“…Ah, Instructor.”
As his illness had worsened, Jayden had stopped his swordsmanship lessons. So it had been quite a long while since he’d last faced his instructor.
Instead of smiling in welcome, the child found his shoulders drawing in without meaning to.
Like someone who’d committed a crime.
“Straighten your shoulders. I’ve told you—a Dragonblood must always carry himself with dignity.”
At the stern tone, Jayden hurriedly corrected his posture, looking cowed.
Then, as if nothing had happened, Morden returned to his usual, particular courtesy.
“Congratulations on your recovery.”
Though they were unmistakably words of congratulation, Jayden felt a suffocating pressure.
He’d been pretending not to notice all this time, but there was something that had kept weighing on his mind.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Jayden moved his lips and confessed in a voice trailing off to nearly nothing.
“I, um… Instructor. I’ve been taking medicine…”
He’d taken medicine. Even conveying that simple fact made Jayden’s shoulders tremble.
Like a child afraid of being scolded.
But Morden’s answer was unexpected.
“Well done.”
“…Pardon?”
“We cannot afford to lose a precious Dragonblood, after all.”
For someone saying “well done,” Morden’s eyes were as cold as could be.
“You may have lost a Dragonblood’s pride, but in the end, you survived, so it was the right choice.”
Lost his pride. That meant a Dragonblood, who ought to stand on his own, had dared to depend on something else.
At that cold single sentence, laden with so much meaning, Jayden’s face twisted with self-loathing in the end.
“…”
To the boy, unable to say a word, Morden asked:
“Now that you’ve recovered, surely you can resume the swordsmanship training you’ve fallen behind on?”
Jayden’s eyes, which had been fixed on the floor, went wide for a moment. Then, with effort, he opened his mouth.
“Training… not yet, I was told…”
He needed to say that Viola hadn’t allowed it, that she’d told him they still needed to be careful. But under Morden’s stern gaze, feeling as though he were committing some crime, Jayden couldn’t finish the sentence in the end.
“…”
A heavy silence settled over the bedroom. The boy, watching his instructor’s face, plucked at the poor blanket for no reason.
“If you laze about like this, what will His Grace think of you?”
His Grace the Duke.
Cain Asheln.
At the mention of that name, Jayden’s eyes wavered uneasily.
He might look like him, but he was a true Dragonblood, on an entirely different level from a half-measure like himself.
Gulp. Jayden swallowed hard with nerves.
“You seem to have forgotten… you are a Dragonblood, Young Master.”
“…”
“Shouldn’t you become stronger?”
A tone that was less a question than an outright demand. After hesitating, Jayden nodded heavily.
At last, the stiff corners of Morden’s mouth curled into a sneering twist.
As if he’d finally gotten the answer he wanted, he left the room without delay.
“Pathetic.”
To be born a Dragonblood and yet grovel like this.
There had been a time when he’d pinned some hope on the boy, given how closely he resembled his uncle…
But in the end, Jayden was nothing but a half-measure, just like his father.
So the dragon’s blessing ended with Cain Asheln.
Twenty-odd years ago, the day he first laid eyes on Cain. Morden had shuddered.
Beautiful.
And awe-inspiring.
Eyes empty, without a single grain of feeling in them. An arrogant, absolute indifference, as though the whole world lay beneath his feet.
Even though he was only a child, Morden—who had already reached the level of Sword Master at the time—had broken into a cold sweat before Cain.
Only after truly feeling that overwhelming terror had Morden become certain, at last.
This is the master I was truly meant to serve.
Morden was the Knight Commander of the Silver Dragon Knights, and the head of House Barnes, a viscountcy that had served the ducal house for generations.
To him, House Asheln, carrying the dragon’s blood, was a religion, and the vassals who served them were its chosen priests.
Which was why, for the sake of Cain, a true Dragonblood, Morden could do anything at all.
Even if it meant getting blood on his own hands.
A vassal for the Dragonblood. That was the very worth of his own existence.
Cain’s study.
Amid the silence hanging over the room, Conrad’s calm report continued.
“We still haven’t secured a dedicated physician for the knights’ order.”
“Still?”
“Yes. Since my last report, I instructed the Knight Commander to find one quickly, but given the post remains vacant, it does seem to be a deliberate act.”
Cain stopped turning through his documents and fell silent for a moment.
