Don't Keep a Dog in the Garden - Chapter 9

It might have been possible if it were Whisker.

The Crown Prince fell around ten at night, when the sun had fully set.

There would be no shortage of witnesses who could testify that Whisker was in the underground of the Inspection Bureau at that hour, but it couldn’t be assumed for certain that the Crown Prince’s time of death was the same as the fall.

After dinner, the Crown Prince’s whereabouts were unclear, and Whisker had come to find Cassia around sunset.

On his way to and from her residence, he might have killed the Crown Prince and delayed the time of discovery.

She couldn’t guess exactly what he had done, but he was certainly capable of it.

And yet, for some reason, Cassia held back Mikhail, who was holding the whip.

“Then first we must find out what trick the Bureau Chief played.”

At Cassia’s words, Mikhail gave a crooked smile.

Dragged away in front of his subordinates, he had endured humiliation the entire day.

Until his adjutant had appeared at the interrogation room of the Inspection Bureau under the Emperor’s command, Mikhail had thought he was going to die.

The Emperor’s intent in saving him and ordering Whisker’s investigation was obvious.

It was to give the arrogant hunting dog who had dared disgrace the Captain of the Guard a chance to be avenged.

Regardless of the Emperor’s true intent, that was how Mikhail saw it.

“I will reveal it now.”

With that, Mikhail turned his back to Cassia. Then he tore open the shirt of Whisker, who was hanging against the wall.

“How cruel. I treated you like a gentleman.”

Even with his bare back exposed, Whisker kept his composure.

“Let’s see how long you keep it.”

Mikhail, who remembered all too well how Whisker had treated him, swung the whip with all his strength.

The sound of the leather striking bare flesh rang through the prison, and Cassia turned her head away.

“You assassinated His Highness the Crown Prince, didn’t you? And the Second Prince, too, wasn’t that your doing? Speak the truth!”

Whisker straightened his hunched back and turned his head toward Cassia.

Seeing her tightly shut eyes turned away, his red gaze grew cold.

He turned his head back to the wall and closed his mouth, and another lash struck across his back.

As Whisker, with an indifferent face, endured the pain without a sound, Mikhail, goaded, set the whip aside and unbuttoned his sleeve.

As he rolled up his sleeve and moved to the side, Whisker’s back, previously hidden from Cassia’s view, was revealed fully.

Cassia’s brow furrowed as she saw it. His back, covered entirely in scars.

More wretched than ten years before, there was not a single unmarked place, and now a new wound was being carved into it.

“Enough!” Cassia shouted.

When Mikhail ignored her and raised the whip again, her voice grew sharper.

“Are you trying to intimidate me, Captain of the Guard? If you don’t stop this instant, I will make a formal issue of it!”

Finally looking back at her, Mikhail, his face flushed with revenge and exhilaration, asked, “Didn’t I tell Your Grace that no harm would come to you?”

“Torturing the man who was dragged here with me in front of my eyes is in itself a threat against me. Did His Majesty order you to treat me like this?”

At the raised voice of the last descendant of the Golden Dawn, Mikhail hesitated.

If Cassia lodged a formal protest, the Emperor would surely turn his anger upon him.

The Emperor’s command to Mikhail had been to separate Grand Duchess Diorent and the Bureau Chief, and to investigate the Crown Prince’s death.

He had interpreted that order broadly and brought her to the Guard’s prison, but anything beyond that was rife with potential trouble.

If it were the hunting dog who had fallen from the Emperor’s favor, perhaps, but if trouble arose involving Cassia, it would be truly dangerous.

Mikhail forced a false smile and began to soothe her.

“How could I dare threaten Your Grace? If you are uncomfortable, please return to your residence for now and come later for the investigation.”

“Who asked you to release me? If you are going to investigate, do it according to procedure.”

“Your Grace, the Crown Prince has died. In such grave circumstances, it’s impossible to follow every procedure.”

Mikhail, who had been begging for his life in the interrogation room of the Inspection Bureau earlier, now looked down at Cassia inside the bars and spoke as though teaching a child.

