Don't Keep a Dog in the Garden - Chapter 19

After leaving the banquet hall, Cassia made her way to the Summer Garden, the pride of the imperial palace.

Under white moonlight, roses sprawled in bloom, and the night was noisy with the chorus of insects.

She meant to stroll here for a moment and wait for the uproar that had shocked the banquet hall to settle.

As she walked slowly between the rose bushes, Whisker followed after her.

With a half-dazed face, he clung to her, lips parting and closing, and then, as if revealing an unbelievable secret, he asked with grim resolve, “That night… wasn’t a dream?”

“Did you want it to be a dream?”

Cassia gave a small snort of laughter as she asked back.

“No. No….”

Whisker’s red eyes wavered.

It wasn’t a sight you saw often, him exposing his feelings like this and floundering.

The corners of Cassia’s lips rose in a beautiful curve, and Whisker’s gaze wavered even more.

Dazed by her smile, he couldn’t even read his own heart.

He loved her and dared to want her, but would he have hoped for this even in a dream?

Marriage.

“Why did you do that?”

“You looked happy when I proposed.”

Now her tone was outright teasing.

Mischief settled in Cassia’s golden eyes.

Whisker looked like his legs might give out.

Unlike usual, he couldn’t even smile. He faced her with a stiff expression, and only after a long while did he open his mouth.

“Please think it over again. There is a way for me to disappear.”

She was a woman who, from the moment she was born, even her breaths had to become political moves.

He couldn’t make Cassia accept a marriage like this.

After grinding down and stomping on the greed he wanted so badly, he finally forced those words out, and Cassia also turned serious.

No, she looked puzzled.

“Do you hate marrying me that much?”

She expected Marquis Orlendo and the other nobles to oppose it. But there was one person, aside from the Emperor and the Crown Prince, whom she thought would welcome this marriage.

So Cassia thought that Whisker, at least, would be happy.

At Cassia’s question, Whisker’s eyes darkened.

“That’s the question I should be asking. Do you hate marrying me?”

Hate.

Would you hate it, if I dared to become your husband?

With a restless, desperate heart, he asked.

Whisker’s throat bobbed as he forced down a dry swallow, and watching him, Cassia tilted her head and asked again, “Is there a reason I should?”

At a question that was an answer and yet not an answer, Whisker’s chest hurt.

His heart was beating abnormally.

If only he would close his mouth now, twist her words to his liking, misunderstand that you feel the same as I do, and have his heart burst.

Whisker lowered his eyelids heavily, then opened them.

The red eyes reflecting Cassia’s face shook widely, then turned dangerous.

Whisker’s hand, which had been holding her right arm, slowly slid down.

It brushed her slender wrist and stroked her fingers, then lifted Cassia’s hand.

With his gaze still holding Cassia’s face, he tipped his head slightly and kissed the back of her hand.

Without lifting his lips from her skin, he asked as if it were his answer.

“Because I’ll go crazy?”

A man who had gone mad long ago was spouting nonsense now.

“As if that’s new.”

Cassia gave a short laugh as if it were nothing and turned her head away.

With her gaze turned aside, she no longer had to meet his eyes.

Whisker’s eyes were always mad, and yet they were hard to face.

Whisker was silent for a moment.

He was someone whose thoughts were hard to read even when you looked into his eyes, and with Cassia avoiding his gaze, she couldn’t even guess what his silence meant.

Cassia turned her head, about to meet his eyes, and Whisker moved.

He narrowed the distance he had kept, as if it were a chasm dividing life and death.

Slipping a leg between the full skirts of her dress, Whisker lowered his head and brought his eyes level with hers.

“I haven’t shown you just how crazy I can be yet.”

She thought flames were rising inside his eyes.

It was the first time she had looked into Whisker’s eyes from this close.

Drunk on that strange red light, she fell silent for a moment, and he came closer.

Only after the straight bridge of his nose tilted to the side and his golden lashes drew close enough to brush did Cassia realize what he meant to do.

She hurriedly opened her lips, trying to say something, but before she could even make a sound, his lips captured hers.

