Chapter 61

It was understandable. She had rarely seen Reyes with Kenneth; to Sabina, Reyes was always a snake-tongued trickster. He knew when to strike and could hide his expression until the moment arrived.

She was almost certain Reyes would back off now.

He wouldn’t want to ruin Duchess Rebella’s recital, after all.

But her appearance with Ashton, Ashton’s unyielding resistance to Reyes’s attacks, and her calm gaze as she stood to protect her lover, drove Reyes mad.

He drained his champagne. A silence so tense it felt like even a mouse’s footsteps could be heard enveloped the surroundings. The recital hadn’t even started.

“Ahahahaha!”

Reyes laughed sharply, like breaking glass. Sabina instinctively sensed something was wrong.

“Is this the first time you have defended someone since that young slave boy, Miss D’Vialis?”

Sabina frowned. Helio was now a proper Academy student, and after graduation would be treated as a precious attribute mage. His slave origins didn’t matter. Calling him a slave was an insult.

Reyes alternated his gaze between Ashton and Sabina, speaking in a sweet voice.

“Oh, you must love this man quite a lot. Yes, I thought the Sabina D’Vialis had finally settled on one man for some time now…”

“Your Highness.”

It seemed the Duchess Rebella decided this would not do, and stepped forward. But Reyes restrained her actions with nothing more than raising one hand. Right now, it seemed that only by throwing his authority around like that could he recover a little of his wounded pride. His face had already hardened.

“I was worried about whether you could even love anyone, Miss D’Vialis.”

After saying that, he set a contrived smile on his lips and swept his gaze around the room. The voice that would have melted women’s hearts if he had been reciting poetry was now prepared to deliver a skin-crawling insult.

“As you all know, Miss D’Vialis, you are……. Hahahah!”

Reyes laughed. It was a wordless command to laugh along. The people around him began to laugh, reluctantly. The only ones who did not were Sabina—the direct target of the insult—and Ashton, standing firmly behind her.

As Reyes threw his head back laughing, Ashton met the eyes of a footman and motioned for him to bring a bottle. The footman, terrified by the murderous atmosphere, hurriedly handed Ashton a bottle and an opener. With fairly practiced hands, Ashton opened the champagne and filled Reyes’s glass.

“I look forward to hearing what poem you will recite, Your Highness.”

Ashton wanted to end the subject here. Bristling and latching onto Reyes now was not a wise choice. It was obvious that a war of words was exactly what Reyes wanted.

But Reyes had no intention of allowing Ashton’s attempt.

The clear, yellow liquid filled about half of Reyes’s glass. When the forced laughter died down, Reyes stopped laughing as well. He stared at Ashton’s face in silence.

Then liquor was splashed across that handsome face. The sweet drink ruined his hair, soaked his shirt collar, and flowed down the line of his neck. At Reyes’s sudden action, everyone went deathly still in shock.

Ashton, however, seemed to have expected something like this to a degree. Calmly, he pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket that was still dry and wiped his forehead and cheeks.

That was when it happened.

Reyes’s lewd, rasping breathing. His arm swung wide.

Crash!

The glass shattered.

And Ashton’s short groan.

“Ashton!”

“Mr. Bryant!”

Shards of glass scattered across the floor. Drops of blood pattered down onto them.

Ashton’s body had twisted sharply away. A dark red stain slowly spread across the handkerchief covering his eyebrow and forehead. Because of the blood running from his fingers, an ugly blotch began to bloom on his sleeve as well.

Reyes’s hand, which had been holding the glass only moments ago, was now empty. The glass he had held had struck Ashton’s forehead, shattered, and burst across the floor.

A beat later, people screamed, and the footmen rushed about busily to clear away the shards.

The recital had been ruined long ago.

Sabina urgently checked Ashton’s forehead. By sheer luck, no shards had lodged in it, and his eye was not injured. The cut from the fragments was above the eyebrow.

It was a dizzyingly close spot. If the glass had landed even a little lower, he might truly have been blinded.

Sabina looked at Reyes with a face that said it was unbelievable. No matter how much he had lost his reason, to go this far.

The atmosphere around them had become irreversibly quiet. Not even murmurs could be heard. Only a cold, doused silence circulated.

“Don’t move. A shard could have gotten into your clothes.”

Sabina took out her own handkerchief and pressed it to Ashton’s head. There were also scratches where glass had grazed his cheek and jaw. Her heart felt as though it were rattling loose.

“Duchess Rebella, please bring a healer.”

The Duchess Rebella quickly signaled a footman with her eyes. But Ashton waved a hand.

“It’s fine. No healer. Just some styptic.”

The forehead is an area that bleeds heavily even from a small tear. Sabina lifted the handkerchief slightly to check the depth of the cut, and predicted that if he did not receive magical treatment quickly, a deep scar would remain on his handsome forehead.

“Ash.”

She spoke his name as if scolding him. Ashton pretended not to hear.

The footmen brought a first-aid box and staunched the wound. Ashton sat on a chair pulled from a nearby table and gave a low laugh, almost like a growl.

“It’s fortunate you are not the eldest, Your Highness.”

It meant that if he had been the eldest and become King, he looked like the sort who would frequently misgovern, unable to rein in his temper.

The attendees recoiled once again at Ashton’s scathing sarcasm. Unable to contain his fury, Reyes stepped forward. It looked as though he intended to slap Ashton across the face.

The one who stopped him was the Duchess Rebella.

“Your Highness, that’s enough now!”

At her cry, her husband, the Duke Rebella, stepped in personally. He placed himself between Reyes and Ashton so that Reyes could not advance any farther.

“Your Highness. This is enough.”

Trembling, Sabina pulled Ashton’s shoulder into her arms and stared straight at Reyes. The Duke Rebella turned his head slightly and signaled Sabina with his eyes. It meant: he knew her temperament, but she must not open her mouth here and make things worse.

Ashton himself also took Sabina’s hand, as if to restrain her. Sabina hated being unable to say a single word even as she shook with hatred.

Meanwhile, once the Duke Rebella blocked his view and Sabina and Ashton were no longer visible, Reyes slowly regained his composure. He looked around with an embarrassed expression. No one tried to meet his eyes.

Everyone hurriedly hid their faces behind fans, or under hat brims, refusing to be seen. And in front of him was the Duke Rebella’s heavy expression.

“Your Highness.”

Because Reyes was royalty, the Duke Rebella could not throw him out. That was how the national law was made. But the King’s brother read the Duke Rebella’s face and saw it brimming with contempt. He flinched in alarm.

Only then did Reyes look down at his own hand. It was empty. And in the hall, the sweet scent of liquor and the awful stench of blood had become tangled together. No one was reciting poetry; they were only standing at a distance with their mouths shut.

Reyes realized that he had used violence.

No matter how cunning a Brinita-born mage Ashton Bryant might be, on paper he was a foreigner. If he had lost his life—or even just an eye—this could truly become a diplomatic issue.

That fact was shocking. He had always tried, in public, to show only the temperament befitting imperial stock. And for twenty-seven years, he had done well. But to think he could be swept up so suddenly by impulse and act so irrationally.

It felt as if his blood were turning cold.

It was obvious Ashton Bryant had done it on purpose. The exact same way as Kenneth. In subtle, insinuating ways, he would provoke anger—then when Reyes finally exploded, he would make Reyes look like the only madman.

And what’s more, Ashton—this man—had even become the victim right before everyone’s eyes, so what a profitable deal it was for him.