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THE party was held in one of the reception rooms of the castle. It was a small affair, with only some of the upper echelon of Ferrier nobility invited.
“Small” in King Edouard’s and Richard’s estimation, that is.
The venue wasn’t as large as the grand hall at the castle in Saleilles, but it was quite spacious, holding nearly one hundred aristocrats. Everyone was dressed unusually warm for the season, perhaps due to the rain, and the collection of so many fuzzy coats and large hats was a tad overwhelming to Sara.
Just as they had discussed in advance, Sara and Richard had entered the castle holding hands like they had the last time they visited, and as soon as they had finished making their rounds, they sat together on a sofa to relax there as briefly as they possibly could before it wouldn’t be considered impolite to go home.
But all things considered…the prince has been very alert and energetic tonight.
Sara looked at him, but his eyes were scanning the room. He didn’t seem to notice that her attention was on him.
It hadn’t been terribly long since Sara had last looked over at him like this. When some of the nobles had caught sight of the fabled prince and his consort and had come up to talk to them, Richard had surprisingly fielded their questions without any effort, even making it so that Sara didn’t have to speak very much at all.
With how much he disliked being around people, she had been fully prepared to take the lead in their conversations, but instead, he had been the one helping her out.
“Um… Your Highness?” Sara whispered.
“What’s the matter?” Richard responded immediately. “Are you tired? Are you thirsty? Do you want to go home?”
He had been looking around the room somewhat nervously, but the moment his eyes landed on Sara, his entire face relaxed. Sara picked up on the undercurrent of concern in his questions.
The prince can be so considerate…
“Well…thank you for taking care of everything. I wish I could have helped you more…” she said.
“Huh? Oh, when we were making our courtesy rounds? Don’t worry about it. You haven’t been living here for very long, and though I may be a recluse, I do remember the names and faces of all the nobles. It’s also your first time attending a party here in Ferrier, so you don’t have to dive in head-first from the very start,” Richard said kindly.
He gently placed his hand over the one Sara had been resting on her lap.
From somewhere in the room, Sara heard faint voices whispering, “Oh, my!” and “Look at the prince…”
“I try my best to avoid parties as a rule, but you can get used to them slowly. I mean, I rely on you most of the time, so you can rely on me now.”
“What?! That’s not true! You’re always very dependable, and you’ve helped me so much more than I’ve helped you,” Sara said honestly.
Richard sat up a bit straighter and pressed his lips together.
“I don’t think that’s true…”
“Well, I do.”
“F-Forget it… Anyway, we’ve finished what we came to do, so let’s go home. I want to go back to the villa and have you brew us some tea.”
Sara laughed. “That sounds nice.”
Richard flagged down one of the guards and arranged for their carriage home. Just as Sara was gazing at Richard’s back, she suddenly caught a whiff of a strange smell and looked up.
It’s a mix of water, dirt, and…mud?
No matter how hard it was raining outside, all the guests were wearing fresh clothes and had applied perfumes. Even the waiters and guards had been quite careful about their appearances. The smell couldn’t have been coming from someone who had been indoors this whole time.
Sara’s eyes quickly scanned the room. Just then, a waiter carrying a glass of wine atop a tray handed the glass to a guest and then started walking toward Sara.
She smelled rain coming off him.
“You’re a demon!” shouted the waiter. “A demon that has deceived the Ferrier royal family! Go back to hell!”
A wineglass shattered. Someone shrieked.
A black shadow hovered above Sara.
The readied knife flashed white.
“Glory to the Ferrier royal family!”
The silver blade, raised high in the air, shone under the glow of the chandelier.
The sound of cloth ripping cut through the air. Someone screamed so loudly the room shook.
A piece of white cloth and shards of glass fell to the floor.
But there was no splash of blood.
At the last moment, Sara had sensed impending danger and swerved backward, so the knife that had been aiming for her heart had missed its target and instead only cut her bolero and corsage.
Wh-What?!
Sara slumped down onto the sofa in a daze, but the next moment, she saw something black flash across her vision.
“Augh!”
“Princess, this way!”
Something massive had lunged at the shadowy figure and pinned it to the floor. Sara could finally move freely, and one of the royal guards was pulling at her arm.
An enormous beast had wrestled a man she had never seen before to the ground. The man was bleeding profusely all over. His thigh had been deeply cut into, exposing a fresh wound.
Amid the party guests running around wildly as they tried to escape, the black beast roared and plunged its claws into the man’s abdomen. The man had been struggling against the beast, but at that moment, he let out a choked scream, twitched, and began to tremble feebly.
With that, Sara’s mind finally caught up to what she was witnessing.
She had almost been murdered by this man.
But this beast had lunged at him and was now trying to kill him instead.
The beast’s fur looked like high-quality wool, but it was stained with blood. The creature bared its sharp fangs and growled… This beast was…
“Y-Your Highness…,” Sara whispered, her voice barely audible.
It had looked like the beast was consumed with the thought of killing the man before him, but he twitched in surprise at Sara’s words and looked back at her.
The beast’s body was lithe, and he had a long tail. Under the light of the chandelier, Sara could see that his fur was dark gray.
He was roughly the size of a horse and had upright ears, sharp green eyes that rose at the outer corners, and long canine teeth, which were covered in blood.
The beast wasn’t like a cat or a dog, and indeed it would have been difficult to describe it using any known species of animal. When he looked at Sara, his raging ferocity, incredibly, subdued. He climbed off the man’s body with a soft thud.
The beast stared at Sara, without sparing a passing glance for the man now struggling to breathe.
Sara could recognize the smell of blood and animal, but she could also sense a lovely fragrance mingling among them.
“Your Highness…”
This time, she called out to him in a clear voice.
The beast growled out a sad noise and lay flat against the floor on the spot.
Sara approached him.
The way he had flinched at her voice was just like someone else she knew… She felt nearly overcome with emotion.
When Sara reached out her hand, the beast fell back and flattened his ears as if uncomfortable. If a cat or dog did that, it would probably mean they were scared.
But when Sara gently touched his fur, his tense body gradually relaxed. He rubbed his cheek against the palm of her hand as he made grumbling sounds.
This is the power of the prince’s ability…
The power that had tormented him for twenty years—the power that had driven his birth mother to make grave mistakes.
And because of Sara, he had just revealed that power publicly.
But Sara knew that the words she ought to say to him in that moment weren’t “I’m sorry.”
“Your Highness… Thank you for saving me,” she whispered before throwing her arms around the black beast’s neck. She could smell the gentle scent of Richard’s sachet on his fur.