Chapter 16
What couldn’t a madman do?
If he was crazy enough, then revenge or whatever other twisted excuse he came up with could be used to justify doing something this absurd.
Sylvia even felt a little sorry for the Wilden entourage for getting tangled up with someone like that. But the real problem was something else.
As people were saying, Owen’s background simply wasn’t impressive enough to withstand his own madness.
If the Count of Wilden’s household keeps pushing hard for Owen to be punished…
No matter how much the higher-ups valued Owen’s talent, they wouldn’t protect him to the end.
But Sylvia herself wasn’t in a position to do much, either. So what if she was the daughter of a duke? The only way she could use her family’s power was through her father, and if she begged him to help Owen, he’d immediately start drawing strange conclusions. Far from helping, he’d probably make Owen’s life even more miserable.
In the end, Sylvia decided to watch the situation for a few more days instead of rushing into anything.
Of all times for Heston to be away…
If Heston had been here instead of her, he would have been able to help Owen. But Heston had left on assignment, and just as expected, the Wilden house, along with the houses of Buckley and Jipael, had begun pressuring the knight order to punish Owen.
According to the rumors spreading by word of mouth, they’d even gone so far as to demand that Owen be stripped of his knighthood entirely.
People relayed the story with obvious shock at the severity of the demand. Even those who had laughed at first were now backing away, saying Owen had gone too far, suddenly acting like judges and weighing the seriousness of the offense.
By the time it had come to that, she could no longer sit back and simply wait as she’d originally intended. Sylvia finally decided she had to go see for herself what Owen had been thinking when he did something like this.
From what she’d heard, Owen was being held in the building where knights who had committed offenses were kept.
Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be a very serious matter, so there likely weren’t many people guarding him, and the facilities themselves seemed decent enough.
Somehow, she managed to sneak into the prison, make her way to the place where Owen was being held, and unlock the tightly fastened lock. Beyond the door, under a slant of lazy sunlight, Owen was sprawled deep into a plush red sofa, fast asleep.
His soft blond hair was scattered against the crimson fabric, and his closed eyes looked peaceful, almost serene.
“Well, aren’t you living the life.”
She’d even brought a ham sandwich in case he hadn’t been fed, and now she felt like an idiot.
Had coming all the way here been too much?
She hesitated with her hand still on the doorknob, torn between leaving and staying, when Owen spoke without opening his eyes.
“The patrol’ll be making its rounds in a bit.”
Startled, Sylvia hurried inside. Behind her, the lock clicked shut with a sharp sound as she sealed it with magic.
“Thorough as ever.”
Owen opened his eyes as he said it in that flat, unhurried voice of his. When his amber gaze came into view, deep as a jar of thick honey, it felt as though her breath caught for a second.
Sylvia pretended to look around casually, focusing on anything but him. She’d sorted her thoughts out on the way here, but standing in front of Owen made her heart flutter for no reason at all.
“You look good.”
She muttered the words without meaning them and stepped closer. Owen extended a hand at once. Sylvia blinked, not understanding what he meant by reaching out so suddenly.
What, did he want her hand?
Well, if he’d been locked up for three days, maybe he was craving human warmth. Sylvia carefully set her hand atop his, as though she’d just been asked to dance.
His mouth curved upward in a very satisfied smile.
“Not that. Food.”
“What?”
“Give me what you brought.”
“Did I leave it with you?”
Startled, she snatched her hand back and, cheeks heating, hurriedly handed over the bread she’d brought.
Owen checked what was inside, then bit into it, and thankfully, it seemed to suit his taste.
“How’d you know they weren’t feeding me?”
“They aren’t feeding you?”
“They kept giving me some weird soup. I was practically starving.”
He’d looked so perfectly at ease sleeping that Sylvia had assumed he was doing fine here. She’d never imagined he might not be eating properly at all.
And yet, for someone who said he was starving, he didn’t look like he was gobbling the food down in a panic.
“You’re not lying, are you? You’re good at that.”
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Owen only glanced at her sidelong. Then, making the person who’d asked feel strangely foolish, he went right back to eating without answering.
“You really were starving?”
“Why would they go out of their way to make something new just for me?”
So even if they’d given him a decent room on the fourth floor, they’d still handed him the same food the actual prisoners ate because preparing anything special was too much trouble.
Was the reason he’d been asleep back then not because he was living in luxury, but because he was hungry?
Now that she knew, Owen looked different to her. His cheeks might even have hollowed a little… Sylvia felt guilt stabbing at her conscience and sat down heavily in front of him.
“Are you okay?”
“Not really. I’m weak from not eating, and I’m bored out of my mind because there’s nothing to do. So I just sleep.”
