TLSD 28

Chapter 28

With a fierce, irritated sigh, the man sifted through the meager food items in the bag until his fingers brushed against a certain red book.

Elio’s eyes flew wide. She lunged forward, stretching out her arm to grab the red book right out of the man’s grasp.

“Sir! M-My Lord!”

Catching the woman as she practically threw herself into his arms, Carlos used his forearm to support her and forced her right back down onto his lap.

“Give that back! What gives you the right to just go poking through other people’s private things? Hand it over, give it back!”

Elio pressed her hands against Carlos’s thighs, tugging furiously on the red book held aloft in his right hand. A crooked smirk touched the corner of his lips as he lifted the book even higher out of reach and flipped it open.

“Does this talk about a noble knight’s first kiss and what goes on between her legs? Quite the provocative title.”

“It’s for studying! Give it back. Honestly, have you no manners…?! You have absolutely zero concept of boundaries!”

“What is there to study? In a red book?”

“I’m going to have a real marriage soon, and since my nanny never gave me a proper education, I’m self-teaching! Noble ladies are supposed to receive this kind of training!”

Carlos pinned her flushed, burning face with a gaze as sharp as a razor’s edge.

“You’ve become a commoner stripped of your immunity, yet instead of studying the holy scripture, you’re studying your wedding night?”

With a desperate lunge, Elio snatched the book back from his hand, scrambled off his rock-hard thighs, and skittered backward on her bottom in a panicked retreat.

“…D-Don’t discriminate against subjects of study! The scripture and the first night hold completely equal value. Could the God Himmell have ever been born if not for a first night? The first night comes first, before any scripture.”

Deciding she had nothing left to lose, Elio muttered the rapid defense under her breath as she aggressively crammed the spilled grapes and white bread back into the bag.

Frustration and scorching embarrassment boiled up inside her at the sheer audacity of someone peeking at her personal hobby.

“…God Himmell was born completely on his own from the light. As the god of love.”

Carlos said, pressing two fingers to his temple.

As Elio slammed the crumpled book shut, her fingers curled inward and she bit her lower lip in mortification. She chewed hard on the inside of her cheek, vividly remembering the explicit, scandalous content printed on the exact page he had flipped open.

At that moment, she wanted nothing more than to turn into a handful of sand and blow away.

“E-Even if he was born on his own… he had to experience his first night once he became an adult to father the archangels, obviously! This isn’t something to be ashamed of or treated as a taboo. The natural urges of love and intimacy are just part of a lady’s foundational education—”

“Urges of intimacy? Ah. So you hate a man’s power and wealth, but you’re all for carnal desires?”

Elio blinked through her confusion as she met his narrowed, piercing gaze, before instinctively sticking her chin out with the absolute dignity of a strict matriarch lecturing on marital duties. Her entire body was burning red, but she refused to back down from his dark eyes.

“I’m talking about instinctual urges and their intrinsic value! Every human possesses the drive for propagation, and feeling romantic desire toward an object of affection is completely natural! It is by no means a taboo—”

“Toward whom?”

Carlos dragged a rough hand down his face, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly rasp between clenched teeth.

“Pardon?”

“Who on earth did you feel something toward that made you think you needed to study this?”

She flinched even when their hands merely brushed, and now she was reading this at barely twenty years old…

Suppressing a chill, hollow tone—much like an adult reprimanding a rebellious adolescent—Carlos reined in his breathing and tried to steady himself.

He was well aware that noble ladies typically received intimacy education by sixteen, or eighteen at the latest. It was true that a twenty-year-old lady who had reached adulthood ought to have long since been instructed by her nanny or mother regarding relations with men.

While the ascetic doctrines of the Himmell Church strictly regulated public morality, the ironic counter-effect had only sparked a booming underground culture of secret masked balls and free romances.

Since very few women actually experienced their first night during the temple’s perfunctory, pre-arranged virginity inspections, he knew full well that education on the matter was expected well before her debutante season—at least in theory.

At least rationally.

“Whose attention caught your eye? Are you still exchanging messages with those puny, pretty-boy squires you saw on the carriage ride? Do you honestly think bastards who aggressively prey on young girls are normal?”

He asked again, his voice dropping into an even darker, more chilling register as if struggling to crush down an erupting fury.

“Why on earth are you reading garbage like this out of nowhere? I’m asking who you’ve suddenly taken an interest in.”

“Interest in whom?”

Elio glanced at the muscular, carved contours of his chest rising and falling beneath his thin tunic, and abruptly snapped her head away.

“I-It’s none of your business, it seems. You told me to become trash, so why do you even care?”

Blushing fiercely, Elio wrestled her bicycle upright and spun around with a clumsy jerk, looking ready to topple over. She felt utterly flayed open, her privacy completely gutted like an empty plastic bag blowing in the wind.

“…Don’t poke around in my personal life. You’re just using me anyway. What’s the difference between you, my father, and Parliament? You’re all the same. No—you’re the worst of the lot.”

When she cast one last lingering glare over her shoulder, he was standing entirely still, his expression locked in a terrifying, heavy silence. Though her steps tripped over themselves like a toddler learning to walk, Elio refused to look back again and forced herself forward with long, determined strides.

