Words He Wasn't Meant to Hear

Strain as I might to pass myself off as Aine, I had no wish to torment the old butler on top of it, so I nodded without a fight.

"All right. Then I'll go myself."

"I shall escort you."

"No need. Just tell me the way."

I said it firmly. The conversation ahead was one I wanted between him and me alone. Whatever the butler made of that, his expression turned briefly strange, and he hesitated.

This was a man who had dealt with Aine countless times, and still his face had slipped. The Grand Duke's will, it seemed, was formidable indeed. I was sorry for the butler, but I had no intention of backing down either. I had come this far on a particular resolve; simply turning around was out of the question. For the Grand Duke it might be nothing more than a matter of mood. For me, it was my life.

When he still could not bring himself to answer, I fixed him with a sharper look. At last he raised the white flag and told me the way to the rear garden.

I committed the route to memory, ordered that no one follow, and set off alone.

As befitted a grand ducal house, the mansion was broad and elegant, though it fell a little short of the Foregreen Ducal Estate in scale. Unlike the ducal house that held the empire's purse, the grand ducal house prized honor and took little interest in swelling its fortune.

And then she ran headlong into Aine.

Soon enough, though, his fame as a war hero spread, and the house's circumstances improved of their own accord.

Later he pays the whole sum and breaks the engagement with Aine.

The fortune would scrape bottom because of it, yet the emperor was glad to aid the man who would become his son-in-law, so it never grew into a true problem. From the beginning, that was all Aine was to him: a stone in his path. She might be less than that. She could never be more.

My heels clicked softly as I made my unhurried way toward Asad. He was a character I had loved within the story, and being able to help him even like this left me glad, in a sense.

Walking on, I slowly took in the grand ducal residence. It lacked the splendor and grandeur of the ducal estate, but it was peaceful and quiet. I had once heard that a house takes after its master, and this one certainly wore an air like Asad's—somewhere still, and a little lonesome.

"Ah. Is this it?"

A fork opened ahead of me. I took the left-hand path, as the butler had said, and a faint scent of grass drifted low on the air. Birds were singing, and butterflies flickering here and there went on before me.

When I reached the rear garden, a breath of admiration escaped me. It was beautiful. Not one of the flowers was showy; modest little blooms huddled together until they called some hillside to mind. I stepped carefully in among them. Moving demurely along the narrow path cut so one would not crush flower or grass, I soon came upon an open space, and in it a small, long bench—just large enough for a single person to lie down.

"...Found him."

A man lay there with his eyes closed. I stared, blank, as a breeze rose and combed through his navy-blue hair. Delicate eyelids were shut fast, a keen nose set between them. His lips, prettier than I had expected, were pressed tight, and past the loose shirt a deep scar marked the strong line of his collarbone.

"You."

I had thought he would ignore me. I had not thought he would be napping at the hour of a scheduled visit. Still, it was not a bad thing. It let me study his face at my leisure.

I had believed Aine's beauty extraordinary, yet Asad was not a whit behind her. It was hard to credit that this was a man returned from a hellish battlefield after cutting down thousands—the one they whispered of, in secret, as the War Demon.

He was revered as the hero who had ended the long war, and mocked, behind that praise, as the War Demon. How starved for blood must he have been, people said, to volunteer for such brutality, to cut lives short and drench himself in gore. Nonsense, of course. It was only the envy of those who had watched him rise all at once. They murmured it at his back, but Asad knew perfectly well what he was truly called.

Even so, he offered no particular reply. In part because he, too, thought of himself as a monster. He could tell himself it had been to reclaim what was his, to survive, and still he had killed countless people who differed from him in nothing but the nation they belonged to. Nightmares hunted him every night, and only with medicine for his insomnia could he snatch a little sleep.

The heroine would soothe those wounds, and he would offer her the sword that had been both his shame and his life. In other words, he would offer her his heart.

Looking at the sleeping Asad, I opened my mouth, barely.

"You have no idea how much I liked you."

He was asleep, so surely this much was allowed. Speaking one's true heart to a person inside a book was hardly an ordinary thing. Today might be the last day I ever saw him, and I wanted to leave him something honest. He would not hear it anyway.

"You have no idea how much I cried, reading your story."

I had always been a little more sensitive than most. In a daily life that was hard enough already, Asad's struggling never felt like a stranger's pain, and whenever he suffered my eyes would heat before I knew it. It was somewhat embarrassing to remember now.

I lifted a hand and carefully touched the scar on his collarbone.

