TLSD 19

Chapter 19

“…My Lord. Please book me an inn that provides meals. A place where the meal price isn’t charged separately, but inc… included in the room rate.”

She wanted to make her demand as brazenly and confidently as anyone, but lacking any sense of shame, her words kept stumbling and stuttering.

“What do you want to eat?”

“……Steak.”

“Tell our chef.”

“Tell whom?”

“The chef at the ducal castle. He grills them well.”

Elio blinked her eyes for a moment.

“You want me to come eat steak? All the way at the ducal castle?”

“You’ll be sleeping at the ducal castle.”

“Today?”

“Always.”

Elio snapped her head up in a start.

“I’m not even formally married to you, so how am I supposed to spend two months living at the ducal castle?”

“Why can’t you?”

“Is it okay to just bring any random lady into the castle? That looks terribly immoral!”

“You shared the first night with me, didn’t you?”

At the man’s brazen retort, Elio’s jaw dropped.

“That was just me playing along with your shameless lies! I’ll be staying at an inn for the time being, so please arrange any house in the village for me as soon as possible.”

He wore no expression at all. Elio nervously parted her lips.

“You said you’d take responsibility for everything I need…!”

He gazed intently into Elio’s eyes. The hand clutching Elio’s jacket twitched.

“Ah, you said earlier there’s no need to greet the Duke and Duchess. So I can stay in the village…”

“I said there’s no need to greet them. I didn’t say you don’t need to stay in my castle.”

Elio looked into his pitch-black eyes and lowered her head. She muttered in a voice so faint even an ant couldn’t hear it.

“…Whose castle is it anyway. It’s the Duke’s castle, not yours…”

Could anyone possibly sleep comfortably in the ducal castle?

Just the fact that the fiancé brought home by their son—temporary though it might be—didn’t even warrant a greeting from the lady who would be staying in their castle for a while was enough to show just how unfavorably the Duke and Duchess regarded her.

Of course, that was entirely understandable. Even if she bore no personal blame, it was a hard fact that her father had pulled off an unforgivable stunt.

They’d surely treat her just like the old knight uncles…

No, the Duke would undoubtedly be far scarier than that…

So what if he’s a hopeless romantic? Aren’t romantic dukes usually absolute lunatics only for their own wives?

Every romance novel she had read up until now was like that. It was a completely illogical thought, but Elio’s anxiety-ridden mind spun even more frantically and dizzyingly.

“Stop twisting my words. As for the inn, those bastard soldiers…”

Carlos let out an impatient sigh and shoved his thumb right between Elio’s blood-red, chapped lips.

Elio bit down on his thick finger and parted her lips in startled dismay.

“Open your mouth. What are you so scared of?”

Carlos murmured low, as if scraping it from his throat.

“I m-m-not sc-sc-scared.”

Elio tried to turn her head away from a gaze so intense it felt as though he intended to dissect her, but the man’s unyielding hand wouldn’t let her go.

Panicked, she moved her tongue to say anything, and only then did the man slowly withdraw his finger from her parted mouth.

Elio let out the breath she had been holding. Seeing the man’s thick finger glistening with her saliva, the blood rushed furiously to her face.

“H-How can a person always put their b-bare hands in someone’s mouth…”

Elio swallowed hard as the ducal castle’s drawbridge, growing closer beyond the window, came into view. Her heart raced, turning frantic and urgent.

“The cheapest inn in the village is fine, really. I want to live freely in the village. Staying in the village is much better if I want to look into other fiefs to settle down in, you know?”

The knights at the very front began crossing the drawbridge. Closing her mouth tight like a clam once more, the man remained entirely silent.

Suddenly, a wave of surging emotion flared up within her like an active volcano, and she turned toward the man.

Must I continue to walk on eggshells and live in fear even after escaping Aquitaine?

Entangled in anxiety, her words spilled out in a haphazard rush.

“Honestly, isn’t it completely obvious that the ducal castle will be uncomfortable? With the Duke, the Duchess, and the servants, there won’t be just one or two people who look down on me. How am I supposed to spend two full months at ease? If it were just the two of you and me, maybe…”

Elio bit the tip of her tongue. Mortified by her own slip of the tongue, she slammed her eyes shut.

The humid, lilac-scented wind felt scorching hot.

Carlos, who had been silently watching her while wiping his damp fingers, let out a dry chuckle.

“Just the two of us?”

The doors of the Papal Chamber slammed heavily against the wall.

A pen tip slipped and skewed, sending ink splattering.

The large framed plaque reading, “Love will set you free,” rocked back and forth like a seesaw, and the statue of the Archangel toppled sideways.

“Just tear the whole place down already!”

Early in the morning, Grand General Roxana kicked the door open and barged in, shouting even louder than the Pope as she hurled a newspaper onto the desk.

“This is the old man’s doing, right?”

Roxana slammed both hands down on the desk as if she meant to smash it to pieces. Having finally tracked down the Pope, who had consistently avoided her, she felt her blood boiling right out of her skull.

“Why on earth did you raid the Count of Aquitaine’s estate? And why did you notarize that damned blue bead?! Did you accept bribes from the Count of Aquitaine?!”

The Pope clicked his tongue at the woman’s fiercely distorted face. He carefully righted the fallen statue of the Archangel and meticulously wiped the angel’s face with his sleeve.

