After some serious self-reflection, Lord von Kleist has come to the conclusion that some apology is required for his eccentric behavior—which is why he is heading for Lord von Voltaire"s private chambers with a basket of strawberries in hand.

Though they have known each other for a very long time, this visit to Gwendal"s living quarters is his first. Günter sighs dramatically. What if he barges in on Gwendal being attended on by a bevy of beautiful women?

"...For Gwendal, at least, that"s not very..."

Head bowed, Günter ascends the stairs with an air of exquisitely becoming tragedy. Rude though it might be to say, he looks poised to become the subject of a master painter"s masterpiece.

He gracefully announces his visit with the door knocker and pushes open the heavy door.

"Gwendal, a word if you please...I came to apolog...ize...urg..."

His speech comes to a grinding halt at the unexpected tableau in front of him.

Gwendal is not being attended on by any beautiful women—or beautiful men, for that matter; nor is he amusing himself with any kinky hobbies.

The chamber belonging to the master of the castle is appropriately furnished and decorated with burnished, glistening suits of ornamental armor. A framed portrait of the previous lord with his wife and daughters is prominently displayed. Perhaps the only thing missing is an antlered deer head. But in a corner of the room is a pile of strange objects.

Lord von Voltaire is in the chair by the window, long legs crossed.

"Did I give you permission to enter?"

"Aaah, um, well...I"m really...er, I"m really sorry. Um, Gwendal, what..."

A mountain of objects made of knitted wool is piled in the corner of the room opposite the fireplace.

At the bottom are things made from folded cloth, but the nearer the top of the pile the more complex the objects. There are so many knitted stuffed animals that they look ready to start an avalanche at any moment.

"I didn"t know...you knitted as a hobby..."

"It"s not a hobby."

Okay then, what"s with the little rabbits and kittens and puppies?! And what about the one you"re working on right now?!

"It"s a stress-reducer."

"Stress..."

"When I"m knitting, my mind is freed from obstructive thoughts."

So when his mind is freed he makes cute little animals? Gwendal"s expression doesn"t change in the slightest as his fingers move on his lap.

Ah, so that"s it, the tutor realizes. That"s why his fingers twitch like that when he"s irritated. He"s unconsciously trying to preserve his presence of mind by doing fantasy-knitting.

Now he knows something he shouldn"t. If it were possible he"d unknow it.

"But there have been so many unpleasant incidents lately that I"ve been finis.h.i.+ng them one after another. I"ve been giving them away to my subordinates and servants, but honestly, foster parents are scarce."

"S-scarce?"

"Want this one?"

Günter hurriedly catches the small, dark knitted animal Gwendal tosses to him.

"Wh-what a cute little black pig."

Gwendal lifts an eyebrow. His matchlessly cool eyes glint a terrifying sapphire.

"...That is a bear."

The yellow band mows down the coliseum.

Chaos reigns within, filled with the screams and bellows of people trying to escape.

I"m doing everything I can think of to subdue Morgif or soothe him or cajole him, but after absorbing his first human life in fifteen years, the demon sword shows no sign of stopping.

Judging by the spots covered in whatever it is he"s spewing out, it"s not particularly harmful to the human body. My own body is ample evidence of that. But the Humans are panicking and climbing over each other to be the first to get away from me.

"Stop it, Morgif, stop!"

"Yuuri!"

Tears unexpectedly spring to my eyes at the sound of that familiar voice.

He vaults the fence and jumps down from the audience seats, then rushes over with an expression I"ve seldomly seen on his face.

"Conrad!"

"Your Majesty, how did you end up in a place like this?"

"Don"t get too close—watch out! The vomit is okay to touch, though."

"Lower the sword. Point the tip down toward the ground."

I"m not strong enough to control it. Conrad unhesitatingly comes up behind me and covers my hands with his on the hilt of the sword.

"Don"t! Your hands—!"

"...It"s all right. Now, slowly. Down, yes."

Call my name.

"What?! What did you say?!"

"It wasn"t me."

Words flash in the back of my mind like the afterimage of fireworks—written, not spoken.

Call my name, and I will do all that I can. My name is...

"Willem Dussollier Eli de Morgif!"

"Yuuri?!"

"If you"re gonna barf, do it into an etiquette bag!!"

Gulpreen.

The sound Morgif makes is not a gulp or karumph or gulop, but a razor-sharp gulpreen as he frantically holds down his stomach cramps. His mouth, usually wide open, is sealed into a slit, and there"s even a tiny wrinkle on his brow.

