ROSE MANOR

CHAPTER 2

—

I

—

Several minutes later, D stepped into a hall in the manor proper. Even with the Red Knight unconscious, he still had at least three foes here. And although he had yet to see the last of the quartet, the fourth knight would be no common opponent if the skill of the others was any indication. The entranceway had been mostly intact, but the ceiling was crumbling in places, and pillars of sunlight slid down to the floor.

Needless to say, D’s destination was the grave of the woman everyone referred to as “the princess.” In many cases, a Noble would have a solitary grave at the edge of some garden, while it was also common to find such resting places in the basement of the main building. So it only stood to reason that the Hunter would search the manor before circling around to the gardens. Looking all around at the hall, D then proceeded to the door at the far end.

Behind him, a voice like the tinkling of a golden bell said, “I’m so glad you could come.”

When D turned, his eyes were greeted by a hazy figure that glowed and shimmered. Although it was clear that it was a woman in a white dress, the flickering light seemed to be passing through some sort of polarizing prism, and the woman’s face was left indiscernible. But even before D faced her, he knew what he would find. A hologram. It was unclear if her face was obscured because she thought this image quality would suffice, or because she didn’t wish to be recognized. Perhaps it also meant that the princess was unsure what to make of D.

“I’m the lady of the manor,” she told him. “Call me ‘Princess.’”

Anyone who’d heard the reputation of the lady of the manor from the villagers in Sacri would’ve been thoroughly perplexed by her voice. Although she had a tone as refined as any woman in her twenties, she talked like a little girl.

“The Black Knight tells me you didn’t draw the sword from your back, but you still intimidated the Blue Knight and Red Knight. I like strong men. Be a dear and wait there a bit until I can meet you in the flesh. You can leave that room if you like, but even by day, this is a dangerous place to wander. I’ve had another room prepared for you further in. Go there if you like. Of course, if you’re anything like I heard, I don’t expect you to behave yourself at all.”

“As you ordered, the Red Knight didn’t draw his weapon,” D told the projected image. “If I’d taken my sword to him, you’d have lost a valued retainer.”

Laughing haughtily, she replied, “So, you take me for some cold-blooded villain who doesn’t care a whit about the lives of my subordinates? As I just said, I think I know you. If you’re the sort of man I think you are, you wouldn’t cut down a defenseless person.” The glowing image of the woman laughed loudly. “You can look for me, but you won’t find me. And the Red Knight would die before he’d tell you anything. Walk around all you like. Soon our world will be here. I can hardly wait till then.”

And with her final word, the light winked out of existence.

“Oh, she’s good,” the voice that rose from the Hunter’s left hand said with obvious interest. “She may talk like a dingbat, but she knew what you really were just from what her servants told her. She’s a real wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Chortling, the voice added, “I’m really looking forward to meeting her, too.”

D didn’t reply to that, but headed for the door to the back of the hall. Apparently he had no intention at all of abandoning his search.

“I thought I told you to quit that!” a voice called out from behind the Hunter, stopping him.

The light burned a faint shadow of D on the door.

“You’re a bit too insistent for such a good-looking man. Women don’t like you peeking into their bedrooms. Wait until night. That’s when beds get put to use anyway. But if you’re going to keep at this—”

Her words became a brief shriek. A small hole had opened in the chest of the glowing female form, but it immediately closed again. Her light-sculpted face turned and looked behind her.

Quickly facing D once more, she asked, “What was that?”

Apparently she couldn’t even imagine that D would hurl a wooden needle at her.

Seeming to recompose herself, she added, “To give me such a fright when I’m composed of no more than electrons, you must be an incredible man. I suppose I could kill you countless times.”

“You seem quite sure of yourself,” D said when he turned.

“Oh, how sweet. You’re finally speaking to me. I was beginning to wonder if you even had a tongue.”

“Where’s your grave?”

“Think I’d tell you?”

