Will You Throw Me Away Too?

For a moment he overlapped with the Asad who had asked whether I was playing some joke on him. Were the male leads of this world all a little wrong in the head to begin with?

Would that one be the same?

If so, I was going to be truly worn out. I closed my eyes. I had the feeling tonight would bring nothing but nightmares.

"My lady, will you be all right?"

As I climbed into the carriage, Rita fretted over me for what must have been the umpteenth time. My head was already throbbing, and with her clinging to me on top of it, my mind went dull.

Just as I had feared the day before, nightmares had hounded me all night. Again and again I was chased by debt collectors, struck by a car, and killed.

Thanks to that, I was in the worst possible shape. And in this state, I had to go and see him.

The thought alone drew a sigh out of me, but I had no wish to delay. Yesterday had made one thing certain. If I did not do this properly, I really might die.

In truth, I don't think that child would try to kill me.

I told the worried Rita that I was fine, then shut the carriage door and spoke toward the driver's seat.

"The kennel."

Aine's third collectible. He was Aine's pet dog.

When the carriage pulled away, I buried my face in my hands. God. A person lived in that house, and I had just called it a kennel.

I had only said it because I was following the path Aine had already worn, but a sick sense of wrongness washed over me all the same.

And yet the name itself made the difference plain. Unlike the betrothed and the lover I had dealt with until now, the one I was going to meet was Aine's... pet dog.

To someone who had lived in a country where human rights were guaranteed, it was a thing I simply could not get used to. This place, however, was the inside of a fantasy novel through and through—a world that had borrowed a rigid caste system and a feudal order and made them law.

Magic existed here, and other races, and beyond them a status lower still: the slave.

Aine's pet dog was a slave.

More precisely, he belonged to one of the other races—the Wolf-kin. To the eye he was no different from a human, but he carried a wolf's nature, and when he wished he could transform into a wolf entirely.

As people do everywhere, humans cast out whatever differs from them, even by a little. They had shunned the other races and those of mixed blood, and in the end, coveting their remarkable looks and abilities, they kidnapped them and worked them like slaves.

I tried to call the third collectible back in greater detail.

His name was Sion. That, though, was only a name Aine had given him. Like Jay, his true name was something else, and I did not know it either. A Wolf-kin speaks that name only to the mate, or the companion, who will walk beside them for a lifetime.

As I remembered it, a power of command dwelt in the name itself. Know it, and you could bend a Wolf-kin to your will.

Sion had been an ordinary Wolf-kin child. He lived with his parents in a village hidden deep, away from human eyes, until humans pushed even that far, slaughtered without distinction, and took him.

He watched his parents die in front of him, run through with spears, and then he was dragged to a slave auction.

That very day, Aine—suddenly hungry for a new collectible—had gone to the auction as well. Every one of them was strange and beautiful, but not one caught her exacting eye.

Time passed, and the last lot came. Dragged out in all his beauty with a shackle at his throat, Sion was the first thing that pleased her. At last Aine had found a collectible to her liking.

She bought him for the highest price the house had ever taken, fastened a collar around his neck, and said this:

Even I was struck dumb. How must it have been for him? And Sion, just then, was already brimming with disgust for humankind.

Aine disliked the Sion who never so much as stirred, whose eyes were dead. He was a pet, wasn't he? He ought to eat well and fill out, or what face would his owner have?

So she bought a house for him—the so-called kennel—shut him inside, and raised him. Yes. Raised him, the way one raises an animal. Food when it was time to eat. Sleep when it was time to sleep.

Until he was a dog that belonged to her and to no one else.

Just as Aine had wanted, Sion became her faithful dog. He was nothing but an empty shell with no soul left in it, but such things did not matter. All Aine had needed was the shell.

I leaned back against the seat and closed my tired eyes.

A faithful hound...

Sion became the perfect loyal dog. Then, rebelling against Asad and Jay in order to protect his master, he lost his life at their hands. His case was the precise opposite of those two.

Even that life was spent for nothing. Right afterward, Aine died as well.

I disliked Aine. But whenever I thought of Sion alone, something in my chest went tight. Torn apart under human hands, he had died to the very end for someone else, never once having a life of his own.

But this time will be different.

I would not die, and Sion would not die trying to protect me. He must not.

More than anything, I wanted him—even now—to live a life that was his. Not to die shut inside a house called a kennel, gazing at a single person until the end, but to meet someone he loved, to do the things he wished to do, and so to find a person he could trust with the true name he had locked so tightly away.

For that, I had to sever the bond of master and servant that bound Sion and me.

I looked down at the document envelope I had set on the seat beside me and drew out what was inside.

It was Sion's Slave Deed, received from the auction house.

The moment I found it, my first impulse had been simply to burn the thing. Seeing him classified, without a shred of shame, as a "beast" had sent anger surging through me as well.