As if he’d been waiting for someone to ask, Owen let it all spill out.
Sylvia was a little taken aback. She’d never expected him to answer so straightforwardly just because she asked. Heston, whenever something was wrong, would almost always hide it from her because he didn’t want her worrying. To her, he was forever repeating the same line like a parrot: he was fine.
Even four years ago, when he’d gone on a mission and been badly injured, he’d hidden it so well that Sylvia only found out by accident a month later, through Rosalind.
After dealing with Heston, who answered every question with, “I’m fine. Don’t worry about it,” hearing someone say they’d been starving and sleeping only because they were bored and had nothing to do was unbelievably disorienting.
No, is disorienting really the right word?
More than anything, it felt refreshing. And in some ways, it was nice that he seemed willing to ask her for help.
“Should I go get you some more?”
He was eating so well that Sylvia found herself saying it before she’d even thought it through. Owen looked down at her from the corner of his eye. Sylvia, meanwhile, was just admiring how even the act of biting into bread could look handsome on him.
“You came all this way to bring me this?”
He chewed and swallowed before speaking. At his dry tone, Sylvia felt a little flustered and looked away as she stood.
“No. I came to tell you you’re in big trouble.”
“Big trouble?”
“Yeah. The Count of Wilden’s house is raising hell, demanding you be kicked out of the knight order. Seriously, what were you thinking doing something like that? I thought you didn’t even care about her.”
“I cared a lot.”
At the quiet murmur, Sylvia’s body stiffened. Her heart gave a small thump, and she clenched her fists so Owen wouldn’t feel how flustered she was.
“If I didn’t care about my own panties, how was I supposed to live? If there’s no one around to take care of you, then you have to look after your own things.”
But Owen only said something ridiculous like that and neatly finished off the rest of the bread, brushing his hands together as if that settled everything.
She’d been momentarily shaken by a man who still wouldn’t stop talking about panties. Even if the flow of the conversation had made it easy to misunderstand, the humiliation was still overwhelming.
“That isn’t your panties. Why do you keep making such absurd claims?”
“Sorry, but you didn’t see all my panties just because we slept together once.”
“Owen Summers!”
She snapped his name, exasperated even in the middle of all this for still making jokes, but he didn’t even flinch.
He only shrugged, as if to say she didn’t have to believe him if she didn’t want to. It looked as though even if a blade were pressed to his throat, he’d still stand by that claim to the end.
If she were just a little more naive, maybe she would have fallen for it. Even with the situation as it was, what sort of lunatic would keep insisting on that nonsense?
What sort of lunatic? Right here.
Sylvia let out a long sigh and flopped down onto the bed.
“You didn’t seriously say that to the Commander too, did you?”
“……”
Silence, as always.
He didn’t have children, and yet Sylvia felt like she was staring at a stubborn child who refused to listen.
“The Commander’s a stickler. He hates it when people cause trouble, but if it looks like they caused trouble and then started joking around, he hates it even more. If you keep going at this rate, he’ll probably kick you out in a fit of temper.”
“You don’t believe me. I’m telling you, this wasn’t because of you.”
“How am I supposed to believe that? I’m not stupid.”
As she muttered under her breath, he rose to his feet. Slowly he came closer, his footsteps muffled against the carpet. It was nothing at all, and yet just the fact that he was coming toward her somehow tightened her stomach and made her tense.
Maybe it was because the room here felt even smaller than Owen’s room in the knight order’s dormitory. Back then, she’d thought that room was terribly cramped too.
Why? Why was he coming?
While she was still stuck in that thought, Owen’s fingers slipped through her hair. Then he drew out a single dry leaf, crinkling faintly.
“Did you crawl here?”
Her face burning, Sylvia lifted a hand to her head. The trip hadn’t been smooth, so of course she’d had to crawl and squeeze herself through narrow gaps to get in. It had seemed perfectly fine while she was doing it, but being caught by the person standing right in front of her was beyond embarrassing.
“No.”
She shook her head and muttered the denial, but he caught her wandering hand and lowered it, then lifted her chin.
Her pale blue eyes met his deep amber ones, and Sylvia hurriedly looked away, pretending not to notice.
He hadn’t really been aiming to look into her eyes in the first place, and so he lowered his hand and peeled the bandage from Sylvia’s chin. The cloth that had been clinging to her skin came away slowly, and whether it was because of that strange sensation or because of his touch, goosebumps rose from the back of her neck all the way to her chin.
“Still red. Does it hurt when you move your jaw?”
“No, it doesn’t. It’s nothing.”
“Should’ve gone ahead and stripped your panties off completely.”
He’d just told her it wasn’t because of her, and yet Owen said something like that with total ease. Sylvia said nothing, only clenched her fist tightly.