The light flickered. She’d smiled. Yet only seconds earlier she’d been chilled by D’s attack.

“Well,” she continued, “since you asked nicely, I’ll tell you. It should be quite exciting to see if you can get the lid of my coffin open before my time arrives. There.”

A beam of light shined from the tip of one glowing finger. It guided D’s gaze out to the center of the ruined courtyard. But there was nothing to indicate a grave.

“Go see for yourself. I’ll keep you company,” she said, her tone buoyant. And knowing as she did what D was capable of, it took incredible audacity to show him her own resting place in broad daylight. However, there was a sort of innocence in the woman’s voice that made it seem she was neither arrogant nor stupid.

Standing at the spot she’d indicated, D looked all around.

“You don’t see at all, do you? My coffin is buried in the earth. And you’ll need more than brute strength to dig it up,” the light figure laughed.

Kneeling without so much as a word, D put his left hand to the ground.

“Fifteen feet, give or take,” the left hand told him after a moment.

Hearing that, the light figure gasped, “Oh, my!”

D raised his left hand high. In the sudden rush of air, the woman’s glowing image flickered wildly. It was as if the Hunter’s left hand wasn’t sucking in the air, but rather the very roar of the heavens. But did the glowing woman see the tiny mouth that’d surfaced in his palm? Did she catch the blue flame blazing deep in its throat as if fanned by the wind it consumed? Had anyone else been there to see it, they would’ve surely been left feeling that the Hunter’s hand had swallowed the blue sky itself.

And then, after a few seconds—the sound simply stopped. The mouth had shut. Having lost its destination, the rush of air tossed D’s hair and slammed into the grassy ground.

“What in the world was that?” the phantasmal woman asked, making no attempt whatsoever to hide the astonishment and childlike curiosity that tinged her voice as she leaned forward.

Once more, D brought his left hand down to the ground. His arm easily slipped into the dirt up to the elbow. Moving it to another spot, he did the same thing again. After repeating the strange action a number of times, he’d made a hole roughly three feet in diameter. If D were to get into the hole and continue what he was doing, he’d be able to burrow down fifteen feet in less than five minutes.

“You’re tricky,” said the glowing woman. “I didn’t think you had anything like that up your sleeve. How handy.”

“You’re a regular comedienne,” the hand in question spat.

“But I can’t bear to see you reach my resting place so easily. I’m afraid I’m going to have to interfere. Come out, I say!” she cried in a voice as clear as crystal.

But even though the woman spoke, nothing appeared. Stillness settled once more over the desolate ruin of a garden where the sunlight shared its blessings with the Noblewoman without prejudice.

D stood up straight once more. He alone could sense something coalescing in the stillness. It had no lust for killing. In fact, it didn’t seem to have any emotions at all.

“Holograms?” he said as almost a dozen figures surrounded him. Each was about twelve feet away. Warriors. And all of them were clad in lightweight metal alloy armor. With finlike blades shielding their shoulders and underarms, their armor was a style used exclusively by the Nobility in the northern Frontier. Furthermore, every one of the warriors was translucent. Although no more than black outlines could be seen through their chests and thicker parts of their faces, stone pillars and trees showed quite clearly through places like their abdomens and shins. These warriors were not flesh and blood, but were mere conglomerations of electrons.

“Behold my castle guards! Cut them and they won’t die. But they can kill their opponents well enough. See for yourself.”

And as the glowing figure spoke, her armored knights passed right through her and bounded for D. The two-handed great swords they swung down at the Hunter had blades of more than six feet. Originally, the weapons had been intended for use against armored chargers and tanks.

Waiting until the whining swords were just about sink into the top of his head, D drew his blade. Although he definitely bisected the knight’s torso, a pale line ran through the area in question and there were two or three ripples of what seemed to be electromagnetic waves, before even that faded away.

