Don't Keep a Dog in the Garden - Chapter 14

Cassia, who had been staring at the desk with eyes that wavered like a heart she couldn’t decide on, rose to her feet.

After praising Ellen and Rinox, she stepped out of the office, and Ellen followed with a worried expression and asked, “Where are you going?”

“Don’t follow me. I’m only going to the garden.”

At Cassia’s order, Ellen kept his eyes on her as she left.

Only after he saw her leave the mansion and turn into the garden did he finally let his taut nerves loosen and release a sigh.

Even though he told himself it couldn’t be, he was afraid Cassia would go search for Whisker herself.

If the little mistress who had never opened her heart to anyone and had isolated herself began to waver for the first time, it would not end as a passing breeze.

Should he pray that the breeze never becomes a storm? Or should he pray that the storm will lift Cassia up?

The old butler’s sigh was heavy.

***

As she wandered without aim, she ended up stepping deep into the garden.

A small fountain she hadn’t sought out in a long time caught her eye, and when she looked around, she realized it was the place where she first met Whisker.

She’d started walking to shake off thoughts of Whisker, and yet her feet had carried her here on their own.

Cassia let out a hollow laugh, stopped, and bit her lower lip.

The midday sun was imitating the heat of that day.

A boy with hair like gold thread, narrow shoulders, and red scars.

As his image rose before her across more than ten years, Cassia’s brow creased.

She tried to turn away and leave, but slowly, she walked toward the fountain.

It was small, but it still sprayed a decent mist of water. Beside it, she stood there, helplessly soaking in the damp, then reached out.

As if repeating what he once did, she leaned in to dip her hand into the fountain basin, and as if repeating what he once did, she sensed a presence.

Cassia lifted her head, and her gaze met the red eyes that had been watching her.

“Whisker?”

For a moment, she hoped it was only an illusion, but then she saw that his face and body were soaked in red.

Cassia’s eyes went wide as she froze, and Whisker, who had barely managed to straighten up, collapsed onto the shrubbery drenched in his own blood.

Cassia rushed to him, cradled his neck and lifted him into her arms, and Whisker retched and spat blood.

The shirt, stiff with dried blood, was soaked through again.

The day was hot like it had been then, but everything about Whisker was cold.

Holding him, Cassia looked around wildly.

She regretted coming alone and shouted at the top of her lungs.

“Rinox! Rinox!”

She let out a relieved breath at the sight of the loyal Knight Commander running in from afar, but Whisker, coughing and spitting blood, let out a soft laugh and said, “You’re too much. Calling another man’s name so desperately right in front of me.”

“You’ve lost too much blood. Don’t talk.”

Cassia spoke coldly as she pressed her hand over the wound at Whisker’s neck.

And it wasn’t only his neck.

She didn’t need to look to know what state he was in under the shirt, shredded and slashed everywhere.

That night, when they estimated at least ten had died, he had escaped with his life, and only barely.

And then, like a dog that came to find the place to die, he had crawled to the place where he first met her and was now dying there, curled up.

A sigh slipped out of Cassia without her meaning to.

“What am I supposed to do with you?”

At her voice, heavy with a sigh, Whisker’s eyes curved beautifully.

Like a thoughtless puppy delighted to win its master’s heart, he asked, “Will you pick me up?”

At those absurd words, Cassia let out a dry laugh, then her face hardened.

He would become the very pretext the Emperor had so desperately wanted.

Keeping Whisker at her side was no different from declaring she would stand against the Emperor.

The false peace the Emperor and House Diorent had been precariously maintaining would be smashed, and Cassia’s tomorrow would become a battlefield.

But, but.

As Cassia looked at Whisker with a stiff face, the line of her mouth slowly loosened.

A voice, firm but not cold, flowed from her lips.

“I don’t need a dog. If you want to be with me, you’ll have to become something else.”

Cassia held out her hand to him.

Whisker gasped as if his heart had been stabbed by that blinding gold and lost consciousness.

Still, his blood-soaked hand was, for the first time, clasped in Cassia’s.

***

Memory is a nasty, self-willed bastard. It keeps what you want to forget in vivid detail, and turns what you don’t want to forget into a blur.

Do you remember?

