The Price of Being Honest
“Hahaha!”
At Sylvia’s candid answer, Duke Araspe burst into delighted laughter. Mortified by the blunder she’d just made, Sylvia flushed bright red. Had she really gotten drunk?
She hadn’t had much wine at all. Barely half a glass. No—had she finished one full glass, then another?
Her head felt foggy, as if it had stopped working properly. She stiffened, shoulders going rigid, as though she could already feel her father’s contemptuous gaze on her—the look that said he was ashamed of a daughter who had no manners and was behaving like a little hooligan.
“Sylvie, you don’t seem well, so keep your mouth shut.”
Duke Appleton warned her, each syllable weighted with exaggerated force. But Duke Araspe seemed unwilling to let this amusing situation pass him by. With the same warm indulgence one might use with a cherished granddaughter, he asked, “What’s so boring about it? Don’t you like the subject?”
“Ah, yes…. Honestly, it’s just that it doesn’t have much to do with me, and it’s all such sleepy talk….”
Even as the words left her mouth, Sylvia was horrified enough to look around.
Princess Catherine seemed surprised, though not especially troubled. Come to think of it, no matter what kind of disaster her fiancé’s friend caused here, so long as it didn’t interfere with her own interests, Princess Catherine would probably not even blink.
And Owen—like Sylvia, perhaps he, too, was checking whether she was drunk or whether something else was going on, because his eyes went first to her wineglass.
“Sylvia Appleton, have you lost your mind? Do you know where you are—”
Before Duke Appleton’s furious roar could shake the dining room, Duke Araspe smoothly cut in, as though to rescue Sylvia from the blow.
“No, no. I very much value an honest, straightforward attitude. It’s true that we’ve invited you here and not treated you as well as we should have, and in any case, I can’t possibly treat a hero so shabbily. So then, will you tell me about that day? The day you found the Holy Relic.”
Sylvia frowned and pressed her lips together.
This was really bad.
At this rate, she felt as though she might spill everything—from the people she’d seen that day to every secret she’d learned after that. She’d been warned so carefully to keep her mouth shut about it. Heston had even set out exactly what she was supposed to say, just for a moment like this.
Please, just shut your mouth. Don’t say another word from now on. Pull yourself together.
But once again, her mouth opened on its own and her voice leaked out.
“Well, when Owen and I were about to go back, all of a sudden, um…. We picked up a signal from the Holy Relic. There had never been a signal from the tower before, and by then we were certain that what Courtney had stolen was a fake Holy Relic, so there was no doubt in my mind that signal was the real thing. So I kept pestering Owen to—”
But as if she had gone completely mad, the urge to tell everything exactly as it had happened came crashing over her with terrifying force. She bit down on her twitching lips and tried to clamp her rebellious tongue still, but the moment she resisted, her head throbbed as though it might split open. It was so bad she almost wondered whether her face was flooding with blood and her skull would simply burst apart.
On top of that, she was so thirsty she couldn’t stand it. Reaching out, Sylvia grabbed her wineglass and gulped it down in one go. Duke Appleton looked at her with visible disgust, as though he couldn’t believe the daughter before him was the kind of woman who would greedily drain wine with not a shred of refinement.
Meanwhile, Owen, seated opposite her, had no choice but to lower his head with a frown. Sylvia’s pain was being transmitted to him as well. The scorching thirst, the rush of blood to the head, the sensation that every vessel in his body was expanding at once. It took him only a moment to realize what was happening to Sylvia.
“So, I— I found the signal and headed that way, but then the cottage….”
As she struggled against the mouth that kept babbling on, her voice kept breaking and the logic of her words unraveled more and more. But since Duke Araspe had never been interested in hearing a polished heroic tale from Sylvia in the first place, he picked out exactly the word he hadn’t heard yet from everything she’d blurted and asked, “A cottage?”
“...I think Miss Appleton may be drunk. She looks unwell, too. It might be better to send her back at this point.”
Only then did Princess Catherine, sensing that the situation was taking a dangerous turn, cautiously interject. But if they had intended to send Sylvia away now, they shouldn’t have invited her in the first place. The duke asked her in a mild voice, “Miss Appleton, are you feeling ill?”
“What? No….”
Her head felt as though it might split open, but her mouth continued to insist with complete composure that she was perfectly fine. Sylvia was so frustrated by it that tears actually sprang to her eyes. She wanted to run, but her body had locked rigidly in place, and there wasn’t even a gap she could slip through.
She hadn’t exactly spent a long life getting drunk, but she knew immediately that this was different from simple intoxication.
Had she eaten something strange? Maybe she really should have listened to Owen and been careful about what she drank? No—but had that ever been something she could actually control in the first place?
Meanwhile, Duke Araspe nodded as though he’d expected Sylvia to say exactly that, then turned a warning look on the princess, who seemed ready to pull her away.
