Chapter 98:  The Grand Duke’s Daughter’s Care (2)

Meanwhile, the procession of the Grand Duke’s daughter heading toward Nord.

Not long after their departure, Echina had just reached the outer wall of the capital.

Her expression atop the black horse was far from good.

She had clearly completed the joint Imperial project flawlessly, and all that remained was to report this victory to her father.

Yet for some reason, she only tormented herself, pressing her tongue hard with her sharp canine teeth.

“Lady Grand Duke’s daughter, we are about to leave the capital.”

“Yes, I know.”

It felt as if she had left her sword behind but carried only the scabbard that always hung at her hip.

Returning home during the safe daylight was the norm.

However, since the Grand Duke of the North would not be at the mansion in two days, she intended to push herself and return early.

Just as they reached the guards stationed at the outer wall—

The black horse carrying the Grand Duke’s daughter shook its head violently, as if sensing something.

“Why is this one acting up?”

Echina gently stroked the horse’s neck.

At that moment.

A black silhouette blocked the full moon in the sky.

Soon, a snow-white owl began flying low beside Echina.

The Grand Duke’s daughter immediately placed her hand on her scabbard, her eyes sharp.

Then she realized that, like a messenger bird, a letter was tied to the creature’s leg.

“This bears the Imperial seal.”

Echina quickly softened her expression and let the owl perch on her gloved arm.

She then untied the note and checked its contents.

“……”

While the Grand Duke’s daughter read the words in silence,

the Black knights waited quietly at her side for her command.

But even though it was a short message, she could not easily take her eyes off the note.

Finding this strange, the knights carefully asked,

“Um… my lady, are you all right?”

“What could it possibly say that…”

As she read, Echina swallowed hard.

Then, as if realizing she had been absent-minded for too long—

“It’s nothing. It seems Roger is feeling a little unwell.”

The knights exchanged glances and casually shook their heads at such an unimportant message.

However.

The expression of Echina, who had just said it was nothing, was peculiar.

As though countless thoughts were tangled in her mind, she hid her cherry-red lips behind the note.

“Well, it is surprising. Roger, of all people, falling sick.”

“Indeed, with the results he has shown so far, one would almost think he wasn’t human.”

Since they were familiar with Roger’s achievements, the knights joked lightly.

They were not truly worried.

“Then, what will you do now, my lady? Will you still return to the family estate?”

Echina glanced down at her subordinates and steadied her voice.

Then, as though struck by a good idea, she spoke again in her usual cold tone.

“Return first and make the report.”

“What…? Just us, my lady?”

The knights looked up at their lord with faces that seemed to say they must have heard wrong.

Their very reason for existence was to guard Echina—

so how could they understand being ordered to return ahead of her?

“Either way, someone must go back and make the report, mustn’t they?”

But Echina’s expression was resolute.

She simply tightened the buttons of her dress shirt and held her ground.

“But, my lady. If we leave you alone in a foreign land, how could we ever face the Grand Duke?”

“That’s right. Please, withdraw this command.”

The capital’s sentries stared blankly at the knights of Nord who were wavering at the gate.

It was, after all, a rare sight to see the famous Black knights swayed by a twenty-one-year-old woman.

“I am not weak enough to require anyone’s protection.”

Echina spoke with her cold golden eyes that gleamed in the dark night.

“But what about you? Is there anyone among you who could defeat me in a match?”

Echina stood on the brink of the high-ranking expert’s realm.

The Black knights were certainly strong, yet in pure martial skill, none of them could best her in a one-on-one duel.

“If you truly wish to force me to return immediately, then face me here and now. After all, there are good witnesses present.”

The sentries blinked, wondering if she meant them.

Faced with such a scene, the Black knights worried about their pride being trampled, and sighed deeply.

“Ha… Then when exactly will you return?”

“One day. I will depart at dawn, so do not worry.”

The knights’ faces showed their torment over whether this was the right decision.

But there was no choice.

Before them stood the daughter of the Grand Duke of the North.

If they displeased her, nothing good could come of it.

Between writing one report of dereliction and bearing the grudge of the Grand Duke’s daughter for life, the former was preferable.

“Understood. Then we will wait in a city four hours from here.”

“So, once the sun rises, please depart and rejoin us later, even if late.”

Echina gave a curt nod in agreement.

Then, with practiced ease, she turned her horse and began to ride off.

“Ha…”

“She’s scarier because she’s so serious in the middle of the night.”

The Black knights, terrified, muttered as they watched her disappearing figure.

Yet the only woman among them, the short-haired knight, seemed to think differently.

“Did she really look frightening to you?”

“Of course! Didn’t you see that blank expression? She looked like a beast you meet in the dead of night…!”

The short-haired knight smacked her lips as she watched the Grand Duke’s daughter’s black hair flutter.

Then, in a low murmur, she said,

“No… somehow, she actually looked strangely happy to me.”

“Happy…?”

The clueless men raised their voices at the female knight’s remark.

“Wasn’t it? Anyway, it felt kind of overwhelming, you know?”

At their comrade’s follow-up, the men only looked more puzzled.

Then, they simply stared blankly at the horizon where the Grand Duke’s daughter had completely vanished.

――――――

Late at night.

All the lights of the grand residence near the Imperial Palace were extinguished.

Because of that, the area around the building was cloaked in eerie darkness.

Through that atmosphere, a black horse galloped harshly.