"What sort of sorcery did you use?"

"You know that I"m a faux-magician, right? I didn"t use any magic. It wasn"t sorcery at all; I was only reading out loud the words that were being transmitted directly into my brain via ESP.

"Read? Does that mean that you can now read?! Ah, I"m sorry, let"s leave that for later. Wolf and Josa should be securing our path. We need to get out of here right now."

"But Rick..."

A fleeting glance at Conrad"s palms is enough to show me their painful redness, but he ignores them and lifts the boy up in his arms. With a "Your Majesty, please see to Morgif," he leads the way out.

The woman who was kind to me is alone next to the gate I came through, running around looking after the crowd bewilderedly. She has suddenly been deprived of money to treat her son.

"Excuse me...ma"am."

She glares at me in surprise, and fear is intertwined with hatred and rage within her narrowed eyes. I dig into my pocket and hold the bills I find there out to her slim fingers.

"Here."

"You"re Mazoku, aren"t you?!"

She quickly backs away as if she"s been touched by something dirty.

"I thought you were an ordinary child, but then you...you unleash that terrible sword! You Mazoku came to kill us Humans, didn"t you?! You want to wipe us out! Don"t touch me!"

"All right, I won"t touch you. Here, I"ll put this money here."

"You think I"d pick up something like that?! You want to lure me in with that money, wait for me to take it and cut me down with that sword! d.a.m.n you, what sort of a weapon is that anyway?! Well, we Humans will pray to G.o.d and ask for an even stronger weapon! We Humans will make an even stronger weapon..."

"I don"t care about any of that!"

I thrust out my hand like bona fide prodigal son and take Conrad"s wallet. The woman involuntarily staggers forward half a step at the sight of the heavy leather wallet.

"Take this money and go get your son treated for his illness."

"If I pay the doctor with money from a Mazoku, my son will be cursed."

What the h.e.l.l?! Why?! Money is money! It doesn"t matter who uses it, it"s this island"s currency.

I place both the wallet and my notes on the ground. Not looking at the woman, Conrad smiles at me and says: "My father even had a child with a Mazoku woman."

"Was he cursed?"

He puts on an absolutely superior know-it-all look.

"Not at all. He lived until he was eighty-nine and spent his life doing exactly what he wanted."

We run all the way back to the waiting room. Morgif is heavy, and I"m still worried about the woman. If she really is a mother, then I have to believe that she would make the decision to pick up the money for her son.

Wolfram and Josak are waiting impatiently for us with uniforms stolen from the soldiers. They seemed to have been talking, and it didn"t feel like idle chatter.

"Change into this—hurry. We can"t use horses in this confusion. We"ll be heading for the marina rather than the harbor; please act like soldiers until we get there."

It takes a bit of effort to get Morgif wrapped up, and Conrad, unable to sit still and wait, gives me a hand. When I look around for Rick, I find him in the arms of a blond man I don"t know.

"Your Majesty, hurry."

"Ye-yeah."

It"s not far to the marina, but people scrambling to get away from the arena choke the road. This is why we"re in disguise. The power of the uniforms is extraordinary; though many disgruntled looks are flung at us, everyone still gets out of our way.

Even among the several extravagant cruisers anch.o.r.ed at the marina, one snags the eye with her beauty and elegance. Silver stars adorn her snowy-white body, and her unfurled sails are a deep aqua blue. A woman is waving from the deck.

Her golden curls fall to her waist, and her lascivious clothes border on the criminal...actually, they"re more "cloths" than "clothes." If she were an idol, she"d get negative reviews from her agency. Her beautiful long legs, with skin as fair as that of her third son, are generously exposed.

Aaah, geez, Lady Cäli, please spare me.

Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s sway with every wave of her hand.

After the "oh, it"s been so long!" greeting, which is way too intense for my peace of mind, we enter the cruiser. It"s so enormous that I don"t think anybody but a foreign millionaire or Kayama Yuuzou could afford it—and filled with so much gold and silver and gemstones that it makes me think "can"t you just use iron for that?!" Like the chamber pot.

"A gentleman and dear friend from Cimarron insisted that I make use of this boat. He even got down on his knees to make the request, so how could I be so cold as to refuse?"

The s.e.xy Queen is active in various locations all over the world. It looks like the pheromone advisory this year has to be issued in this very country of Cimarron.

