So the invincible hero Shu had prophesied turned out to be the Hippity-Hop Bunny Prince from the picture book.

Tonight, Rose thought she might dream something as sweet and silly as she had when she was small.

“Thank you, but I don’t need the fluffy tail……”

No matter how soft the fur, a tail was out of the question.

Honestly, chest hair isn’t really my thing either.

Right on the edge of sleep, Rose found herself picturing Jade’s chest from the hot spring without meaning to, and let out a low groan as she squirmed under the covers.

❀❀❀

Sadly, the peace Shurelli’s visit had brought lasted less than a week.

Anton and Piar’s patience was truly no match for a six-year-old child’s. Even when Shurelli was two, she would have understood “please wait quietly for a moment” far better than her own father ever had.

“Good heavens, Piar! Anton!”

Just as the sky was beginning to blush with the pale blue of early dawn, the two brothers, who had vanished without anyone noticing them slip out of the castle, came staggering back supported by their attendants.

Both their faces were badly swollen, and each had a splint and cast on an arm and a leg respectively.

“Where have you two been all night?”

Rose set down the newspaper she had been reading and came downstairs.

A physician was summoned in a hurry, and the two brothers were laid out on sheets spread across the floor. They winced and groaned, watching Rose’s expression carefully.

“Well…… we went to the Costaca festival last night and ran into those blasted Camelot lackeys, of all the rotten luck. Ow, it hurts……”

Camelot again.

“What did Camelot do.”

Rose’s voice dropped, and the two brothers’ heads dropped along with it.

“Well…… we didn’t exactly expect them to show up somewhere that isn’t even their domain, barging in where they don’t belong. We were just looking at them, naturally, and they started mouthing off, so we had to set them straight, and then…… ow, ow.”

As if they themselves hadn’t gone to someone else’s domain to make merry.

“Shu is here visiting, and you two went outside the domain on your own? Without telling Mother or me?”

“You have to understand us. A sacred-era legendary sword was up for auction at the festival. What kind of knight could stay home? Ahem, ahem.”

“If you went for the auction, why not just watch quietly and come home? Why fight?”

“That’s entirely the fault of those wretched Camelot dogs! They kept underbidding us on everything we put our hands on!”

Running into Camelot and getting into a forced quarrel, that was the only excuse they had.

Of the ten great vassal houses, the two families that placed the most importance on the path of the knight were naturally going to be drawn to similar items. That was simply how auctions worked. Calling a bidding rival a provocation was absurd.

Anton let out a loud, pointed cough, apparently noticing the contempt that had crept onto Rose’s face.

“Isn’t it time you made a decision too? How long are you going to keep letting them off? Their heir is back and their arrogance has gotten unbearable. You can’t just keep watching. One proper fight to settle the pecking order would solve everything. Why won’t you just do it?”

One proper fight……

“Piar’s right! It’s because you, the heir, keep being soft that they feel bold enough to come at us and start fights!”

“Peace is only kept by strength. Making it clear who the stronger side is might be the best way, Rose.”

“Hear, hear!”

They could lie there in tatters, beaten by another family’s attendants, and still say things like this.

Rose felt a sudden, hollow despair.

Fight properly?

They would have to be out of their minds.

“……Do you think you’d win?”

She asked without being able to bring herself to say the full sentence.

Do you think you’d win? Do you think you could bring down Jade Camelot?

“Who? You two?”

War between knight families was nothing like war between nations.

In Hailion, conflicts between families were traditionally settled by tournament combat. Two fighters faced each other until one was dead or had surrendered.

In that kind of tournament format, one knight with overwhelming power was nearly impossible to defeat. Any rational strategy preserved the strongest fighter’s stamina for as long as possible, which meant the outcome ultimately came down to the two families’ strongest fighters facing each other.

“Or me.”

In other words, it would come down to Rose and Jade.

“As long as your own lives are intact, nothing else matters to you?”

The two people most opposed to a fight between the families would be the ones forced to bear the yoke.

