TLSD 18

Chapter 18

“My Lord. Aren’t you on bad terms with the Holy Knights?”

Hesitating over whether to ask about his family member after all, Elio changed her question to something else. Talking about family matters still felt a bit too soon…

“We’re on good terms.”

“Liar.”

Elio narrowed her eyes at the man who kept pulling her close and dragging her hood down over her face.

“Aren’t you constantly wearing your hood and hiding because of the Holy Knights? Every time a holy knight comes into view, you keep dodging them.”

Elio was fully convinced that something was going on between the Holy Knights and this man.

She was particularly certain after seeing the Robin Hood-esque knights scattering, pulling their hoods down and wandering around like petty thieves, paired with the way the man dragged her along to clear a path the moment any holy knights appeared.

“My Lord. You’d win, right…?”

Carlos looked at her with an expression of sheer absurdity.

“Well, obviously I assume you’d win. I just meant—what if getting caught by the Holy Knights makes things dangerous? Do you have to duel them or something?”

Carlos let out a sigh and pulled her even closer. He closed his eyes while tucking her away between his thighs as if hiding her from view.

Elio’s eyes widened, but so as not to interrupt the man’s secretive posture, she swallowed hard, wrapped her arms around her knees, and curled herself up even tighter.

“I win.”

Carlos gave a childishly short reply, like a seven-year-old boy, as he lightly poked the back of his own hand to prompt a response from the anxious woman.

“Then why are you hiding…?”

Elio glanced back, only to immediately drop her gaze as if convinced the moment she met the man’s menacing glare.

Carlos let out a sigh as he watched the woman curled up roundly like a baby rabbit.

He had habitually changed their travel routes to avoid getting this cowardly woman tangled up in any quarrels or disputes, but wondering if that had only made her more anxious brought a bitter smile to his face.

Why ask why we’re hiding our faces?

Watching her remain entirely oblivious to how much her own face stood out, he felt even more exasperated than he had back when she used to be a baby who couldn’t communicate and did nothing but cry at the top of her lungs. He tapped the back of her hand lightly.

“I avoided them because they’re a nuisance. We’re on good terms. We don’t fight even if we run into each other.”

Swallowing a dry throat, Elio listened closely to the man’s low voice. Staring strictly at the trash can right in front of her, she nodded.

The man fell silent again, replaced by the bustling, boisterous noise of pilgrims and mercenaries.

As night fell, harsh curses rang out, accompanied by the sound of shattering glass as people seemingly picked fights with one another.

Fidgeting with her sweat-dampened hands, Elio pulled her hood down even deeper.

The man looped his forearm around in front of her.

Blinking rapidly, Elio looked down at the solid forearm suddenly resting right before her chest.

“…Rather than winning or losing contests, I think it’s way cooler to win the fight against oneself and keep moving forward no matter what.”

Carlos laughed in sheer disbelief.

“You think I’d lose?”

“No. I believe in you, My Lord.”

Shaking her head vigorously, Elio gave a firm, resolute answer before handing out the chicken skewers she was holding to the little kids loitering nearby.

Carlos stared intently at the woman’s flushed cheeks. The yellow lamplight of the storefronts twinkled adorably across her stimulated, glowing face.

“…You believe in me?”

“Yes. You’re strong, and I believe at least that you’re not a bad person.”

Elio abruptly swallowed back the words—You’ve never laid a single hand on me this whole time, haven’t you?—that rose to the tip of her tongue.

A memory flashed through her mind of her nanny, whom she had believed to be pure-hearted her entire life, suddenly turning on her and striking her.

Carlos curved his lips into a dry smirk and rolled up his sleeves.

“Look at you. So naive.”

“…Me? I’m secretly not naive at all, you know.”

Savoring the chicken skewer the man had bought her in small, slow bites, Elio gave a quiet laugh.

A giggle slipped out as she watched Carlos pulling an awkward, furrowed expression while playing arm-wrestling matches against the kids who had been lingering around him since earlier.

“What’s wrong? Did you lose, My Lord?”

A person who uncharacteristically liked animals and babies, and walked around wearing a portrait of his mother around his neck—he surely couldn’t be a bad person after all, she thought.

“Are we really arriving today?”

Elio mumbled, curling herself up against the carriage wall.

“We’re here. Look outside.”

“……You’ve been saying we’re here since a while ago.”

“I’m telling you, we’re really here this time.”

Pulling back the curtain, Carlos grasped the tips of Elio’s wave-scattered golden hair in his hand.

Rubbing her eyelids, which were swollen from sleeping so much, Elio pressed her body flush against the window. Peeking her head out at the rattling carriage’s breakneck, flying speed, an endless wall of towering mountains unfolded right before her eyes.

“…Is that the Dragon Mountain Range?”

Elio’s jaw dropped, unable to tear her gaze away from the scenery beyond the carriage window.

The wind blew fiercely, making her narrow her eyes. Behind a grayish-white city wall as long as a vast plain, massive mountain ranges wound and snaked into the distance.

“How did you even know it’s the Dragon Mountain Range?”

“It’s always on the very first page of history textbooks!”

Elio spun around, pulling away from her close press against the carriage window.

“Schüpenhardt chose the most dangerous land for their fief despite being founding contributors! The land of death that borders the Dragon Mountain Range!”

At her excited voice, Carlos let out a soft huff of laughter.

“You sound like a wandering bard.”