Lady Cäcilie von Spitzweg, in addition to being Her Majesty the Prior Maou, is also the mother of Gwendal, Conrart, and Wolfram, the Mazoku brothers who are unlike as unlike can be. Though she has three children, she doesn"t look a day past thirty, and is popularly called the Hunter of Love. Thanks to me she is now retired from active duty, and is out of the country on a trip of free love.

"I was coming to see the famous Van der Veer Fire Festival when I heard a rumor that Mazoku were captured here. I asked Chevalier to investigate and was able to get in contact with Wolf."

Chevalier is Lady Cäli"s companion, the blond man who was carrying Rick. Surprisingly, I now recognize him—he"s the attendant I met last month in the bath.

"Oh Your Majesty, you are as cute as ever. Are things coming along with my son?"

"No-no-nothing"s coming along!"

"Oh my, that"s too bad. And I was imagining so much more."

What?! WHAT have you been imagining?

"But does that mean I still have a chance? Oh, how I tremble at the thought. This "Captive of Love" has extraterritorial status and is free to travel any ocean in the world, so don"t worry about any boors barging in on us."

Then you should"ve let us take this boat for our journey. But why did you have to give it such an embarra.s.sing name?

"More importantly, Mother, let us set sail as soon as we can. We have an injured person, and His Majesty is tired as well. Do you have a Healer on board?"

No matter how perfect her charms, her son seems proof against them. Looks like that"s one universal principle.

"Talk to Chevalier about that. Someone has been injured? Oh my."

Lady Cäli covers her mouth with her hand sweetly at the sight of Rick lying on the verge of death. My head is spinning. To an unpopular high school student like me, she"s a heavenly maiden.

"...Arrow man, hmm?"

He"s not that duck with the arrow in his head!

"I have just the person. There"s a handsome middle-aged Healer on board, but he"s my beautician, so I don"t know about wound-healing..."

"Handsome middle-aged Healer...? Mmmn..."

"Anyway, Your Majesty, were you able to get the demon sword? Won"t you let me take a peek?"

How can I refuse? I unwrap Morgif from his swaddling cloths. Lady Cäli is simply overjoyed at the sight of him. Smiling widely, she asks, "Incredible! I"ve never seen any sword so ugly! Your Majesty, can I use it to decorate my room? Please?"

"Ask Günter that when we get back to the castle."

But if she did use him as decoration, she"d probably get nightmares every night.

Catching sight of Conrad leaving the cabin, I unthinkingly chase after him. Josak is alone on deck, gazing back at the island. Before I can reach the top of the stairs, Conrad seizes his friend"s collar.

"What were you trying to do?!"

"What are you talking about?"

There"s a thud as my Guard of the Inner Circle hits the wall.

"It"s true that Wolfram doesn"t know about the festival. He has no interest in Humans. But you! Cimarron is your country—you were raised here—you lived here until you were twenty! There"s no way you can"t read the language! And there is no way you haven"t heard about that depraved pastime!"

Though he"s shoved against the wall, Josak doesn"t lose his Roger Rabbit smile.

"But everything went well, didn"t it? If His Majesty hadn"t lost his nerve at the crucial moment, Morgif would"ve absorbed the kid"s life and been sated. Well, in the end I guess he satisfied himself with that old grandpa"s life. Now the demon sword we bring back to the country will be ready for use at a moment"s notice. None of our enemies would"ve been afraid of something we can"t use."

"...Your way of doing things is wrong."

"Wrong? How is it wrong? Who knows what will happen if we leave the country to a child-king like that? He needs someone behind him, steering him in the right direction. Doesn"t that make it easier for His Majesty too?"

I can"t go out now. I grip the railing tightly. Ignorant of the fact that the subject of their conversation is eavesdropping on them, their quarrel grows ever more heated. Conrad never gets angry thoughtlessly.

"Making light of the king and manipulating affairs of state is tantamount to rebellion!"

"Making light? I"m not. Didn"t we come to get the demon sword because His Majesty said he doesn"t want to go to war? Having a strong weapon is certainly not a bad thing. Which means that we need the ultimate weapon so we"re more powerful than anybody else. That way our neighbors won"t attack us. See, there"s a principle behind His Majesty"s thinking, too. That"s why I"m doing all I can to help him. Now when His Majesty goes home with Morgif, he"ll have a place of honor among the Maous of s.h.i.+nma Kingdom. Even the people support a strong king. So tell me, how were we wrong?! How are we making light of him?"