Watching as her henchman rose effortlessly from the spot where he’d landed, the woman gave a haughty laugh and said, “I don’t care if you are a Vampire Hunter, you can’t very well cut down a collection of electrons. But they can cut you!” the mocking figure said, pointing to D’s feet and a white stone that had been hewn in two—the work of a blade also composed of electrons.

The hazy figures had grown clearer, for they’d just tightened the circle around him. But how was D supposed to destroy opponents he couldn’t even cut?

“Whatever will you do now, Hunter?” the woman asked, throwing her head back with another haughty laugh.

“Just this!” a hoarse voice replied, but it was unclear if the words reached the princess’s ears.

Getting inside the wide swath the same armored knight cut with his great sword, D made a diagonal slash through the phantom warrior from the left side of his neck to his right hip. Once again, a pale glow indicated the path of the blade through him. And the woman was laughing, just like before. But suddenly, she stopped.

Although the blue line flickered as it had before, it didn’t fade, and the upper half of the warrior’s body slowly slipped off the lower half. Even after the torso hit the ground, the legs remained standing. Flecks of blue light then spread from the wound, throwing a more vivid light on the scenery behind the warrior before his body broke into a millions fragments and vanished.

“Do my eyes deceive me? You really are good,” the woman said, her voice tinged with excitement. What was she thinking? “Get him!” she cried. “Kill him already!”

At her command, her guards made a deadly charge, their great swords and spears glinting in the sunlight.

D met them head-on. Supposedly impervious spears were hewn in two, and swords that had met only empty space sailed through the air with both arms still attached to them. Perhaps it would’ve been foolish to inquire just what technique allowed the Hunter to cut through conglomerations of electrons.

In a scant three seconds, D had dispatched the phantasmal attackers. A few streaks of pale blue lightning zipped around the garden, and then peace reigned once more.

“Impressive. I’ve never seen anyone so incredible,” the glowing figure remarked with genuine regret. “If you can cut down illusions, there’s no way to stop you. I wonder if I’m as good as finished now? Of course, I do still have other guards,” she said, turning her glowing face to the heavens.

A speck of black appeared in the blue sky, quickly separating into a few smaller parts that came drifting down around D in the space of two breaths.

One of the most fearsome phrases that’d been passed down from the distant reign of the Nobility was “the guardians from above.” A prime example of those defenses had been seen in the southern Frontier, in the domain of a Noble family known as the Brockdens. Their territory covered thousands of square miles, and everything necessary for its defense came from the sky—bolts of steel-melting lightning, ground-devouring storms of acid rain, and even monstrous beasts that could chew their way through mechanical troops.

And now, D was surrounded by a pack of gigantic spiders. They were three feet high, had bodies more than six feet long, and would’ve measured more than thirty feet across from the end of one leg to the other with their limbs fully extended. The sight of them snipping their exposed fangs together like metallic blades while a yellow fluid dripped from their maws was chilling enough to freeze even the most vicious of beasts in horror.

Though several theories attempted to account for the sudden appearance of such creatures from the sky, the most probable of them suggested that the monsters were released from “arsenals” flying hundreds of miles above the earth. Several decades earlier, one such craft had crashed. In addition to the large-caliber particle beam cannons and weather disrupters, investigators on the scene were also amazed to find the remains of a variety of monstrosities, each covered with a simple form of heat-shielding armor and strapped to a braking rocket. The armor must have been to protect the creatures from air friction during their descent.

The six spiders bent all of their legs in unison, and darkness enveloped D. The spiders’ sudden leap had hidden the sun. But this was no ordinary darkness—there wasn’t a speck of light anywhere. D’s vision had been taken from him in an instant.

As the glowing woman watched the black forms of the spiders raining down on the gorgeous young man, she heaved a sigh. She was sure that this was the end of him. But before she could hear meat and bones being devoured, the light returned. And different sounds rang out—those of steel severing flesh and the agonized screams that spilled from the mutilated creatures. That’s what the woman heard.

