He was bewildered. He was fairly certain he had heard something wrong. He blinked slowly and looked up at the emperor, who had not even commanded him to raise his head.

“I believe, just now, there is something wrong with my ears.”

He had made his way here gladly at the news that the emperor had finally returned to the palace. He had wanted to ask why she had not come back sooner, but when he saw her staggering and crying out in pain from the curse’s seizure, he could do nothing at all.

Red blood poured out freely. Yet Iberis permitted only Maria to come near her. Sirak was left aside.

Outside.

At Maria’s glance, Sirak suppressed the sullen feeling rising within him and waited outside.

His beast-like body caught the scent of Iberis’s blood spilling through the door.

Every time it thickened, he ground his teeth.

The emperor’s life was bleeding away. He felt he could go right now and drag the last partner here by the collar, whoever that person might be.

After enduring that dreadful stretch of time, he was finally allowed inside. Maria was sent out as well, and in Iberis’s bedchamber, only the two of them remained.

“Sirak.”

At the quiet address, the knight immediately dropped to one knee and bowed his head. It seemed the last partner was no ordinary person.

Perhaps the king of some kingdom. If so, this matter could even spark a war. Even so!

“Whoever it is, I will bring them. Give me your command.”

“……So, you can bring anyone?”

“Yes. Am I not Your Majesty’s sword? I will carry out the command without fail. Who is it? Who is the last person who can save Your Majesty?”

“Anyone, you say.”

As he thought. Sirak steeled himself and set his jaw. Just how impossible a target could it be, to draw that reaction from the fearless emperor?

The knight felt a pang of sorrow.

That this noble person had to agonize over something like this. How absurd it all was.

The gods were heartless and fate was cruel.

To visit such suffering upon someone who deserved nothing but happiness from this point on. And to offer a solution that bordered on humiliation, at that.

Even if some uncomfortable feeling pricked quietly within the knight’s private heart as he watched all of this unfold, he intended to swallow it down and suppress it to the very end, without fail.

What Iberis wanted was a sharp sword.

And he was that sword.

“Yes, I will do so, whoever it may be. I will bring them even if I must abduct them. So please tell me, Your Majesty. Who is the subject of the final Oracle?”

“Before that. Sirak, I have a question.”

“What is it?”

“……”

“Your Majesty?”

The obedient knight raised his head. He found himself looking at his liege’s face, drained white. He could see the emperor’s expression, as though sunk in deep deliberation and yet resolved on a firm decision.

It was something that did not suit Iberis.

Something that looked like human emotion, conflict, or perhaps fear.

Sirak was shaken not by the blood the emperor had shed moments ago, nor by the pain, nor by the terrible curse, but by that expression.

Why was she looking at him like that?

“Can you follow any command I give?”

The question came from the one person who knew the answer better than anyone, without needing to ask.

Unable to hide his puzzlement, Sirak answered readily all the same.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Even an unjust command?”

“I will follow any command.”

“Even if I asked for your life?”

“If that is your wish, I would gladly give it.”

At the fiercely resolute answer, Iberis, who had been holding a rigid expression, let it fall away. A smile tugged at the corner of her lips.

“You dense, stubborn fool.”

“……Is that a compliment?”

“It’s an insult.”

She let out a small laugh as she watched the knight taking in every shift with careful eyes. Iberis shook her head slowly, her face carrying the look of someone who had given something up, and leaned forward, quietly closing the distance between them.

“Very well, Sirak. My knight. From this moment, you are to follow your sovereign’s command.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“You will become the subject of the final Oracle, and you will hold me and heal me.”

“……Pardon?”

It was the moment the knight, filled with resolute determination, faltered. Sirak drew a short breath and blinked rapidly.

Having nearly gone limp in the arms and toppled over in an undignified heap, he found himself asking in bewilderment.

“I believe, just now, there is something wrong with my ears.”

“No. You heard correctly.”

“But…… The subject of the Oracle.”

