/
“What?”
Kalcion looked like he didn’t notice anything at all. However, Selina found it too strange, even if the situation and relationship itself were strange.
Would his mother, the cold-hearted Duchess, who had focused only on her own parties and decorations, care about a nanny? She made Kalcion grow up pretending not to be sick even though he was sick, but she ended up putting a nanny by his side.
“You said they didn’t get along so well, so why did the Duchess has to have her as her maid?”
“…Well.”
Kalcion didn’t get a sense of it at all. Even though there was an idea crossing Selina’s head, it was groundless. It was not something she could just randomly throw away, and she decided to move on for now.
“It is clear that Mrs. Janet has something… I don’t have the means to find out right now, so I’ll have to look for Juna first.”
“It hasn’t been long, so we’ll be able to find her soon.”
While Selina was moving to her room without speaking, Kalcion had already ordered to track down Juna.
“I should have put a watchman on her in the first place.”
“Our manpower is not infinite. It would have been true if it was Renbird, but the manpower in Myong alone is not enough to escort you and me.”
“If it wasn’t a hunting contest.”
The timing was bad. It was a hunting contest, so the two escorts could not be loosened. Even with an escort, something like this happened today.
Selina noticed the marks caught in her eyes as she grunted and took off his armor. She clearly remembered that when she put it on, there were no marks. However, there were now sharp scratches. When touched with her fingertips, not only were there scratches but also dents in the iron.
“What’s this?”
“…Ah.”
As if he had forgotten, Kalcion reacted slowly.
As she came out of the barracks, she remembered hearing the words ‘something happened while hunting’ among the murmurings.
“What happened to the Duke while hunting?”
The tremors returned to her fingertips, which rested over the scratches on the armor.
“There was an attack. It was disguised as a mistake while hunting, but it was definitely aimed in my direction.”
“What…? So, you got shot?”
“I saw it flying and deflected it. That’s it.”
Beep—
She suddenly heard a ringing in her ears. While Kalcion replied lightly that he had been hit by a bullet during training, that still meant he had been attacked. Her hand, which rested on his armor, fell helplessly.
“Selina…?”
Kalcion called, but the strength to move her lips was gone.
Her eyes darkened.
“…Gasp.”
When she opened her eyes again, Selina was leaning against Kalcion’s chest.
“Are you up, Selina?”
“I’m… up.”
“You suddenly collapsed.”
“Ah…”
Her vision returned, but no strength entered her body. She then traced Kalcion’s arm. The wounds on his wrist were the same. It was proof that it could have been not only Count Orlen but also him.
“The injured place…”
She barely lifted her head, where the strength could not enter, and looked up. However, Kalcion’s eyes were looking elsewhere.
“What is this blood?”
Kalcion’s eyes were fixed on the tip of Selina’s hand. He was in a hurry, too. What he would have noticed immediately, as usual, he didn’t see them all the way through the carriage trip. He later discovered the blood on her hands.
On top of realizing it late, Kalcion’s face hardened with twice as much anger.
“Ah, this… I touched the wound without knowing it.”
“What? What wound…?”
Suddenly, the voice grew louder.
When she glanced at her fingertips, Selina realized that it was blood and patted her shoulder and back. It was not long before she found the wound on her earlobe.
“…What’s this.”
“An arrow brushed against me.”
Selina, who was embarrassed for nothing, answered with a shriveled voice.
“The arrows passed you? Why are you saying it so lightly? You’re bleeding like this?” As he asked, Kalcion’s voice was filled with anger. His eyes lit up in Selina’s earlobe.
“I forgot…”
“Forget…? There’s nothing to forget. How could you forget that?”
Her earlobe was invisible to her eye, so she forgot. She was shocked and didn’t even know she was hurt. Selina shrank after a long time at Kalcion’s burning eyes.
“I was so surprised…”
“You were so startled that you asked about the Count, asked the whereabouts of the maid, asked of Mrs. Janet’s past, and even worried about me? Who was hit with an arrow?”
“It just brushed past…”
“Brushed past is getting hit as well. You should have said it first.”
Kalcion was so angry that she even felt guilty. She had nothing to apologize for, so it was even more difficult for her to figure out how to release her.
“It’s starting to hurt.”
In the end, she faltered in like a child.
Surprisingly, the childishness worked surprisingly well.
“…Let’s wash it first.”
Even now, just like this, he immediately shut his mouth and walked away. When Kalcion stood up, holding her, Selina quickly grabbed his neck. He walked unwaveringly into the bathroom, holding Selina as always.
In the bathroom, there was only preparation for bathing, and there was no maid to serve. This was what happened after a few attacks on Selina.
