The Toy That Bites
"Your Highness, forgive me for saying this, but frankly, you bear considerable responsibility for this situation as well."
"...I know."
Cantares admitted it readily to Diana's calm remark. He was the one who had loosened that creature's reins, after all.
Laios spoke up, his face noticeably more haggard than usual.
"Are you aware of this, Your Highness?"
"What?"
"The healers now hand me stomach medicine the moment they see my face."
"......."
Setting down his teacup with a clink, Kendrick patted the shoulder of the promising young knight commander a few times.
"Well, you always do bring back results. The method is a bit... outlandish, mind you."
"You're welcome to take him if you want him."
"No, I'll have to decline that offer."
Kendrick said this with utter seriousness.
Diana, regarding both of them with disdain, lowered her head.
"More importantly, Sir Laios. Can that werewolf, Warren, be trusted?"
"With the help of Guildmaster Neumann, we have confirmed that his testimony is true."
Laios nodded gravely.
A village that cultivated herbs existed exactly where Warren had said it did, and they had also verified that a suspicious armed group was stationed in the immediate vicinity.
"And above all, Arendt said so himself. It will most likely be fine."
"Trusting your subordinates is admirable, but I'm afraid the one you're trusting is rather the problem."
Kendrick tossed out the joke, but Laios did not answer.
"Then we have no choice but to move as well. Before the neck of an apprentice knight who is brave beyond all necessity happens to fall off."
"I ask for your cooperation."
Answering Diana's half-jest, Laios slowly repeated the motion of clenching and unclenching his fist.
The feel of his hand in its half-gauntlet, which he did not normally wear, struck him as strangely foreign.
The game had already begun; there was no turning it back now.
All that remained was to give it everything he had.
The moment Warren burst in covered head to toe in blood, his subordinates erupted in uproar.
"Lord Warren! Are you unharmed?"
"Yeah. Where's Rebecca?"
Before he had even caught his breath, Warren growled out his question.
A subordinate hastily handed him water and answered.
"She is away on business. We heard she was arrested by the Imperial Knight Order, but......."
"What a mess to come back to. Doesn't matter. The mission is complete."
He casually flung down the person he had been carrying over his shoulder.
Only then did they get a proper look at what Warren had brought back: a young apprentice knight with silver hair, unconscious and hanging limp like a rag doll.
"...!"
As if to prove that a ferocious fight had taken place, the boy's condition was every bit as terrible as Warren's own.
Wiping the blood off himself roughly, Warren ground the words out between his teeth.
"Lock him up somewhere, anywhere. When Rebecca returns, I want him ready for interrogation."
"B-but... Lord Warren, did you not go to kill the target? Why would you capture him alive......."
"There are things I need to find out from him. Stop flapping your jaws and move."
Warren's frost-blue eyes swept over his subordinates. Only then did they scurry off and begin carrying Arendt away.
"I-I'll fetch a healer. Please wait just a moment."
"Not needed."
Spitting the words out coldly, Warren glanced back at Arendt, who was being hauled along like a sack of cargo. The boy had cracked one eye open at some point and, hidden from the others, winked at him.
Goosebumps rippled up Warren's arms, and he hastily averted his gaze.
He'd been swept up in the current of things, but was this really going to be all right?
I honestly don't know anymore.
If the boy got himself killed playing these games, it would be none of his doing.
With an irritated scratch that ruffled his hair into a mess, Warren turned his back on him.
Rebecca returned before even a few hours had passed.
The moment Warren, who had been waiting in her chambers, sprang to his feet, her eyes went wide.
"Warren! You're safe!"
"I'm back, Rebecca."
Warren swept his gaze over her and gave a faint smile. Rebecca, who flung aside even the bag she'd been carrying, threw herself straight into his arms.
Warren caught her naturally.
"I'm sorry. Did I worry you?"
"No. I'm just glad you made it back in one piece."
Rebecca lifted her eyes to meet his, her lashes sweeping upward.
Thinking of it anew, she was a truly beautiful woman. Hair of rare, ink-black silk, skin so pale it verged on ghostly, and lips of bewitching crimson.......
"You captured the target alive?"
"Ah... yeah. A bit of a problem came up. I should have handled it cleanly myself. Sorry about that."
"A problem?"
And yet his voice was endlessly composed — while that unmistakable air of his kept her from relaxing entirely.
Warren hesitated a moment, then opened his mouth again.
"...That thing you've been searching for. It wasn't on him."
Rebecca's brow curved, just slightly.
Perhaps the fact that he was hopeless at lying was, in its own way, another of his charms.
"I see."
Murmuring something deliberately vague, Rebecca tilted her head. Her black hair cascaded down like a waterfall with the movement.
"I can't quite decide whether I ought to praise you or scold you."
The greatest objective had been to recover the artifact the apprentice knight was likely carrying. But the last thing they wanted was for anyone to learn that this was what they desired.
Rebecca deliberated for a moment, then smiled and drew Warren's chin toward her.
Warren bowed his head obediently, then calmly accepted the kiss that brushed against his lips and withdrew.
"You did well. I'll handle the rest myself."
Like praising an obedient hound, she stroked his head once, then turned away without the slightest lingering attachment.
