A Mad Dog Needs a Leash (6)

Could the Grand Duke have regressed, just like her? Daisy turned the question over in her mind, wondering if he had only pretended to collapse in order to humiliate her and have her dumped in this room.

That's an absurd thought.

Too many bizarre things had happened in quick succession, and her head was a hopeless tangle of them. The Ezra she had known, however briefly, was not the sort of man who would stoop to such petty tricks.

Then why had he fainted?

He had been perfectly at ease even standing before the master of an A-Rank dungeon — a monster that left most men struggling to stay upright on two legs. She couldn't fathom the reason.

Reading the complicated look on Daisy's face, Isaac the aide left her in the room and stepped outside. He had been working at the Grand Duke's residence when news arrived that the Grand Duke had collapsed — and he had never been so shocked in his life.

The Grand Duke found the company of others tiresome and always conducted his duties alone, and this was what had come of it.

"Aide, you need to see this."

A servant hurried in, holding out a sheet of paper with a face drained of color. A rushed extra edition, its headline blaring the Grand Duke's affair in letters the size of a barn door.

Beneath it was a drawing of a man with a garishly gleaming face crumpling to the ground in a delicate faint. Isaac barely stopped himself from bursting out laughing as he handed the paper back.

"How far has the rumor spread?"

"There isn't a place it hasn't reached. By tomorrow, the entire Empire will know that you collapsed, my lord."

His face grew darker still. The Grand Duke's body was not his alone!

He was the face of the Empire, its hero — practically the pillar holding the whole nation aloft. And of course, part of the blame for this mess lay with that imbecile of an Emperor. Isaac cursed the man silently, worrying over how even this small incident might provoke him.

While he fretted, one of the maids who had been attending the Grand Duke came running up.

"Aide — His Highness is awake."

Isaac nodded at the maid's report. He instructed the servant guarding the interrogation room to keep a close watch on Daisy, then headed for the Grand Duke's chambers. Now that the man himself had come to, he had to find out exactly what had happened.

Meanwhile, Ezra opened his eyes on a strange bed in a strange room, utterly bewildered as to how he'd gotten there.

I could have sworn I was shaking hands with a woman — Daisy, or was it Rose?

Just then the door burst open and Isaac strode in.

"Your Highness!"

Isaac faltered at the sight of the Grand Duke staring back at him with a vacant expression. Ezra spoke slowly, drawling out the words.

"Why am I here?"

"You collapsed."

"I did?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Well, how would I know?"

Something felt off. Isaac sat down beside him.

"You don't remember? You attended the Academy graduation ceremony, handed out the diplomas, and dropped where you stood. We called a physician, but he couldn't determine the cause — so just to be safe, we brought in the last person you had contact with."

"The last person I had contact with… you mean Daisy?"

Isaac was stunned that Ezra remembered someone he had met for the first time. The arrogant Grand Duke, a man with no fear of anything in this world, had never once bothered to remember the face or name of anyone he deemed unnecessary.

Because of it, the many women — and the handful of men — who had tried to win him over had all gone home with their pride trampled flat. And this Grand Duke remembered the name of a woman he'd met once?

Something was very wrong here.

"Are you acquainted with her?"

"No. It was the first time I'd seen her."

And yet, despite having never met her before, Ezra remembered Daisy with perfect clarity. Her eyes, gleaming with that mysterious shifting color, were burned into his memory more vividly than anything else.

Those eyes, brimming with hatred and resentment.

No. That wasn't right.

She had never looked at Ezra with such eyes. Hers had carried the same wary, guarded caution one saw in anyone else — careful, watchful, reading the room.

The instant he recalled the way she had cautiously sized him up, the sensation of her hand in his came flooding back to his palm, vivid and immediate. The mere memory of that warmth, that texture, sent heat rushing to his face.

"Your Highness?"

When the Grand Duke drifted off into his own thoughts, Isaac decided to deal with the urgent business first.

"So her collapse — Daisy's — had nothing to do with yours, then?"

"Presumably not."

The Grand Duke's constitution was extraordinary; common drugs and poisons had no effect on him whatsoever. Only the most exotic varieties of toxin, or a masterfully crafted top-grade potion, could hope to touch him.

The last time Isaac had panicked like this was when Ezra was very young — when he had been felled by the poison of a foreign tribe no one had ever heard of.

Even the antidote had failed, and everyone had assumed the boy would die. By sheer fortune, he had survived.

"Then we should release Miss Daisy. We only detained her because she's an alchemy student — we thought she might have brewed some new poison."

Isaac said it while scratching the back of his head.

