Madness
"What was that sound?"
Bariya sat up, her face still blank with sleep. The Caliph household was made up almost entirely of feline predator beastkin, so true uproar was rare—and yet something had roared loud enough to drag her out of it.
A thin, keening whine. White, who had been sleeping beside her, had woken as well and begun to whimper.
"What's wrong?"
A low groan answered her. White even climbed down off the bed and started pacing, back and forth, back and forth, so restless she looked frightened.
Don't tell me the hyenas have come.
The Caliphs guarded her like an iron fortress. A quiet abduction was hopeless. Had they decided to attack in the open instead?
Bariya ran to the balcony and looked out. The garden lay as still as ever. The commotion was coming from above her room—from Sabrina's bedroom on the highest floor. Screams, and the crash of something breaking, carried all the way down to her.
This doesn't feel like a raid.
If it were hyenas, they would have come for Bariya first. They would never have gone straight for Sabrina, the most dangerous of them all.
She hesitated only a moment, then decided she had to see for herself.
"White?"
But just as she was about to leave the room, White—still whimpering—caught Bariya's nightclothes in her teeth and pulled.
"There's all this noise coming from Lady Sabrina's room. Come with me. You're worried too, aren't you?"
White lingered at her side mostly because Bariya's presence was nearly that of a Divine Beast. Even so, White loved Sabrina. Bariya had assumed she would come without question.
A long, miserable groan. White only shook her head and bit down harder, dragging at the cloth.
No.
"Do you know what's causing all this?"
White nodded. Once, then again.
"Is it dangerous?"
Another nod. And another.
"Dangerous for who? Me? Or Lady Sabrina?"
This time White could not answer. She only groaned, and the tremor in those eyes told Bariya at once.
"Both of us, then."
Shouts and the shatter of breaking things kept pouring from Sabrina's room. White was rigid with fear. And both Sabrina and Bariya were in danger. Something had happened to Sabrina. There was no doubt of it.
"Then I have to go even more. There might be something I can do."
White, who had been blocking her so stubbornly, hesitated for the first time.
"You know I'm not an ordinary beastkin."
Beastkin felt drawn to Divine Beasts, but animals felt it far more deeply. To an animal, a Divine Beast was as good as a god. That was why White was not merely weak to Bariya, but kept trying to stay at her side.
"I'll help Lady Sabrina. So come with me."
At last White released the nightclothes and lowered herself. The moment Bariya climbed onto her back, she broke into a run so fast it was as if she had never tried to stop her at all.
"Young miss!"
"Young lady, you mustn't go up there!"
"White, stop! You can't take the young lady with you!"
Servants and knights sprang up in alarm to bar the way, but White slipped past every one of them with agile, liquid speed. She took the stairs in a flash, and the instant they reached the fifth floor, Bariya gasped.
A pheromone filled the space—thick, and thicker still, so heavy that black itself seemed to rise unbidden in the mind. The concentration was so intense she could not even name the scent. Gooseflesh prickled over her skin. The pheromone stabbed at her like thorns.
Lady Sabrina's pheromone.
Since their first meeting, Bariya had barely felt it at all. Now it was tearing through every corner of the floor.
A choked sound broke from White.
"White—"
Unable to bear it, the great tigress staggered and sank where she stood. She looked as if even breathing hurt. At last Bariya let a little of her own pheromone out. She had lived hiding it as completely as she could, afraid someone might realize how close she was to a Divine Beast, but this was not the moment to worry about that.
"Don't try to endure it here. Go back down. I'll go the rest of the way alone."
She slid off White's back and tried to push her toward the stairs, but White only groaned and pressed herself against Bariya's side. Bariya's pheromone seemed to have made breathing a little easier.
"All right. We'll go together."
White was worried about Lady Sabrina too.
A thud. A crash. A shattering cascade. The closer they drew to Sabrina's room, the louder the chaos became. Unlike the floors below, almost no one was here—driven off, no doubt, by the pheromone raging through the hall. Only Knight Commander Rowin Denebian, Tyreen, and Baden stood before the door.
