Don't Keep a Dog in the Garden - Chapter 13

What the Emperor sought to gain from this incident was a pretext to take Cassia’s life.

So the true culprit had to be someone entirely unrelated to her.

If it was the Second Prince’s longtime friend and loyal escort knight, even the Emperor would have no choice but to accept it.

Cassia knew that.

As the final piece of a very well-constructed script, she squeezed her dry throat and asked again, “You’re telling me to lie to survive?”

Her voice sounded as if she resented him, as if she were hurt.

For the last descendant of the Golden Dawn, survival always involved a measure of cowardice, but she had never faced injustice this humiliating.

Her trembling golden eyes wandered over the blade she saw for the first time.

Whisker leaned toward Cassia and whispered gently in Cassia’s ear, “If you do not want to, then don’t. Before you tell the truth, you can kill the Emperor.”

The corners of his eyes curved beautifully as he offered the quickest, cleanest alternative.

His playful smile hid whether it was a joke or earnest, but his sincerity had always been one thing from the start.

Cassia knew that too.

She swung her arm and shoved Whisker away, warning him coldly, “I told you not to say blasphemous things.”

“But if not, he will kill you, so what choice do we have?”

Pushed back without resistance, Whisker shrugged, looking wronged.

Cassia’s lips moved as if to argue, but Whisker’s stubborn words were clearly true.

After all, the one who had forcibly shoved the leash of the dog he raised into her hands was the Emperor himself.

If Cassia spoke the truth, the Emperor would rage that Whisker had fabricated the imperial assassination case and practically dance with delight.

He would claim the culprit was Whisker, that he plotted treason for Cassia’s sake, and he would dance, sword in hand.

Her golden eyes, wavering before a truth more useless than justice, landed on the corpse that could say nothing.

“Did you kill this person?”

“For you, I haven’t killed anyone yet.”

Whisker dodged the truth with an ambiguous answer.

His full-bloom smile made Cassia’s eyes swim.

The true culprit, who died after leaving behind a long suicide note.

Was it guilt over failing to protect his lord that drove him to hang himself, or was it an unjust act committed to protect someone?

Afraid her heart might grow even more tangled, Cassia turned away, avoiding his eyes.

Afraid her heart might grow even more tangled, Cassia turned away, avoiding his eyes.

“Don’t kill anyone from now on, either.”

She drew a line with cold words and was about to move, but Whisker’s voice caught her.

“Does the Emperor’s death have meaning to you?”

“His Majesty’s death has meaning to everyone in the Fedemillon Empire.”

“What about my death?”

“What?”

“Does my death have meaning to you?”

A familiar smile sat at the corner of his lips, but Cassia thought his eyes looked unfamiliar.

In those red eyes that seemed either empty or condensed as if about to burst, she saw her own face.

‘You are nothing to me. The death of someone who is nothing can’t have meaning.’

The answer was decided, but other words she could not say circled at the tip of her tongue.

Her lips wouldn’t move, and unable to spit them out, Cassia turned away.

Normally, Whisker would have followed right after her, but only after a long while did he fall in behind her.

The place the two arrived at, with a gap in time between them, was the Emperor’s council chamber.

Officials and nobles had gathered there to learn the full story behind the assassination of the Crown Prince and the Second Prince.

After keeping silent and listening to the report, the Emperor’s lips trembled as he praised the two for their efforts, and Whisker couldn’t hold it in and burst into laughter.

The consecutive deaths of the Crown Prince and the Prince, which had plunged the Fedemillon Empire into shock, ended like that.

And that night, dozens of guardsmen in black masks quietly left the palace gates and vanished into the darkness.

***

The whereabouts of Duke Whisker Mastiff, Chief of the Inspection Bureau, became unknown.

It was common for him to disappear for days at a time on the Emperor’s secret orders, but this time was different.

He would not return, like the countless people who had gotten tangled up with him and vanished.

Everyone knew who had arranged his disappearance, and the nobles of Fedemillon raised their glasses and welcomed the end of the discarded dog.

Cassia was, once again, the only exception.

