“Sergeant, could you please excuse me from night watch duty for just one week?”
Lakan paused his busy hands, which had been sorting through paperwork, upon hearing Lugaid’s earnest plea, the youngest soldier in the entire regiment.
Though he was the baby of the unit, he was bright and diligent, always seeking out tasks without being told, a fine lad indeed.
Lately, however, the boy had fallen head over heels in love and apparently gave away everything he had, rations, gear, even his own liver and gall bladder, figuratively speaking, to a certain woman.
It was fortunate, truly, that this woman was not one of those bouquets occasionally summoned from other regiments, but rather one of the nurses.
“Why?”
“Well, it is about those gloves you gave me last time. I gave them to the nurse, and she said they have caused her trouble…”
Lakan gave a soft snort of laughter as he watched Lugaid scratch the back of his head anxiously.
“How exactly did they cause trouble that you need to skip night watch? Planning to stay up all night comforting her?” K
“No! How could I possibly…!”
The naive boy’s face flushed bright red as he waved both hands frantically, prompting Lakan to burst into open laughter.
“That wicked head nurse ordered her to tidy up the medical supply warehouse alone at night! Is that not outrageous…?”
“Watch your tongue. Did not the Admiral specifically warn us just recently not to gossip about the nurses serving in the field hospital?”
“Oh! Y-Yes. I will be careful!”
“Pero what do you even know about medical supplies? Will you not just get in her way if you go?”
“I might not know much about medicines, but I thought maybe I could at least carry boxes or something.”
Well, perhaps some affection might blossom between them alone together in the warehouse, but knowing this boy, he would not even dare to touch the tip of her finger. He was just that hopelessly shy.
Lakan chuckled faintly, yet frowned and shook his head slowly.
“You are the type who gets taken advantage of so easily. Be careful, these days, women are scarier than ever.”
“Huh? No, taken advantage of…?! I am doing it because I want to!”
That is exactly what someone being taken advantage of would say, Lakan muttered to himself, then silently answered by piling a few extra odd jobs onto the youngest soldier and excusing him from night watch.
When the Duke questioned Scáthach about why she was here and she offered no reply, he roughly pulled her arm away from Madam’s grip.
“Let go of me!”
Lakan was just as startled by the Admiral’s sudden action as Scáthach was. It was only now that he had clearly recognized the woman’s face.
He knew her.
Her beauty was unforgettable, and he had once felt a sense of moral responsibility toward her when she had been forced, against her will, to become the Duke’s mistress to clear herself of false murder charges.
Surely His Excellency was not… thinking of taking her back as his mistress again…?
It was entirely predictable that a beautiful commoner woman scorned by nobility would end up like this. Indeed, the Admiral’s anger was so understandable it almost made sense.
Still, for His Excellency the Admiral, a man of such noble standing, to take back a woman who had rolled around in the mud with lowborn men was utterly unthinkable.
“Y-Your Excellency! You have a meeting scheduled shortly.”
“Postpone it.”
“Huh? Ah, yes…!”
Raw emotion now filled the Admiral’s once-dull, crimson eyes, which had seemed empty and weary just moments before. Lakan had not seen that look in nearly three years.
“Please let go…!”
Scáthach, dragged helplessly by his firm grip, now cried out with a note of pleading in her voice.
Yet he showed no sign of releasing her. She felt flustered and furious, heat rising to her face.
“Just, please!”
Thrown into a tent, Scáthach was yanked roughly into the Duke’s arms as he twisted her wrist. The heat from his large hand wrapped around her waist seeped through her thick dress, unmistakable and overwhelming.
Despite the flicker of desire in his red eyes, his expression remained chillingly cold.
“If you were going to run away, why even come back?”
Pressed down by his intimidating presence, Scáthach trembled all over, yet stared back at him with large, resentful eyes.
“…Why are you doing this to me?”
“If you were going to sell your body anyway, I would have paid you far more.”
“Hah…”
Only then did Scáthach realize the Duke’s terrible misunderstanding. She let out a bitter laugh and sharply turned her head away.
Apparently offended even further by her reaction, the Duke gripped her chin firmly, forcing her to face him.
“To be resorting to tricks like this just to survive, you have really sunk that low…”
“Let, let go. Even if I really had to sell my body, I would never sell it to you.”