When the glowing figure turned around, D was standing there. Three of the six spiders lay at his feet, while the other three had returned to their original positions and were staring now at the twitching bodies of their compatriots and the beautiful butcher.

“You’ve gone and done it again, haven’t you?” the dumbfounded figure of light remarked. “I’ve had quite enough of this. I’m running out of pawns. You other three—do something about him already!”

But the woman’s impassioned cry wasn’t enough to move the survivors into action. It was as if the sight of the Hunter gripping a gore-soaked blade but personally unsullied by a single spot of blood had utterly robbed them of their nerve.

“Do it! You know, that thing you do!” the woman cried.

The spiders seemed to understand what she had in mind. Their black bodies began to bulge in places, giving way to conical protuberances that sent yellowish streams of fluid into the air without a sound. For all their resemblance to giant spiders, these monsters were actually something else, and what they launched was no doubt some bodily excretion.

As soon as the liquid settled like a mist on them, the marble pillars and ground all began to give off a white smoke.

“Yes! That’s it!” the jubilant figure of light exclaimed, but then she gasped aloud and froze in place.

The young man in black appeared to be enveloped by the deadly yellow rain, but a split second later, he came down right in front of the woman. The spot he’d leapt to was the safest place imaginable. Although she was merely an illusion, the creatures didn’t let their deadly rain fall on their mistress.

Flashes of white light sank between the eyes of the befuddled monsters, and all three of them fell forward together to lie motionless.

Watching intently as D took the remaining wooden needles in his left hand and put them back in his coat, the glowing woman paused a second before saying, “Well, it looks like there’s nothing more I can do. Say, you wouldn’t mind teaching me how to do that needle-throwing trick later, would you?”

Making no reply to her stupefying remark, D returned to spot where she was supposed to be buried.

When he touched his left hand to the ground, a voice exclaimed, “What’s this, now?”

The dubious tone issued from the point where the hand made contact with the soil.

“This is a curious development,” the hoarse tone continued. “Her grave’s vanished. I wonder, has it gone up into the sky or deep into the earth?”

As D turned, his eyes were greeted by the fading figure of light.

“Under the circumstances, I had no choice but to run away, grave and all. See you. Wait until night,” she said, her hues melting into the sunlight.

“Interesting gal,” the hoarse voice remarked to D as the Hunter sheathed his sword. “Still, I’ve gotta wonder if she’s worth all those knights risking their lives. Well, I suppose that’s the tragedy. At any rate, let’s wait until nightfall.”

In lieu of an answer, D turned his gaze to a wall on the west side of the ruins. A familiar figure was pushing her bike as she cautiously approached. It was Elena.

“What, another tomboy already? Looks like we’ve got feisty females by the handful this time, eh?”

Naturally, there was no reply.

—

II

—

Even when the sun went down, Elena showed no sign of going home, and D didn’t force the issue. Perhaps he figured he could put her to sleep if it became necessary.

When Elena had joined him again in the ruined garden, she’d groused, “You certainly had nerve leaving me back there like that.” But she didn’t sound particularly angry. Apparently, she wasn’t stupid. When D didn’t give her any response, she’d continued, “You know, I saw your fight with those spiders just now. I’m gonna stay here with you until night.”

After that, she’d gone on to tell him exactly how much trouble it’d been to repair her bike, and then she fell silent.

Three hours later, the blue of the sky was deepening. Sitting on a flat piece of stone wreckage a short distance from D, Elena began to tremble slightly.

“Scared?” said D, although why he’d even bother to ask her that was anyone’s guess.

“It’s just excitement—getting ready to fight,” Elena replied, hugging her own shoulders.

“Are you scared?” D asked her once more.

Elena continued to quake. Then she said, “Of course!” Her tone was incensed. “I’m not a Hunter. I’m just a normal person. There’s not a chance in hell I wouldn’t be scared of the Nobility.”

“Then why did you come?”

