Chapter 88

Lyssel shoved himself up and bolted.

When he stepped into the bedroom, Iberin really was awake.

"Iberin!"

She was wan, but the moment she saw Lyssel, a small smile touched her face.

"Iberin."

The instant their eyes met, the strength drained out of him.

He couldn't bring himself to step closer; he stopped where he was and slowly let his eyes fall shut.

And thought,

God, thank you.

Lyssel was desperate enough to call out to a god he'd never believed in.

"I'm… all right."

Her voice was heavy from days of not waking, but she used it to settle him.

He bit down hard against tears that almost spilled, and walked slowly to her.

His legs felt boneless; they wouldn't quite obey him.

Everyone held their breath and watched.

When he got close, Iberin reached up to him with a worried face.

Her fingers brushed his sunken cheek.

"I'm sorry. I made you worry."

"…"

"Don't cry, Lyssel."

"Am I?"

"Yes. There are tears running down your face."

A sound caught and broke in his throat.

He didn't know.

He had no idea why he was crying when Iberin had just opened her eyes.

It had been like this the first time he'd realized he was smiling, too. He couldn't shake the thought that everything in him now flowed from her.

Which meant — he couldn't live without her.

He wanted to slap his own past self in the face, the one who'd thought he could let her go if she ever loved someone else.

He couldn't let her go.

"Iberin."

"Yes."

{"Iberin. I love you."}(#uxn6ig2t0ws7)

"What?"

He'd been holding it down and holding it down, but his heart was about to burst, and Lyssel couldn't keep it inside another second.

---

I love you.

Those few words landed with a force.

The children, who'd just been letting themselves believe Iberin had really woken, and every staff member with them — all of them froze, stunned.

Even the knight captains were still there.

The captains gave a small cheer and tactfully retreated.

So did the staff and the children.

"Hng — why does it have to be now…"

Ether glared at Lyssel through tear-streaked cheeks, full of betrayal, but it didn't change anything.

In the end, he got scooped up by a staff member and carried out of the way.

Once everyone else had cleared out, only silence sat in the room.

But Lyssel didn't look away from Iberin's eyes when they met his.

If anything, she looked away first.

"I love you."

He said it again, and this time the tips of her ears went a bright red.

Then she asked,

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"Am I being too much?"

It wasn't 'too much' so much as just — disorienting.

"This isn't your usual personality."

"You're the one who made me this way, Iberin."

"Always pinning it on me."

"It's true."

She wanted to argue the point, but the fact was Iberin really had been the biggest factor in how Lyssel had changed.

"But why all of a sudden…?"

"I couldn't hold it in anymore."

"H-hold what in?"

"My feelings."

"Oh."

"What is it?"

Iberin's whole face had gone red by now, and she'd clamped her mouth shut.

The confession was abrupt, sure, but Lyssel hadn't meant to corner her with it.

It was enough for her just to know.

"Watching you not wake up — I was terrified."

Lyssel laid his heart open evenly, calmly.

"I used to think that if you ever fell in love with someone else, I'd let you go. This time I figured out from the bone how arrogant that thought was."

He had no talent for words, but the truth landed because of that, not in spite of it.

"Lyssel."

"I don't think I can let go. So I said it."

"…"

"Because you're kind. You won't leave me behind looking like this."

"Oh."

"Awful of me, isn't it. I'm sorry."

Iberin's eyes brimmed before she knew it.

She hadn't expected him to be thinking like that.

She'd just been thrown, wanting nothing more than to dodge it.

Not because she didn't want him. Because some part of her still held the thought — I'm not really Iberin.

If the real Iberin ever showed up — would Lyssel confess to her too?

"What if I went back to how I used to be?"

"I'd still love you."

"Even if I was afraid of you? Even if that lasted my whole life?"

"You're worried about getting your memories back? But getting them back wouldn't make you a completely different person, would it? The old memories would just layer over the ones you have now."

He was saying it because he didn't know.

She hesitated, then asked,

"Then what if I'm not the real Iberin?"

"What?"

Lyssel tried to read into what she meant, but couldn't.

It didn't matter if the person in front of him wasn't Iberin.

He'd be fine with a monster.

"Then I'd find the real you. Even if it took my soul."

Iberin's mouth shut as if someone had glued it.

Even from someone who'd say that much, she didn't have the courage to tell him the truth.

"I was the coward."

"…"

"I thought if I died, you'd be the one tearing yourself up over it, so I pushed you away. The way I came into your life one day — if I left one day the same way, I thought it'd be too much for you. So I kept stalling."

