Chapter 71
Kalian’s dark eyes sharpened, shifting away from Angela toward the outside. One, two, three seconds passed before he bellowed out.
“Stop the music!”
His voice struck the air with such ferocity that the orchestra halted without even waiting for the conductor’s cue. Not a single instrument played another note.
Everyone turned to Kalian in shock. Not just him—knights from the Bilton ducal family, who had already sensed something amiss, were drawing their swords as well.
“Kalian?”
Angela called out to him, as if asking what was wrong.
Just then—
“Kiaaaak!”
From outside came a grotesque screech and the savage flap of wings, all at once.
Angela’s gaze, along with everyone else’s, turned toward the windows.
“Kyaa!”
“Heuk!”
“Kyak!”
Several people screamed, stumbling backward and falling onto their rears. Their legs had given out beneath them. Such frantic behavior wasn’t out of place.
Those who held their ground weren’t brave; most were simply frozen in place. They couldn’t even manage to flee.
Angela recognized what those massive creatures flapping their wings were. Alcyons. The very monsters Kalian had supposedly eradicated from the Golden Plains.
But how were they here… in the heart of Ron… at the Bilton estate…
“Get away from the windows!”
At Kalian’s shout, those frozen near the windows startled and barely managed to step back.
In contrast, Kalian told Angela to wait there and approached the windows himself. It was clear he intended to confront them.
It made sense. Kalian was a knight who protected the empire, and in a dangerous situation, it was right for him to stand at the forefront to shield the people.
Yet Angela hated it so much that she wanted to grab the hem of his retreating coat. She wanted to tell him to come with her to a safe place.
She knew Kalian wasn’t the type to do that, but she still despised seeing him walk toward danger. She wanted to follow and stand by his side.
But she knew she’d only be a hindrance, so she couldn’t. During the fight with the Red Wolves, hadn’t several knights been forced to waste their strength protecting just her, unable to spread out? She couldn’t create that situation again.
“Kiaaa! Kaaak!”
“Kiaak! Kaak!”
“Kaaak! Kiaaaak!”
From outside, the unending cries of who-knows-how-many monsters echoed relentlessly. Angela gritted her teeth.
Kalian had already vanished out the window. The same went for the Bilton family knights who had been standing guard.
Breathing heavily with tension, Angela scanned the guests. They were trembling with anxiety. Beatrice seemed the most gripped by fear among them. Anette, at least, was holding steady.
Angela immediately approached Anette.
“Your Majesty, we need to move everyone somewhere else. There are too many windows here.”
“I was thinking the same. Where should we go?”
“The lobby would be better.”
“Alright.”
With that exchange, Angela began guiding the people out of the banquet hall. Anette supported a few women who could barely walk. About half had exited when—
Crash!
A window shattered, and a monster’s wing flapped inside. The hall turned to chaos in an instant as people dodged flying glass shards. As screams erupted one after another, the eyes of several Alcyons whipped toward them.
Angela wanted to tell them not to scream, but that would require shouting herself, so it wasn’t feasible.
Crash! Crash! Crash! Crack!
The long row of banquet hall windows shattered one after another under the Alcyons’ brutal collisions. The remaining people panicked, milling about in confusion. In their rush to exit first, they collided with each other, and some tripped on the shard-strewn floor, getting injured.
Amid the mayhem, Angela spotted Beatrice, who hadn’t even made it near the door and was trembling from a distance.
That idiot!
Angela rushed over and snatched Beatrice’s hand.
“What are you doing here? Come on, hurry!”
She yanked her along with a sharp rebuke. But in that instant, an Alcyon that had finally squeezed its body through the window gap slowly unfurled its wings right in front of them.
It had looked huge through the window, but up close, it was truly enormous. Angela or Beatrice wouldn’t even make a single bite for it.
The people still trapped in the hall went berserk, letting out screams more grotesque than the monster’s cries. Beatrice staggered as if she might collapse.
“Snap out of it!”
Angela wouldn’t allow it. She positioned Beatrice behind her and cautiously edged away, keeping a wary eye on the Alcyon.
But the Alcyon swung its wing without any warning motion. Angela pulled Beatrice into an embrace and huddled low. She doubted it would help evade that massive wing, but then—
Clang!
What blocked the wing hurtling toward Angela and Beatrice was Kalian’s sword. She couldn’t fathom how a bird’s wing clashing with a sword produced such a metallic ring, but Kalian had perfectly parried the Alcyon’s wing.
“Run, Angela!”
Kalian shoved his sword forward, pushing the wing aside, and snapped Angela back to her senses. Startled out of her daze, Angela urged Beatrice to focus too and dragged her along frantically.
But they didn’t get far. They were blocked by a second Alcyon that had successfully invaded.
Seeing it, Angela felt a strange sense of déjà vu. These monsters, too, seemed oddly drawn to her side, just like the Red Wolves had been.
“Beatrice.”
Tracking the bird’s fluttering movements with acute awareness, Angela addressed Beatrice.
“Answer me, Beatrice!”
“Y-yes…”
Beatrice barely responded. Angela nodded toward the banquet hall exit, about twenty steps away, and said,
“Run straight to the lobby. Got it? If you’re scared, close your eyes and run. On three, you go—ready?”
Beatrice, too drained to speak, nodded tearfully. Having seen the response, Angela began counting.
“One.”
“…”
“Two.”