"Young lady?"
The moment they saw her, Rowin and Tyreen rushed over.
"It is not safe. You must return to your room."
"He's right, young miss. I'll see you back to your bedroom myself. Come with me."
The instant Tyreen drew near, Bariya took a step back, and White moved to block the way.
"White! You know why this is happening—how could you bring the young miss here?"
A low growl rolled out of the tigress. Tyreen scolded her, but White did not yield. She bared her teeth.
"White tried to stop me. I insisted. So don't blame her."
"Young miss..."
"What is going on? What's happened to Lady Sabrina?"
Bariya glanced toward the door. Baden, who would ordinarily have sensed her presence before anyone else, was staring silently into the bedroom and saying nothing at all. He didn't even seem to have noticed she was there.
"Well..."
"I'll explain once you're back in your room, so for now, if you would just—"
Tyreen was still trying, somehow, to coax her back downstairs when a tremendous crash split the air.
"Out of my way! Move! I have to go kill those hyena bastards!"
Glass shattered inside the bedroom, and Sabrina's roar tore out with it.
"Kh—!"
"Ugh—!"
A fresh surge of dense pheromone crashed over them. Tyreen and Rowin sank to the floor, their faces twisted in pain. Even White, who had been breathing more easily thanks to Bariya, flattened herself in fear.
Bariya ran straight to the bedroom door.
"Ah..."
Her eyes went wide.
A broken window. Curtains shredded to ribbons, fluttering in the air. Every fine ornament lay smashed and rolling across the floor. Not a single piece of furniture remained whole—not the bed, not the chairs, not the vanity. In the middle of the ruined room stood Sabrina and Sirka.
"Those hyena bastards—every last one of them has to die. I won't forgive them. I'll kill them all. I won't leave a single one."
Sabrina, her always-lovely hair a wild tangle, was spitting rage, and weeping as if her heart were being torn out. Sirka held her with his whole body, straining to keep her still. Scratches covered him from head to foot.
"Yes. We'll kill them. We won't forgive them either. But not now."
Bariya couldn't make sense of any of it. Why was Sabrina like this? Why was Sirka the only one holding her back? And was Baden simply standing there, watching all of it?
"No—no! I have to kill them now! They're right in front of me! Do you think I'll lose my son again?!"
Sabrina screamed and shoved Sirka away.
"Ugh—!"
The force sent him tumbling sideways across the floor. In that gap Sabrina seized a vase and hurled it—straight at Bariya.
"Ah."
It came so fast there was no time to dodge. Her eyes flew wide, and then, with a great crash, a warm and familiar embrace closed around her.
"Little one?!"
Baden, who had been staring blankly a moment before, had come back to himself somehow and was holding her with his whole body.
"When did you get here? Are you hurt anywhere?"
He checked her over in a rush. Shards of the broken vase rained from his shoulder, and only then did Bariya realize he had taken the blow in her place.
"You're the one the vase hit, my lord!"
"I'm fine. Something like this won't even leave a mark."
He turned his shoulder for her to see, but blood was already seeping slowly through the cloth, belying his words.
"...I forgot it was Sabrina who threw it. Still, I'm all right. This will heal quickly."
Good heavens—how hard had she thrown it, for it to wound a predator beastkin famed for toughness, and the head of the house at that?
"What in the world are Tyreen and Sir Rowin doing..."
Already angry, Baden found the two of them pinned helpless beneath Sabrina's pheromone and let out a sigh.
"Why is Lady Sabrina like that? Why doesn't she even recognize Sirka—or you, my lord?"
Bariya caught hold of him and cried out.
"Tell me."
"Little one..."
"I might be able to help."
At words he had never expected, Baden's eyes shook hard. The wish to place his hope in Bariya collided with the reason that said he must not lay such a burden on a child. He hesitated a long while. In the end, he forced the truth out.
"...It's Madness. Ever since she lost Rabin—her first child—she loses her reason like this from time to time. The only one who can stop her is Sirka."
A truth sadder than any other.