How many times, when we were young, our eyes met?

Do you even know?

How I died with my heart stabbed by those golden eyes, and how I lived again.

Can you say it?

That when I close my eyes, it’s all gold, so even dead and even alive, I was dazzled.

Faces I had to forget and faces I couldn’t forget surfaced and vanished. Moments that were both sorrowful and longed for snapped apart and joined again.

Whether I was dead or dreaming, as I wandered through murky exhaustion, now and then I heard voices.

“Bleeding aside, the pain must have been unbelievable. It’s a wonder he didn’t die of shock.”

…

…

“Whisker.”

…

…

“I don’t know whether to call him tenacious or lucky. Don’t worry, Your Grace. He’s alive.”

…

…

“Whisker.”

“Cassia?”

“How impudent. To dare call the Grand Duchess by name.”

Contrary to what he expected, a rough, sharp voice answered.

When Whisker forced his eyelids open, someone he had seen before was frowning and glaring at him.

He also saw a woman with red hair and a bored face like she didn’t care about anything in the world.

And then, there she was.

“Whisker, are you awake?”

Is this a dream? he thought.

Cassia Diorent speaking to him in such a gentle voice.

He was about to close his eyes again, but Whisker suddenly sat upright.

Because the warmth he felt in his hand was vivid, not like a dream at all.

Cassia pressed down on Whisker’s shoulder and laid him back down, then looked to House Diorent’s personal physician.

“Seems like he’s fine. Marsilla, you worked hard.”

“I’m not sure it’s a good thing that that one came back to life, Your Grace.”

“As a physician, you should be glad your patient survived.”

“If the patient hadn’t been him, I would have,” Marsilla answered, lips jutting out.

She’d kept him alive through a whole week of hovering at death’s door, so as a physician, she should have felt proud, but of all people, it had to be Whisker Mastiff.

And on top of that, she could feel warmth in Cassia’s gaze as she looked at Whisker Mastiff.

Marsilla lived with no interest in politics, shutting it out and devoting herself only to medicine, but she wasn’t ignorant of what it meant that the most dangerous man in the Fedemillon Empire was lying in the residence of the Grand Duchess Diorent.

She debated letting him die more times than she could count, but now she couldn’t take it back.

Marsilla scratched roughly at her thick curls, then spun on her heel and left the room.

Pretending to forget the painkiller prescription was spite, but that tenacious man wouldn’t so much as blink at ordinary pain.

Just as Marsilla expected, the pain left in Whisker like a trace of death wasn’t the problem.

He kept blinking as he looked at Cassia’s golden eyes, then, with a dazed face unlike him, asked, “Am I dead?”

“No.”

Cassia answered as she pulled the blanket up over his chest.

Her voice was so gentle that he weighed it for a moment, thinking that if he wasn’t dead, then maybe he was dreaming after all.

Ever since he took a worse wound than he expected and slipped into the garden of the Grand Duchess’s residence to hide, everything had been vague.

With a dull headache and blurred memories, Whisker recalled Cassia’s face as she held him, then sat up again and asked, “What if you really pick me up?”

He’d clung so stubbornly, begging her to pick him up, yet now that she’d saved him, he was asking why she did it, as if scolding her.

Cassia let out a hollow laugh at the absurdity and replied, “I didn’t pick you up. I saved you.”

Then she gently pushed his shoulder to lay him down again, but instead of leaning back, he grabbed her hand.

He still couldn’t tell whether this was a dream or waking life.

His red eyes wavered pitifully like a child who’d lost its mother, then flashed sharply like a madman’s.

“There’s no turning back now. From now on, no matter what happens, I won’t let go of this hand.”

Holding Cassia’s small hand tightly in his, Whisker looked grim, as if he were warning her of murder.

The assassin who had been abandoned by his biological father and by the Emperor did not seem to know that the threat of not being abandoned was really a plea for her not to throw him away.

Cassia stared blankly down at their joined hands, then met Whisker’s eyes and said in an even voice, “I’m prepared.”

“Prepared for what?”

“I told you. If there’s a place I have to go, I’ll go on my own feet.”

Whisker, who’d been hovering between life and death, seemed to have forgotten, but Cassia remembered clearly.

The one who reached out her hand was her.