A Mad Dog Needs a Leash — Chapter 14
While Daisy tossed and turned, tangled in complicated thoughts, Ezra lay awake seething, sleep hopelessly out of reach.
Still fuming from head to toe, he looked up when the door to his room burst open.
"Get out."
The woman who had stepped inside stiffened for a moment at the irritation in his voice—sharper than usual. Then she straightened her spine and spoke.
"And who, precisely, was it you just told to leave?"
Ezra's face twisted at the arrival of his uninvited guest.
"Mother."
Freya, the former Grand Duchess of Alkenes, wore an expression of barely contained fury, her sharp features drawn tight. Ezra clicked his tongue inwardly and forced out the words he had no desire to say.
"What brings you here at this late hour?"
"I hear a dungeon opened at tonight's banquet and caused quite a scene."
"Yes, and I handled it well, so there's no need for you to concern yourself, Mother."
At the naked sarcasm, the corner of Freya's mouth twitched violently.
"No need to concern myself? Are you saying that knowing what happened to Lady Witton?"
"Am I expected to keep track of Lady Witton's personal affairs? I wasn't aware of that. I'll be sure to take note going forward."
"You—!"
Freya finally lost her temper and shouted. Ezra, clearly done with the conversation, sank back into his seat and turned his head away.
She bit her lip, glaring at him for a long moment—then decided that the one with something to lose should be the one to give in.
"In any case, I hear part of the Count's manor collapsed when the dungeon opened, and Lady Witton was badly hurt. Go pay her a visit on my behalf."
"If she's injured, she should be resting quietly. Why on earth would I go see her?"
"She was hurt because of you, so of course you're going!"
"How exactly is Lady Witton's injury my fault? You don't actually believe the dungeon opened because I happened to be there... do you?"
Struck squarely on the nerve, Freya's face flushed crimson.
"Mother. You were the Grand Duchess of House Alkenes. You spent less than twenty years as the daughter of House Witton and more than thirty as its Duchess—and you're still trying to prop up your father's house?"
Now Freya was trembling from head to toe. Rage made the room spin before her eyes.
"Go home. You're exhausting me."
Having gotten nothing out of the exchange and taken nothing but blows, she stomped out, her footsteps thundering down the hall.
After Freya had gone, Isaac slipped back in and broached the matter.
"House Witton is up to something, my lord. It doesn't look good."
"Why?"
"They've been throwing money around all over the place. My guess is they're trying to get close to the imperial family."
"Ha. Absurd. Do they take me for some dog that rolls over whenever someone snaps their fingers?"
The instant the word dog left his mouth, Daisy's face flashed through his mind—her voice cursing him with that exact word—and his blood ran hotter still.
Ever since he'd met that woman, not a single thing had gone his way! For all he knew, Daisy was the god of calamity.
Count Witton gazed down at his daughter with a face full of worry as she lay in bed. Her complexion was so drained of color that she looked as though her breath might give out at any moment.
The banquet he had thrown for her sake lay in ruins, and word had come that her leg was injured so badly she might never walk properly again.
"It was dangerous! Why were you waiting there?"
"I—I assumed His Grace the Grand Duke would come, obviously..."
"A dungeon opened, so naturally the Grand Duke went to seal it. What made you think he'd come to see you?"
Alice pressed her lips shut. She had known he wouldn't come—of course she had. But a sliver of hope had refused to die. He wasn't the kind of man who could be that cold. What Alice didn't know, however, was that Dana, the maid she'd sent with her message, had never delivered a single word to the Grand Duke.
"It's over now. He never spared me a glance even when I had two perfectly good legs—now that I'm crippled, there's no chance he'll ever accept me."
"What nonsense is that? This is all because the Grand Duke failed to protect you properly. If he had simply done his duty, would you have been hurt at all?"
The Count's eyes bulged as he shouted. He had never seen his ever-confident daughter look so utterly deflated.
"Enough. It's over for me either way."
He clenched his fist and swallowed his anger. Watching his cherished daughter wither like this made heat rise scalding in his chest.
Just then the butler entered and asked for a word. Sensing trouble, the Count stepped out of Alice's room.
"What did Lady Freya say?"
"Well... she said it was too late in the evening, and that since Her Ladyship is injured, a visit today would be difficult."