“None of your business!” the girl snapped back, turning her head away roughly and flicking the hair out of her eyes. “As long as those bastards are here, our village will never know peace. The mayor and his advisors all have their tails between their legs. I’d like to beat the hell out of folks like that even worse than I wanna lay into the Nobility!”

“The village looks peaceful enough,” said D. “And everyone seems satisfied.”

Elena turned and looked back at him in astonishment. “You’ve already figured out what’s going on here, have you?” she said in a low, twisting sort of voice. “The villagers—and I mean everyone—have gotten so damned used to being ruled. As long as there’s Nobility in this castle, the fields stay green no matter how dry it gets, and we can harvest as much grain as we need. No matter where else you go, you’ll never find a village as well off as ours. But it’s all a sham. When the water dries up in summer, the regular thing to do is dig a new well with the sweat of your own brow. And in winter, it’s only natural to stay up nights tending bonfires so your fields and ponds don’t freeze. Raising as much food as you like whenever you want and having storehouses packed with the stuff—now that is crazy!” Elena said, her confession tinged with self-loathing.

“Did you notice how many folks there were with scarves wrapped around their necks?” the biker continued. “They’re all victims of the Nobility. But the Noble in this castle is good at drinking blood, and she can feed on them without killing them or turning them into Nobility. And we’ve got Mama Kipsch going for us, too. She’s a genius at witch doctoring, and she saves everyone from the wounds they’re left with. Now, if it was me and a Noble had sucked my blood, I’d be ashamed to live. But no one around here’s got any pride at all. Have you heard of any other village in this day and age where people just sit back and let the Nobility suck their blood?”

Saying nothing, D soaked in the moonlight.

Realizing that the sight of the young man made her mind wander, Elena hurriedly turned her thoughts to something else. “Those bastards—,” she started to say, but her eyes suddenly narrowed. Sniffing once or twice, she said, “What’s that smell?”

“Roses,” D replied.

The blue darkness was shifting toward pitch black. As if to praise the coming world, the faint aroma of flowers had started to mix with air that still held the last lustrous remnants of daylight.

“Ah!” she gasped with new surprise.

All around her—actually, around both of them—little glowing points of whiteness came to life. And the glow wasn’t that of any light. It was from flowers. Where had they been hiding?

In the murkiness, white rosebuds had begun to open their petals in splendor. What’s more, the glow came from within the flowers themselves. These nocturnal roses gave off a light of their own.

Elena closed her eyes—she thought this wasn’t possible. How could flowers this beautiful bloom in such a fearful place? She simply couldn’t believe it. And she didn’t want to see them. The demon’s lair was supposed to be more vile than this, and yet sharp lights shone in the darkness. The roses had burned their image into her retinas. Elena feared the way they tried to make her feel.

She opened her eyelids once more.

A dazzling display of life had begun to cover the garden. Resplendently blossoming white roses appeared, and all around them, elegant spirals of color continued to bloom in pale purple, crimson, blue, and even black. This symphony of brilliant lights left Elena in a motionless daze. Before she knew it the hour would grow later and later, and the people of the night would awaken and quickly find her there—

However, a powerful hand caught hold of her shoulder and a hoarse voice rang in her ear, saying, “Here it comes, missy.”

As something that felt like ice water raced from her shoulder to her brain, Elena returned to her senses. She quickly turned her head.

Three figures suddenly stood in the hall of the main building.

“So good of you to come,” said the knight in blue armor. “Mere words cannot convey your boldness, as you come here of your own accord after seeing us, and you even threaten the very resting place of our princess. However, you’ll never leave here alive.”

“Or would you care to become one of us?” the Red Knight inquired in a low voice. His tone wasn’t quite as forceful as that of the Blue Knight, but it was understandable given the fact he’d been knocked out earlier by D. “With your skill, you deserve to stand shoulder to shoulder with us. But if that doesn’t suit your fancy, we can destroy both you and the girl.”

