This happened a little while before the king and queen’s return.
Four days before Prince Elliott was tortured by Martina in the name of “sorting out the facts,” a minor marital spat broke out in a fortress on the frontier.
In order to prepare for potential enemy attacks, the soldiers garrisoned at the border fortresses lived in lodging houses inside them. The eastern border wasn’t that tense, but the fortresses were far from any towns, so even if they’d wanted a house of their own, there were none outside in the surrounding wasteland. Therefore, the newlywed Abigails set up their new home in a unit of a row house.
As Martina Abigail cheerfully carried food to the table, her new husband Sykes Abigail watched with admiration—not with terror...or so he tried to convince himself.
“What’s got you in such a good mood?” Sykes asked. “Did something nice happen?”
Martina began fidgeting and looked at her beloved husband with upturned eyes.
“Hm? Oh, nothing special. I just wanted to see you eat.”
“Yeah?”
Though she’d answered with a smile, Sykes sensed something off with the way Martina was acting. She’d said she wanted to see him eat, but here in the fort, they didn’t cook their own meals. That was handled by the kitchen staff, so it wasn’t something she’d made herself. Plus, the menu was just the usual bacon, potatoes, and vegetable soup—nothing more luxurious than normal.
Something was wrong. Sykes’s sixth sense—limited to Martina—started sounding alarm bells.
He didn’t remember messing up recently. If he’d been looking at another girl, she’d have punished him on the spot, and there was no one in the fort who’d listen to him gripe about Martina. He hadn’t rejected any of her requests, and nothing had seemed out of the ordinary as recently as when they went to bed last night.
For now, I should eat up and then report to the command center and ask to be sent on a long-range patrol. While I’m away, they can get some of our comrades who can read Martina better to listen to her complaints.
As Sykes was starting to put together a schedule in his head, Martina smiled and asked him, “Well? Is it good?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, it’s delicious. Is there something special about it?”
“Yeah.”
Setting down the empty pot, Martina smoothly circled around behind Sykes. She gently placed her hands on his shoulders, bringing her cheek next to his.
“Because...depending on your answers, this could be your last meal.”
Sykes kicked off the floor and tried to dash to the exit, but Martina strengthened her grip on his shoulders and stopped him dead in his tracks.
“What’s wrong, Sykes?”
“Everything’s wrong! Who wouldn’t try to run when you announce you’re about to murder them?!”
Sykes shivered as he felt a current of cold air run from the back of his head all the way down his spine. However, the air in the room was hot, if anything. It felt cold because Sykes’s instincts had picked up the murderous intent bearing down on him.
“Wh-What? I haven’t done anything to make you angry lately, have I?!” Sykes asked.
“No, I’m happy you’ve been such a good boy,” Martina beamed. “If only you’d always been.”
“I can’t fix the past, can I?!”
Martina slapped Sykes across the face with a book. “I was cleaning this morning, when I found this.”
The book she passed over his shoulder and into his trembling hands was...His Highness is After Me!
“Why?! I threw this book out when I was packing!”
Sykes had said that without meaning to. It was a bad move. The chill he felt behind him suddenly got a lot colder.
“So you do recognize it...”
“M-Martina...”
With an intimidating presence he couldn’t possibly turn and face, his darling wife Martina spoke to him in the sweetest of tones.
“I was careless. I was able to notice the sows that tried to tempt you, but I never would’ve guessed that you were interested in men too.”
“I’m not! I’m not romantically interested in men!”
“Maybe, but even if he took you by force at first, it felt good for you, being pursued by His Highness like that. It’s making me jealous, you know?”
Sykes mustered all his strength and courage and turned to face Martina. “Wait, Martina! I’m honestly, truly not into guys! And this is a work of fiction. Nothing like this ever happened between Elliott and me.”
“Ohh?” Martina smiled pleasantly at him. “Now tell me the truth.”
“But that is the truth?! This is just a thing someone wrote! You saw how head over heels His Highness was for Margaret, didn’t you? He’s not interested in me either!”
“Margaret?”
“Ah...”
