The Safest Place In This Country Is In My Arms

I hurled the mug I had been holding.

Honestly, I did not think it would hit. But at least it might serve as a distraction.

The instant I threw it, I started running.

I felt hot particles being released from my brain.

My heart thudded violently, and that heat spread all the way to my extremities.

As though leading me onward, the mug traced an arc through the air, spilling out what little remained inside it as it flew toward the waiter.

He must have noticed that something was wrong.

Lady Shitoen tried to rise from her chair.

The waiter pinned her down there.

With a crash, Lady Shitoen toppled over together with the chair.

The moment I saw the waiter straddle her, my reason snapped with appalling ease.

A flash exploded across my vision.

“The hell do you think you’re doing to her before I do!?”

Before I knew it, I had kicked the waiter up under the jaw with full force.

But it had not been a clean hit.

There was less impact against my toes than I had expected.

Sure enough, the waiter sprang away from Lady Shitoen and dropped to one knee, regaining his stance.

Holding a knife in a reverse grip, he glared at me with eyes like some feline predator.

“Get Lady Shitoen out of here!”

I shouted.

At the edge of my vision, I saw several knights rushing over at once.

“I am in an exceptionally foul mood right now.”

I gripped the hilt of my sword and drew it.

Even I could tell that heat was pouring off my entire body. My mind surged all at once, and even though I was furious, for some reason I almost felt like laughing. I crushed that by grinding my back teeth together and licking my lips.

The waiter alone seemed to rise apart from everything around him, his colors unnaturally vivid. It felt like spotting prey in the snowy mountains.

“Commander.”

Behind me too, I sensed several knights drawing their swords.

The odds were clearly against him. I wondered whether that waiter would run, but.

Remaining in a low stance, the waiter stepped into range.

Then he sprang upward.

From low to high.

The dagger shot up, aimed unerringly at my throat.

I stepped back half a pace and bent my body away.

The waiter’s arm holding the dagger swept past right in front of my nose.

The dagger cut through empty air. I struck it with the hilt of my sword and altered its course. I was about to bring my blade down onto his skull when Raul shouted, “Left!”

Shifting only my eyes, I saw that, at some point, he had produced a dagger in his left hand as well, and it was aiming for my side. I stepped back several paces, and the tip sliced past just beside my clothes.

Because he was using daggers, the distance was close and his movements were fast.

The way he chained attacks from right and left together was irritating too.

But.

There were only so many attack patterns.

I could read them.

The moment the right came, then the left, I opened my body to the left and let go of my longsword.

I caught his left arm, which had lashed out like a blow, with both hands and turned my body, throwing him across my back.

Then I swept his legs and slammed him violently into the ground.

The moment he hit the ground on his back with a scream, I twisted his arm and wrenched it up.

“Bring rope! Rope!”

The moment I shouted it, one of the knights rushed over and bound the writhing man’s torso with rope.

“Please let go now. We will handle the rest.”

Raul pried the waiter’s arm away from me, and he showed absolutely no mercy about it. He locked the joint even harder than I had, and it looked agonizing.

“Commander, over there.”

I was about to tell him to go a little easier when he pointed behind me.

I turned, wondering what it was.

Then a soft impact struck me from the front.

It took me a few seconds to realize it was Lady Shitoen.

Her silver hair swayed as she buried her face around my stomach and clung to me with both arms wrapped around my back.

“Were you frightened? Are you all right?”

Then I remembered that she had been shoved down and pinned, and just as I was about to tell Raul, “Actually, dislocate his arm,” she suddenly lifted her face.

“What about you, Prince!? Are you all right!?”

“Huh?”

She stared at me so seriously that I was taken aback.

“You’re not hurt!? Nothing hurts anywhere!?”

A moment ago she had been clinging to me, but now she jumped back and started patting at my legs, my hands, all over. It seemed she was checking whether I had any injuries.

“Well, I—”

It felt oddly fresh, having someone worry about me like this. I bent down until my gaze was level with hers.

“My other name is the Winter Bear of Tidros, after all. Something like this is nothing to me.”

When I smiled at her to reassure her, the tension finally seemed to leave her face.

She stared at me in silence, then stretched both arms toward me.

When I bent forward, she wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me tightly again.

Suddenly, I found it a little funny.

What kind of person did she think I was?

From the way she had said, “Pain, pain, fly away,” on the first night.

To the way she was hugging me now.

It was all like the way an older sister might fuss over a little brother.

“For a while, Commander, please stay by Lady Shitoen’s side. Shall we secure the café’s second floor as a waiting room after all?”

Raul said that.

I hugged her back and straightened the knees I had bent.

Her body lifted lightly into the air without any effort at all. Supporting her around the waist, I turned around, and a few of the knights let out whistles, but I ignored them completely.

“No, let’s move. Even if we have to push ourselves a little, it would be better to get to Vandel’s place sooner.”

The business with the peaches, and now this assassin too. What the hell was going on?

“A few of you stay here and dig into who is behind him. The rest of you, we leave as soon as preparations are complete. Eaton!”

I called for Lady Shitoen’s maid, but apparently her legs had given out. Why was it that this maid always lost the use of her legs at the crucial moment? Several knights were desperately trying to get her back on her feet.

“Never mind. I’ll carry Lady Shitoen to the carriage myself. Someone carry that one too.”

I said it in exasperation, and Lady Shitoen tightened her hold around my neck again.

“Are you all right?”

When I asked quietly, she gave a trembling nod.

“I’m glad you’re safe, Prince.”

That made me feel oddly ticklish. She gave off the impression that if she kept hugging me like this, she might declare that she would protect me from any enemy there was.

“I’m safe. Always.”

I adjusted my hold on her. Supporting her beneath the hips, I raised her until our eyes were level, and only then did I realize, to my surprise, that she had been crying.

Those violet eyes were shining with tears.

“Really?”

In a trembling voice, Lady Shitoen asked.

“Are you really all right? You’re not going to die?”

By the end it was nothing but sobbing.

Tears spilled down in torrents, and Lady Shitoen broke into the helpless crying of a small child, which utterly stunned me. She was making little choking sounds now, beyond words.

“My, my, Princess…”

“She must have been terribly frightened.”

“Oh dear, oh dear.”

The knights around us were flustered too. There were not usually any women around, after all.

“Lady Shitoen.”

I touched my forehead to hers.

At a distance where our noses nearly brushed, I gave her a grin.

“I am not going to die. And neither are you.”

Blink, blink.

Her eyes, like wet amethysts, fluttered.

“The safest place in this country is in my arms. And that is where you are right now. There is nothing for you to be afraid of.”

At that, the knights around us all started laughing and chiming in.

“That’s true enough. There’s no place safer than that.”

“Please rest easy, Princess. No one will harm you.”

No one.

No one would ever be able to hurt her again.

Because.

I was going to stay by her side forever.