Shoving her beloved knight romance novels into the bike basket like trash tossed into a bin, she hesitated for a split second at the crushing weight of his absolute silence—he hadn’t even made an effort to stop her—before sharply wrenching the handlebars with trembling, hot hands.

Wobble, wobble. She pedaled away frantically, desperately hoping the cool breeze would finally cool down her burning ears.

Swish…

How far had she walked? The bittersweet, intoxicating scent of lilacs, completely ignored in her earlier agitation, drifted softly against the tip of her nose.

The gentle splashing of the stream and the rustle of thick foliage reached her ears. A cool breeze slipped beneath her skirt, sweeping across her sweat-cooled skin.

Under a deep violet twilight, the evening stream stretched out endlessly in the quiet stillness. Elio parked her bicycle beneath the deepening sky, looking like a watercolor painting gone wrong, and slumped down onto the grass.

…Such a jerk.

She picked up a small pebble and flung it into the water. A tiny ripple broke the surface before absolute stillness settled back over the bank.

She stared anxiously at the tranquil stream, rubbed her tired eyes hard, and fumbled through the black grocery bag for the loaf of white bread. Her fingertips trembled faintly. The cold, hardened expression he had worn at the very end had looked unmistakably furious.

…Angry or not, why on earth is he the one getting mad?

As she struggled with trembling fingers to rip open the bread wrapper, a tiny bird fluttered down and landed right beside her. It hopped over to her boot, cocked its head, and let out a soft chirping trill.

When she stared back in bewilderment, the bird gave the toe of her shoe a sharp, playful tap with its beak. Tied securely around its slender leg was a small scrap of paper.

“…Who on earth sent you?”

She was completely baffled as to whose messenger bird this could possibly be.

…My sister’s messenger bird already came this morning, though…

Frowning in confusion over whether the delivery was even meant for her, she hesitated, her breath catching in her throat when she noticed the impossibly dainty, bear-patterned seal stamped on the note. Carefully squatting down, she gently unspooled the paper.

As she unfolded it, a bold, energetic handwriting instantly met her eyes—one that unmistakably belonged to that man.

Elio’s trembling fingertips finally went still.

Just how far are you walking?

Your house is in the opposite direction. It’s late, so head straight home.

Don’t wander around after the streetlights come on. Stay out of the inn district and the mercenary quarters when you’re by yourself. Don’t answer if a stranger talks to you, and don’t blindly follow anyone just because they ask for help. Don’t go accepting random food from people either.

Don’t let anyone into the house besides me. And I’d appreciate it if you actually memorized the roads by now.

Pretty lady.

Care to join me for dinner at seven?

Elio stared dumbly at the closing lines of the note, reading and rereading the words before a dry, incredulous chuckle slipped past her parched lips. She waved a hand in front of her flushed face in utter disbelief.

Was he going to demand dinner dates out of nowhere just because they had finished fighting? The man did whatever he pleased.

Is a simple dinner invite supposed to fix everything?

Utterly flabbergasted, she muttered the words “Pretty lady” under her breath before quickly shaking her head to clear her burning face. Grabbing her bicycle, she sprinted all the way home, sweating profusely. To make matters worse, a sudden downpour opened up, soaking her through to the skin. Even as she muttered curses at the jerk under her breath, her body moved with the lightning speed of a kingfisher.

She scrubbed every speck of dust from the entryway tiles, polished the marble in every room, and cleaned the bathroom corners until her entire body was slick with sweat. After a thorough bath, she even smoothed strawberry-scented lotion over the damp ends of her hair.

Fussing over a loose thread on the cheap dress she had bought at the market, she rolled the sleeves up twice, then three times, growing increasingly anxious as she hunted around for a pair of scissors.

“A-At least give a lady a full day’s notice if you’re coming over! Why is he always springing things on me out of nowhere? The man is completely lawless.”

Elio was frantically brushing and twisting her hair back up when she let out a distressed whimper, dropped to the floor to scoop up a stray strand, and spun back to the full-length mirror to inspect her elbows and the zipper on her back.

Right at 7:00 PM, exactly as the note had specified, the doorbell chimed.

Peep! Peep! Peep!

“Hey, shh! Quiet down…!”

Hearing the messenger bird burst into a frantic chorus of chirps at the sound of the bell, Elio hissed at it to keep quiet. Having found her new residence already—hardly a surprise given how early her sister had tracked her down that morning—the bird was throwing a deafening fit over a mere doorbell chime.

Stuffing a treat into the screeching bird’s beak while panicking that her racing heartbeat might somehow be audible through the door, she frantically snipped the stray thread with her scissors and bolted for the entryway.

And when she flung open the courtyard gate with a flushed, expectant face—

“Lady.”

Gritta was standing there.

“Have you had dinner yet?”

Gritta’s hazel eyes curved softly in a gentle smile.

Completely unexpected, the sight made Elio’s eyes widen in shock. Standing out in the dark night clad in a crisp, immaculately tailored military uniform, Gritta cut a figure far taller and more striking than most men.

“Sir Gritta?”

As Elio stood frozen in absolute speechlessness, Gritta offered a polite, polished smile and lifted a wicker picnic basket. Her warm gaze slowly drifted over Elio’s slender ankles, her narrow waist, and the curves of her chest, before finally resting upon her face.

A strange, unreadable smile played across her lips.