“What. Does it seem strange? Did you not say you would bring anyone? If anything, this works out well. The target of the final Oracle is you, Sirak. There is no need to bring anyone, no need to abduct anyone. You need only make up your mind.”

“……”

A terrible silence settled over them. The stunned knight’s composure crumbled, and his mouth fell open.

“Your Majesty, do you truly mean, no?”

“Do you think I would make a jest of something like this?”

Iberis, seeing an expression she had never seen on him before, curved her eyes in amusement, but Sirak found nothing about this situation pleasant at all.

“I will say it again.”

“……”

But his liege was merciless, as always. She gave him no time to sit there staring blankly.

“It is you, Sirak. You.”

Clear eyes looking straight at him, a gaze that seemed to pierce through him, declared that this moment was vivid, undeniable reality.

“You must hold me.”

* * *

An abandoned slave. A boy who had lost one eye, powerless and without will. A vagrant of a fallen nation who could tell no one, yet carried the direct royal bloodline of the wolf therianthrope clan.

That was Sirak.

The therianthropes, who lived driven by instinct, and among them the wolf therianthropes, who possessed the greatest combat strength of all, held a deeply dangerous identity. Dangerous enough that revealing his true nature could mean death without a trace.

So Sirak did not want to use his power.

His family, his friends, every root of his childhood had turned to a handful of blood. There was nowhere to return to, and all that remained was a life like a parched desert.

‘I just have to stay like this.’

The only reason he endured each day, cast away as a combat slave, was because of his parents’ dying wish.

Because of that shackle-like wish that he must not die, that he must survive no matter what.

But whenever he struggled to live, the beast’s desire coursing through his veins would close around his throat. Just a little. Just a tiny bit.

He knew that if he used his power, as though awakening, he could reduce everything around him to ash.

But he also knew that once he unleashed that instinct, there would be no coming back.

The abandoned slave boy did not know how to control his own power and impulses.

And then, one day.

The slave boy was discarded like refuse.

He had lost one eye, become useless, and was to be disposed of.

With only the decision remaining, whether to be killed or sold off as a slave for other purposes, he met someone like a beam of light.

‘Shall I save you?’

A beautiful girl he could not have imagined even in dreams.

The contrast between her snow-white skin and red lips was vivid. Her black hair, darker than that night sky, was striking to an almost unnatural degree. She looked like a living doll.

And that girl was the princess spoken of in rumors. Iberis.

‘Shall I save you.’

Her silver eyes, shimmering with a strange light as though she would not ask a third time, were cold as ice. Even so, he felt drawn to her. This person, if he followed this person.

And so Sirak chose.

Like a flame swaying before the wind, the slave boy who had simply let fate carry his life along took the hand extended in salvation.

‘Yes.’

His lips, cracked and bleeding from dryness, moved quickly.

‘Please. Save me.’

It was the moment he chose his liege.

Of course, the life that followed was not comfortable. Iberis had been stripped of every right to the abundant life she ought to have enjoyed as a princess.

The girl was less like a princess and more like a wild creature. Untapped power pooled within her slender frame, giving her an uncanny air. She never shrank, not even before the empress consort’s fierce and devouring presence.

Even when she was driven out of the castle on some absurd pretext, even when she faced death more than once at the hands of the empress consort’s pursuers, she remained undaunted.

Rather than sobbing and weeping, she was the sort to focus her attention on determining whether the weeds right in front of her were edible or not.

Before he knew it, he had been swept up in his liege’s fervent will to live, in the force of her spirit.

There were times it was overwhelming, but Sirak grew fonder of her with each passing day. How could one not look at a person who was like a sun that would never go out?

He wanted to protect her.

By any means necessary.

And so he did. Will and heart were the finest fuel for a therianthrope to draw out their power.

He protected his liege, bleeding with a force that seemed to set his entire body ablaze.

He fought to the very last.

And then, a single arrow came flying. Just before it buried itself in the nape of the bloodied, exhausted wolf-bloodline knight.