“Did you meet any of the duke’s servants?”

At her question, the butler, Ellen, shook his head with a heavy expression.

On Cassia’s orders, he had secretly investigated Whisker’s trail, and had just returned with no real gains.

“There was no one at the duke’s residence, Your Grace.”

“Ask around. Someone must know what happened that day.”

“No, that’s not it. They say there was originally no one at Duke Mastiff’s residence.”

“What do you mean, Ellen?”

“They say Duke Mastiff kept no servants.”

“He lived alone? In that huge mansion?”

“Yes.”

Unable to bring back the answer his mistress wanted, Ellen lowered his head with an apologetic look.

At the unexpected news, Cassia let out a hollow breath. Her gaze shifted from Ellen to Rinox, who had gone with him to the duke’s residence.

Rinox spoke more matter-of-factly than Ellen as he reported the grim scene he had found, “It looked like someone tried to wipe away the bloodstains, but they couldn’t erase every trace. I estimate at least ten casualties.”

At Rinox’s cold words, Cassia let the pen in her hand fall as if she had dropped it.

She sank deep into the backrest and covered her expression with a hand pressed to her brow, but her shock reached the people standing before her all the same.

She had overlooked that what the Emperor wanted was not only her life.

She thought he was dumping Whisker’s leash on her to bind her, but he had truly let go of it.

He couldn’t touch Cassia without a pretext, but he didn’t need one to put down the dog he had raised.

Even so, she never expected him to move on the very day the case was closed.

Whisker must have known.

That was why he said what he did.

Careful not to pant, Cassia asked Rinox, “Is he dead?”

“Probably.”

It was an answer that left room, but Rinox was certain.

What remained in the mansion was not the trace of a battle, but of a driven hunt.

Whisker Mastiff did not seem to have gone down easily, but it would be hard for him to survive.

When Cassia’s expression darkened at his words, Rinox also hardened his face and asked, “Why do you care so much about that man’s death? Wasn’t he someone who deserved to die?”

To Rinox, Whisker was his older brother’s enemy and his mistress’ foe.

The end of a dog abandoned by its master.

He only regretted that he hadn’t taken Whisker’s life with his own hands. He thought it was a fitting end for a man who lived scattering hatred.

But his mistress’s golden eyes, always lofty, looked unsteady.

“The Emperor has no right to condemn him.”

The one who had made him commit the sins that might deserve death was the Emperor.

Even if the whole world pointed fingers at him, the Emperor least of all was qualified.

And the one who carried out countless deaths, the one whose life was decided by someone else’s will, was Whisker, and the ones who did that were Cassia and her father, Hamilton.

So Cassia, too, could not condemn him.

His last words rang vividly in her ears.

“Does my death have meaning to you?”

Should she have answered?

Would anything have changed if she had told him not to die until he found that meaning?

Beneath the hand she hadn’t managed to hide her face with, her golden eyes wavered as if they might topple.

Whisker had caught her like that a few times, but it was the first time Ellen and Rinox had seen it.

Ellen, faintly guessing his mistress’s feelings, hurriedly spoke, “He’ll be alive.”

Cassia lifted her head and looked at Ellen. Ellen revealed the news that the spy he had planted in the imperial palace brought back.

“The Inspection Bureau has been sealed off, and they say even the imperial army has been mobilized to guard the palace. But the Imperial Guards are nowhere to be seen. If they’re not protecting the Emperor, what do you think they’ve emptied the palace to do?”

If Whisker were alive, it would explain both why the palace security had been tightened and why the Imperial Guards had vanished.

They would be searching for Whisker, and they would not stop until they finally cut his throat.

Cassia’s stomach churned at the Emperor’s persistent malice in trying to kill Whisker, even mobilizing the Imperial Guards.

“Ellen, he….”

Without meaning to, Cassia moved her lips, then barely swallowed the words that were about to spill out.

What was she going to do if she found him?

Drag him back, after he barely escaped, and hand him over to the Emperor?

Or protect him from the Emperor?

“He….”

Cassia opened her mouth again, but in the end, she couldn’t finish.