“I actually heard it from a real bard once, just once! It’s famous, you know. The story of the friendship between the First Duke and the Black Dragon.”

Eyes sparkling, Elio lost herself once again to the scenery outside the carriage. The closer they drew to the castle, the further back she had to tilt her head to look up.

Grayish-white fortress walls soared like a sheer cliff, as if a towering mountain had been sliced away in a single stroke, reaching all the way up to touch the sky. It was the highest wall she had ever laid eyes on in her entire life.

It was so towering that it looked as though God had drawn a line right here to split the world in two, declaring that everything beyond this point was no longer human soil.

The claim that this was the largest fief in the empire, dividing the Southern and Northern Continents right down the middle, was entirely true.

Before she knew it, the heavy gates of the fortress loomed right before their eyes, and she stared, spellbound, at the black banner fluttering vigorously above the gate.

Schüpenhardt’s golden crest—a sword piercing through golden wings—flapped brilliantly in the air.

“Congratulations on your safe return from a grand journey. May the blessings of the God Himmel and the courage of the Archangel Euros be with you!”

Some forty or fifty guards, fully armored from head to toe, struck their long spears firmly against the ground to pay their respects.

Crushed by the oppressive weight of the atmosphere, Elio forced down a dry lump in her scratchy throat and lowered her head.

A rough cloud of dust swirled upward as Schweitz’s thick fortress gates swung open.

Passing into the fortress, which resembled a stronghold, a scene of such abundance unfolded that it made the bard’s classic tales—proclaiming the land had reverted to a realm of death following the fall of the Black Dragon—feel utterly absurd.

“Kya-ha-ha, it’s Schüpenhardt!”

From young children daringly shouting the lord’s title as they chased after the carriage to farmers waving their pickaxes high in the air, everyone looked thoroughly peaceful.

By now, they seemed to have reached the center of the town, where lined-up eateries were packed to the brim with people, bursting with hearty laughter. Perhaps because it was a territory bordering the Cyprus Kingdom, merchant caravans filled the main avenue to the point of crowding.

As the carriage sped down the central boulevard past the merchant wagons clearing the way, the crowds on the sidewalks gradually grew denser, until the cheers of the fief’s residents resounded deafeningly in her ears.

“Death to the monsters! Freedom to Schweitz!”

“Glory to Schüpenhardt, slayer of the evil dragon!”

Startled by the thunderous cheers of the townspeople, Elio instinctively cowered before immediately straightening her shoulders to pretend nothing was wrong. Her heartbeat pounded heavily and rapidly.

…How can there possibly be so many people?

The bustling spectacle was astonishingly different from Aquitaine, which was always wrapped in silence.

When she read about it in books, she had never imagined it would be a fief this crowded….

“My Lord, aren’t you going to wave back to the residents?”

Elio asked, clutching the region around her heart where her pulse raced with suffocating anxiety. Carlos nodded as if to say there was no need to look outside, pulling up the cardigan slipping from her shoulder before turning another page of his book.

“Everyone seems like they want to see your face…”

Elio tightly pressed her legs together where they brushed against the man’s solid thighs. Hiding her face behind the curtain, she stretched a trembling hand out of the carriage window to catch a flower petal.

“…Why are there so many lilac trees?”

The national flower of the Cyprus Kingdom—lilacs, said to dye the entire Northern Continent in shades of purple—were embroidered all along the grand avenue of Schüpenhardt.

“My father planted them.”

“Ah… Does he like flowers?”

“No.”

“Then why…?”

“He thought my mother would like them.”

Elio blinked her curious, turquoise-blue eyes as she looked at the utterly blunt man.

He must be… an absolute romanticist….

Then why is the son like this?

He truly seemed absurdly, callously unaffected by this dazzlingly beautiful sight.

……Does he take after his mother?

Shrugging her shoulders as her mood dipped slightly, Elio watched the overflowing laughter spilling outside the carriage window.

Faces beaming with happiness, completely free of worries—just like the noon sunlight—felt somewhat unfamiliar and fascinating.

Her earlier anxiety slowly began to calm down—the fear that if the townspeople believed the absurd tabloid reports claiming she had forced herself upon this man, they might scream curses and hurl abuse at her.

Contrary to the wizard’s frantic worries that the commander’s honor would be dragged through the mud, her scandal regarding their first night didn’t seem to have inflicted even a speck of negative impact on this vast land’s young lord.

…Well. Naturally, nobody would ever believe this man was the one who got forced, would they?

“My Lord. The people of Schüpenhardt all look so pretty. Even their smiles are pretty.”

Carlos raised an eyebrow as he glanced at the people at the edge of Elio’s gaze.

“……They look frail.”

Elio smiled along as she watched the smiling townspeople.

“I happen to like pretty men, though.”

The calls of merchants soliciting customers and the sweet smells of street food. Stirring all her five senses at once, Elio whispered with a voice tinged with excitement.

“Oh, steaks are only 2,000 shillings. It looks way cheaper than Aquitaine.”

“Commander! Are we finally going to sink our teeth into some meat today?”

“And drinks, too! Let’s crack open all the barrels for a change!”

Growing hungry from the scent of steak, the knights shouted boisterously toward the carriage window.

“Alright. Gather at the banquet hall.”

Elio tuned out the conversation between Carlos and the knights as if it concerned someone else entirely. Wondering if her own lodging would also have steak on the menu, she looked out at the upscale inn district.

Then, the moment Carlos finished talking with the knights, she whispered with an expression full of worry.