Don't Keep a Dog in the Garden - Chapter 17

Cassia hesitated for a moment at his unexpected reaction, then asked back with a serious face, “Don’t you want to?”

“No.”

Whisker urgently shook his head.

As if that wasn’t enough, he even waved his hands, then lifted one to scrub his face dry, steadying himself.

The misunderstanding ran too deep for him to be fluttering with excitement.

With a rather serious face, Whisker continued, “It’s not that. If you enter the palace with me, His Majesty will know I’m here.”

And he will know you picked me up.

The Emperor would surely bare his teeth not only at the dog that dared survive, but also at the new master of the dog he threw away.

So Whisker naturally assumed Cassia would hide his existence.

But Cassia answered again, as if it were nothing.

“He probably already knows.”

The day after Cassia picked up Whisker in the garden, the imperial guards who had been tearing through the capital returned to the palace.

There are only two reasons the Emperor gives up pursuing Whisker.

Either he confirmed Whisker’s death, or he confirmed Whisker’s survival.

If she had warned the servants to keep their mouths shut, she could have bought a little more time, but Cassia didn’t.

From the moment she took Whisker’s hand, she had never once thought she needed to hide him.

At Cassia’s nonchalant response, only Whisker grew grim.

“The Emperor will come after you.”

“He’s been doing that all along, hasn’t he?”

Cassia spoke as if she didn’t see the problem.

Whether she didn’t grasp the situation or couldn’t, her calm reaction only made Whisker more anxious.

His red eyes wandered over Cassia’s pale face, then suddenly flared with a dangerous light.

“This won’t do. Before they move first, I should….”

He was a man who could make a dangerous decision, like assassinating the Emperor, with ease.

Cassia cut him off with a baffled face.

“Don’t.”

“But, Your Grace.”

“If I said don’t, then don’t. I didn’t take your hand to make you do that.”

Cassia’s golden eyes were serious.

Faced with her sincerity delivered without a tremor, Whisker grew puzzled.

He was someone raised as a tool for assassination, a man whose life had never been used for anything else.

With a troubled face at such a difficult order, Whisker asked, “Do I have another use?”

And Cassia, too, grew troubled at his question.

Whatever the circumstances, the head of the empire’s inspection agency, a duke among the five in the Fedemillon Empire, a master swordsman with the tenacious vitality of someone who seemed impossible to kill, and a man with a perfectly sound build and a cleanly handsome face was asking what use he had.

He wasn’t the type with modesty, so that question must be sincere.

That only made it more absurd.

When Cassia clamped her mouth shut with a stunned expression, Whisker, misunderstanding something, grew little by little more pitiful.

With a low sigh, she gave up on answering and brought up something else.

“Do you know how to dance?”

“Huh?”

“Focus on recovering. The banquet is in ten days.”

Cassia spoke as casually as ever and started walking again.

Whisker muttered “A banquet…” with a blank face, then hurried after her.

“Do I dance? With Your Grace? We dance?”

Cassia didn’t answer and kept walking as if she hadn’t heard.

Whisker, who had been scattering killing intent about assassinating the Emperor, then turning pitiful asking what his use was, now trailed after Cassia, trotting along like a puppy following its master.

He kept chattering, asking if they really were going to dance together, boasting that he was unbelievably good at dancing, and he didn’t even get tired of talking until Marsilla came to haul the patient away.

***

After Third Prince Jachim was announced as the new Crown Prince, the capital of the Fedemillon Empire, Elium, stayed in a constantly excited mood.

All the titled nobles came to Elium to curry favor with Crown Prince Jachim, who had emerged as the new axis of power.

And in Elium’s social world, where everyone was locked in a battle of reading the room, a strange rumor was spreading quickly.

In the receiving room of the Grand Duchess’s residence, the source of that rumor, Rinox, dressed in formal banquet attire unlike usual, muttered with a sulky voice.

“Father, no, Marquis Orlendo sent another letter. He asked whether Duke Mastiff is really alive, and whether Your Grace is hiding him.”

“No other message?”

“He said that if it’s true, you should kill the duke at once.”

