‘What is it? What did I miss?’As she raced through possibilities, he said in a slow drawl:“Looks like you don’t remember a thing.”“…Remember what?”“What you did while you were out.”Noce laughed, brittle with nerves. He opened the nightstand drawer and took out a fairly old-fashioned mirror. Then he held it up for her to see.“……!”Aquila flinched at the sight of the left side of her neck in the glass.Unrelated to the bitten shoulder, there were tracks of scratches raked over her neck again and again.They had closed now, leaving only faint red marks, but they were wounds that would certainly have bled. Noce studied the disordered cast of her face and asked in a low voice:“I tried and tried to stop you, and it didn’t matter. I had no choice but to tie you like that.”“……”“So—why did you do it?”The longer she took to answer, the colder Noce’s eyes sank.“Because of that mutt, isn’t it?”Aquila’s eyes, which had been staring hard at her neck in the mirror, squeezed shut.***In the past, in the Kingdom of Leandro, it was not uncommon to see slaves with brands on their bodies. The brands marked ownership, yes, but the burn seared with hot iron also broke a slave’s hope and drove them to resignation.However they ran, the brand never faded in a lifetime, and everyone who saw it treated them as slaves.Among masters with foul tempers, some would brand in places that couldn’t be hidden by clothes, where it showed best.The back of the hand would have been a mercy. Those with brands on the neck or face shunned going out at all.But by decree of Crown Prince Joshua, slavery was abolished, and many slaves were freed.He did not stop there. To erase the brands carved into former slaves’ bodies, Joshua braved fierce opposition and used the royal healing spring guarded for generations—“Mermaid’s Tears.”It was an artifact from so long ago that the spring was nearly dry, yet even a light application of water diluted from that spring wiped old burn scars cleanly away.Many slaves wept to see their bodies without brands.Aquila had been one of those freed then.But the hateful brand being gone did not mean everything was instantly all right.‘Aquila, your neck…’Warm meals, a comfortable bed, a peace where she would no longer be barked at or exposed to violence—those things endured, but not for her.Every night Aquila was tormented by vicious nightmares and clawed her neck over and over. So every morning she woke with her neck bloody, giving her comrades a fright.In the end Joshua could stand it no longer and stepped in.“No matter how much it hurts, you mustn’t wound yourself. If I’m someone you can bear to tell, will you tell me everything? What makes you so uneasy and afraid?”“…I don’t know either…”It was her body, and still it would not obey her will. The gruesome content of the nightmares never surfaced once she woke; only the bloodied neck remained.Because it was where the slave brand had once been, she could only dimly guess she was dreaming of the day it was burned in.After much deliberation, Joshua suggested she join the Crows, the royal secret intelligence unit.“If you yourself rescue those like the person you once were, wouldn’t that bring you at least a little solace?”The prediction was right, and wrong. On nights when she collapsed into sleep after grueling missions, she had no strength in her sleep to scratch her neck. But on days in the field when she confronted slaves whose bodies bore brands, Aquila invariably met the next morning with her neck a bloody mess.“Humans, get lost…!”“N-no! Where are you trying to drag me this time…!”Those rescued from vicious slaveholders and black markets often recoiled from Aquila for being human. Each time she faced that vivid hostility, her trauma did not heal—it worsened.On days she wrapped her neck in layers of bandages, Joshua would secretly summon her and himself apply that precious medicine—Mermaid’s Tears, diluted.Even when Aquila balked and tried to refuse, it did no good.“Even if it’s not for you, use it for me, who grieves over those wounds, and for your family.”Said like that, she had no grounds left to turn him down. But she couldn’t let the vicious cycle run forever; at last Aquila took an extraordinary measure.“Aquila, I heard you applied to the assassination unit.”Harder work, with almost no chance of facing slaves.She had decided to become an assassin.From the moment he saved her he had cared for her constantly, and Joshua showed his worry at once.But Aquila had already set her heart like iron.“I was told by the martial instructor that I fully meet the qualifications.”