“There. She says she’s fine, doesn’t she? No matter how much you princesses may be serving some grand command and doing whatever you please on my lands, I’d advise you not to extend that behavior to the dinner table. We’d hate to ruin such a pleasant banquet. Now then, Miss Appleton, will you continue? What did you see in that cottage?”
“The cottage, cough. In the cottage, there was a magic circle….”
“Your Grace, I’m sorry, but that’s enough….”
Princess Catherine cut in again, and the duke set down his cutlery with a harsh clatter.
“Didn’t you just tell me there was nothing you were hiding from me? Then why is it that you seem so determined to keep me from hearing this story? Princess, are you hiding something from me?”
Her throat ached. Sylvia opened and closed her fist, opening and clenching it again as she prayed someone would rescue her before she caused a disaster. She didn’t even expect anything from her father. He would only be busy despising her even in a moment like this. But wouldn’t Owen be different?
Sylvia caught herself searching, before anyone else, for Owen whenever she found herself in danger, but she couldn’t help it. She was just about to turn her head toward him when—
“Eek!”
Suddenly, the maid serving behind Owen screamed and dropped the food she was carrying, stumbling back. Owen, too, let out a pained groan and seized the tablecloth, his upper body pitching hard to the side.
Crash.
As the tablecloth was yanked loose, plates and bottles began toppling all over the place, and the commotion only grew.
“What is the meaning of this!”
Interrupted at the most crucial moment, Duke Araspe shot to his feet and demanded an explanation. The maid who had dropped the food looked close to tears, her hands shaking uncontrollably, and after the duke’s aide hurried over and caught sight of the scene, he turned away as if he couldn’t bear to look and urgently signaled for a physician.
And no wonder—the blood was already pouring in a dark trail from Owen’s chair all the way to the carpet.
“It looks as though the wound in his injured area has reopened.”
Princess Catherine, seated nearby, hurried to report, relieved that something had finally happened to break up the situation for even a moment.
“Tsk.”
The duke clicked his tongue and gestured sharply for them to get that knightly riffraff out of here at once. Then, after apologizing to Duke Appleton and his daughter for the disturbance, he said they should move to another place and not waste the rare opportunity he’d finally secured. But for some reason, Duke Appleton’s daughter had also gone deathly pale, her head bowed as pained groans leaked from her in stuttering bursts.
“What’s wrong with your daughter?”
Were they making a fool of him now? In the blink of an eye, the situation had turned into utter chaos, and even that thought crossed his mind. Seeing the distinctly displeased expression on Araspe’s face, Duke Appleton rested a hand on Sylvia’s shoulder, where she was bent forward.
“Are you so appalled by the sight of a little blood that you’ve gone white as a sheet? Stop embarrassing yourself and get up. Compose yourself.”
“Ah, ngh….”
But what came from Sylvia’s mouth was only a pained groan. It wasn’t as though she were frightened merely by the sight of blood; she truly seemed to be suffering. Realizing something was wrong, Duke Appleton straightened her shoulder and examined the body she’d been hiding. Sylvia was clutching her thigh hard enough to make it look ready to burst.
Referred pain?
He thought he’d heard of people suffering from such a mental disorder, from time to time, but the location was strangely convenient. That thigh was the same place where the knight over there was currently bleeding profusely.
“Sylvia Appleton, pull yourself together.”
If she was making such a spectacle of herself with that weak little mind, it was a serious problem. What would others think? Duke Appleton was prepared to slap his daughter across the face if that was what it took to wake her from such a delusion. But then Owen, who had torn up the tablecloth with his own hands and bound his thigh tightly, spoke with a face slicked in cold sweat as he held back the pain.
“I don’t think pulling myself together is going to fix this.”
“What?”
Duke Appleton glared at him, offended in the same way Duke Araspe was, insulted that some knightly nobody had dared interrupt him.
Owen replied with infuriating composure for a man whose thigh had been split open.
“She’s feeling my pain too. I’m told it’s something like sensory transfer through Mana Sharing or whatever. In any case, the more you tell her to pull herself together, the worse it’ll hurt. It’s already making me see stars.”
“Mana Sharing? That’s something between a knight and their partner, a Supporter….”
Princess Catherine cut in, but Owen told the guards who were coming to help him to take Sylvia first. Soon after, he was helped to his feet by someone as well.
The moment he straightened his bent back, an overwhelming presence seemed to fill the room, dwarfing everyone seated at the table.
“Yes. Sylvia’s my Supporter now.”
And even with blood streaming down his thigh, he maintained his manners and left them with a final farewell before stepping back from the table. Sylvia thought she couldn’t tell whether this escape was fortunate or unfortunate, and then the world went dim and distant as if she were being faintly pulled under into unconsciousness.
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