At her sharp retort, one corner of his mouth twisted into a faint smirk. Yet his eyes remained icy, filled even with contempt.
“Do women like you even have a choice?”
His words, women like you, brought back a flood of memories. No, perhaps she had never truly forgotten them, not even for a moment.
Pero now his tone carried even deeper scorn than before.
“Woman like me? You mean a commoner? Or a prostitute? Either way, I doubt you would want to cause yourself such a headache.”
“Hah.”
He let out a brief, hollow chuckle, clearly remembering his own past words upon hearing hers.
“Do not talk nonsense.”
“How is that nonsense…?”
“Do you really remember my words so vividly? Was I truly that significant to you?”
Casar asked, then immediately laughed at himself as if the very notion were absurd.
Of course not. If he had been, she would not have run off with that brat the moment he had let her go.
“…”
Though he knew it, her silence still stung bitterly.
He disliked everything about this situation, why she was among those bouquets summoned from other regiments; where her husband was; whether he was truly so incompetent.
Yet after three long years, her eyes remained as crystalline and beautiful as ever, utterly untouched by time.
How could someone with such an innocent face carry out such acts? Did she really not care whose arms she fell into?
Just imagining it tangled his thoughts into chaos.
Part of him wanted to hunt down that brat who had run off with her yet failed to protect her, and every unknown man who had ever touched her, and shoot them all dead.
“Undress.”
“N-No.”
“You were never given a choice.”
As Casar stepped closer, fear flooded her wide eyes. The woman who had just moments ago snapped back at him defiantly now shrank into herself, trembling.
Seeing her like this stirred a perverse sense of satisfaction. It pleased him that he could still affect her so deeply.
Pero the thought that other men might have felt this same twisted pleasure sent a cold chill through his blood.
“Did you do this with other men too?”
“What…?”
“You come here to sell your body, but pretend to be frightened and timid, do men enjoy that?”
Her expression crumbled like a building collapsing, and his burning urge to throw her onto the bed vanished instantly, replaced by the sensation of a knife twisting in his heart.
“…You really are something.”
Her voice, thick with tears, cracked as if each word were snapping in two. Yet even now, he refused to apologize. If this humiliation would make her stop, he would do it a thousand times over.
“If you were expecting something else… I am sorry, but…”
Her words, the price for not correcting the Duke’s misunderstanding, were unbearably humiliating. She prayed he would come no closer.
“I need to go to the medical supply warehouse…”
She wanted to speak calmly. She even wanted to demand an apology. But what slipped out instead was a trembling, choked voice, barely held together.
A pathetic, tearful voice that failed to utter even a single coherent sentence as she had planned.
Fortunately, it was enough. The man before her froze, his tense eyes slowly blinking as if coming to his senses.
“…”
Truly, he was as sharp-minded as the world claimed. Merely from her faint, faltering whisper about needing to go to the medical warehouse, he grasped the entire situation.
With a short sigh, Ha, ha, he turned his back to her and roughly ran a hand through his hair. He might have even cursed under his breath, Damn it, Bloody hell, or something similar.
“Go.”
Finally freed from the Duke, Scáthach pressed her cold fingertips firmly against her reddened eyes and walked toward the tent’s entrance.
In the end, she realized only this:
The Duke remained as tyrannical as ever, and to him, she was still nothing more than a poor, insignificant commoner woman.
How eerily unchanged he was.
Just like on her last day at Lindkoem Mansion, he told her to leave without so much as an apology. It was unbearably absurd and heartbreaking.
After leaving the Admiral’s tent, Scáthach wandered aimlessly, lost among the identical Nissan huts.
Clack.
Stumbling blindly through the darkness, Scáthach froze at the sound of a rifle being aimed directly at her.
“Pigeon.”
Pigeon?
Scáthach, not being a soldier, had no idea how to respond to the sentry’s password.
Moreover, a long-buried trauma seized her ankles, locking her body in place and draining her mind blank white, likely triggered by her recent encounter with the Duke.
She remembered the villa where she had last run an errand, staring at cold, lifeless corpses while dozens of guns pointed at her back.
That single, quiet click of a rifle being loaded brought back every sensation from that day, intact.
