Don't Keep a Dog in the Garden - Chapter 15

2. The Culprit and the Selection

After coming to his senses at the brink of death, Whisker continued to hover between life and death for several more days.

Marsilla clicked her tongue, saying she didn’t know why he wasn’t dying when he should have, and even Rinox spent those days marveling at what a terrifyingly tenacious bastard he was. In the end, he survived.

When Whisker opened his eyes again, everything around him was quiet darkness.

An unfamiliar ceiling, unfamiliar bedding, unfamiliar stillness. Nothing felt certain. Whether he was dreaming or awake, alive or dead, he couldn’t even tell.

As if it were his final mission, Whisker called her name.

“Cassia.”

Hearing that familiar name slip from between his dry lips, he thought that maybe he was still alive.

Without a sound, Whisker rose and slipped out of the bed.

What moved him, when he shouldn’t have had any strength left, was hunger. Hunger aimed at a single person.

Entrusting his body to that pull, no different from an instinct for survival, Whisker flung himself out the window.

The structure of the Grand Duchess’s residence was more familiar to him than his own home.

He landed without difficulty on Cassia’s bedroom terrace, and behind him, the round moon cast its light.

Moonlight sketched Whisker’s form into shadow and spilled into Cassia’s bedroom, and a voice broke the heavy silence from inside the room.

“I really should order the security around the mansion to be strengthened.”

A soft snort of laughter followed, and Cassia sat up in bed.

She slowly slipped on a robe and walked to stand in front of the window.

Whisker pressed a hand to his heart, which had begun to pound, and faced Cassia through the glass.

After confirming the shadow standing stiffly on the terrace, she clicked her tongue lightly and opened the window.

He couldn’t tell whether her face, thinner from illness, looked paler because of the moonlight or because of his condition, and the thought unsettled him.

“You shouldn’t be wandering around like this yet.”

In the golden eyes that met Whisker, there was neither wariness nor disgust.

How was he supposed to read that look?

It was still unclear whether this was a dream or reality.

Standing as if nailed to the terrace, unable to step even one foot into the room, Whisker reached out.

Long, thin fingers carefully approached and touched Cassia’s cheek.

The unfamiliar warmth beneath his fingertips was so vivid that it made this feel like a dream instead.

Even when he slowly stroked her cheek, she didn’t push him away or avoid him.

Maybe it really was a dream.

A dry smile brushed the corner of Whisker’s lips.

Since it was a dream anyway, the thought made his touch bolder.

His fingers brushed Cassia’s small ear and slipped into her black hair.

Gathering the back of her head amid the flowing night-dark strands, he bent down.

He thought that at last, at least in a dream, he would touch the lips he’d wanted so badly.

Until Cassia turned her head and slipped free of his touch.

Even in dreams, it seemed she was someone he couldn’t reach.

He let out a soft laugh and lowered his hand, but Cassia, who should have pulled away, caught his hand and asked, “Should we get married?”

Whisker froze, then blinked once, closed his eyes, opened them, blinked again, then once more.

Then the corners of Whisker’s eyes, red as if they held gemstones, curved beautifully.

“A marriage proposal from lips that refused a kiss. You’re cruel, Your Grace.”

“So, is that a rejection?”

The golden eyes staring straight up at him shook his heart like moonlight, then fluttered as if caught on the curve tugging at the corner of his mouth, and Whisker lowered his forehead onto her shoulder.

“Of course not.”

He closed his eyes, dizzily thinking it was a dream he couldn’t make head or tail of.

***

The only heir of House Diorent, standing atop a blade forged of gold.

Even Cassia, Fedemillon’s pride, who resembled Grand Duke Slayden’s gaze down to the last detail, had a rebellious phase.

That’s what the summer at fourteen is like.

When things that had meant nothing until then began to take on meaning, what caught the always lofty Grand Duke’s daughter’s eye was a gold that looked just like her own irises.

“Tommy.”

Hearing Cassia’s small voice as she murmured while looking out the window, the maid Marlin spoke to her warmly.

“What did you say, miss?”

“It doesn’t suit him.”

“Yes?”