At Rinox’s cold tone, Cassia let out a small laugh.

He smiled along without realizing it, then, seeing where Cassia’s gaze had gone, Rinox’s expression turned sullen again.

“Seeing him like that, I almost feel like doing what my father says.”

Whisker was currently altering a beautiful red-ochre banquet jacket into an assassin’s work clothes.

After sewing a hidden pocket inside the sleeve and tucking a dagger into it, he put the jacket on with a satisfied look.

The attire, clearly meant to match Cassia’s dress, suited his red eyes perfectly, and Rinox, watching him, sharply turned his head away.

“Is he really worth that much? If you’ve decided to stand against the Emperor, shouldn’t you be joining hands with those who follow the Golden Dawn?”

Cassia knew what Rinox, his father Marquis Orlendo, and many who once followed Grand Duke Slayden were worried about.

That was why she took Whisker’s hand.

And what her loyal Knight Commander still hadn’t guessed, Whisker knew.

Having finished dressing up, Whisker came over, wearing a beautiful smile, and mocked Rinox.

“How foolish.”

“What?”

“Didn’t it occur to you that this is why you can’t capture him?”

Rinox bristled at Whisker’s question, then shut his mouth as if the point hit home.

Those green eyes, never once soiled, avoided the poison-red eyes and turned to Cassia.

In Rinox’s gaze, as if seeking an answer and also seeking help, Cassia said quietly, “What I want is not the division of Fedemillon, Rinox.”

“But…!”

Rinox tried to protest, but at the faint smile on Cassia’s lips, he swallowed his words.

She had been smiling more often than before, yet somehow, there were times she felt even more out of reach than before.

With an uneasy heart, Rinox watched the clasped hands of Cassia and Whisker as they went out like people stepping onto a battlefield.

At that time, in the seat of honor in the imperial palace’s banquet hall, the Emperor and Crown Prince Jachim sat side by side.

The Empress Consort Sharia, who rarely showed herself in public, was dressed splendidly and making her presence known to celebrate her son’s investiture as Crown Prince.

The Empress was also there, in black mourning dress to grieve the late Crown Prince.

Beside her, unlike her mother, Princess Veronica held her place with a stiff face, wearing a red dress.

The Emperor, who had lost two sons not long ago, simply looked cheerful, and the nobles murmured that perhaps the Empress would be replaced soon as well.

As lively music filled the hall and a strange current ran through the air, Cassia Hestian Diorent, Grand Duchess, and Duke Whisker Mastiff entered side by side, dressed in gold and red.

It was the arrival of the night’s other main figures.

Of course, every gaze in the packed banquet hall turned to them at once.

Marquis Orlendo, spotting them, crumpled his face and pressed a hand to his brow.

“I was afraid of it, but still….”

Count Taft, standing beside him, continued as if lamenting, “I guess the rumor was true.”

Many nobles of the Diorent faction, who had long admired Grand Duke Slayden’s achievements and supported House Diorent’s claim to the throne, let out bleak sighs all at once.

It was bad enough that the Emperor’s mad dog, said to be dead, was alive and well, but the rumor that he’d caught Cassia’s eye was now proven true.

For the Diorent faction nobles, who had been mauled by that mad dog simply for supporting House Diorent, it was a romance they couldn’t accept.

The pair’s combination was just as unwelcome to the Emperor faction nobles, who checked House Diorent and claimed to be the Emperor’s backing.

Was this the Emperor’s scheme, or Whisker’s betrayal?

While the nobles busied themselves whispering as they watched the Emperor’s mood, Cassia and Whisker, hands clasped, walked in side by side.

Emperor Giiern, slamming his glass down as if throwing it, sprang to his feet and shouted, “What are the guards doing!”

As if they had been waiting for it, guardsmen drew their swords and stormed into the banquet hall.

Leading the dozens of guardsmen at the very front was Captain of the Guard Mikhail, his right eye covered with an eyepatch.

He aimed his sword at Whisker and declared, proud as a victorious general, “Duke Whisker Mastiff. I am placing you under arrest on suspicion of plotting treason.”