A Slave Deed is no mere scrap of paper. It is a scroll stained with a slave's blood and laid under a binding spell.

So long as that deed exists, a slave cannot escape his master even in death. It revolted me, truly—but my thinking soon changed. If I was going to burn it, would it not mean more to burn it where he himself could watch? That way, Sion would have more reason to believe me.

I sealed the mouth of the envelope again, leaned my weary body back, and turned my head. Beyond the window, the light was failing.

Is it going to rain?

It had been pitch-dark since last night. The rain was coming.

When the memory of last night rose again, I closed my eyes.

Where Jay was concerned, I had steeled myself to a point. I knew he was the sort who would do anything to feed his own interest and pleasure. I had not known he would try to die in front of me merely to see how I reacted.

He can't truly have meant to die.

The very thought of it was outrageous.

Even so, did I tell him too one-sidedly?

With Asad, I felt I had at least given him my sincerity, and that we had talked things through after a fashion. With Jay, I had only gotten angry and come back.

Thinking that, I shook my head hard. Why was I worrying over a boy like him? My real purpose had been to end the relationship between us. However the process had gone, I had succeeded at that yesterday.

Then why does this sit so badly?

Somehow I had the anxious sense that it would not end so cleanly.

"We've arrived."

I stepped down from the carriage. Sion's house stood in a quiet, out-of-the-way place, like a village in the country. A fence enclosed it. A wood and a ravine lay nearby, and a great apple tree grew in the yard. The house itself was a sizable two-story dwelling.

Did she choose somewhere close to nature, in her own way?

Sion was someone who had lived in the wild, keeping clear of human hands. Drop him all at once into a noisy, filthy place, and he probably could not have endured it. Aine must have taken some care, after her fashion.

And what good is that, if all you do is lock him up?

I took the long lace gloves from the coachman and drew them onto both hands. They looked like ordinary gloves, but these too carried a defensive magic of sorts—the gloves Aine wore whenever she met Sion, just in case. A precaution, should he ever attack.

I gathered up the document envelope as well and went through the fence alone. After a brief hesitation, I fitted the key into the hole and turned it.

Kreeeak.

Metal scraped on metal. I told the coachman to wait, stepped inside, and shut the door. The light was good; the house was bright within.

Unlike the peaceful world outside, the interior was cold in its emptiness, bleak and bare. A single bed and a dog's bowl sat forlornly on the floor.

I looked for Sion, then shifted my gaze to a stake fixed beside the bed. A chain running from the stake led away behind it.

"Sion...?"

I tried his name, carefully.

"Grrrr."

A beast's growl spread low through the room.

I swallowed and moved slowly in that direction.

"Sion."

I called his name again. This time the growl unfurled even more bleakly. I knew that so long as he wore the collar, he could not attack me, and still a cold sweat broke over me by instinct.

It had been a long time since anyone came. He seemed warier than usual.

I stopped and looked around.

Seen again, the place was bleak and lonely. Thinking of him having spent so long shut up in a room like this, pity spread through me.

Even while I was reading the book, Sion had been the character I pitied most. The other male leads could at least leave to seek a love of their own. Sion kept a loyalty that had been forced into him, and lost his life for nothing.

So I could not cast him off as decisively as I had the others.

If this was pity, then yes. It was pity.

Going any closer seemed likely only to sharpen his wariness, so I stayed where I was and did not move again. Instead I spoke from an honest heart.

"Sion. You're listening."

"..."

No answer came, but the low breath that had been settling vanished with it. I knew he was listening to my voice.

"I'm sorry."

"..."

As I had with Asad—but I put even more of my heart into it.

Because I was the only one who could apologize to him. Because I was the only human around him. Even if I was not a person of this world.

"I'm sorry for snatching you away without a thought. Sorry for binding you. Sorry for tormenting you. Sorry for leaving you lonely. And so the reason I came here is—"

"..."

"I'll set you free."

Sion still gave no answer, but I set my halted feet moving again and went toward him. Following the path where the chain lay, his figure slowly came into view.

A collar set with a ruby to Aine's taste. Hair gone stark white. Clothes changed on him as if he were a doll being dressed for play. A slave's brand stamped into his ankle.

Hidden behind the bed, seated, Sion lifted his head. The blue eyes peculiar to the Wolf-kin turned on me. They were too beautiful to look away from, and yet I felt nothing in them at all, as if they had been hollowed out.

At that sight a sharp ache rose in my chest.

"Sio—"

"You too, Master."

In the instant I meant to call his name, Sion opened his mouth for the first time.

Sion does not know Aine's name. From the moment she first saw him, she had forced him to call her Master.

I looked at him without a word. Soon the eyes that had been utterly empty brimmed. Mine went wide.

And then a tear dropped from his eye.

Words failed me.