Every war was the same. The ones who paid the price were always the ones who had done nothing to deserve it.

Siset’s death seven years ago had been the same. Rose’s first knight. The old knight of House Ordo, a man who had loved peace more than anyone, had tried to stop a fight between young knights and died when his injuries worsened.

Had they already forgotten that day?

“Why do you always……”

The long-burning anger inside Rose’s chest was about to erupt when a thin cry rang out from the central staircase.

“Dad!”

“Wh, you’re up already, sweetheart?”

Anton’s eyes went wide at the sight of Shurelli coming down the stairs.

“You’re hurt……”

Shurelli’s clear eyes trembled and filled with tears in an instant.

“Who hit Dad and Uncle? Did it hurt……?”

Tears streamed down both cheeks in rivulets.

“They must have gotten hurt during sword training. Your father is a strong knight, Miss Shu, he’ll be better in no time.”

Vivi, who had been holding Shurelli’s hand as they came downstairs, tried to soothe her, but the sight of her father wrapped in blood-soaked bandages frightened the child and she burst into tears.

“Waaah! Don’t die, Dad!”

Vivi pulled the struggling Shurelli into her arms and held her back. Flustered, Anton tried to calm his daughter down, telling her that good girls waited in their rooms.

In the end, Rose carried Shurelli back to her bedroom before returning downstairs.

Anton and Piar were still lying side by side in the sitting room. Treatment finished, they were already bickering as though nothing had happened.

“Look, brother. My scar is bigger, isn’t it?”

“Size means nothing. I had a bone in my leg shattered, I’ll have you know.”

“That’s our brother for you, what a man!”

“Ha ha ha!”

People with the memory of goldfish……

Men who could make their only child, the family’s only little one, cry and forget it within minutes.

Men who could forget even the sacrifice of a knight who had given his life in service to the family.

Had Rose’s tears, when she lost Siset and felt she had lost half the world, meant nothing to them at all?

“……I’ll arrange a meeting with Camelot soon.”

Rose continued in a flat, emotionless tone.

“Fight to your hearts’ content. Dying in an honorable duel is more dignified than dying in a brawl at someone else’s domain festival, raging like animals in heat. The odds are high that you two, who are weaker than me, will die in the fighting, so I’ll avenge you. Anton, send Eva a will in advance asking her to take good care of Shu.”

Left as things were, House Ordo was heading toward a miserable end.

Living through today, breathing safely, with hearts full of nothing but hatred and violence, was not something to take for granted. It was nothing more than borrowed luck with a fixed expiration date.

“D, dying? Why are you saying such grim things?”

She had only wanted them to understand that.

“Don’t say frightening things. Who dies in a duel these days? I mean, if luck is really against you, accidents can happen, but……”

The two brothers muttered, watching Rose’s face with aggrieved expressions. They couldn’t finish the sentence because they had remembered the “accident” that had once happened when luck was against them.

But as always, their brief spell of good behavior didn’t last long.

“But…… are you really going to fight Camelot?”

Piar’s body stirred with anticipation, as though he might leap up at any moment.

“Now you’re thinking, Rose! We’ll sweep up all the small fry!”

“Let’s restore Ordo’s honor! We’ll have our revenge!”

Rose pressed down the wave of nausea that rose from the depths of her despair.

A person who could laugh while talking about war was either too dim to think or too indifferent to others’ pain to feel anything, and either way, the fact that most of Ordo’s people were cut from the same cloth as these two brothers was utterly, hopelessly bleak.

The only knight in this household who had ever truly known honor had been dead for seven years.

Could Ordo’s knights protect Ordo with swords alone?

Could they protect Shurelli?

“……If honor were something you could kill someone and take for yourself, you two would have been tremendously honorable people since seven years ago.”

Rose stared at the two brothers with cold eyes, then turned sharply away.

“Hyah!”

No one dared stop her as she rode out through the castle gates into the dawn wind. Only Terra, who had been watching her mistress in silence, followed naturally in her wake.