Sitting her on the massage bed and bringing wet towels and medicine, he poked the towel in her earlobe and at her complexion.
“…Doesn’t it hurt?”
He touched it so lightly that she didn’t even know he had touched it.
“Yes. Am I paralyzed that I didn’t feel anything.”
“But, if I keep touching it, it will hurt.”
“It’s okay. It’s a treatment, it doesn’t matter.”
Selina resolutely tucked her hair back and put her ear in front of him. At that, Kalcion carefully wiped the blood with her towel. The hardened blood fell off after rubbing it a few times.
“…Uh.”
As he continued to touch it, it began to tingle.
As she shrugged her shoulders and tried to hold back the pain, Kalcion patted her on the back. As she dug into his arms, he wiped the blood while holding her and applied the medicine.
“I wish there won’t be anything like this in the future.”
“Never will.”
Kalcion’s words were close to an oath to make sure that would never happen.
“Still, if someone is after me… What if that was the Crown Prince?”
“Don’t worry, I will stop it even by killing the Crown Prince.”
Selina doubted her ears at those words that popped out so easily.
“…Excuse me, but wasn’t that treason?”
“So, I should do my best not to do useless things so that I don’t cause treason.”
Kalcion replied without hesitation. It seemed that he didn’t know who was the crown prince and who was the duke.
“However, there is no confirmation that it is the Crown Prince.”
“It’s most likely him.”
“Still, if there is no evidence, there is no way to do anything.”
Nothing about the assassination and nothing about Irel’s case, it could eventually be resolved only by approaching the Crown Prince and finding out something. If they stopped in this state now, both Irel’s case and Selina’s near-death case would all disappear into a mystery.
‘However, approaching the Crown Prince will soon be a step closer to the underworld…’
Then, Kalcion clasped her hand.
What?
She looked down and saw that her hand was trembling again.
“Ah…”
Facing the fear of death, her body trembled uncontrollably just thinking about it. As Kalcion hugged her tightly, Selina buried her face in his chest and hugged his waist. She had the belief that she would be absolutely safe as long as she was in his arms.
“…It’s the first time I’ve seen a person fall down like that.”
She mumbled into Kalcion’s arms, and he rubbed her back as if he knew.
Surprisingly, she rarely saw accidents before her eyes in her life. Accident notifications came in from all over the world though it was only once or twice in her life that it happened right in front of her eyes.
There were many people whom she would never see until they died.
Selina was like that, too.
She was as shocked to see someone nearly killed in front of her eyes. It was even more shocking because it was rather engraved on the eye. With the arrow studded, she did not see the blood from her body or Count Orlen’s. Still, she did see the blood stain her own hands.
Kalcion’s hand stopped when the treatment was over. Selina pushed his chest and pulled her body apart.
He quietly retreated.
Selina gazed down at her hand, and a bloody residue that had not yet been washed was stuck between her fingernails and fingers.
When she saw it, tears flowed down her cheeks. Just as a child who had fallen and was injured but didn’t cry would cry as soon as they saw their guardian, she burst into tears when she was held in Kalcion’s arms.
“In front of me, a real person almost died.”
“Yes.”
“If only one thing had gone wrong, the Count could have been really dead, or, no… I could have died. An arrow got stuck in my head…”
“That never happened.”
After cutting off her gibberish words, he hugged her body tightly once more. Her thoughts couldn’t go further. Instead, the frozen feelings melted and flowed into the warmth of his arms.
Selina wept for a long time as she buried her face in Kalcion’s arms. During those time, he never took his strength away from his arms and held her in a hug while she was shedding tears that made her face wet.
“I must have thought that it was too easy. Still, it was a matter of one person dying, and I thought that everything would be solved for me as easily as in a play.”
It was the same with Kalcion, who thought lightly.
Up to now, all the investigations were carried out by his subordinates, not by him himself. He did not know the details of the process, so he only saw the results and judged that it was insufficient. He did the same when Selina made an offer he couldn’t refuse.
A good hand appeared, and he swung it easily. No one could have predicted that another sacrifice would be repeated before their eyes.
“It’s not your fault.”
“Right. I did not do anything wrong.”
It was not wrong to not accurately predict the future. It was just hard to accept the present and blame the past. They have to blame it because it was an apology for the pain they were in right now.
“You did a good job. It’s more than I thought.”
Praise.
Although she was someone with clear reward and punishment, it was the first time that Selina had been praised for all she had done so far. She raised the corners of her lips helplessly and faced Kalcion.
He would probably say that it would be okay if she said she wanted to quit now.