"My beloved Warren. You know this already, but... I despise a lover who is not honest with me. Understood?"
"...Of course."
Warren pulled the corners of his mouth back up into a smile.
Rebecca shot him one more sidelong glance, answered his smile in kind, and left the room.
Rebecca.
She was a titan of the underworld.
There was not a single commodity that moved through the shadows without passing through her hands, and everyone feared her.
Rebecca knew this well. She trusted in her own ability — the talent that had raised her to this seat by her own will.
Which was why she could be certain.
Warren was lying to her.
Why, though?
She strolled down the long corridor at a leisurely pace. The subordinates she passed from time to time bowed their heads in hurried greetings, but Rebecca ignored them with practiced ease.
Warren had never once lied to her in all their years together. He had always followed her blindly, always without resistance.
The reason was simple.
He loved her. And there was something he had to protect.
And yet now of all times — right after making contact with the imperial family — he was lying to her face.
A smile curled across her lips.
"How interesting."
Had he betrayed her? Or was he merely trying to conceal some blunder of his own?
Either possibility was entertaining.
The key, most likely, rested with that young knight he had captured.
"The boy Warren brought in?"
"He's locked up in the cellar."
"Is he behaving himself?"
"Yes. He appears to be injured, so....... Even after regaining consciousness, he's shown no signs of resisting."
At that, the subordinate respectfully extended a hand forward before any order had even been given. He was offering to escort her.
Rebecca followed him, deep in thought even as she walked.
Could Warren actually be entertaining some foolish notion?
Of course, the possibility existed. She held his family hostage; rebellion was entirely within reason.
It was a little early to jump to conclusions, but for now, she would do well not to rule anything out.
Following the staircase down to the very lowest level, she felt the cold, damp air close around her. Rebecca had her subordinate wait outside and entered the underground prison alone.
In the dim lamplight, a silver-haired young man leaning his back comfortably against the wall came into view.
Click.
The high heel of her shoe struck the floor with a crisp, deliberate ring.
At the noise she made on purpose, the young man raised his head. His face, still carrying traces of youth, was fully exposed — and Rebecca's brow creased a little.
"......."
His finely drawn features might have been carved by a temperamental artist. He was covered in wounds, and yet even so, the cool, aristocratic elegance beneath them was not entirely hidden.
Even in that prison where only the barest light entered, his silver hair seemed to shine of its own accord, holding a subdued luster within it.
But what seized her gaze above all else were those golden eyes — the eyes of a wild animal taken in a snare.
Lips that had been frozen like a statue's began to move, twisting into a crooked smirk.
"...So you're the master of that son of a bitch, then?"
And at the slightly rasping voice that followed, Rebecca's own lips curved in answer.
"Full of venom, for someone who was just caught alive."
"No sword to bite with, so I'll have to make do with venom."
The retort came back utterly unshaken by her mockery.
Rebecca studied him through the bars for a long while. Arendt absorbed her gaze without flinching.
There was a sharpness about him, like a blade that would cut if touched. It might have been the fragility that a cornered man inevitably carried — but Rebecca quickly revised that thought.
The refined sensitivity and chill he radiated were unmistakably his own, native to him alone.
A dry laugh escaped her. To think such an aura was possible in a young man who looked barely twenty.
"...You're interesting."
"So are you."
With an utterly blank face and his head cocked sideways, Arendt asked provocatively:
"Why did you drag me here? Planning to kill me?"
"And if I am?"
"Then I suppose I'll have to work hard not to die."
The answer came back level and flat, without a single rise or fall in tone.
Rebecca found herself more and more intrigued.
"How?"
"Well... let's see. I could leak some internal secrets, perhaps. Or maybe hand over some trinket you've been dying to get your hands on."
Putting on a show of deliberation, Arendt let out a dry little laugh.
Rebecca stepped one pace closer to the cell.
"I make it a rule to take information only from people I can trust. As for things I want — I simply take them into my own hands."
"What a shame."
"Planning to grovel for your life, Sir Knight?"
"I'm afraid so. I'm the sort of man who values his own hide above all else."
The voice that answered was, as expected, perfectly indifferent.
And yet the desire to lunge forward that very instant and wring her neck poured out nakedly from eyes like knives honed on ice.
The gaze of a cat a heartbeat away from biting into a mouse. A beast with its fangs sheathed. Hatred that longed to pounce right now and could not.
Rebecca's smile widened until it broke into open laughter.
"I do like your audacity. You mean to make a trade with your life on the table? And here I thought it might be worth that much."
"Frost-Tinged Touch."
At the words that followed, the laughter died in her throat at once.
In its place, Arendt curled his lips into a crooked smile.
"If my head comes off, I'd wager you'll never lay hands on the thing you want. Not ever."
"......."
Rebecca did not answer.
While the two of them held each other's gaze in silence, a heavy stillness settled between them.
Then, after a moment, a fine curve drew itself across her lips.
"Interesting, isn't it?"
She knew it was a bluff. She knew, too, that there was every possibility this young whelp had used Warren to infiltrate her domain on purpose.
No one understood better than Rebecca that the ones backing him were the imperial family of this very empire — the open enemies of the 'gods' she had devoted her heart and soul to.
But that was precisely what made it.......
This young man was a toy tailored perfectly to her tastes.