"There was no need to put him in so much danger! If anything had gone wrong, injury wouldn"t have been the end of it!...to say nothing of making His Majesty kill someone...!"

Their words stab into my thoughts, making me so dizzy that I can"t stay upright.

I"ve forgotten something. I"m wrong about something, too.

But the thought isn"t concrete enough for me to grasp.

"In the end, I guess—" Josak says in a casual conversational tone, removing his friend"s hand, "—the point is that the young lord"s very important to you, isn"t he? Publicly, you claim to be working toward peaceful coexistence with Humans, but in reality you just don"t want the new king to be hurt—that"s why you praise him and protect him and raise him up with all your might."

"You understand nothing."

"Nothing? If he"s that important to you, why don"t you put him in a box and hide him away somewhere deep in the castle? Lock him up in his room and don"t let him come out."

"Josak!"

"You even gave him that precious stone of yours, huh?"

The magic stone heats at my chest.

When he was still called the Lion of Ruttenberg, who did this stone belong to? That person must have been someone so much smarter than me, someone who wouldn"t be manipulated.

See, Conrad? My approval rating"s at rock bottom.

"You might scorn Stoffel, but you"re doing exactly what he did. Will you push His Majesty into making the same mistakes as Lady Cäcilie, Her Majesty the Prior Maou?

"No indeed, Your Excellency, my lord Conrart Weller. Lady Cäli"s mistake was refusing to reign herself and leaving everything to others. She was mistaken in her choice of advisors."

"...Are you saying that she should have chosen Lord von Voltaire?"

"No."

Josak abruptly shuts his mouth.

I slowly trace the pendant"s narrow silver border, where the lives of its owners must be carved memory by memory. If only, like my grandfather"s record collection, a needle could traverse its grooves and revived those memories.

"...Everything is too late now. We must not fail this time; we cannot let something like that happen again."

"No matter what schemes you think up, you will never turn His Majesty into your puppet."

"You"re not listening, are you? We"re not trying to make him into a puppet. We love him, we really do."

"Even so! If anything like this happens again, if you put Yuuri in danger again—"

There is a strangely long, heavy silence.

"...Be prepared to pay with your life."

Conrad"s voice is low, harsh. I"ve never heard him like that before. He immediately turns on his heels. I hurriedly descend the stairs as his footsteps approach.

"I will tell Gwendal that in person! Your way of doing things will only harm His Majesty."

"Do as you like."

The voices become distant and hard to make out.

"Still, even...looks like that...the lordling...without...huh? ..."cause...got...a king"s..."

"He is the only one who doesn"t acknowledge that."

We decide to spend the night in the luxury cruiser so we can leave for s.h.i.+nma Kingdom when all the other tourists set sail on the morrow, and drop anchor on the other side of the island. Of course there are more than enough rooms. And beds.

The north side of the island is so quiet and tranquil that you might almost think all the tumult earlier never happened. There"s no sign of the festival here. You wouldn"t even believe that it"s the same island—there"s no noise or light or crowds.

I insist on going down to the beach, and start jogging for the first time in a week.

I need to get my body back to its usual pace, or my mind won"t work either. If I can get my feet moving and my blood circulating, it"ll bring oxygen up to my brain. So the more I run, the more endorphins my brain will secrete, and maybe then I"ll come up with a good idea I wouldn"t normally think of.

Talk about naïve.

I jog barefoot along the beach illuminated only by the s.h.i.+p"s lights.

My feet sink into the warm, wet sand, cus.h.i.+oning the impact with flip-flapping noises.

I can"t go running by myself, of course. Conrad follows silently behind me. I"m jogging with a bodyguard, like the president of the United States. I guess it can"t be helped when you"re a king.

I"m sweating as soon as I start: proof that my physical baseline has dropped.

"In junior high, when I was in, the baseball club, we had to run every day, and I thought, it was totally natural."

"What about now?"

"My body"s gotten, really lazy since, I stopped going to club. I started, playing baseball again, a little while ago, but I"m still, not back in shape yet."

"I see."

What irks the h.e.l.l out of me is that he"s not even out of breath. I wonder if sword masters jog every day, too?

"Aargh, I keep thinking, that maybe, I shouldn"t have stopped, that I should, be in the baseball club now, too."

"You said that you hit the coach and was kicked out, right?"

"Yeah."

I bend with my hands on my knees, then sit down on a dry spot on the sand.

"Give me a push. I"m going to stretch."

"Stretch?"

