibly like her. I thought I understood them now.
What the hell was this crazy bastard doing.
"There are too many eyes here. Get up."
Conscious of the murmuring around us, I caught his arm, hauled him forcibly to his feet, and dragged him somewhere less crowded. The moment we reached a secluded patch of shade he tried to drop to his knees again, so I seized his sleeve hard.
"Have you lost your mind, Theodore? You want to become a knight of the Grand Ducal House? This isn't some children's game—you're spouting that in front of people? Are you trying to get yourself thrown out of House Leonel this instant?"
Even as I warned him, he thumped his chest as if he had every right to be proud of himself and answered.
"Wouldn't getting thrown out of my house actually be for the best? Then I could come under Your Grace right away! Your Grace—does that mean you'll take me as your knight?"
"..."
What the hell was going on inside this man's skull? The second son of a marquis was treating being struck from the family register—no, erased from the family tree—as lightly as quitting a neighborhood mercenary guild.
While I stood there stunned, he started spouting even dumber things.
"If you don't want me as a knight, how about the Grand Ducal House adopting me? As of today, I'll serve Your Grace as my older brother! Brother!"
"...Why would I be your older brother?"
"Then adopt me as your foster son. Father...!"
"Has this crazy bastard actually lost it?"
His nonsense made my head throb, but thinking it over, it was not a losing proposition. With the Great Calamity two years away, even one skilled knight was something I could not afford to turn down. The fact that his brain appeared to be made entirely of muscle was a flaw, but if I polished his swordsmanship even a little, he was talent I could put on the front lines. Besides, rather than figuring out how to kill all three supporting male leads, taking one as a subordinate and dealing with only two was simply more efficient.
He came to his senses now, so I suppose that counts as a slight increase in intelligence.
Then again, throwing away the position of Imperial Second Knight Commander to become a Northern knight who might get mauled to death by demonic beasts at any moment... he still seemed pretty stupid.
Sienna, who had been watching Theodore's spectacle from the side, clicked her tongue in disbelief.
"Hey, Theodore. Are you actually in your right mind? You're the second son of a marquis, and with your skill you could pick any famous knight order you wanted—and you're crawling into the North where monsters swarm?"
From a fellow knight's perspective it was practically suicide, and she snapped at him in frustration. Theodore snorted right back.
"So I'm supposed to keep rolling around with men who have no real combat experience in some Southern backwater full of wheat fields? If I'm going to die, I'll die as a swordsman who's gotten stronger! From now on, I'll bury my bones in Hatelion...!"
He dropped to one knee in front of me again.
"And more than anything... I committed an unforgivable discourtesy against Your Grace. As an apology, I want to offer you my loyalty!"
Then, as if a sense of injustice were boiling up in him, Theodore flushed and pleaded, the veins standing out in his neck.
"Honestly, I feel wronged too. Lady Florence was crying so pitifully that I only comforted her out of a knight's duty... I had no idea she was scheming to make it look like she was involved with me!"
I don't know whether to blame his pathetic intelligence for not seeing through that flower-brained lady's obvious little scheme, or to take comfort in the fact that he's come to his senses at all.
"Well, you're not the only one she played. No—Zenon and Sian knew full well and still enjoyed their secret trysts with Elysia, so I suppose you really were the only one who got used."
"What...?"
Theodore's eyes shook with shock, as if he were hearing this for the first time. I delivered the finishing blow.
"Elysia was already fooling around with Zenon and Sian and enjoying everything there was to enjoy. You were the only one taking it seriously, completely in the dark."
"...! Those insane bastards. So the three of them were pulling that shit even though she clearly had a fiancé? Those sons of bitches aren't even worth chewing up and killing."
"Good. You've got it."
Watching Theodore clench his fists and grind out curses, I glanced at Sienna. She, on the contrary, was trembling with shame, her fists shaking.
Every time Theodore cursed Elysia, a nauseating shame churned through her gut.
Ah, this is driving me insane...
When that bitch Elysia had been holding secret trysts with men like Zenon and Sian while she already had a fiancé... hadn't Sienna been the one standing lookout so those filthy dealings would not be found out? Other people might think Theodore looked like an idiot, but she, who had been used as that woman's hands and feet, would look every bit as stupid.
She had not taken up the sword to suffer through every menial chore under a woman like that. And if Theodore abandoned Elysia and went over to the Grand Ducal House as well, the only fool left standing would be her.
By the way—just how good is that Northern heir's swordsmanship, for Theodore to be acting like this?
The second son of Marquis Leonel might be thick-headed, but his swordsmanship was among the best in the entire South. She could not even begin to guess what level Northern swordsmanship must be at.
Suddenly, a fierce desire to cross blades with that man herself surged up through her. Whether she would crumple before his sword, or whether she could preserve a knight's last shred of pride—a corner of her chest began to pound, hard.