The Shadowed Corridor

“…You're making this much of a fuss over a brief moment of choking?”

When her face turned ghost-pale and she seemed genuinely on the verge of suffocating, Eusilif finally relented, fetching a warm, damp cloth and laying it across her throat with an expression of sheer disbelief.

Blue veins standing out at her temples, she lay in bed, drawing carefully steadied breaths, and said petulantly, “Be more careful from now on. *Cough.* As you can see, I'm rather fragile.”

She rolled up her sleeve to show him the bruise on her elbow.

“See this? You did that with your little wind blast earlier.”

Her snow-white arm, the blue of her veins faintly visible beneath the skin, was as fragile as a bare winter branch. Looking at the large bruise blooming across it, Eusilif clicked his tongue.

“Just how pampered a hothouse flower were you raised as, to have a body this frail?”

“A hothouse flower? Did you forget what you heard yesterday? Frail as I look, this body survived a poisoning. Though, granted, I probably would have died if it weren't for you.”

At Arabella's self-deprecating joke, Eusilif merely shrugged.

A little while later, satisfied that her breathing had steadied, he pressed his demand again.

“You seem all right now, so talk. How do we save Allin?”

“Whew.”

Arabella set aside the cloth on her neck and sat up. The coughing had stopped, but the bruise on her bare arm remained.

For some reason, Eusilif found himself pulling his gaze away from it, forcing himself to focus on her words.

“To save Allin, we have to get into the Magic Tower. But as you well know, the Master of the Tower is no ordinary man. And he's a collector of non-humans, on top of that. There's no way he'd hand over Allin, a rare quarter-elf he worked so hard to acquire—not for any amount of money.”

“So?”

“So we have to offer him something he *truly* wants, in exchange.”

“Something he truly wants.”

“Yes.”

“Which means you already know what that is.”

“I do.”

“…….”

Eusilif simply stared at her intently, as if to say: get on with it.

“And to obtain it, you'll have to become far stronger than you are now. Your current skill won't even come close. Ideally, you'd become a Swordmaster.”

At her words, he let out a short laugh.

“A Swordmaster. You're serious?”

“Have you forgotten? That was part of my promise, too. Save Allin, free you from slavery, and make you a Swordmaster.”

“…….”

Eusilif looked at Arabella as though she were a swindler mid-pitch.

A Swordmaster. however gifted a born warrior Eusilif might be, Swordmaster was an entirely different realm. It was a height that even heaven-sent talent, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and over a decade of relentless training combined could only hope to reach.

That was precisely why Crown Prince Sota, who had attained Swordmaster in his twenties, was revered as nothing short of divine.

Yet despite his skeptical expression, Arabella continued without a flicker of doubt.

“I can't explain how, but I truly do know the way for you to become a Swordmaster.”

There it was again. *'I can't explain.'* The moment a crooked retort rose to Eusilif's lips, she cut him off, anticipating it.

“To be precise—I can't *make* you a Swordmaster. But—”

Eusilif's brow furrowed once more.

“—I *can* put the path to Swordmaster right into your hands.”

As if she were harboring some magnificent secret scheme, Arabella flashed him a grin.

A corridor so dark that I couldn't tell what was an inch in front of my face.

*Rustle. Thud.*

“Ow.”

I stepped on the hem of my own skirt, staggered, and smacked straight into Eusilif's back, and he whispered with unmistakable exasperation.

“Didn't I specifically warn you not to make a single sound if we didn't want to be caught?”

“…Sorry. I can't see anything.”

I offered the apology first and rubbed my aching nose. Eusilif's bones and muscles had to be made of some material different from mine—my nose stung as though I'd walked face-first into concrete.

Still, this was a disaster. Even if the corridor had no lamps lit, could it really be this impossible to see?

It seemed Arabella hadn't merely been frail of stamina; her senses—her eyesight, her hearing—were equally defective.

Having nearly misstepped yet again, I heaved out a long, helpless sigh, and Eusilif grumbled coldly, “Blind as a bat. At this rate we'll be discovered before we ever reach the study. Just hold onto my clothes.”

He said it, stopped walking for a moment, and waited in silence. When I, hesitating, quietly reached out and grasped his shirt, only then did he resume moving.

His shirt was warm, saturated with his body heat, and holding onto it as I walked made me feel strangely odd.

This is the man who tried to snap my neck minutes ago, and now I'm clinging to him for my safety.

Then again, my life really did hang on him, in more ways than one. With the Elixir locked away in imperial custody well beyond my reach, the only medicine that could stabilize my condition was his blood.

Sorry about this, Eusilif. Looks like I've got yet another reason to stick to you like glue.

Gripping the hem of his clothes like a lifeline, my eyes fixed on his back as we walked, I caught my foot on a stretch of uncarpeted floor and nearly buried my nose in his back a second time.

*Zing.*

The look he threw over his shoulder was so murderous that I hunched my shoulders. He took one look at me, let out a sigh deep enough to crack the ground, and started walking a little slower than before. Catching up to his stride became far easier after that.

He acts utterly unreasonable, but he's secretly quite considerate.

Wrapped in that thought, I walked on—and before I knew it, we had arrived.

“Is this it?”

He whispered, facing an enormous oak door. This was none other than the head of house's study.

It had once been the room of Arabella's father, Roderick, and now it was a space Graham had taken over in his place.

“Yes. It should definitely be in here.”

When I nodded, Eusilif seized the handle without hesitation and pushed.

*Clack.*

But the door didn't budge an inch.

“It's locked.”

I barely managed to stop him just as he was about to wrench the handle clean off, tilting his head in confusion.

I gestured for him to wait, then carefully flipped over the picture frame hanging beside the study door. After a brief struggle with the mounting bracket behind it, I finally pried it loose—and there, tucked neatly inside, was a hidden key.

When I beamed and held the key up for him to see, his eyebrows rose in something like grudging approval. I let out a breath of relief.

“Thank goodness it's still here.”

Back when Arabella was seven years old and living in this manor with her parents, she had come and gone from this study constantly, spending her days at Roderick's side.

Whenever she scrawled her crooked letters or drew a picture and presented it to him while he worked, he would always praise her—“my clever, beautiful daughter”—and lift her high into his arms.

It had been a very long time ago, and yet those moments were etched into Arabella's memory far more vividly than anything from recent days. It was thanks to that clarity that she remembered the spot where Roderick kept his spare key.

Having seen the key, Eusilif shrugged.

“So, once we're inside the study—then what?”

“We steal the head of house's seal that my uncle is holding and get out.”

“And you know where it is?”

“Well, I have a pretty good guess. But we'll have to get inside first.”

I put on a show of confidence and turned the key in the lock.

*Creeeak.*

But the moment I actually stepped into the study, my mind felt oddly jumbled. Arabella's recent memories were considerably hazy, while her memories of this study—of the distant past—remained strikingly sharp.

Fighting down my disorientation, I crossed the darkened study and made straight for the desk.

I opened the drawer where Roderick had once kept his seal, but there was no seal inside—only a pile of letter envelopes. Disappointed, I was about to close the drawer when moonlight streaming through the window fell across one of the envelopes, and the name written on it caught my eye.

What's this?

The moment I picked up the envelope, Eusilif suddenly drew close and whispered.

“Someone's coming.”

“What?”

Before I could even respond, he seized me and pressed me down, tucking us both behind the desk. I stuffed the envelope into my bodice on reflex and held my breath—and the sound of his breathing, this close, as if he had all but wrapped himself around me, tickled at my ear.