Just as her legs gave out beneath her, someone caught her arm and answered for her, the commander of the Blachnatt regiment and Admiral of the Farsade Imperial Army, Casar de Blachnatt.
“Deer.”
Satisfied with the correct reply, the soldier lowered his rifle. At the same time, he seemed to recognize the deep, resonant voice.
“Y-Your Excellency the Admiral!”
Flustered, the soldier quickly adjusted his rifle and placed his dimmed night lantern on the ground, having wrapped it in a hazy cloth as per regulations.
Though he had properly followed the password protocol, he clearly had not anticipated encountering the Admiral, and forgot that salutes were not required during night patrols.
“Save the salute.”
The soldier’s eyes widened as he held his breath, having nearly barked out a formal salute.
Contrary to rumors of the Admiral being heartless and cruel, the soldier silently appreciated the gentle warning, clamped his lips shut, stood at rigid attention in lieu of saluting, and quickly departed, completely oblivious to the fact that the Admiral had simply wanted him gone to avoid further annoyance.
Scáthach remained frozen in place until the soldier had vanished entirely.
Slowly turning her head, she saw the Duke standing there, his earlier expressions of contempt and scorn now completely wiped clean from his eyes.
He almost looked gentlemanly.
Scáthach let out a hollow laugh into the cold wind that tousled her hair.
Disgusting. You who claim to value honor above all, you, head of the Ten Noble Houses, pinnacle of aristocracy, treat me with such base cruelty. How absurd.
The Duke quietly studied her face for a moment, then placed a night lantern into her hand.
“You will be mistaken for an intruder if you do not carry a night lantern.”
Since he no longer looked as intimidating as he had inside the tent just moments ago, Scáthach found herself able to reply with slightly less humiliation, though she still had to focus every ounce of willpower to keep her voice from shaking.
“…Please do not pretend to know me. We are hardly that familiar.”
She had expected him not to agree immediately, but instead, he surprised her with an unexpected remark.
“Hmm. I know you dislike Berlioz’s music, and I know your sleeping habits. Is that not familiar enough?”
Scáthach bit down hard on her lower lip, then steadied herself by squeezing the lantern he had given her.
“I do not… dislike it. And I do not have any particular sleeping habits. What you know is not that impressive.”
Casar stared intently at her face. Her brow furrowed slightly under his silent gaze, though she refused to look away.
Then she tensed her slender arm, so small it could be encircled by one hand, as she struggled to pull away, clearly giving it her all.
“Please let go… It is so easy. Pretending not to know me should not be that hard…”
He noticed her fingers trembling around the lantern. Even as she glared at him fiercely, her face remained frustratingly beautiful, so much so that all he wanted was to pull her into his arms and kiss her, defying her request entirely.
“I will walk you.”
“I do not need—”
Gently wrapping an arm around Scáthach’s shoulders, he turned her in the opposite direction.
“If that is what you truly want to say, you should not have walked in the exact opposite direction of the medical supply warehouse you claimed you needed to reach.”
“…”
She had no rebuttal. After all, Cathleen had not given her a night lantern nor explained where the medical warehouse was, this being Scáthach’s first time on such duty.
Arriving at the warehouse not far away under his guidance, Scáthach gave a curt nod of thanks.
“Leave.”
It was her way of drawing a line, begging him to disappear from her sight immediately. But the Duke, having clearly understood her intent, responded with shameless audacity.
“Guess I am not very welcome. Funny, I am quite glad to see you.”
“We are not at a point where we should be glad to see each other.”
“Then what kind of relationship do we have?”
Scáthach forced her expression as blank as his and slowly shook her head.
She desperately hoped she appeared composed. If she had known he already saw through her fear, she never would have tried.
“…None at all.”
“None at all…” It was accurate, even if spoken through trembling lips, but somehow, it left a bitter taste.
Perhaps only she had held onto the faintest trace of lingering affection. And of course, from her perspective, that was perfectly natural.
It had been a long time ago. Even if she had accepted his kiss without resistance back then, that did not mean she held feelings for him.
At that time, she had been dragged there, tortured, and held hostage by the promise of returning her necklace.
Had he done something even worse, given her circumstances, she likely would not have resisted then either.
“Fine, let us say that is true.”
Casar tilted his head slightly.
“Pero is your husband truly so incompetent that he would send his own wife into danger like this?”