His lowered red eyes met Cassia’s eyes, widened in shock, then vanished behind her golden lashes.

After that, she couldn’t think at all.

The hand feeling along her neck was hot, and against the chest pressed to hers as if it might crush her, a heart she didn’t know whose pounded as if it might burst.

Startled by the vivid sound of their lips rubbing, Cassia tried to push down on Whisker’s shoulder, but what slipped into the slight gap was his tongue.

“Mm. Hng.”

When an unintended sound mixed into her broken breath, a vein bulged along Whisker’s tilted neck.

One step, following Cassia as she retreated without meaning to.

Another step, winding around her tongue as if he would never let go.

The large hand that had been stroking between her shoulder blades slowly slid down to her waist, and the other hand that had dug into her hair wrapped around Cassia’s bare shoulder.

The unfamiliar sensations poured over her like a waterfall, and she nearly lost herself before Cassia twisted her upper body and shoved at Whisker’s chest.

Reluctantly, so reluctantly, like a beast setting down prey it had already swallowed, Whisker drew his lips back, then wrapped his arms around Cassia’s back as she tried to pull away.

Because of that, Cassia had to catch her breath with her face buried against Whisker’s chest.

Shock and bewilderment, shame and anger passed through her in turn, and then Cassia shoved hard at his chest and snapped her eyes up.

A madman with a face full of hunger met her with red eyes that looked even crazier.

Even after doing that, his gaze stayed brazen, and Cassia let out an incredulous breath.

Then, drawing a hard line between her beautiful brows, she opened her mouth.

“Whisker.”

Just having his name called coldly was his defeat.

Whisker accepted it without resistance and bowed his head.

That savage lust that felt like it would send him crashing down unless he swallowed those lips again, he decided, as always, to cram down his throat.

Bending at the waist and lowering himself, Whisker thrust his face in beneath Cassia’s eye level.

With Whisker closing his eyes and offering his face, Cassia asked more sharply, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I thought you’d want to hit me,” Whisker answered with his eyes still closed.

Now that she looked, it was a height where she could easily slap his cheek if she swung her hand.

When he approached Cassia once before, she warned him not to touch her and punched him.

And after taking that hit, Whisker had lied that he would never do it again.

Exasperated, Cassia stepped back instead of striking and scolded him.

“Do you have any intention of not doing things that deserve to be hit?”

“Wouldn’t that be difficult? We have to become husband and wife.”

After cracking his eyes open and confirming Cassia had no intention of attacking, Whisker lifted the corner of his mouth as he answered.

For once, Cassia was at a loss for words.

She’d only been thinking of how to keep Whisker alive through marriage. She hadn’t thought deeply about what marriage meant beyond that.

As her lips parted slightly, then closed again without managing a single word, the red eyes chasing them curved, and Whisker smiled with a fresh face that seemed like it would smell of summer roses.

He held out his right hand to Cassia and, with an innocent face that looked like he might wag his tail, said, “Shall we return to the banquet hall now?”

Why was it that even when a dog with golden fur smiled so clearly, it felt this dangerous?

Cassia, with a prim face, looked down at his hand, then turned sharply away.

“I’m going back to the mansion.”

“Already? What about the dance?”

“Go dance, then.”

Cassia answered coldly and started walking.

Whisker grumbled that it meant nothing if it wasn’t with her, then soon chased after her like a puppy following its master.

Following behind Cassia as she walked lightly ahead, Whisker felt his insides turn sickly sweet, to the point it hurt.

Is this what it feels like to drink a poisoned chalice?

He knew better than anyone the path his life had taken.

He was a shadow that should fade when the sun rose over Fedemillon’s sky, so he meant to be Cassia’s shadow until the life she saved ran out.

Swallow all of Cassia’s enemies, then vanish without a trace beneath the highest sun.

That was the ending he’d dreamed of.

But now.

The sun was so dazzling that, again and again, fire caught in a yearning he had no permission to have.

Once it all burned away, he would disappear without a trace anyway.

So just for a moment, just a moment, wouldn’t it be all right?