That Was Not Love
“Ania!”
By the time I shouted, Ania and the thugs had already vanished beyond the window.
For an instant my thoughts seemed to grind to a dull halt. Yet my body moved first.
“Ania!!”
Whether that cry came from my own heart or Edward’s body reacting on its own, I could not tell. One fact alone was certain: I had to save her.
I seized the carriage window, vaulted clean over it, and dropped into the station. Disaster waited below. The platform thronged with people; the kidnappers had already melted into the crowd. I had no intention of letting them slip away so easily.
I sprang onto a station pillar and leapt high. Through the sea of heads I spotted Ania thrashing among them.
“Stop right there!”
For the first time I felt grateful that I had possessed Edward. Had I woken in the body of some half-baked noble who could not even control his own limbs, I would never have been able to chase them. I would have been forced to watch, helpless, while Ania was carried off.
I raced from pillar to pillar, cutting through the press of bodies. The thugs were almost within reach now; the crowd had thinned. That was the moment I saw them—another group waiting at the station exit, black masks identical to the first, already mounted.
“Hurry and hand her over!”
“Fuck… they’re right behind us!”
They hauled Ania onto a horse and spurred away at once.
“Damn it…”
Even a knight of Edward’s caliber could not outrun horses on foot. Then my eyes fell on the stable standing just outside the station. Thought never had time to form; my body was already moving.
“You there!”
I sprinted to the stable and shouted at the groom.
“Yes, my lord… what is the matter—”
“I’m borrowing a horse! Send the bill to House Radner!”
“M-my lord!”
I yanked the sword from my belt, sliced the tether, and swung into the saddle. I had never ridden before, yet somehow the motions came as if I had done them a thousand times. A hard kick to the horse’s flanks sent it surging forward. Reins in one hand, sword in the other, I thundered after them.
“Halt!”
Two riders. The one carrying Ania was on the left.
“Tsk! Don’t follow!”
The man on the right snatched an arrow from his belt and drew. It came whistling toward me, but I saw it clearly. A single sweep of the blade sent it spinning away.
“Run! You mustn’t be caught!”
“Shut up and shoot! Faster!”
More arrows streaked for the horse; none found their mark. Blood roared through my veins until my skull felt ready to split, and every shaft burned sharp in my vision. I knocked three aside and drove the horse harder, closing on Ania’s mount.
“I don’t know who you bastards are, but release my wife!”
“Would you let go if it were you?”
The thug holding Ania swung a club. I ducked beneath it and raised my sword high—only for another arrow to force me aside, and the gap between us widened again. I leaned low, wheeled right, and charged the archer who had been so free with his shafts. One clean stroke took his head; it bounced across the dirt while the headless body slid from the saddle.
I had killed a man, yet felt no guilt. A strange certainty settled over me: no matter how many times I killed those who dared take Ania, the guilt would never come.
“If you will not release her…”
I turned the horse toward the remaining rider.
“Then you will pay for your crimes with your lives!”
“Lives, my ass! Watch your own!”
At the shout I glanced back. Several more pursuers had closed the distance and loosed arrows. I cut two from the air, but the third buried itself in my horse’s fetlock.
The animal screamed and pitched forward. Just as I braced for the fall, a strange force I had never felt before wrapped around me. I leapt—using the collapsing horse as a springboard—straight for the thug’s mount.
“Let go! Let go of her!”
I seized the reins of the galloping horse and hung in midair. Shock hammered through every joint; flesh tore at my palms, wrist bones threatened to snap, yet none of it mattered. I had to save Ania. Somehow, I had to get her free.
“This is the price of your life!”
My free hand locked around the thug’s throat and wrenched sideways.
“Ugh—Aaaargh!”
He hit the ground with a final, broken scream, neck snapped. I swung into the saddle.
“Run!”
I wheeled at once and charged the men who still followed.
“Th-they’re coming!”
“Scatter!”
They tried to flee, but it was already too late. I closed on one, seized him by the nape, and hurled him from the saddle. He tumbled through the dust; the other two had already put too much distance between us. Still, it was enough. Whoever was behind this—no matter the cost—I would learn their name.
I dropped from the horse and hauled the fallen man up by the collar.
“P-please spare me, my lord!”
“Speak.”
“I will! I will speak!”
“Whose orders? Tell me now!”
“Th-that’s all I know! That’s everything!”
“If you’ve lied, I will hunt you to the ends of the earth and exact the price.”
“It isn’t a lie! I swear on everything I am!”
The interrogation yielded the culprit at once.
“He’s the one they call the drug king of the back alleys! He promised a fortune if we kidnapped the lady…!”
Johan. Of course. In the entire empire only one man answered to that title.
Yet why? Johan was never supposed to move in earnest until December, after the first snow.
Has causality… changed?
Looking back, the wedding itself had been the same—advanced by a full fortnight from the original date. Perhaps every deviation I made from the novel was rewriting the chain of cause and effect.
None of that mattered now. I pressed a hand to the thug’s forehead and poured mana into him.
“Tracking magic. Pray your words were true.”
“Th-then may I—”
“Get lost.”
“Thank you!”
He fled the instant the words left my mouth. Only when the last of the chaos settled did I truly see Ania.
Her shoulders trembled faintly. The elaborate coiffure, the careful makeup—all of it ruined. Tears glimmered in her clear, shaking eyes; her tightly pressed lips quivered. Even so, the pitiful, trembling figure before me was beautiful.
I draped my coat over her shoulders and met her gaze.
“…Wife. Are you all right?”
“……”
She gave the barest nod.
“…I’m sorry. I should have protected you better.”
Failing to assign escorts to a duke’s daughter—that, too, had been my doing. Even if I was not truly Edward, my skill alone had never been found wanting. How complacent that confidence had been. I understood it only now.
Ania shook her head.
“No.”
She forced the corners of her mouth upward.
“Because you saved me, husband… so it’s all right.”
Watching her smile through the effort, something rose inside my chest—warm and aching and hazy all at once. It was not love. Something adjacent to love, yet different. A feeling I had no name for. I swallowed it down hard.
“Shall we return? We can hardly attend the ball looking like this.”
“Mm…”
She smoothed her hair, drew a compact from somewhere, and repaired her face. In moments the trembling vanished as though it had never been; the familiar Ania stood before me again.
“Let’s go.”
“But just now you were—”
“Let’s go. We made a promise. We must keep it.”
She sniffled and struggled toward the horse; I lifted her into the saddle.
“I am Ania Brontë. Daughter of the honorable House Brontë.”
“……”
She smiled with quiet resolve. Faced with that expression, the words urging retreat would not come.
“If my wife insists.”
I mounted behind her, gathering her close, and took the reins. Two stations by train—we would arrive later than planned, yet if Ania wished to go, then go we must. Spoken with that look, even force would not have kept her away.
“Hold tight. We’ll be a little late, but I’ll make the best speed I can.”
“Yes…”
The horse surged forward, cutting across the open plain toward the west. Only then did every muscle begin to throb, yet I could not let the pain show. Ania had fallen into an exhausted sleep against my chest; the sole thought that mattered was that she must not wake.