“You said there were four knights,” D replied quietly. His aura was so eerie that it seemed for a second as if the sweet perfume had left the air. “Blue, Red, Black—you still seem to be a color short.”

“And you may count yourself fortunate in that regard,” said the Blue Knight. His two compatriots did nothing to indicate their agreement. Apparently, the fourth knight was someone who was not to be mentioned lightly.

“On the Frontier, there is but a thin line between life and death,” said the Black Knight, who until now had remained silent. His voice was a monotone. “As a Hunter, I’m sure you appreciate that. And now that you’ve entered our castle, we have no choice but to fight until you, or we, are dead. However, it would be a pity to have to take a life like yours. I won’t ask that you ride with us. But at the very least, could you swear fealty to our princess?”

“Okay, stop trying to make us laugh already!” Elena exclaimed. Until a few minutes ago, her body had trembled, but now it shook in a new way—with rage. “This man is a gift from God, a huntsman sent here to slay you all. Why the hell would he ever want to serve that monster?! Just watch. We don’t need any help from those gutless worms in my village. Him and me will put an end to all of you!”

The three knights fell silent, but it wasn’t that they were amazed by the girl’s fighting words.

Having finished speaking, Elena suddenly found herself breathless. It was just such a silence.

“You called our princess a monster, didn’t you?” said the Blue Knight.

“Those words shall cost you!” the Red Knight declared.

Seeming somewhat more personable than the other two, the Black Knight muttered, “Does their idiocy know no bounds?”

“What is it we’ve done that’s so terrible? Haven’t you been given a life of peace and plenitude?” asked the Blue Knight

“And how many people have been killed in return?!”

“You can’t get something for nothing. It’s a fair price.”

“A life of peace in exchange for the lives of our friends? Spare me! The others may be able to stomach that, but not me. I spit on your deal, and will till the day I die.”

“In that case, your spitting days will shortly be at an end,” the Blue Knight jeered as he jumped down to the ground.

At the same time, smoke and blue flames poured from the motorcycle’s exhaust pipes. The ancient garden was shaken by an engine roar that hardly suited such a place. Elena meant business.

“Insulting our princess is a grave crime. Your death won’t be an easy one.” To D, he added, “Stay out of this, Hunter.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth!” Elena said, kicking firmly off the ground and sliding to one side. The wheels of her bike could be turned a full three-hundred-sixty degrees. “Even without his help, I can still take out the likes of you one-on-one. I’ll show you what a human’s capable of, you monster flunky!”

“That does it!” the Blue Knight exclaimed, the brief phrase seething with anger. Lowering the lance in his right hand, the Noble’s knight was a daunting sight as he took a purposeful step forward.

Elena rolled back a pace on her bike. And stiff though it seemed, she definitely had a smile on her lips—the girl certainly had nerve to spare.

D didn’t move. He wasn’t there to keep the other two knights from interfering. Rather, he’d become another observer of Elena’s deadly conflict. Everyone understood the rules.

“I shall bring the battle to you,” said the Blue Knight.

“Come and get it!”

The instant Elena shouted that, she angled her exhaust pipes toward the ground and shifted her bike out of its current acceleration mode to activate its boosters. Nozzles wailing all the while, the bike carried Elena straight to the left.

The blue figure was still in the same spot, his lance unraised.

I’ve got him baffled, Elena thought as she felt an explosion of delight. Her right thumb pressed the firing button.

Go! An ember hit the tails of the rockets in the launch tubes mounted on either side of the girl’s bike. Shooting sparks all the while, a trio of three-foot-long implements of death streaked at the Blue Knight.

Not moving from his spot, he merely rotated his blue wrist a bit. The Blue Knight’s whole body grew hazy, and at that instant, the three missiles were easily deflected right in front of him. A mere twist of his wrist was enough to keep his lance spinning like a windmill. And that was only the beginning—the knight’s superhuman skill made the tapered projectiles shoot up for an instant, then sent them speeding back at Elena retracing the very same path they’d followed to him.