She'd thought she didn't dislike him, but didn't love him either.

The truth was she'd been lying to herself.

Watching him confess like this, throwing as it was, the way her heart was hammering like it'd come loose said the rest.

"I love you."

His eyes flew wide.

"I love you too."

"…Really?"

"I'm not brave enough to tell you everything yet, but someday I will."

She had looked an instant from crying — and then she smiled.

It didn't matter how any of this ended.

She'd fallen in love with him.

Lyssel froze where he stood, as if he didn't believe what he'd just heard.

Then Iberin tilted her head down.

Her slightly trembling lips landed lightly on his.

"Hk!"

"Oh my, eep—"

Tiny squeaks burst from outside the door.

---

"Congratulations!"

Every staff member, of one heart, congratulated Lyssel.

Pons and Rotte were the worst of it.

They were welling up like it was their own happy day.

"Our Grand Duke…"

Pons couldn't finish the sentence and kept dabbing his eyes — the knight captains tilted their heads at it.

"But the two of them are already married — what are we…?"

The mood wasn't quite tracking for them.

"O-oh, no, His Highness is just so reserved that even we have never actually seen him confess before!"

Rotte tacked on, hurried.

"Ah."

The captains nodded, finally getting it.

"Seeing him confess, he looks less like the Grand Duke Lecashe and more like a regular man, doesn't he."

"Right. Count Elton is going to be floored when we tell him."

In a flash the mood had brightened over stories of Lyssel.

The staff secretly let out long breaths.

"But everyone's all right, aren't they?"

Iberin, finally clear-headed, had no idea how the whole thing had played out.

It felt like the same thing had happened when they'd gone to the capital before.

She resented her own habit of going down at exactly the wrong moment.

"You woke up last, Iberin. Worry about yourself before the others, please."

Lyssel said it with the smallest frown.

The first thing she did after waking up was worry about other people.

"Hm, fair."

When Iberin caught the look, Lyssel sighed and walked her through it.

"Most people are fine."

"Most?"

"There were losses."

"Of course there would be…"

The two knight orders had been a huge help — that was the truth of it.

The captains had lost men they'd lived alongside; the weight of that had to be terrible.

"I don't know what to say. I'm sorry."

Iberin said it quietly.

The captains shook their heads.

"No, Your Highness. We came here precisely to keep you safe. Please don't apologize."

Lyssel knew Iberin was both strong and tender, so he settled her.

"Don't worry. I'll handle the bereaved families so it doesn't sit on you."

"Yes. We know His Highness has already seen to it."

A life couldn't be paid back with material things, but it was something, at least.

"Right. Anyway…"

The assassins who'd come for her — would they come again?

Iberin hesitated and couldn't get the rest out.

Maybe because she'd come that close to dying — she was afraid.

Being terminal because of demonic energy was one thing; nearly being killed by someone else was something else entirely.

"We've found them. I asked Captain Pigret to handle it, but somehow they got wind of it and struck first. This time we'll wipe them out so it doesn't happen again."

It wasn't what she'd been expecting.

"Now that you're awake, Iberin."

"Oh."

"I was waiting only for you to wake up."

He hadn't been able to make himself leave, terrified of what could happen to her while he was gone.

But now it was time to break them properly.

---

The moment Lyssel finished talking, he made for Moana's hidden den. Alone, in ten minutes flat, he tracked down the assassins in hiding and wiped them out.

The ones holding their breath, never realizing they'd been found, were dead by his hand before they could so much as raise a weapon.

"Sp-spare me!"

The head was clinging, abject.

Lyssel looked down at him coldly.

It was a look that mixed contempt with the kind of disdain reserved for pathetic things.

"Who's behind this."

"Cherity! Duke Cherity!"

The head didn't hesitate for a beat.

"What kind of head has no honor. Then again — you're the lot who'll do anything if the money's there."

"N-no! Duke Cherity killed the previous head and forced us, we had no—"

"And before that you were the lot who killed people for money."

"I'll wash my hands of it from now on!"

The head wept and ran at the mouth, pathetic enough to embarrass himself — but not a flicker of pity moved in Lyssel.

He hadn't planned to spare anyone anyway.

The head's neck — the last one left — dropped to the floor.

He'd learned who was behind it, and that was an unexpected return.

If the man hadn't talked, he'd planned on dragging him back to torture it out of him.

"Cherity."

Lyssel murmured the duke's name in a den of nothing but bodies.

A man he had no point of contact with. Why on earth.

"Doesn't matter."

Killing anyone in the way settled the matter.