Martina’s frozen smile was terrifying.
“Hey, Sykes, I’m jealous of Margaret too.”
“Huh? No, seriously, there was never anything between Margaret and me.”
“Oh, nooo, that’s not what I’m jealous about, see?” Martina had wrapped her hands around Sykes’s, and she began crushing them with all her might. “It’s that the name of a sow like that is occupying any of your limited brain space, okay?”
“You’re being unreasonable?! Ow! Stop it, please!” Sykes begged.
“Sykes, if you have that much space, fill it with nothing but my name.”
“Okay, okay! I’ll try! I’ll do my goddamn best!”
“Good. I hope you mean it.”
Martina grinned, but she hadn’t released her crushing grip on his hands just yet.
“Martina?”
“Now, back to the main topic. Tell me, was His Highness intense?”
Martina never changed.
“I’m telling you, that book is a lie! It’s not the truth! Believe me, okay?!”
“Of course! Of course I believe you, Sykes! Now, what’s the truth?”
“You don’t believe me at all, do you?!”
“You belong to me, and I won’t give you up to anyone, not even His Highness.”
“I’m telling you, His Highness never ‘made me his’!”
“Then why would you have a book like this, hmm?” Martina let go of Sykes for a moment to tear the rather thick hardcover volume in two with a smile. “Tell me, Sykes. Was His Highness so dear to you that you wanted this reminder of your love close at hand?”
Placing the two halves of the torn book on top of each other, Martina began tearing them into four. Sykes blanched at this inhuman display of strength.
“You’re wrong! Yes, I bought it, but I didn’t know it was about that!”
“Ohh... Even though you two made love so passionately?”
“I told you, that’s not real. Believe me, please...”
✦ ✦ ✦
Martina watched for a while as Sykes knelt on the floor, trembling and begging for forgiveness. After some time, she crouched next to him and gently wrapped his hands with her own.
“Okay, I understand.”
“Martina!”
“I’ll try asking your body until I have proof.”
“You don’t believe meeeeeee?!”
In the command center in the middle of the fort, cringing staff officers shuffled into the room. There had been report after report from the rooms near the Abigail residence that something terrible was occurring inside.
“What? What happened this time?!” an officer asked.
“We don’t know! Have the two of them submit a report.”
“You think we could?”
Just as they had settled on maybe evacuating the nearby rooms, the two people in question showed up. Martina had brought her husband to the infirmary, all while smiling cheerily.
The medical officer nervously asked her, “Wh-What could be the problem, so early in the day?”
The black-haired girl smiled and stuck her tongue out cutely. “Heh heh, Sykes tosses and turns in his sleep.”
It didn’t take a doctor to tell that the injuries Sykes had sustained were not from rolling out of bed. But the medical officer didn’t pry.
“I see. Well, could you set him down on the bed over there?”
“Okaaay.”
There were some questions you didn’t ask if you valued your life, and Martina was still in her evil-god mode. As proof of that...
“Oof... Sykes, you be a good boy here in the infirmary, okay?”
Martina set Sykes down on the bed without making a sound. She’d been carrying him in her arms, princess style, despite his being much larger and heavier than she was.
If his medical report showed that the injuries were the result of violence, Martina might decide to persuade him otherwise. The medical officer, his face pale with fear, ordered a month of bed rest without any stated reason, then hung a card saying “no visitors” in front of Sykes’s bed.
“Now, then.”
Martina cracked her knuckles as she headed toward the commander.
“I’m sorry, General, but I’ll be taking a short leave to visit the capital. Look after Sykes for me, will you?”
The commander of the eastern division unconsciously scowled. There was no way she had a good reason for this request.
“Whatever for? You just brought Abigail back here last week.”
“Yes, but I’m not done yet...”
Martina, who was still holding the book, now torn to shreds, crumpled it into a ball of waste paper with a smile.
“I still have some questions for the other person involved.”
When he later heard about what had unfolded at the palace, the general regretted not questioning her more thoroughly at the time. But, at the same time, he also realized that there was nothing they could have done to stop her, so he didn’t let it weigh on him any longer.