Cassia’s golden eyes grew cold.

With just a slight lift of her chin and tightening of her lips, the atmosphere shifted completely as she looked straight through him.

“Have you already forgotten, Captain of the Guard? Even in a grave situation, Duke Mastiff did not strike your back with a whip.”

Cassia reminded him of the situation just earlier when Mikhail himself had been interrogated as the suspect in the assassination of the Second Prince Mesus.

Her flat voice held no emotion, but Mikhail flushed red as though she had mocked him.

He vented his anger on his men. “Who was it that dragged even Her Grace here? Take her back to her residence at once!”

At their captain’s order, the Guards flustered as they opened Cassia’s cell door.

But she shouted at the approaching Guards.

“Stand back!”

The Guards, caught between the Captain of the Guard who ordered them to remove Cassia and the Grand Duchess whom they dared not touch, hesitated in confusion.

In Cassia’s golden eyes, filled with the clear will not to leave Whisker behind, Mikhail threw the whip down in irritation.

“Her Grace wishes it. I certainly tried to send her away.”

Angry, Mikhail strode out, and the Guards, glancing nervously at Cassia, locked the cell again.

Then they freed Whisker from the chains and shoved him into the cell next to Cassia’s before following their captain out.

Only Cassia and Whisker were left in the prison, where a single torch on the wall burned unsteadily.

“Are you all right?”

Cassia’s low voice sounded.

Whisker turned his body to look at Cassia. His chest too was covered in hideous scars, so Cassia lowered her gaze.

“A foolish question. Of course you’re not.”

“I’m fine. I’m used to it.”

“No one gets used to such things.”

“I’m not human, I’m a dog.”

Perhaps he thought it a joke, for Whisker gave a faint laugh at the end of his words.

Cassia, finding it not funny at all, frowned as she answered, “You are human.”

Whisker’s eyes widened slightly as he looked at Cassia, then he drew in a deep breath.

His throat bobbed, his chest rose, then slowly sank again.

Whisker stepped closer to the bars and raised his cuffed hands to grip them.

His arm muscles tightened as though he might tear the bars away with his bare hands, then relaxed again as his chest swelled with another deep breath.

“Words like that, if you say them carelessly, make me want to believe them.”

She didn’t ask what he wanted to believe. No, she couldn’t.

Cassia barely managed to turn her head away from Whisker’s red eyes. Leaning her back against the bars, she sank to the floor.

The sound of the cuffs rattling against the bars was heard, and Whisker too sat down.

Cassia and Whisker sat back to back, the bars between them.

As she gazed not into Whisker’s red eyes but into the cold darkness, Cassia muttered as if to herself, “You are not a dog. A dog doesn’t have eyes like that.”

Whisker swallowed back the question of what his eyes looked like.

Cassia’s hair brushed against his back as she leaned her head against the bars.

All his senses gathered in his back.

Blood dripped from his torn skin, yet he felt no pain.

He knew well what kind of look he had in his eyes.

Though Cassia couldn’t see, with their backs pressed together, Whisker closed his eyes to hide them.

From where her hair touched, his whole back grew hot.

Then his whole body, until at last his heart itself burned the hottest.

The cuffs binding his hands, and the iron bars dividing him and her.

Backs nearly touching, yet not quite. For all that, it was quite a decent night.

Whisker gave a faint laugh as he looked around the dark prison.

Hearing his scattered laugh, Cassia asked in a voice of disbelief, “You can laugh now?”ance.”

“This is the second night I’ve spent alone with Your Grace, isn’t it? I even feel like I could dance.”

At his voice, full of laughter, Cassia shook her head and sighed.

Just as he said, it looked like she would end up spending a second night with Whisker.

The reason was that yesterday the Second Prince had died, and today the Crown Prince.

The reason was that yesterday the Second Prince had died, and today the Crown Prince.

The moon peeking in through the small window was unbearably beautiful, and it was even more absurd that the madman who bled from his back spoke innocently of dancing.

“By the way, it seems His Majesty truly means to abandon me. No, not abandon, but kill me, perhaps?”