Don't Keep a Dog in the Garden - Chapter 2

It was a night when an early summer rain poured down.

Just as Cassia was preparing to go to bed, the attendant of the Second Prince Mesus came looking for her.

It was both a request and a command: Mesus was summoning her and demanded she enter the palace immediately.

She tried to refuse, using the late hour as an excuse, but the prince’s attendant, with tears brimming in his eyes, pleaded with her.

“Please save me, Your Grace. If I return alone like this, I will be punished.”

It was a well-known fact that Mesus, like his father, was not lenient toward his subordinates.

Cassia hated more than anything for someone to suffer because of her, so she climbed into the carriage, braving the night rain.

Looking back, everything was strange.

The late-night summons was odd enough, but being led to the reception room connected to Mesus’s private chambers instead of his usual place was especially suspicious.

Though she was reluctant, she thought this might be a chance to warn the Second Prince about his antics, so she stepped into the reception room.

But Mesus, who was supposed to be waiting, was nowhere to be seen.

When the maid knocked on the bedroom door and announced Cassia’s arrival, only a voice came back telling her to wait.

What was he doing, summoning her at such an hour and then making her wait?

Cassia’s displeasure showed clearly on her face, but the maid lowered her head and quickly disappeared.

The reception room she was left in alone was thick with the scent of mimosa.

Cassia opened a window to ventilate the air, the fragrance so strong it gave her a headache.

A heavy early summer shower was pouring down.

As she looked out at the rain-drenched garden, waiting for Mesus, the mimosa scent carried away by the wind revealed a fishy odor.

Sensing at once that something was wrong, Cassia threw open the door to the prince’s chamber, and what appeared before her eyes was Mesus, collapsed on the bed in a pool of blood.

From his back, as if a stake had been driven through, a long sword pierced straight through him.

Cassia rushed inside, pulled out the sword, and turned him over.

“Your Highness!”

“Kh, krk, khh…”

“Your Highness! Stay with me!”

Mesus coughed up blood-foam and died in Cassia’s arms.

At Cassia’s cry, the attendant came running and screamed, and before she could utter a single word of explanation, she was dragged to the interrogation chamber of the Inspection Bureau.

The prince’s chamber where only she and Mesus had been present, the Grand Duke covered in blood on her hands and clothes, and the prince dead.

It was a situation in which anyone would mistake her as the assassin who had killed the prince.

And the one who wanted such a deep misunderstanding more than anyone else was the prince’s father, the Emperor of the Empire.

Cassia was cornered, about to be executed as the murderer of the prince.

And in that moment, Whisker asked her what the truth was.

Cassia slowly lifted her tightly closed eyelids and opened her eyes. This time, she didn’t avoid his gaze.

Cassia looked directly into Whisker’s blood-red eyes, and he, as though stabbed by the golden light bright as the dawn, faltered.

Her father, the late Grand Duke Diorent, had been famous for resembling Emperor Slayden, but even he hadn’t carried such intense golden eyes.

Cassia, who had inherited eyes that carried undying glory, answered without expression.

“I did not kill Prince Mesus.”

Whisker looked at her with an odd expression.

As if in admiration, or mockery, or simply suspicion.

Other than holding her head high and meeting those red eyes, Cassia had no way to prove her innocence.

Caught in the trap set with the enormous bait of the Second Prince of the Fedemillon Empire, Cassia swallowed a sigh. Then Whisker suddenly changed his expression and shrugged.

“So that’s how it is. I understand.”

His tone was plain.

Cassia, surprised, asked with a startled face, “You believe me?”

“If you tell me to believe, then no matter what lie it may be, to me it is the truth.”

At Whisker’s meaningful reply, spoken with a smiling gaze, Cassia frowned.

It didn’t matter what Whisker believed.

What mattered to Cassia now was uncovering who had killed Mesus and tried to trap her.

And there was no guarantee that Whisker was not that someone.

This time, suspicion seeped into Cassia’s golden eyes, but Whisker continued in a light tone.

