“Asha, let go!”
Phoebe and Kairos flapped loudly, and Karnov reached for the cat in Asha’s arms, but Asha shook her head and embraced it even more. Evan* turned pale, too.
[*T/N: After rechecking the raws, it seems as though I’ve been mistranslating Asha’s knight as Ivan when it’s really supposed to be Evan. That was my mistake, everyone! I’m sorry about that. So from this moment forward, he’ll be called Evan.]
“I, it’s okay, Ouch! It hurts! It hurts, but it’s okay! This cat is getting better, right, Phoebe?”
<That’s right, but put him down! Don’t hurt yourself!>
“P, peach will be in big trouble if this continues!”
<Aaargh!>
“When it hurts, ouch! Ouch! When it hurts, you need to take action quickly, okay, ow!”
“What you’re saying doesn’t match what you’re doing!”
Asha’s grip on the cat weakened from the pain, and just as Karnov, who was beside her, reached out to pull him off of her with all his might, the cat jumped up.
“Meow!”
But the cat had only gotten a few steps after it leaped up and out of Asha’s arms. At Asha’s cry, the cat arched its back sharply and looked back at her, purring. It seemed to be torn between the pain that plagued its body and the incomprehension of its situation. The cat whimpered and looked around, then mewled and suddenly vomited blood.
“Meow! Come here, it’s okay.”
“Asha!”
Karnov shook his head, but Asha was stubborn.
“I won’t hurt you. Come here, okay?”
“You said you didn’t like him.”
“Yes, I don’t… but I can’t let him hurt like that.”
The cat purred a few more times, then cautiously approached Asha, wary of his surroundings.
<Meow.>
“Whoops. That hurts.”
Asha quickly picked up the cat who came close. The cat was coughing and left itself in Asha’s hands in a more comfortable position unlike the first time. It seemed to realize that Asha’s stroking had eased its pain.
“Silly, did you eat something weird?”
<Meow.>
<Where are you trying to pretend to be cute!>
“Phoebe, don’t bother him too much right now. He’s sick.”
<This… This…!>
Phoebe flapped up and down, upset that Asha had hurt herself while taking care of the cat in the way she’d been told. The cat clung to her, as if he were desperate. Asha finally relaxed her body and gently stroked the cat from the top of its head to its back.
When the noise died down for a while, the cat rose up again.
“Meow, what’s wrong?”
At Asha’s worrying question, the cat bent over in a confident, natural motion, and then, with a yelp, vomited something.
<It’s Prasti!>
<Prasti!>
It was a large seed, white and plump, but slightly shriveled on one side, and the big, fat cat instantly shrank to a small, chubby kitten. The cat stamped its front paws with a cheerful face and leaped up and into Asha’s arms.
“Meow.”
“Oh my goodness! You did it! Good job. Well done. Our little kitty went through a lot.”
The moment Karnov picked up Prasti’s seeds with a sigh, a hurried-looking healer stormed in.
“Your Grace! Did you call me? I…”
“The princess is badly hurt.”
Karnov almost dragged the healer down in front of Asha. The healer, who originally ran to take care of the large poisoned beast, sat down in disbelief when he saw Asha, both arms in tatters. But Asha shook her head and put the cat out first.
“I’ve just been scratched, so see if he’s okay first. He’s been poisoned and vomited blood twice.”
The healer first turned the cat over carefully while watching Karnov’s expression. The cat meekly leaned into the healer’s hand and rubbed its head against Asha’s palm, as if it hadn’t just clawed at her.
<That abominable thing! Didn’t you just scratch my child? And now you come here!>
As Phoebe flew up, the healer was startled. Kairos finally calmed Phoebe down.
“The cat… is amazing. Seems perfectly healthy.”
It was doubtful whether it was true that he had eaten the poison, but there were traces of the cat coughing up blood on the floor, which was quite large.
“Then that’s a relief…”
“Enough of that, quickly treat Her Highness’s wounds.”
“Yes, right.”
Asha wanted to say that Karnov was being a nuisance, but when the healer took out antiseptic from the medicine chest and applied it to her scratched wounds, she couldn’t even scream. Next to her, Evan’s face turned even paler. The healer was even more surprised, holding his breath as he hastily treated the wounds.
“How did this wound happen…”
It was a deep scratch with blood flowing from the big cat’s claws. The cat that supposedly ingested poison was lying there so small and gentle…
Asha managed to suppress her tears and smiled weakly.
“This cat might have been hurt because of the poison. Still, after I petted it, it got better and calmed down.”
The healer looked at Asha with a puzzled expression, trying hard to regain his composure. The princesses in fairy tales had that ability, but…
“F… Fortunately, there are no wounds that need to be sewn. Be careful not to let water in the wound for a while and apply the ointment well, and you will be fine.”
Asha nodded, looking up at Karnov to indicate that she took the healer’s words to heart, then her eyes widened in surprise as she looked down at her wound and laughed bashfully.
“I’ve become a bit cooler too.”
“…”
Karnov’s face contorted as he clamped his mouth shut. His lips twitched as if he wanted to say something, then closed again, and he swept a dry hand across his face. The mauve air currents from him rippled endlessly in waves like a waterfall.
“Now Karnov understands how worried I was, right?”