"It must have hurt so much."

The wound had come as he cut down an enemy commander. A sword had driven in here, and as he crossed the threshold of death he had felt as though something inside him slipped out through the tear.

The humanity a person is supposed to keep.

That day, Asad lost it.

Stroking the scar as slowly as if I were touching an infant, I let my real heart out before I knew it.

"I hope you'll be happy. Asad lu Reinhardt."

Parting from him was a road for my sake, but it was for Asad's as well. This was good for both of us.

I drew my hand away from the scar. I meant to wait in the reception room until he woke. Sleep came so hard to him that I did not want to break a deep one, and I had just begun to turn away.

"Wait."

Warmth closed around my wrist in the same instant the voice reached me, and I whipped my head around. The charcoal eyes that alone had been hidden now held a light, and held me inside it. Even they were achingly beautiful. The awe lasted only a breath before I stared, thrown, at the large hand locked about my wrist.

He hadn't been asleep?

His eyes had been shut and he had not so much as stirred, so I had been certain of it. All at once the things I had said came rushing back. "You have no idea how much I liked you." "You have no idea how much I cried, reading your story." "It must have hurt so much." "I hope you'll be happy, Asad lu Reinhardt." And it had not stopped at words. I had gone and touched his collarbone in secret. I wanted to tear free of Asad's hand that very second and crawl into a mouse hole.

"Why were you pretending to sleep?"

Shame tipped over into anger. Why pretend to be asleep? And if he meant to pretend, he might at least have seen it through to the end!

I looked straight at him. Set against the sunlight and the garden, his beauty was blinding, but I had built up a tolerance on Aine's looks and adjusted soon enough.

"Why did you just lie there?"

He said nothing.

While I muttered beside him and touched the scar, he had had time enough to give some sign. He had not. And then, at the last—

"So why are you grabbing me?"

He had gone so far as to feign sleep and shut me out, and now that I meant to leave he was trying to hold me. I could not make sense of it. The question out, I closed my mouth and watched him. At my words his eyes wavered. He looked confused. Confused over what, exactly?

Still watching him, I dropped my gaze to my wrist. Noticing, Asad let go a moment too late.

With the advantage suddenly mine, I folded my arms and regarded him. A corner of my conscience did prick, but if I did not brazen it out now I really might go looking for that mouse hole. Fortunately, the shameless reversal landed.

"...The young lady arrived just as I was falling asleep."

"Then why grab me now?"

The warmth that had wrapped my wrist was still vivid.

"That..."

Asad faltered, as if it had been something he did without meaning to.

I stared at him a little longer, then let my arms fall. By now, I told myself, that mortifying episode had surely faded at least a little from his memory.

"Anyway, fine. You're awake, so shall we go in? There's something I need to say."

At that, Asad looked at me as if the rest of his words had deserted him.

You didn't know I could be this shameless either, did you? Neither did I.

I turned sharply and, head ducked, walked fast. The heat I had been swallowing took my face.

God. This is humiliating.

I glanced back. Asad, looking thoroughly at a loss, was following me.

There was only one path, so I had no fear of striding off first and then wandering. Before I knew it he had come up from behind and was walking a step ahead of me. I followed his stride and looked at his back. Whether he had never meant to receive me at all, he wore only a light, informal shirt, and scars kept catching at the corner of my eye.

It was hard to look away from them. Some I had seen in the original story. Some I had never seen. They were proof of how fiercely he had survived.

And the moment he came home, Aine had him by the nose.

There would have been no time to rest. Driving out his stepmother, setting the house in order, enduring the emperor's watch, and on top of it an unwanted engagement forced by Duke Foregreen's threats—while that fiancée treated him like an object besides. Laid out that way, his life felt truly hard. From today, at least, I could lift one of those burdens from him.

Pitying a man who had never once in his life been given a proper apology, I said it toward him for no better reason than that I was using Aine's body, in a voice so small he would miss it unless he were listening.

"I'm sorry."

Was it my imagination? His steps seemed to slow for a moment, and then Asad drew away at a quicker pace.

In the reception room I drank the tea a maid had brought and stole a glance at him. Asad sat in silence opposite me, head tipped slightly down, lost in some thought. His fine navy-blue hair spilled in a soft slide. Fighting the urge to touch hair that fell like silk, I set my cup down.

Porcelain clicked, and Asad looked at me.

"I'll come straight to the point."

He fixed his gaze on me. I met it, drew a long breath, and spoke in a grave voice.