“Then all that’s left is to find the real culprit. Do you have anyone in mind?”

The death of Mesus was a difficult matter even for him, the head of the Inspection Bureau.

Who was it that had assassinated the Empire’s Second Prince and sought to frame Grand Duke Diorent?

A few candidates immediately came to mind for them both.

The troubling thing was that the most likely among them was also the most dangerous.

“I suspect His Majesty the Emperor the most.”

When Whisker mentioned the first suspect, Cassia raised another name.

“It could be the Crown Prince.”

“The Third Prince cannot be ruled out either.”

The three of them, the Emperor, the Crown Prince, and the Third Prince aiming for the throne over the Crown Prince—was it those three?

Whisker nodded as if in agreement.

It could have been some of them acting together, or in the worst case, all of them acting as one.

“Not a single easy opponent among them.”

Whisker muttered without emotion, and Cassia added another person.

“You are possible as well.”

Could Whisker Mastiff be left out among those capable of killing a prince inside the palace without anyone knowing?

Before Cassia’s reasonable suspicion, Whisker’s shoulders slumped.

“So you’re saying I killed him and tried to pin it on you? That’s too much, when you know my heart.”

“I don’t believe you.”

At Cassia’s firm words, Whisker dropped his head with a dejected expression.

The most difficult opponent was right before her eyes.

He had gone around letting the entire Empire know his heart, yet she said she didn’t believe it.

Whisker muttered with an even more sullen face, “Because of this heart, I even earned His Majesty’s hatred. Please, believe me a little.”

His heart.

It had already been three years since the Emperor’s hunting dog, Whisker, had begun insisting on a romance unfitting for him—that he had fallen in love with Grand Duke Cassia Diorent.

Looking at Whisker with his eyebrows drooped down, Cassia was more dumbfounded than ever.

Three years ago, when Whisker first declared his one-sided love, no one had believed him.

Everyone thought the Emperor’s hunting dog was plotting some new scheme against Cassia.

But even though she had never once given him a glance, his one-sided love burned fervently for three years without change.

So fervently that it had even become pitiful.

The Emperor, unable to bear watching, had tried to arrange his marriage to his most cherished princess, Veronica, but Whisker rejected even the position of imperial son-in-law and stubbornly continued his one-sided love.

In the end, the Emperor’s hunting dog had truly fallen out of the Emperor’s favor, and Cassia, who had become uncomfortable for no reason, furrowed her brows and asked,

“So that’s why I cannot believe you. Since the subject has come up, let me ask. Why do you go around doing such things?”

“Such things? Surely you don’t mean to call my love such a thing?”

“If you want me to believe you, then speak honestly.”

Cassia demanded the truth with a face cold enough that not even a needle could slip through.

Whisker let out a dry laugh, looked up at the gray ceiling, then straightened his posture.

The sulking expression vanished, and his red eyes gleamed darkly and ominously.

“Do you have the confidence to distinguish between truth and lies?”

Even faced with Whisker’s sudden question, asked with his expression and atmosphere changed in an instant, Cassia did not waver.

Just as Whisker was used to Cassia’s indifference, Cassia too had become accustomed to Whisker’s unpredictability.

“Truth and lies are difficult. But desire is easier than that.”

At Cassia’s emotionless answer, Whisker’s eyes curved.

“Desire…”

Looking at Whisker’s murmuring face, Cassia wondered inwardly if she had just made a mistake.

What filled those red eyes was the desire she had grown sick of seeing. It was unmistakably the gaze of someone craving something desperately.

His eyes burned with desire, and yet his face was so cold.

Her mind screamed a warning that whatever came from his lips must not be believed, but caught in those boiling red eyes, she couldn’t look away.

Whisker stared straight into Cassia and moved only his lips in confession.

“I love you, Your Grace.”

Whether truth or lie, it was impossible to tell, and Cassia could not answer.

Whisker’s explosive confession continued.

“Please become the Emperor for me.”

“What?”

“That is my desire.”

Cold love and burning desire.

Whisker had spoken the truth.