“Is that why you did it?”
Karnov reached out toward Asha’s arm, where bandages were wrapped, but hesitated to touch it and withdrew his hand. Asha looked at Karnov’s face like that and then turned her gaze to her own arm.
“Still… it turned out well.”
“What…!”
And just as Karnov was about to speak up, the warehouse door burst open violently.
“Your Highness!”
Karnov swallowed what he was going to say to Asha. Asha laughed.
‘Let’s talk about it later.’
“Hehe.”
Constantin was breathing heavily as if he had ran the way there.
“… Did you find them?”
“Yes, we’ve captured them now. As for the mastermind…”
Whether aware of the healer’s gaze or not, Constantin’s words trailed off, but Asha and Karnov understood what Constantin had swallowed. Karnov nodded slowly.
━━━✦❘༻༺❘✦━━━
It was not difficult to find the poisoner. A servant who had long since quit his job had paid an unexpected visit to the duke’s residence today, and a guard on patrol had caught him hooded and hobbling away.
“Geol.”
In the mansion that houses the lord of the manor close to the border, there is a dark, heavy room. After putting Asha to bed, exhausted from the cat fight, Karnov confronted the killer in the room with only Constantin present.
The interrogation didn’t take long. Geol had left the mansion only a few years after Karnov’s pact with the Death Spirit, and he was familiar with the way Karnov had reduced everything around him to ash when he was at the height of his power.
Geol screamed and confessed all the facts at the same time as the hood that was covering his appearance turned into ash and disappeared. The old man, his skin tanned and roughened by the north wind, burst into tears and tried to explain how righteous he was in doing such a thing.
He also tried to explain how much Karnov’s parents, who had paid for the job, had cared for him. As if he was unbearably worried that Karnov would misunderstand.
“Geol, your devotion to my parents is truly remarkable.”
“Y–Your Grace. That’s… that’s only natural. Even though they called expensive healers to save my dying son…”
“…That was more than a dozen years ago, and you still have it in your heart?”
“Of course, how can I forget such grace, even though the child is gone…”
Geol sobbed. Karnov tilted his head with a calm look on his face.
“I see. Then do you also remember why my parents treated you the way they did?”
“Yes, yes, I remember everything. As a reward for completing the tasks that day…”
Geol’s words trailed off for a moment. Karnov picked up where he left off. If Asha had been here, he wouldn’t have been able to say this.
“On that day, my parents entrusted only you with their tasks. I also remember how they helped you take care of your child as a reward.”
“T–That… that…”
Geol’s face flushed. It had been more than a dozen years ago, as Karnov had said, and he remembered.
Karnov continued.
“My parents told me to get a branch of the thorn tree because they didn’t like the tone of my reading that day, or something like that.”
It was so clear why the two were looking for a branch of thorns that none of the servants complied with the order. They excused themselves by saying that they couldn’t get it, or that the branches were all cut down and couldn’t be used, but only Geol was able to cut the branches. Ivan and Yelizay took care of him.
His parents had long known that the eyes of the estate’s employees had changed, so Geol was willing to follow their orders.
And Geol followed Ivan and Yelizay’s orders not because it was sincere loyalty but because there was a similarity between the couple’s parenting and his parenting.
Karnov said with a dry expression that he didn’t even care about such an old thing.
“Whatever your intentions were, it doesn’t matter. However, the depth of your crime cannot be overlooked, for you clandestinely brought poison into the mansion where Her Highness was, intending to harm her through the animals. Do you understand that attempting to harm the royal family is treason? And this…”
Geol, who mistook Karnov’s numb expression for forgiveness and soon faced reality, seemed stunned at first. Then, he burst into something that was unknown whether it was screaming or crying.
“I, I didn’t do it because I wanted to! No, I didn’t mean to hurt the princess because the masters made me do it! I didn’t even know that such a noble person had come!”
Geol almost cowered in apology, that was spanning back nearly twenty years, but Karnov extended his hand with an unwavering expression.
“Well, don’t worry about it. I’ll make sure the two of them who ordered this to happen are also guilty.”
Constantin summoned the guards outside. The guards, who looked stiff with tension, dragged Geol out. He struggled with a strength that belied his old, hunched back, but he could not overcome the men in their prime.
“How could you be so careless…”
Constantin murmured, looking at Geol’s back. Hearing this, Karnov slowly rose from his seat and left the room.
“I suppose the two had no means or plan.”
They were the two people who lost their title and went south with nothing as if they were driven out. It had been several years since they returned to the Sedboyer estate.
For them to now seek out a figure capable of orchestrating poison in the duchy would not have been an easy task. Even in their days as heads, they had not possessed such skills.
“And as Geol said, they would not hesitate to kill the beast that injured me, even if caught, claiming it was an act for my sake.”
If the princess hadn’t been hurt, it could have ended like that…
Karnov recalled Asha’s face. Asha laughed at her arm, which was scratched and scarred by the beast.
– Still… it turned out well.
She must have known this would happen.
“But even so, why were they so intent on killing him…”
Constantin murmured with an expression of incomprehension. Karnov gestured outward with his chin.
“You’re about to find out.”
It was time to go and see Ivan and Yelizay, who had been detained as soon as Geol was caught.