Then, a woman dismounted, her black cloak embroidered with a black lion fluttering in the wind.

“……”

It was the Grand Duke’s daughter of the North, Echina Luton, back from her journey.

She quietly smoothed down her long hair scattered by the night breeze.

Then she removed her gloves and draped them over the black horse before entering the residence.

The hallway was very dark.

Yet it suited well the cold aura she carried.

As though she were a lioness out for a night hunt.

“……”

Echina quietly headed toward a guest room.

And as she pulled at the doorknob—

She tilted her head when she found it unlocked.

“For someone who claims to be sick, he didn’t even bother locking the door.”

She slipped in silently and closed the door.

There she found a man lying on the bed.

Julius Roger.

“Roger, are you truly sick…?”

The Grand Duke’s daughter approached the bed and asked softly.

But no reply came.

“……”

She carefully lifted the white blanket.

And in that instant—

Her long eyes widened round like a startled cat’s.

“Mm…”

Tousled hair, broad shoulders.

Her lips parted at the sight of a man asleep, bare-chested.

“Ahh…!!”

Echina hurriedly let go and stepped far back.

Then, as if shocked by seeing his bare shoulders for the first time in her life, she covered her lips with her hand.

‘Do all men sleep without their shirts…?’

Steadying her startled expression, she slowly approached the sleeping Roger again.

Then she quietly looked down at him, breathing shallowly in his sleep.

“So you really are sick.”

Perhaps it was because of all his past accomplishments—

She looked at the man before her with a sense of disbelief that he could fall ill, her gaze filled with wonder.

“Even you, after all, are human. To think you could catch an illness…”

The truth was, since becoming a mid-level expert, Echina herself had hardly ever been sick.

‘Then, he’s not even a mid-level expert, and yet that time he lifted me with his strength?’

Once again she felt the reality of his being a man.

She brushed back the strands of her black hair that had fallen across him with an elegant hand.

“I suppose I should nurse you…”

The Grand Duke’s daughter went to the bathroom and soaked a towel in water.

And without even wringing it well, she returned leisurely to the bedside.

The truth was, she had hardly ever nursed anyone before.

“……”

She held the towel in one hand and quietly watched Roger’s labored breathing.

Then, just as she carefully reached to wipe away his sweat—

“……!!”

He shifted lightly in his sleep, and she stepped back again.

“He even makes a fuss in his sleep.”

When holding a sword, she always swung it decisively.

Yet now, with a wet towel in hand, she found herself becoming uncharacteristically cautious.

Echina swallowed hard, her golden eyes opening wide again.

Slowly, she began to wipe the sweat running down his shoulder.

“Even the towel turns lukewarm already… his fever must be quite high.”

As she nursed him, a memory suddenly resurfaced.

Her childhood.

After her mother had passed away, whenever she fell ill, it was always the attendants who cared for her.

But once—only once—Duke Luton himself had come to tend to her.

The rough hand of her father wiping her fevered forehead with a wet towel.

And the words he had spoken then:

“Echina, you must not fall ill.”

“Grow strong. Do not depend on anyone.”

“Only then can you survive life in this Empire.”

Even at a young age, those words had been seared into her mind.

To uphold those maxims, she had lived ever since with the same cold, expressionless face.

However.

She herself was beginning to notice it.

That sometimes, without realizing, the expression she had worn all her life began to soften.

“Mm…”

Echina paused at the faint murmur that escaped Roger’s lips.

She leaned closer to hear what he was muttering in his sleep.

But standing back with only a towel in hand, she couldn’t make it out clearly.

So, when she carefully leaned toward his face—

“I also…”

She heard a phrase she had never expected.

“I thought of you… as family, my lady.”

Family.

Her.

“He thought of me as family?”

Echina’s carefully maintained mask slipped away the moment she heard it.

“How could a man not of my blood become family to me…?”

She pressed her lips together, deep in thought.

Then, when the only possible way crossed her mind—

Though she wasn’t the one with a fever, her face began to redden.

“What kind of dream is he having…”

She had never shown a sign of cold.

Never let her gaze waver in heat.

Yet now, without realizing it, she was fanning herself with her hand.

She pushed her hair back behind her ear and swallowed hard.

“Shameless man, Roger…!!”

The Grand Duke’s daughter could not understand why her body, usually cold as ice, burned so hot that night.

And so, she loosened one button of the dress shirt collar that had been choking her and continued nursing him.

Yet—

No matter how much she tried to clear her mind and tend to him as a lord to her subordinate,

that single word he had murmured in his sleep lingered in her heart.

‘Why did he call me family?’

As she repeated the meaning of those words in her mind…

the Grand Duke’s daughter suddenly realized how close her face had drifted to his.

At that moment—

“Mm…”

A shadow of a man’s hand fell across her face.

Then his broad hand gently wrapped around her neck.

“……!!”

Perhaps mistaking her for a pillow, he drew her soft nape closer with one hand.

At the same time, he exhaled hot breath, sunk deep in slumber.

“Ro… Roger…”

Taken by surprise, Echina stiffened like a block of wood.

She, who had countered any ambush with ease.

Yet here she was, disarmed by the word “family,” and now embraced by his bare body.

She had always managed to return to her mask of composure in nearly every situation.

But now, her face was completely flushed red.

As though it were the first time she had ever pressed so close to a man.

“Such an ambush is utterly…!”

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