The Count's Blunder

"Count. Ten years ago, Sir Astar followed you to the North. I already know that."

So don't bother lying. Even at my remark, Rihard didn't so much as blink.

"It's true she accompanied me briefly, but we parted ways soon after. She said she had other business to attend to. Something about someone she couldn't leave behind, if I recall..."

Rihard let his words trail off, staring past my shoulder. Noah, standing behind me, muttered like a man with a guilty conscience.

"Ten whole years, and that's the greeting I get."

"I never said I went to see you."

"...I never told the Count either."

Why were these two fighting? Honestly, unbelievable. I flapped my hands to peel Noah off before he could lunge at Rihard.

"Enough. So the House of Winston knows nothing at all about Sir Astar, is that it?"

Noah, who had backed off, grumbled under his breath. As if Rihard would answer just because I asked. That man was no longer the fool who used to hang on the Count's every word.

I ignored Noah and kept my eyes fixed on Rihard's mouth. The eyes of a man a full head taller than me narrowed. As if to match my eye level, he slowly bent his upper body toward me.

Rihard's fingertips touched the back of my hand. They traced a straight line down, slow as a caress, toward my wrist. The tingling was unbearable; I flinched and clenched my fist tight. To keep Rihard from probing any further.

His gaze lingered on my clenched hand, then slid smoothly back up.

"Then let me ask one of my own, Duke Belois. Do you still have no intention of telling me what was said that night, at that ball, between you and the Crown Prince? Ah—spare me the joke of an excuse about how the Prince was jealous of me."

When I kept my mouth shut, Rihard slowly straightened. His retreat was unhurried and courteous, like a man drawing an invisible line.

"This is my answer."

Not telling me? Fine. I won't tell you either.

A conversation at exactly that level of maturity. I clutched the back of my neck.

So this is how you want to play it?

"I understand your position perfectly, Count. In that case, I believe we're done here."

Rihard caught my arm as I turned to leave. It wasn't forceful—closer to a hand thrust out in startled urgency.

"...Is that all you wanted to ask?"

"What..."

"I've faced countless monsters in the North. I've lost count of the times I've wiped out entire swarms."

The abrupt talk of monsters wasn't abrupt at all.

This was a conversation taking place atop a lie that fooled no one.

Rihard knew. He knew monsters had appeared in Haute Forest.

And he was certain they were real monsters. He was telling me to ask for his help. Say the words, and he would come.

As if he had any idea where Astar was. I swallowed a hollow laugh at the absurdity of it. And then Rihard whispered, his voice dropping even lower.

"No one in the capital knows more about monsters than I do."

The hand on my arm tightened, just slightly.

Rihard leaned in. His carelessly tousled black hair came so close it nearly brushed my forehead.

"Bella. Is there really nothing else you want to ask me?"

Even a child could see that Rihard had extended his hand first. If I took it, he would help me without a moment's hesitation.

He would help me. And Damon would...

I closed my eyes. The hired carriage parked where it could watch the mansion's front gate would be timing exactly when I left the House of Winston. The moment anything shifted between us, it would catch it keenly and scurry back to report to its master.

"There isn't. Now let go of my arm, Winston."

The damned second-most-powerful man in the Empire would blast the House of Winston to pieces the instant he heard the news.

"You received your title so recently that perhaps you don't know any better, Count. Mind your manners."

In that instant, the heat drained from his dark red eyes. Rihard closed his eyes slowly and opened them again. With a face gone blank, he looked once at the hand gripping my arm, once at my face, and then stepped back.

I left the Count's residence with nothing to show for it, and said to Noah:

"Send people after her."

"Pardon?"

"She's not a knight of the House of Winston, is she? Which makes her a wandering knight who trespassed into the Duchy of Belois without so much as prior notice. Are you planning to just let that slide?"

Rihard had made a mistake.

He should have kept Astar under the House of Winston's protection. The moment he pushed Astar outside that line, I knew for certain.

I could finish this without Rihard's help.

And then several days passed.

"What did I tell you."

"Shut up."

I ground my teeth and shut Noah up. But there was nothing wrong with what he'd said.

"I told you Rihard doesn't act without a plan. The only reason he was so confident is because he'd already moved Astar somewhere safe."

Just as Noah had boasted, Astar remained missing.

In the meantime, I had done everything within my power. Every witness worth using was dead, so there was nothing left to hide behind. The problem was that none of it had produced results.

I had gone through five years of Belois's accounts, line by line. Money leaves traces. Embezzling a sum that size had to have left something behind.

The problem was that without knowing when or how much, I couldn't even begin. Belois was damnably vast—the annual expenditures, the sheer volume of purchases, were overwhelming. If the off-the-books funds had been siphoned out in fragments, I didn't even want to guess how long it would take just to find the suspicious transactions this way.

I'd searched Haute Forest too, but nothing remained. What was the conclusion? That I was screwed, obviously. Draped over the back of a chair like a wrung-out towel, I grumbled.

"How is there seriously nothing left?"

"That's just how monsters work. Kill them all you want, they won't die until their core is destroyed—and once it is, they vanish like dust."

"Magic stones remain, though."

I corrected Noah. He shrugged in reply.

"Astar probably collected them."

"Why are you so calm about this? If monsters really did appear in Haute Forest, where was all this panic about a catastrophic incident?"

"Because this is more urgent than that, right now."

Noah jerked his chin at the card in my hand. I wanted to ask why on earth he was using a golden card for something this pointless. Wasn't there a hole burned through the off-the-books funds?

I groaned and tossed it toward Noah. He snatched it out of the air, read the inside, and clicked his tongue.

"When exactly is that lunatic going to come to his senses?"

"You still believe that day will come?"

"He's going to be Emperor eventually. An Emperor should at least be sane."

I took the card back from Noah. The message scrawled across the ornate card was brutally simple.

I stared silently at the handwritten proposal.

He really intended to marry me?

He couldn't possibly think what we'd had this whole time was a real courtship. I shuddered in revulsion.

The problem is that this is tangled up with Rihard.

Which meant I had to play along for now.

Damon had made two demands of me.

Marriage. And no entanglement with Rihard.

What method would let things appear to unfold exactly as Damon intended while buying me time? I mulled it over for a moment, then grinned. Noah flinched at my expression and backed away.

"...What are you thinking."

"What about me?"

"What, indeed. If you're going to play innocent, at least check a mirror first. Every time you make that face, Your Grace, it terrifies me."

Noah's theatrics drew a snort of laughter out of me.

"I was thinking something had just worked out rather nicely."

"...?"

Noah studied me with an expression of deep concern. He was clearly wondering whether I'd finally lost my mind from rage.

Instead of denying it, I tossed the card into the fireplace and said:

"If he wants marriage, he starts with an engagement."

"Pardon?"

"Where does he get off trying to swallow the Duke of Belois whole without so much as an engagement period?"

"Pardon?"

"—write that as elegantly as you can."

A brief silence fell.

Noah seemed to chew on my words for a moment. He looked at the ceiling once, at the floor once, and then asked, staring straight at me:

"What did you just say?"

"Send Damon a reply telling him we start with the engagement. Ah—no. Better if I write it myself."

Muttering half to myself, I dragged over a sheet of paper stamped with the family seal. I had no intention of sending something as casual as Damon's—a single card with nothing but let's start with the engagement scrawled on it.

"A social season should do for the duration, don't you think?"

I murmured it to myself, and without realizing, ground my teeth.