The current Knight Commander, Morden, was a troublesome figure.
Head of House Barnes, which had served Asheln for generations, and a man who had gone beyond the limits of human ability to become a Sword Master, only to willingly offer himself as the dragon’s sword regardless.
He’d been especially favored as Knight Commander by Cain’s father, the late Duke, so his influence among the vassals remained formidable.
The Silver Dragon Knights fell under the ducal house, but various powers had been delegated to the Knight Commander so the order could act independently in a crisis.
And with that power, he’s simply been dismissing physicians and blocking new hires.
However much personnel authority within the order belonged to the Commander by right, this was no longer something he could overlook.
“Find a physician to take charge of the order, even temporarily.”
“…”
No immediate answer came back.
Cain looked up, puzzled, and Conrad adjusted his glasses slightly, looking troubled as he spoke.
“Ah, about that. It seems Miss Viola has already agreed to help.”
Hm?
At a name he hadn’t expected to hear, Cain’s brows drew together.
“It seems Sir Eugene personally asked her, after the order received her help not long ago.”
At Conrad’s explanation, Cain fell into thought for a moment.
Squirrels were quick creatures to begin with, but—
She’s been running quite busily all over the residence, hasn’t she.
The knights’ training grounds would be quite some distance from the annex where she lived. And here she’d gone all the way there without his noticing.
Cain let out a small, disbelieving laugh without meaning to.
Not content with darting around the residence like a curious squirrel, she’d apparently already built some rapport with the men, too.
Well. Given how unusually good she was with people, it was hardly surprising.
Cain thought of the men of the order.
Among them, Eugene Hart was a commoner-born knight Cain had personally knighted.
He’d joined relatively late, but with exceptional talent, had quickly risen to become the third-ranking figure within the order.
Eugene might look easygoing on the surface, but with his knight’s pride, he tended to keep his guard up rather high.
For a man like that to have asked for help in such a short span of time.
He could well imagine how much the men of the order must have opened their hearts to her.
“Shall I find someone else and assign them?”
At Conrad’s question, Cain shook his head.
If she’s already resolved it, there’s no need to step in.
In truth, no one was better suited for the role than she was.
The post of physician for the knights’ order was no easy thing.
Knights carried themselves with a spirit entirely different from ordinary people’s. To treat men like that, one needed some ability to hold her own with them, too…
Wasn’t she the very woman who didn’t so much as flinch in front of Cain, a Dragonblood, himself? Her skill needed no further mention, either.
The only concern was that she’d only grow busier; otherwise, there was no problem at all.
…I seem to have received help I never asked for.
Still, it wasn’t as though there was nothing at all to worry about.
“I’d rather no needless friction arose over it.”
When Cain added that briefly, Conrad nodded.
Even without naming the subject, that much was enough for him to understand.
He means Viscount Morden Barnes.
Three years since Cain had ascended to the dukedom.
For most of that time, he’d been too busy subduing monsters to attend to the affairs of the house, so he’d left the vassals who’d been there since the late Duke’s time alone. But now that the situation had settled, he was rooting out, one by one, those whose loyalty had rotted at the root.
In that sense, Morden occupied a gray area.
A man of deep loyalty, with the legitimacy of a vassal house’s tradition behind him, and skill that had reached nearly the very peak.
But something about him left Cain uneasy about taking him fully into his fold.
If he’d been running rampant the way he had under the late Duke, Cain would have cut him loose in an instant. But now, seeming to read the mood, he stopped just short of crossing any clear line…
He might be reading Cain’s own mood as Duke, but there was no telling how he’d behave toward Viola.
Especially since the Knight Commander seemed to have a particular dislike of commoners, which was why Cain was concerned.
“I’ll see to that matter myself.”
At Conrad’s reassuring answer, Cain finally nodded, satisfied.
With that, the prepared reports were nearly finished, but in truth, the most important matter still remained.
Conrad took something out from inside his coat and set it on the desk.
“There’s one last thing I must pass along.”
Cain’s eyes landed on the envelope.
A golden eagle seal.
That distinctive shape unmistakably marked it as a letter from the imperial palace.
[There is an important matter to discuss. Come to the palace soon.]
Reading through the contents quietly, Cain murmured after a moment:
“It seems I’ll be busy for a while.”
A summons from the Emperor.
