The Last Chance
"Honestly. You can't do a single thing, and yet that mouth of yours runs just as freely now as it ever did."
Rozan clicked her tongue at Darius, who couldn't get a word out.
His fist clenched with a grinding crack, hard enough to twist the bone.
"I heard you'd brought a Divine Beast back, so I thought you'd finally managed to do something right. How empty a husk do you have to be, for a leopard cat to be born instead of a superior hyena? Truly, it's humiliating."
With the clan head at her back, Rozan belittled him without a shred of restraint.
"You—!"
"Darius Mariner."
Darius, rage climbed all the way to the crown of his head, had been about to snap back when Clan Head Velodic's mouth opened for the first time. Rozan, who had been seizing every opening to cut him down, fell silent with him. Both mouths shut at once.
Velodic's pheromone—heavy, stifling, his alone—pressed down over the entire office. Darius's face went pale. So did Rozan's.
"You know your own fault well enough."
"......I am sorry for showing you so inadequate a sight, Clan Head."
Darius dropped to his knees at once. He had already lost Velodic's trust three years ago—not only for letting Claire and Bariya slip through his fingers, but for getting Claire killed. If he fell any further out of favor, he might lose even the Mariner name. What mattered to Velodic was the family's standing, not some child who disappointed him.
Velodic turned. Meeting those pitch-black eyes, lightless to the last speck, Darius swallowed hard. No matter how many times he looked into them, they were a terrifying gaze.
"I trust a child of mine isn't so incompetent that he can't manage even that."
"I will never disappoint you again. This time, I will succeed. I swear it."
Darius flattened himself against the floor. Velodic watched his son's loyal, groveling display in silence, then turned away once more.
"Get out."
Even at Rozan's dismissal, Darius couldn't manage a word. He scrambled from the office.
"Hah..."
In that brief span, cold sweat had soaked him through. He had been given chance after chance only because Bariya mattered—she who carried both Mariner blood and an Authority. If he failed again, Velodic would show him no mercy whatsoever.
I have to stop them from casting me out of the Mariners, no matter what it takes!
"Make ready. We leave for the Caliph Estate."
The aide waiting outside the door startled at the order.
"You're going yourself?"
"I am."
This was no time to be choosy. Better to swallow his pride and plead with the ill-disposed Caliphs than to fall from Velodic's favor.
Bariya, you little wretch! Just let me get my hands on you!
He had disappointed Velodic. His pride had been smashed to pieces in front of Rozan. And now he even had to go to the Caliphs in person. Once he dragged her back, this time he would educate her properly—so she would never defy him again.
Bariya had more to do at the Caliph Estate than she had expected. At every meal and every snack she had to eat something delicious with Sabrina and leave her thoughts on the taste. During hunting-play, she had to throw her whole body into playing with Shirca. White, who had been spending noticeably more time with her of late, needed walks kept to the hour—and somewhere in the middle of all that, the day slipped away before she noticed.
All of it was enjoyable, of course. Even so, the hour she looked forward to most was study time with Baden.
"There aren't many beastkin families that possess an Authority. Among the tiger beastkin, the Frosts are the only ones. The Caliphs have an Authority now as well, but frankly, because it passed through only once, the blood runs thin. Unlike the Frosts, we won't see an Authority manifest in every generation."
Bariya stored away everything Baden taught her, piece by careful piece. For all his blunt looks, he explained things with great kindness and in careful detail, and she enjoyed their lessons. He knew a great deal, too. Beginning with the basic common sense of beastkin society, he taught her language, etiquette, and even mathematics. She had never even dreamed of such things among the Mariners, which made these moments all the more precious.
"How many beastkin in the Frost family have an Authority right now?"
"Four, including Sabrina. The Frost clan head, his two children, and a grandchild all possess one. The current clan head, incidentally, is Sabrina's father."
"So only the direct line has it? I thought there'd be more, since Divine Beast blood was mixed in."