“…….”
“Three!”
Confirming that Beatrice’s steps were heading toward the door, Angela immediately moved in the opposite direction. Sure enough, the Alcyon’s eyes rolled toward her with a grinding sound, tracking her every move.
Its wing lashed out at the floor, a futile swipe like swatting at an insect. The next flap came straight for Angela.
Once again, it was Kalian who blocked the Alcyon’s wing as it arced down vertically toward her. Shoving the wing aside with force, he stepped onto the staggering limb and leaped, driving his sword into the nape of its neck.
Nearly the entire blade sank in before pulling free. The Alcyon staggered for a moment before collapsing with a heavy thud—without so much as a dying cry.
Kalian approached Angela and quickly checked her over.
“Are you alright?”
He’d said he didn’t want to worry about her, but if he kept fighting like this, he couldn’t properly focus on the monsters.
“Don’t worry about me—concentrate on them.”
At that, Kalian furrowed his brow as if he’d heard something absurd.
“I will worry. If you’re not safe, Angela, then none of this means anything.”
With those firm words, he pulled her behind his back as another Alcyon charged, urging her to dodge. He parried its beak with his sword, then sliced clean through the incoming talons in one stroke.
Angela stared at Kalian’s back—the one shielding her—with an intense gaze. Could a scene so brutal ever feel this achingly tender?
In the midst of this blood-soaked carnage, Angela wanted to pull Kalian into her arms and kiss him. She wouldn’t care who saw, or how ill-suited the moment; she could focus solely on him.
But in the next instant, as an Alcyon’s beak sliced toward them and Kalian wrapped her in his protection, narrowly avoiding a gash to his side, Angela banished all such fleeting thoughts. She resolved to focus only on getting out of here safely.
Kalian had said it meant nothing if she wasn’t safe—but it was the same for her. What good was her survival alone? Kalian had to be whole and by her side.
Yet the situation only worsened. The banquet hall had become a veritable den of Alcyons. Five or six of the beasts pecked at the floor like scavenging prey, stabbing with their beaks and flailing their wings in a frenzy.
Judging that fighting in this cramped space was futile, Kalian began subtly luring the attacks toward the windows, aiming to draw them outside.
That was when it happened.
As Kalian blocked a wing hurtling toward Angela, a razor-sharp beak plunged toward his flank. His abdomen was moments from being torn open.
No……
“Stop!”
Angela’s shout echoed through the shattered ruins of the banquet hall.
“Kalian!”
Before she could even process what was happening, Angela grabbed him and checked his condition. He hadn’t fully evaded the blow—his side bore a long gash seeping blood. It was better than a pierced gut, but Angela’s face twisted in suffocating anguish all the same.
Kalian, for his part, acted as if the wound were nothing, his vigilant gaze sweeping the air. Only then did Angela take in their surroundings.
“Ah…….”
The Alcyons had ceased their attacks, as if transformed into docile lambs. They rolled their massive heads this way and that, peering about. With faces stripped of any will to fight—mild as oversized birds—they cooed softly.
It must have been her doing again. Gentler than the time she’d twisted the Red Wolves’ limbs to force their deaths, but that strange power had surged forth unbidden once more.
Angela’s lips moved in a silent murmur.
“Go. Back to where you belong.”
At her words, the Alcyons unfurled their wings in unison, like tamed birds, and began flying out through the broken windows. The scene outside followed suit.
The Alcyons facing off against the Bilton family knights, the imperial guards Anette had brought, and the sword-wielding guests all took to the skies at once, vanishing somewhere into the distance.
“It really was me…….”
Confronted with undeniable proof right before her eyes, Angela whispered softly, then clapped a hand over her mouth. She feared what else her words might unleash.
“You saved me.”
If Kalian hadn’t said that.
“I’m always the one being saved by you, Angela.”
How much longer would she have stood there, doubting her very existence?
Gazing at his steadfast face looking straight at her, Angela wanted to say that she was the one always being rescued. But unease still kept her silent, so she simply stepped quietly into his embrace.
She held him briefly, careful not to press against his wound, and only pulled away when she heard the approaching footsteps of knights rushing over, asking if he was alright.
“Kalian’s hurt. Call a physician.”
At Angela’s request, the knight explained that with so many injured, physicians had already been summoned and asked them to wait in the room.
Angela left the banquet hall for the first time in ages, heading to her own quarters. She offered to support Kalian, but he glanced at the height difference between them and smiled.
Only then did she truly believe he wasn’t in much pain. She was leading the way to her room, a step ahead of him, when—
As she crossed the corridor, Dominic appeared before her, tossing aside the sword in his hand and striding toward her. The blade clattered to the floor, streaked with blood, suggesting he’d been out there battling Alcyons himself.
In the next moment, Dominic’s hands seized Angela. He examined her limbs thoroughly, every inch.
Only after confirming she bore no wounds did relief wash over his face, and he swept a hand across it.
“I heard you stayed until the very end in the banquet hall…….”
The words came out like an excuse. Angela, who had stood there blinking in stunned silence, finally snapped back to herself and took a subtle step back.
“Kalian got hurt protecting me. He needs treatment right away.”
As she hinted at wanting to return to her room, Dominic simply stared at her. It was only moments later that he nodded and stepped aside to clear the path.
His gaze, unfinished and lingering, still followed her. To Angela, it was a look she couldn’t quite decipher.