The girl straddling the bike had no way to escape them.

But just then, it seemed as if the roar of her engine threw the missiles into disarray. The trio of murderous projectiles hit the ground some forty feet from her at an acute angle, and then fell over as if their own weight hadn’t driven them in deep enough.

“Fancy that,” the Blue Knight muttered.

About six feet from her original location, Elena sat on her bike grinning.

It was difficult to believe a machine and a mere slip of a girl were capable of a feat of such ungodly speed. As she’d slipped to one side, the Blue Knight’s eyes hadn’t even seen her change position.

“You’ve got some tricky moves, don’t you? But you’ve had it now!” Elena cried. Her finger slid across the bike’s gauges, and its headlight disgorged a beam of crimson. Roughly a year earlier, she’d acquired this laser emitter during a shopping expedition in the northern Frontier. Although originally intended for communications, at distances of fifteen hundred feet or less it was more than capable of maiming or killing.

A crimson flower bloomed on the left half of the Blue Knight’s chest. In a matter of seconds, however, it lost its color and the armor returned to its original hue.

“Too bad,” said the Blue Knight, his lance whistling in his right hand. He wouldn’t allow his prey to escape a second blow.

Elena smirked at him. “The game’s just getting started!”

“And whatever could you—,” the Blue Knight began to say, but the rest of the sentence was lost. As he took a step forward, a beam of light struck his face.

Though the knight didn’t cry out, he shielded his eyes and backed away. As he came to a halt, Elena and her bike flew at him and knocked his blue-armored form to the ground.

“Now for the coup de grace,” Elena said, raising her right hand. The sharpened tip of the steel pipe she held was aimed right at the Blue Knight’s heart.

A flash of light raced toward the end of the weapon. The electric shock not only knocked the pipe from Elena’s hand, but also left her whole body numb.

“Knocked on your behind by a woman? Let that be a lesson to you,” the Black Knight said gravely. Blue light spilled from the tip of the finger he’d extended. Electrical discharge.

“Goddamn . . . cheaters . . . ,” Elena groaned.

It was amazing that she didn’t fall off the bike or topple over with it. And for all her agonized panting, the gleam in her eyes declared that the fight would go on.

“You needn’t have interfered like that,” the Blue Knight said as he got to his feet.

Elena wasn’t scared. Revving her bike with her numbed hand, she endeavored to maintain her battle-readiness. She was definitely tenacious.

“Well played, missy. You can tell them in heaven that you earned the praise of the Blue Knight.”

The knights watched with satisfaction as their compatriot hauled back mightily with his lance and launched it at Elena’s chest in a gleaming blur.

With a mellifluous sound, the lance jolted upward. And then it completely reversed direction and headed back at the chest of the Blue Knight. Naturally, the knight was able to catch it in his bare hands, though the effort staggered him and he was once more knocked back on his ass.

The three knights gazed in rapture at the powerful figure in a black coat who stood before Elena. Was their reaction a pure response to the young man’s good looks, or was it the joy they felt as warriors at the prospect of doing battle with such a man?

“Are you determined to do this?” the Red Knight asked in a weary tone. “We should’ve known you could never live under the same roof as us. Before the princess awakens, we shall take matters into our own hands.”

Not only the air, but even the flowers blooming so grandly seemed to freeze.

The three knights spread out without making a sound.

Against them stood D, alone. Basking in the moonlight, with the blade that’d deflected the lance in one hand, he was adorned with roses of blue, red, black, and white. The sight of him not only left his three opponents spellbound, but also captivated the agonized Elena.

The Red Knight had all his weight balanced on the tip of his foot. One way or another, life and death were clearly a heartbeat away from colliding in a shower of sparks.

And at just that moment, a voice as distinct as a rose flowed out into the still night it suited so well, crying, “Hold!”