"Yeah. Stretching on the beach at night. Ooph, how romantic."

Well, if I weren"t with a guy.

"Hitting your coach—that"s pretty drastic, too."

"Yeah, one, two, because he said something, really horrible. Three, something, he shouldn"t have said."

Nostalgic memory. It doesn"t make me angry anymore, though it does make my chest ache a bit.

It happened just before the start of summer—almost a year ago, now.

One of the pitchers who advanced to the best four in the Little League Nationals entered the junior high school in the next district. Our club, on the other hand, was full of newbies who didn"t know one end of the bat from the other. They had to be taught everything from scratch, from running to batting and fielding. We got yelled at by our coach every day.

Our right fielder, a third year, was injured in a practice game one day, and a first year took his place. There was no way he could throw directly to home from the outfield without going to the cutoff, but he tried anyway. The ball couldn"t reach either the catcher or a relay in time, and the runner scored.

"After the match, the coach singled him out and told him that if he can"t even make a play like that, he should stop. ...No, wait, he told him to turn in his resignation note. "You haven"t got the qualifications to play baseball, Third Middle is strong enough as it is, we"ll never win if we don"t get some good players in"—stuff like that. "I"ve got no time for a useless loser like you, go join some other club." That"s what he said."

Even though the other team was still on the grounds, he said it so loudly that everybody could hear him.

"And then you punched him?"

"Mn? Yeah. "You"re the one who"s not qualified!" And then, bam!"

It was short-tempered even for me. So totally embarra.s.sing.

"Of course, it would"ve been great if the coach were trying to encourage him to work harder. But I"ve been a subst.i.tute for a long time, and I could read between the lines. Even kids can tell the difference between "get lost" and "try harder." You can push harder, I won"t break."

"So you were kicked out for the sake of a younger teammate."

"That sounds pretty impressive—wonder if that"s how they tell it?"

The ocean is black. So is the sky. The clouds are a dark gray. Only the moon and stars are white—or blue or red or yellow. Glittering. Maybe the night sky is black so that the moon and stars can s.h.i.+ne more brightly. And maybe the stars burn to make the night"s blackness beautiful.

The break and retreat of the waves sound like scattered applause.

"...I wonder if it was true, though."

"Eh?"

"I"ve been thinking about it a bit lately. Did I really do it for my teammate?...to speak up for the team? Is that why I hit the coach? I"ve heard that the coach changed his att.i.tude a bit after that, stopped talking trash about the team in front of students from other schools and saying insensitive things. And that"s great and all, but...did I really do it for the team?"

The pus.h.i.+ng against my back slackens.

"...Maybe I was just looking for an opportunity to stop because I was disgusted with myself for not having any talent? Maybe subconsciously I just wanted a way to leave the club looking cool instead of like a loser? ...I"m asking myself that now. Yuuri, was that really for the team? Stuff like that."

I"ll probably never know the answer.

An arm encircles me from behind. My baseball buddy asks over my shoulder, so mildly that it sounds like he might be querying about the name of the leading hitter, "There"s something you want to tell me, isn"t there?"

"Yeah."

I can hear some sort of staccato beat against the sand, getting closer.

"...I"m thinking about leaving Morgif on this island."

What kind of explanation can I give him so that he"ll understand this self-centered decision? I haven"t got a clue. After all, we only came here to fetch the demon sword because I"m against war and want to avoid it. So the whole thing has been because of my whims. I can"t say that it was an unqualified success, but still, if on the very night we achieve our goal I declare that I"m going to abandon the treasure... The opposing party would probably throw their shoes at me.

"I-I"m not sure how to explain it, though! I just—I just keep thinking about what that woman said to me. That the Humans will get a stronger weapon, that G.o.d will give them one. Would G.o.d really do that? But if that really happened, if they found a super-duper powerful weapon—"

"It"s conceivable."

See? I knew it—he is angry.

"And then the other countries will want it too. Even the ones who"ve been impartial in the wars up until now will get uneasy and build up their militaries. So because we got Morgif, the rest of the world will begin to arm themselves...it"d be like nuclear deterrence or the three anti-nuclear principles."

Newspapers aren"t just for reading about pro-baseball; I"ll look them over in more detail in the future. But I"ll bet only fifteen-year-olds in university cram schools can explain the problem so succinctly.

"The country I want isn"t one that"s stronger than any other country. There"s a difference between a good country and a strong one."