He had overreacted, to be sure, but Daisy had been spectacularly unlucky. The world was full of mad scholars, and most of them gravitated toward alchemy and magic.

It was no accident that the villain of so many novels was the quintessential "mad alchemist." Having settled the matter, Isaac told the Grand Duke to rest properly and rose to leave.

He had misjudged a person, so an apology was owed — and compensation to follow.

It did not take long, however, for Isaac to learn that he had misjudged nothing at all.

Thus thrown out of the Grand Duke's residence, Daisy trudged wearily back to her own room.

She had half hoped that meeting the Grand Duke would summon that square window she'd seen before — but alas, nothing happened.

But still…

She had behaved exactly as she always did, yet the Grand Duke had not. He had been conscious of her.

She was certain she'd felt him stealing glances at her even before she stepped onto the dais — certain she'd seen him scan his surroundings, as though he could feel her gaze on him. And even after she'd mounted the stage, he had kept glancing her way.

Could it be that his behavior changed because I'm the Tamer — and he's my summon?

If that weren't the reason, there was no explaining why a Grand Duke who had never once spared her a glance in any previous loop would react so differently now.

Daisy clenched her fists. The timeline had already diverged irrevocably from everything that came before — so this time, she decided, she would stake the entire loop on the bond between Tamer and summon.

This was an event that had never once occurred in all her loops. Handled well, it might yield an entirely new clue.

Unfortunately, everything Daisy knew about the Tamer class was on the level of what a ten-year-old child could rattle off. Tamers were regarded as legendary beings, so precious little was actually known about them.

But the world was overflowing with scholars — men and women with the passion, the time, and the money to research whatever was unknown.

After a moment's thought, Daisy turned on her heel and headed back toward the Academy library.

Thank goodness for all the tuition she'd paid — she still had library access through the end of the month.

After several days buried in research, Daisy heaved a sigh. The results fell short of her hopes. Nowhere in any book was there a single word about the square window she had seen, and the bulk of the material was nothing but nonsensical folklore.

That becoming a Tamer required a pact with a demon, say, or that one received a divine revelation in a dream — that sort of thing.

In the end, the only person you could rely on was yourself.

Daisy resolved to verify it with her own eyes and her own hands.

Which meant facing the Grand Duke again.

Finding his schedule was no trouble at all. The Grand Duke's private life made the gossip rags every single day, and because she had always pored over his circumstances with careful attention, she knew exactly when and where he appeared, and with whom.

The problem was the gulf in their stations.

The difference in rank between them was staggering — even knowing where the Grand Duke would be, actually getting close enough to meet him was another matter entirely.

She knew, for instance, that he would soon be attending a banquet hosted at the Witton County Estate.

But knowing it didn't mean Daisy could attend. It was a banquet hosted by an honest-to-goodness Count, and she was a commoner — the odds of her laying hands on an invitation were nil.

Even slipping in as hired labor to help prepare for the event would likely prove impossible.

Still, she had to try.

What Daisy needed right now was contact with the Grand Duke, however small the opening.

Even if it earned her a few raised eyebrows, lingering in his orbit was the only way.

To that end, she decided to abandon the Alpha Guild — the guild she had been set to join this time around. This life was going to diverge from all her previous ones on a drastically different course. It would be a lie to say she wasn't afraid, but Daisy had no other option.

If she failed, she would simply have to start over from the beginning. Again.

Ezra, for his part, was forced to drag himself out of doors to attend a banquet he could not possibly skip.

It was being hosted by the Witton Count Family — the family of his stepmother, the late Grand Duchess — leaving him without a shred of pretext to refuse. He had no desire to find out what kind of tantrum his mother would throw if he stayed home.

Ezra stood being fussed over by a valet while Isaac reeled off, at his elbow, the list of everything he needed to watch out for at today's banquet.

"You must be on your very best behavior when we get there. You're aware that family is scheming after the Grand Duchess position, aren't you? If anyone asks you to step somewhere private — do not go."

Isaac knew perfectly well that the Grand Duke wasn't listening to a word of it, but he kept talking anyway.

A short while later, the two of them left the townhouse and headed for the carriage.

Just as Ezra was about to climb in, he thought he caught a glimpse of a sinister shadow from across the way.

No. It couldn't be.

Cold sweat trickled down Ezra's back. He forced his gaze away, straining not to turn his face toward the direction where that stare was fixed on him.

"Your Highness? Did you forget something?"

Isaac, standing ready to board, noticed the Grand Duke's odd behavior and called out to him.

"No. It's nothing."

Gritting his teeth, Ezra climbed into the carriage.

He stole a glance back at the spot where he'd felt that stare, but there was nothing to be seen.