A low, deep voice made her open her eyes. Leonardo was standing over her, protecting her. She went limp with relief.
Leonardo swung his sword. The assassin quickly readjusted his stance and readied his own sword, but the prince was quicker than that to deliver the coup de grâce. The assassin let out a muffled grunt as his shoulder took the brunt of Leonardo’s thrust.
Leonardo flipped back the assassin’s hood with the tip of his sword, revealing the face of a young man who glared ruefully at Leonardo. After a moment’s hesitation, the young man did an odd thing: He took the sword in his hand and stabbed his unconscious comrade through the chest.
Is he mad? No, wait, it’s to keep him from being interrogated!
The assassin easily accepted his fate. Realizing that he couldn’t defeat Leonardo on his own merits, he had stabbed his comrade to keep him quiet. He probably intended to take his own life after this.
“Hey, you! Stop!” Leonardo instantly sensed the young man’s intentions and reached out to stop him, but the young man took a packet from his pocket, put something medicine-like in his mouth, and swallowed it quickly.
The young man fell to the ground and began to writhe in agony. Leonardo threw down his sword, ran over, and grabbed the young man’s shoulder.
“Hey! Spit out whatever you just swallowed!”
The young man pushed Leonardo away. The assassin was gasping for air and convulsing, and then blood began to pour from his mouth. He fell to the ground and stopped moving.
Westalia, who was still on the sofa, slowly got up and walked over to the young man.
“There’s no use in shouting at him. He’s already dead,” Westalia said, shaking her head as she looked for the man’s pulse.
She pulled the small package from the man’s hand, opening it to find a few ground-up agisakuragi seeds. Even in small doses, it was a fast-acting deadly poison that could kill in a matter of seconds.
“What the hell kind of poison was it?” Leonardo asked.
“Agisakuragi. After ingesting the seeds, one will experience convulsions, abdominal pain, difficulty breathing, and finally death from organ failure.”
“You’re pretty knowledgeable about it...”
“I’ve taken it once,” Westalia said.
“At your execution?”
“That’s right.”
The two assassins had died to keep who had given them the order a secret.
Westalia frowned as she looked down at the two young men. When the second man had pointed the sword at her, his hand had been shaking slightly; he’d seemed hesitant about killing someone.
“Didn’t you deserve better? Were you taken advantage of?” Westalia muttered as she looked at them. But her questions went unanswered.
“Was your knight not with you?” Leonardo asked.
Westalia confessed that she’d heard screams coming from the other room. “But don’t worry, Paige wouldn’t be taken out by these kinds of men.”
Paige rushed into the room right at that moment. She had a young man held under one arm like a sack of potatoes.
“Hey! Let go!” the boy shouted, struggling in Paige’s grip.
“Oh, be quiet! Westalia, are you okay?!” Paige asked.
“Yes, I’m fine. How about the girls?”
“The girls and I are all fine. But the other two who snuck in took some kind of poison and killed themselves. The person who ordered the assassination probably told them they would be killed if they returned home unsuccessful. But this one seemed to be afraid to die and tried to run away.”
“I see,” Westalia said.
Paige had already taken the packet of poison away from the boy. It seemed that two more assassins were dead, but it was a blessing to have one witness left.
Then something fell from the boy’s pocket.
“What’s this?” Paige asked. The boy grew pale.
“Stop! Don’t touch it! That’s just—” he started shouting.
Ignoring the boy, Paige leaned down and picked it up. She opened it up, revealing a family seal.
“Don’t look at it! Hey! I told you to stop!”
Leonardo raised his eyebrows. “Wait, that’s the seal of the Reyn family.”
Seals like these, depicting a family’s crest, were used for things like governmental affairs and were very important to families.
The three looked at each other, wondering why the boy had brought the seal of the Reyn family with him.