Seeing that sight, Roxana struck the Archangel with her elbow and growled even more fiercely.

“I asked if you took bribes from the Count of Aquitaine!”

“Oh dear. Absolutely not!”

The Pope raised his voice in feigned outrage.

“I took them from the Empress!”

Roxana muttered a curse, ripped off her Grand General badge and hurled it away, and kicked the Pope’s desk as if she meant to shatter it to pieces.

The Pope clicked his tongue at her barbarian behavior and patted the woman’s bulging biceps with a feather duster.

“Isn’t it said that the Emperor plans to have Carlos marry the Imperial Princess and then hand the throne over to Carlos? The Empress lost her mind and… paid a very, very handsome holy donation to ruin the marriage… Oops.”

The Pope waved the feather duster through the air.

He prudently omitted the part about also taking double-dealing gold from Carlos.

“Whether you took it from the Empress or anyone else—why on earth did you have to drag Ellie into it with those Schüpenhardt bastards?!”

“What’s so grand about Aquitaine getting tangled up with Schüpenhardt? Tsk. Money-making opportunities take priority. What can one do when the Holy Spirit dwells most abundantly in the Empress’s pocket?”

Everyone knew the Papal faction formed a filthy cartel with the Empress and the First Prince, but very few people knew that the mastermind behind all these underhanded schemes was none other than Pope Gregory.

A cheerful, harmless smile wherever he went; a political stance so ambiguous that he seemed completely clueless, far from being a staunch supporter of the Empress.

Someone obsessed with selling Archangel memorabilia and sponsoring romance plays, easily swayed by fickle public sentiment.

Neither the Emperor’s faction nor the Papal faction could reach a definitive judgment regarding the 24th Pope Gregory. They often described him as a weak and spineless man devoid of any standards or backbone, acting much like a gray zone.

Roxana rubbed her face savagely in utter disbelief and dropped onto the sofa.

“Advance me my vacation. There’s somewhere I need to go.”

“Ho-ho-ho-ho.”

The Pope burst into a benevolent laugh. He laid down the feather duster and hoisted up a little puppy that had been wiggling around, drinking milk.

“Come on, say hello. It’s your friend! Woof-woof-woof-woof.”

“Instead, if you send me to Schüpenhardt, I’ll go inflict a mortal wound.”

“On whom?”

“Carlo—dammit.”

The woman deftly ducked a thick, weapon-like book hurled straight at her head.

“Do you take yourself for an assassin? You’re losing your mind and barking utter nonsense. Tsk. Don’t go taking out your pent-up frustration from what the First Duke of Schüpenhardt did to you on some unrelated target.”

The Pope, selecting another book to throw at the woman still glaring at him with a murderous gaze, finally resorted to tapping her with his feather duster.

“Off with you now. Whose temperament did you inherit to be so terribly vicious?”

“Weren’t you the one sending assassins with the Empress every single day?”

The woman let out a hollow laugh before lowering her voice.

“Every single assassin sent to Schüpenhardt died without a single survivor, didn’t they? There’s nobody left to send now. That’s why I’m going. I’ll go attack them myself.”

“Do you think the Empress is just sitting idly by lately? What makes you think you should step in!”

With a severely twisted expression, the woman clicked her tongue and sank back into the sofa.

“There’s something I need to retrieve from that bastard.”

“What could this bastard possibly need to steal?”

“Steal what? That bastard stole my thing.”

The woman tousled her short black hair and clenched her jaw tight.

……Damn this accursed Schüpenhardt.

She muttered through gritted, grinding teeth.

“I’m heading straight to Schüpenhardt, so you can deal with the monsters yourself—”

“Where are you going? To another dimension?”

The Pope blinked with innocent bewilderment and asked back.

Seeing her hesitate and clench her fists until they cracked, the Pope raised both hands in a victory sign and burst into a joyful, roaring laugh.

“Yes, yes! Go ahead and break the commandments of God once more, why don’t you? Hm? Interfere in the life of a child who has finally reached adulthood, and ruin and wreck it all! Go on and wipe everything out, kill everyone, and throw your usual unhinged dog-like temper tantrum, you wretch!”

“You know full well who Aquitaine is! She’s the very last dragon left unharmed! Shouldn’t you save her?!”

“So what? What of it, whether she lives or dies? It’s that child’s life.”

The Pope waved his arm dismissively, as if refusing to entertain the conversation any longer, and spun his chair around. Lifting a hot pot from the windowsill trivet resting atop a sturdy holy scripture, he stirred the beef stew.

“Stop meddling in that child’s life. Dragons release their young into the wild the moment they are born; why on earth are you clutching onto a child you didn’t even bear? Let her grow according to the natural order! Are you trying to project yourself onto that child?”

“Order? What order? Is falling in love with a human and getting corrupted the natural order? Is getting betrayed and murdered by a human the natural order? Even so, why Schüpenhardt of all places!”

“Even if she’s tangled up with Schüpenhardt—”

The Pope ruthlessly cut off the woman’s enraged outburst. Looking down through the window of the highest tower in the Papal domain at the houses packed densely together like ants, he stared into the distance.

Near the hazy horizon, the Dragon Mountain Range of Schüpenhardt was visible.

Narrowing his pupils slightly, the Pope took a large, hearty spoonful of beef stew.

“……She’ll survive if she’s meant to.”