“I’m not doubting your skill. I just don’t want you to push yourself. You have the right to enjoy peace and be happy.”“Your Highness gave me freedom. This is something I choose by my own free will.”“…Aquila.”“I think it’s best if I don’t meet slaves. But… I still want to help build the future everyone hopes for. In whatever way I can.”So she joined the assassination unit that took on the most dangerous, dirtiest work among the Crows.There was little contact with slaves; instead she dealt with villains who bought and sold them in the shadows.Freed from constant triggers to her trauma, she soon stood out, quickly rose to officer, and even gained the epithet “White Crow.”But last night, after facing a “slave” for the first time in a while, she must have had that damned nightmare again and scratched at the spot where the brand had been.‘I don’t remember it this time either…’You could also say it was because she’d met that wolf beastfolk, as Noce said.“Young lady.”The sharp voice bored into her ear like an awl and Aquila flinched. Trapped between two powerful arms braced against the bed, she couldn’t move an inch.“How long are you going to keep your mouth shut?”“……”The setup was all too familiar.Lips and breath close enough to touch at any moment, a voice just there. The faint thud of a heartbeat.Enough to make her thoughtlessly recall that wicked night they’d spent together, briefly forgotten in the chaos of the attack.Don’t think about it.Aquila deliberately swept her head clear of anything unhelpful to this situation. Then she answered, cool and steady:“Thank you for treating me. But I don’t ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) want to talk.”Her red eyes looked straight up at him.“Because it has nothing to do with you.”【 How the Assassin Seduces 】Siobhan took out a cigarette and set it between his lips.Compared to his large hand, the little stick of tobacco lit red at the tip, and the shadowed planes of his face briefly picked up a red gleam before it faded.Hoo—. Milena watched him exhale smoke and made a peculiar face.“It’s the first time I’ve seen you smoke, Underboss. Did you always?”“…A while, in the past.”Siobhan affirmed flatly.The taste after so long was filthy bitter—and filthily consoling. He sighed and rubbed his temple with the pad of his thumb.“I’d quit, but after seeing that, how am I supposed not to smoke.”“Truly…”Milena swallowed a sigh and agreed.They were in the brig at the very bottom of the ship.Beyond the iron bars that breathed a clammy chill, the sole prisoner twisted, bound in thick manacles and chains.“Grrr…”Saliva dripped from under the muzzle he worried and chewed.His injured eye was wrapped in bandages, and the pupil stripped of reason still ran with madness.Last night he’d been brought to the brink of death by Aquila, but Noce fed him his blood and kept him alive.“Keep him alive.”“Not kill him?”“Not yet.”As he forced blood into the man’s mouth, Noce’s eyes said the opposite of his words—he looked ready to kill him on the spot.“After he vomits up everything he knows.”So the questioning began, but nearly a full day later, they had nothing.At some point he kept trying to bite his tongue to kill himself, so they’d had no choice but to strap in the muzzle.If he lost his reason because he took the same drug as the ones who attacked last night, the boss’s blood should have cleared it the moment it hit his gut.If he wasn’t crazed by drugs…Siobhan flicked ash and his gaze settled on the side of the nameless man’s neck. At the brand seared in the shape of a serpent biting its own tail, his mood dropped of its own accord.Disgusting.And he wasn’t the only one thinking it.The pirates who’d originally taken the questioning detail kept shaking their heads, dredging up their own ugly pasts.“Sorry, Underboss, mind if I get a breath of air.”“Hey, Underboss. Can’t we put someone else on him?”“Underboss, I really just can’t…”One after another they pleaded their distress until Siobhan had to step in himself. He stubbed out the ember of the cigarette that had burned down while they talked, then immediately drew a fresh one. Watching him, Milena murmured in a small voice:“But… what’s with him over there?”“……”Siobhan glanced toward the direction she meant.There was a man at the door that led straight up from the brig to the deck, dragging long, harsh pulls from his own cigarette.Their boss—Noce Mostro.“……”He had appeared out of nowhere while the questioning was underway and stood there without a word.Radiating the most foul, ill-tempered air in the world.

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