He reached for it, and I quieted my nerves, chanting my silent spell, It’s fine, I’m his wife. I can do this, over and over.
I did manage this once before with the fried potatoes, even if it was with “Lukie.” I’ve got this. This is your chance. You can do it, Cecilia!
“Here you go, darling. Open wide!”
I delicately pierced the little round pastry with a toothpick and brought it carefully up to Lukie’s mouth. I felt my face turning red even as I flashed the brightest smile I could muster and asked him to eat it. And my perfect specimen of a husband froze, his eyes wide and his hand still outstretched.
It was like he couldn’t process something so unexpected, his golden eyes darting rapidly between my face and the luqaimat in my hand. Finally, he grabbed my wrist and stared at me, as if confirming the reality of the situation, with such intensity that I almost burst into tears.
“I can feel it… It’s not a hallucination?”
“Y-you’ll know once you eat it…” So please, I’m begging you… This is terrifying and mortifying, so just eat it already!
I steadied my arm and held his gaze, doing everything I could to keep my cool. At last, he seemed to realize what was happening. His beautifully sculpted face slowly flushed, bit by bit, the color rising to his neck.
“Open up! Come on, Lukie! Say ahh!”
“Oh, right. Um… Ahhh…” He tightened his grip on my wrist and slowly leaned forward, hesitantly opening his mouth for the luqaimat.
“Mm,” he said softly as he bit into it, and I gasped. As he chewed, he leaned forward and buried his face in my shoulder. That should be against the rules! It was all I could do not to tremble.
“I-I still have more!”
“That’s dangerous. I couldn’t even taste it…” He mumbled something about eating as much of it as there was, even if it was drowning in syrup, before abruptly straightening up. I gazed up at him, my eyes a little watery. And then, his whole expression melted, just like honey dripping from a spoon.
“I feel so stupidly happy, I want to have more, just to keep tasting this. Give me another luqaimat.”
He dabbed the corner of my mouth with his fingertip and then licked it clean. I swear I almost melted on the spot.
You can have them! You can have all of them—just please don’t start reenacting our Kastel-Kues date scene by scene, darling!
“G-go ahead!”
“Mm. Ahhh…”
He was getting used to this way too fast, inhaling the luqaimats like they were nothing. Even when I accidentally gave him two at once, he’d devour both in one bite. Adorable!
I happily fed him the fried donuts until there were none left, then let out a long sigh of satisfaction.
And as I did, Lukie finished his jelly chorba, taking his final sip before casually reaching for the cute little package sitting on my lap.
“All right, let’s split the baklava and eat it together. Open wide, Cecilia.”
N-no way! He’s turning the romance up a notch further?!
And that smug little smile of his was so handsome. But I’ve dreamed of a date like this—with Lucas in his real form and not his Lukie form. I’ve practiced in my head for this exact moment, so there’s no way I’m backing down now!
I tried to ignore mini Cece, closing my eyes as I braced myself. It wasn’t a competition, but still. “Yes, darling,” I said as I turned to Lucas. Then, I slowly opened my mouth. “Aaah…”
But no matter how long I waited, the pastry never arrived.
I opened one eye and…
“Your face and voice… Seriously, you’re trying to kill me here!” Lucas was hunched over, clutching his chest.
I don’t get it.
We handed off the rest of our sweets to our grinning maids and made our way toward the blacksmith Lucas had been eager to visit, eager to reach them before the heat of the day set in.
Sunlight streamed down through a cupola above us, sparkling upon the painted walls that flanked the stone path we followed through the market. The sun was blazing outside, but the air was surprisingly breezy and cool inside the bazaar.
“It’s so cool in here. I wonder if those lattice windows are designed to let the breeze through?”
“Notice the height difference between the shop roofs and the walkways,” Lucas said. “That lets in light, so that even without windows, the walkways are fairly well lit, but at the same time casts shadows that keep things cool inside the dome. We’ll turn left at that fountain. The blacksmith shops are just a bit further.”
I almost nodded but then tipped my head in confusion at Lucas as he gestured down the path. It hadn’t been that long since he’d gone undercover to sniff out Prince Akeem’s plot, posing as a Canaanite to get himself caught on purpose. Other than that, though, he’d been constantly shuttling between Bern and Majaar, so it was hard to imagine he’d had any free time.
“You sure know a lot about this place. Have you been here before?”
“Yeah, I used to disguise myself and drop by after hunting expeditions when I was hungry or on the way home. The forest along the desert border is full of huge rocks. So it’s easy to call Barnabash over to them without drawing attention. Once I make it that far, I can hop on him and be back in Bern in no time.”
So he used his overpowered skills and a giant black dragon to carve out personal time… That’s my perfect Hero…
Still, would that really be enough time to learn the ins and outs of this place? I wondered to myself. But my thoughts were interrupted when Lucas suddenly uttered a familiar name.
“I wasn’t skipping out on the beastmen mission or anything, really. I came to Majaar once before to train with Andreas. I also traveled around the border nations as a guild mercenary with the old man.”
“So you’ve been to the surrounding kingdoms, too?” I asked.
He wasn’t satisfied with hunting at the border forest, so he’d gone off hunting monsters in other kingdoms, too?
“I started training under Andreas when I was ten, but apparently before I became his student, one of his older disciples, who already had something of a reputation as a swordsman, was killed by a monster from another kingdom that wandered into the forest. So Andreas thought anyone with potential should learn how to fight all kinds of monsters from different locales. After all, it would be a huge catastrophe if the next Hero got taken down by something other than a dragon.”
I was already shaken by the lengths he went to for his training, but hearing the reason behind it only shook me more.
But since dragons came from the border forest and the deep abyss, which were so nearby, it wasn’t a risk they could afford to overlook.
It didn’t matter if Bern possessed the sacred sword Eckesachs if there was no one to inherit it, after all. And if the role of Hero wasn’t passed on, monsters would lay waste to our people, and Bern would fall.
“Majaar’s rocky, desert terrain breeds the sort of monsters that you can’t kill with just a bit of sword work. So training here helps sharpen your instincts and judgment, not to mention building stamina. I also learned how to find water and survive the night while camping. Strangely enough, part of our training was basic traveling etiquette, too. Basically,” Lucas said, “the old man taught me how to survive anywhere.”
Hunting monsters was always a matter of life and death, but it was especially challenging when you were up against unfamiliar ones.
I knew at the time Lucas had a ton of potential and was clearly marked to be the next Hero, but I wondered if that was all that inspired Marshal Webber to devote so much to his training. Felix told me once that Marshal Webber was not only raising Lucas as a knight but was also tasked with keeping an eye on him.
And given Lucas’s destructive tendencies, he could easily cause a catastrophe if he ever lost control and unleashed the insane reserves of mana within him. Training someone like that to such a level of skill and knowledge was basically just handing him more firepower.
But Marshal Webber must’ve seen the effort Lukie put in and truly believed that he’d never become that kind of threat.
That must be why he taught him even the sorts of things a knight normally wouldn’t need to know. He wanted Lucas to survive, no matter what.
“Was it hard?” I asked.
“It was really hard. One time, he dumped me in the middle of a wyrm nest with nothing but a dagger and said, ‘Just survive.’ I’ll never do that again.”
He’s slumping at the memory, poor thing… But it’s also kind of adorable…