"And when, exactly, did she say she'd be available?"
At the Count's question, the butler's head sank lower and lower.
"That's what I thought."
The Count deliberated for a long while, then clenched his fist as though something had been decided.
"Return to the estate at once and deliver a message to my wife. Tell her to bring out the treasure."
"My lord... you can't possibly mean to drag His Majesty into this matter?"
"He's the only one who can move the Grand Duke. Which means we must play every card we have."
"But..."
The butler seriously doubted the Emperor would lift a finger for so trivial an affair. But the words had to be swallowed, deep down his throat.
Ezra sat in the carriage wearing a carefully indifferent expression.
Lately his mood had been atrocious. Astonishingly, the culprit was his dreams.
That damned act—the one he could never even properly remember—kept unfolding in his sleep, night after night!
He'd dreamed it so many times now that he could probably sketch Daisy's naked body with his eyes closed.
Fine. He could accept dreaming about the woman. That much, perhaps, was forgivable.
But waking up drenched and aching every single morning, at his age, long past the callow days of his teens—that was a carnal insult to his pride.
To think I'm in heat over that cursed woman.
This was all Daisy's fault. It had to be a side effect of whatever drug she had secretly fed him. That was the only explanation.
Trembling with fury, Ezra turned to look out the window.
Far in the distance, white marble gleamed so blindingly in the sunlight that it hurt to look at, crowned with gold and studded gems—an ostentation he found oppressive.
It was the legacy of an Emperor several generations back, so steeped in luxury that he had decked the Imperial Palace out in vulgar splendor. Whether his successors' aesthetic sense had simply rotted afterward or not, the imperial family had grown fond of the excessive gaudiness, and every year they poured staggering sums into maintaining it.
Thanks to that, decades later, the palace still shone white and glittered gold.
None of it was Ezra's concern, in any case. Acknowledging the knights' salutes, he entered the palace to have an audience with the Emperor.
When he arrived before the audience chamber, the chamberlain approached him with a smile.
"His Majesty is waiting for you in the library."
"I see."
Ezra decided this had just become more of a nuisance. Being summoned not to an official setting but to the library—a private space—boded nothing good for him whatsoever.
His relationship with the Emperor was, to put it mildly, poor. Honestly speaking, it was closer to the Emperor unilaterally hating his guts.
It had started with petty, childish provocations, but they'd begun to genuinely grate on him, and after he retaliated a few times, things escalated so fast that the Emperor's dignity ended up flat on the floor.
Since then, the Emperor seemed to have learned something as well, and the scale of his harassment shrank. To all the world the two men appeared on perfectly civil terms, but behind closed doors they snapped and gnawed at each other over the smallest flaws.
And so, maintaining that precarious truce, they had arrived at the present day.
"Ah, Grand Duke. Welcome."
The doors opened, and the Emperor—barely into middle age, still strikingly beautiful—smiled with crescent eyes in greeting. Ezra drew a long breath and stepped into the library.
Mischief glittered in the Emperor's eyes as they swept over Ezra standing before him.
"If you're that exhausted, say so. You only make me look bad, leaving me to take the blame."
"I'm not."
Had he actually admitted to being tired, the torment that would have followed was easy to imagine. The Emperor was famous abroad for his generosity, and Ezra knew exactly how false that reputation was.
No—or at the very least, that generosity never extended to him.
This was a man who worried over you with that smiling face, then turned around and drove a knife between your shoulders.
"So. What did you summon me for?"
"You know perfectly well. This dungeon incident. There's been a great deal of murmuring from every quarter—the mood has gone rather sour, hasn't it? So I thought I'd refresh the atmosphere a bit, gather everyone together, and hold a grand, splendid banquet."
"If Your Majesty wishes to hold one, then hold it. What is there to deliberate?"
Having no idea what game the Emperor was playing, Ezra had worn a guarded expression the entire time.
"Well, you see, I'm worried that you, of all people, might not attend."
"..."
In a word: he wanted Ezra there as window dressing. But this wasn't just any banquet—it was one thrown by the Emperor himself.
People would fight for the chance to attend; ten carriages wouldn't hold them all. What on earth was there to worry about?
Ezra couldn't shake a creeping sense of unease.