Marlin asked again at words she couldn’t understand, but Cassia, her black hair fluttering, turned her back to the window.

With a puzzled face, Marlin glanced out the window Cassia had been looking through.

The garden, full of lush flowers and refreshing green, was simply beautiful. Marlin didn’t notice the newly hired gardener’s assistant, who had sensed someone’s gaze and tucked himself behind a tree.

Leaving behind the still-bewildered Marlin as she walked back to her room, Cassia thought again.

Tommy.

It really was a name that didn’t suit him terribly.

No parent would have given so common a name as Tommy to that beautiful child who was pale, red-cheeked, and sparkling.

So it was surely an alias.

And that was the problem.

If he’d slipped into the Diorent residence, which rigorously checked identities, using a fake name, that meant he had a special purpose.

Judging by fourteen years of dull experience, that purpose would be another attempt to assassinate her father.

As Cassia continued thinking in step with her footsteps, she stopped both her steps and her thoughts, and let out a sigh.

Assassination.

For that boy, shining with sunlight over his head, it was a word that suited him even less than the fake name Tommy.

With delicate lines and pale skin, so that the red-stained scars looked even more painful, there was no way he could be an assassin.

But those scars were not something a boy who had lived an ordinary life could have.

And the killing intent that filled those candy-pretty eyes….

It was not the kind of gaze an ordinary gardener’s assistant could have, either.

Shaking her head and brushing away the remaining sigh, Cassia turned to Marlin and said, “I’m going for a walk. You don’t have to follow me.”

“A walk? In this heat?”

“There’s plenty of shade in the garden, so it’ll be fine.”

“Go after the sun sets, miss. In weather like this, even the shade could make you sick with the heat.”

Marlin tried to dissuade her, voice full of worry, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to change Cassia’s mind.

Cassia was a girl who rarely spoke, but once she said something out loud, she would do it no matter what.

Cassia stopped by the study and picked up any book at hand, then headed into the garden under the blazing sun.

The gardener’s assistant, in the middle of tending the rose bushes, stood out even from far away.

It must have been because of his hair.

With sunlight on it, it glittered brightly.

Cassia settled herself at a suitable spot where she could see Tommy in the distance and opened a book she had no intention of reading.

And she stubbornly stole glances at Tommy’s movements.

If she spoke rashly before being sure what he was, that child would surely die.

The Knight Commander, sick to death of repeated assassination attempts, would not overlook an unknown danger.

Just because he’d aroused the Grand Duke’s daughter’s suspicion, Tommy would be subjected to an interrogation bordering on torture, and perhaps, to set an example, they might cut off his head and hang it before the Grand Duke.

She didn’t want that pretty neck cut because of her rashness.

So all she could do was watch.

Until she found out what that precarious, beautiful boy truly was.

While Cassia hid half her face behind her book and studied him, the boy called Tommy was tending the rose bushes, forcing himself to act as if he didn’t notice her persistent gaze.

How much time passed?

Only when the lazy summer sun hung over the ridge did the assistant gardener’s work at the mansion end.

Pulling off his gloves, the boy walked over.

He stopped in front of Cassia, who still had the book open to the same page, and looked down at her.

Even though an assistant gardener was daring to look down at the Grand Duke’s daughter as if she were the sky itself, Cassia quietly met his eyes.

Candy, she thought.

Red candy Marlin would place in her mouth after she took bitter medicine. Those irises were like that candy, the kind that tasted like fruit.

Unable to look away from those eyes, Cassia asked, “What’s your name?”

“….”

Meeting the golden eyes, the boy’s lips moved, but he couldn’t answer.

The name prepared for this mission was Tommy.

So he only had to say it.

But Tommy, no, Whisker, couldn’t answer either Tommy or Whisker.

His face reddened.

Cassia was the first person who had asked his name like this.

So heat rose to his face.

Even under the blazing midsummer sun, the boy’s face had been pale, but now a flush spread over it, blooming like dye.

Before Cassia could move her pink lips again, Whisker dipped his head in a quick bow, turned on his heel, and ran.

Leaving behind the girl who couldn’t stop him because she didn’t know his name, the sixteen-year-old assassin fled, his face burning red.