"It's precisely because they carry Divine Beast blood that it passes only to the direct line. Ordinary beastkin find it difficult to carry that blood intact."
True enough. If everyone who inherited Divine Beast blood possessed an Authority, there would be far more who manifested one than there were now. That must have been why the Mariners, instead of binding themselves to a family that already possessed an Authority the way the Caliphs had, went hunting for a Divine Beast.
"An Authority also follows the mother's line more readily than the father's. That's why, in most families that have one, a woman succeeds. The Frost heir is Sabrina's younger sister."
"Oh..."
There was something she wanted to ask. Was it all right to? When Bariya hesitated, watching his face, Baden seemed to notice, and he smiled.
"You're wondering why Sabrina, the eldest daughter, didn't succeed the family, and married me instead?"
"......If it's a secret, you don't have to tell me."
According to Shirca, Baden and Sabrina had married for political reasons. A love match would have been one thing, but if the family's circumstances were tangled up in it, the matter seemed far too sensitive. Bariya shook her head.
"It's all right. Most of the Caliphs know already."
Baden told her without the slightest hesitation.
"It was because I loved Sabrina too much."
It was a reason she had never imagined. And yet, for some reason, Baden wore a bitter smile, as if loving Sabrina were itself a sin.
"It wasn't a feeling faint enough that I could have hidden it with any skill, and everyone in the Frost family came to notice. In the end Sabrina said she couldn't send her younger sister to a man who loved her, and she came to the Caliphs of her own accord."
He was blaming himself.
"Sabrina was born with the strongest Authority in Frost history. She could have become a clan head more outstanding than anyone. And yet, because of my feelings alone, she gave up everything and came here."
Wife to the leader who commanded the tiger beastkin. Some might have called that the greater honor, but it could never have filled the heart of Sabrina, who from birth had been counted the next clan head of the Frosts. And so Baden had lived as if atoning to her, killing the feelings that only grew larger with time, because Sabrina had no particular need of his love.
After they lost their first son, Rabin Caliph, the guilt had tormented him all the more.
"And what is that damned Authority even worth."
If it had not been a political marriage, Sabrina would never have had cause to go mad with rage, and she could have become the strongest, most beautiful clan head the Frosts had ever known. Baden murmured it like a lament.
"Ah. I'm sorry. The talk grew far too heavy."
Then he caught Bariya staring straight at him, and his expression turned awkward.
"It's a story most people already know. I only told you because there seemed no need to hide it from someone living with us. It's all long past, so just keep it in mind."
He had said it so she wouldn't feel left out, and it hadn't occurred to him that the weight of it might burden her.
"I don't think you're a bad person, Clan Head."
He had not expected the child to say anything of the sort. Baden's eyes widened.
Honestly, Bariya had suffered so much on account of an Authority that Sabrina's lot did feel the more pitiable. But the Clan Head didn't do anything wrong. The political marriage had been agreed by both families, and Baden falling in love with Sabrina was no crime. On top of that, he knew the shame of it. He lived tormented by guilt, atoning to her. He couldn't even be compared to the Mariners, who had abused a child simply because they needed an Authority.
Those people had even settled on a fiancé for me before I was born.
The so-called fiancé she had occasionally come face to face with was, if anything, worse than Darius—never better. The same age as her, and how utterly rotten his manners had been!
"Ah—I just mean that's what I think."
Bariya, who had been burning with anger, caught herself when she found Baden staring at her blankly. She had no idea what Sabrina thought of him, and here she was, an outsider, piling her own words on top.
"......No. It's all right."
Fortunately, far from growing angry, Baden smiled and drew Bariya into his arms. The tremor in those arms was so sad, so pitiful, that she quietly patted his back. When they first met, he had seemed as vast as a mountain. Now, strangely, his back felt small—just like the heart he had lived beneath, crushed all these years by guilt.
That night.
BANG!
A tremendous crash shook the entire estate, and Bariya's eyes flew open where she slept.