If I return carrying Morgif triumphantly, my evaluation as Maou will go up. The citizens will give me a high approval rating, too, if they acknowledge me as a strong king. But Yuuri, would you really be doing what"s best for everyone?

Or would it be for my own self-satisfaction?

If I asked my teacher, he would say, "Do it for the team, s.h.i.+buya Yuuri."

That abstract explanation sounds like prose out of some philosopher"s pen, and I don"t think anyone would understand it. Even so, Conrad murmurs in admiration next to my ear, "I see, like Gettysburg."

"What are you two doing over there?!"

Wolfram comes running over, panting. Even in the moonlight I can see his quivering finger pointed at us.

"I was wondering what was taking you so long, and now I find you—what are you two doing sitting so close on the beach?"

"What? Stretching."

There"s an upward movement behind me, and the warmth leaves my back.

"Why are you so out of breath? Did you come just to keep an eye on His Majesty?"

"Oh right, no I didn"t! We have a big problem, Yuuri. Your sword—"

"Morgif?"

"...broke."

Why? And more importantly, how?

Lady Cäli, dressed in a negligee so perfunctory that I have problems figuring out where to rest my eyes, winds her arms around mine.

"I"m sorry, Your Majesty, I wasn"t trying to. I never thought the sword might break."

My elbow pressed against her breast, unconfined by inelegant underwear, launches me into the stratosphere. A sweet flowery scent drifts around me, as if I"ve lost my way in a flower bed.

The demon sword is lying at the center of the cabin, a long dark lump. It was a s.h.i.+ny scabbard fish after feeding, but now it"s a gigantic eel on the verge of death.

"Morgif."

"...Wooo..."

He"s alive. We"ll leave aside the question of whether or not "alive" is the right description for a sword.

"He"s so ugly and strange that I wanted to decorate my room with him for just this trip. When I picked him up to carry him over...this little one..."

Lady Cäli calls the sword "little one" like an employee at a pet shop. Geez, mothers are impossible. There"s probably n.o.body in the world who could ever criticize her.

"...this little one bit me."

"Di-di-did he give you a scare?"

"No, not at all. But I dropped him in my surprise, and he just wilted. It"s probably..."

She picks up a small fermented soy bean with the pink nail of a slender white finger.

"...because this came off."

My fingernails are short and round. My hands are like fuzzy cloth yellow with age, and they"re callused differently from everybody else"s. But Morgif fits perfectly into their tight grip, snug and precise against each finger-joint. I hold him out like a bat before the swing. The thumb of my right hand lies on the guard, and my index finger caresses the back gently.

Even if I should lose the stone on my forehead...

"What?! Who said that just now?"

Just like when I yelled out Morgif"s name at the arena, words flash directly into my mind: not spoken words, but an afterimage. Thin symbols blinking into and out of existence.

Even if I should lose the stone on my forehead and be reduced to a mere sword, I wish to remain by the Maou"s side as your faithful servant.

"Why do you sound like a woman?!"

"Who are you talking to, Yuuri?"

"T-to Morgif."

Yes, Willem Dussollier Eli de Morgif, I will keep you by my side.

"Josak!"

Josak, looking on from a corner of the room, straightens at the unexpected address. His wet orange hair clings to his forehead. He must"ve taken a long leisurely shower.

"What is it, Your Majesty?"

"I will give this obsidian into your custody."

"Huh?!"

Everyone is flabbergasted. Conrad is the only one who immediately regains his composure, awaiting my next words with keen interest.

"I want you to take that stone Lady Cäli has and toss it away some place n.o.body would think to look."

"Toss it away..."

"Why, Yuuri?! Why would you do something that stupid? You"re going to throw away a part of the demon sword we worked so hard to get?"

"I agree, Your Majesty, I think it could make a great earring. Very becoming for Your Majesty"s hair and eyes."

"Mother, it is His Majesty"s will."

The second son takes the stone from Lady Cäli"s finger and places it in the palm of the Guard of the Inner Circle.

"...What if I take this and disappear and sell it to the king of some other country? Or take it back home and hand it to somebody else?"

"To Gwendal?"

He looks surprised. That"s not some cunning deduction computed by my brain, but information gleaned from eavesdropping.

"You are free to do what you think is best for s.h.i.+nma Kingdom. However..."

I fix him with an intent gaze out of eyes that are finally free of their contacts.

"Know that I have chosen you. Don"t make that choice a mistake."

Josak gives me the beast"s smile.

"I will serve, King Yuuri."

A clever beast"s smile.