“No! I’m not going anywhere with you!” I yelled.
“Come on! You’re gonna get killed otherwise!”
“Killed!? You were the ones trying to kill me in the first place!”
I don’t understand what they’re talking about! Ripping my hands out of the leader’s grip, I held them close to my chest. Doing so made me touch the bracelet that Sir Celes gave me. Save me, Sir Celes!
“Sorry, I just need to get a bit of your dress.”
“Wouldn’t the sleeve be easier to rip?”
I tried to get away while the group started debating something or another, but they grabbed me by the sleeve. Between me trying to run, and the leader trying to pull the sleeve off, the flowing see-through fabric was ripped mercilessly. Ahh, I’m only borrowing this dress! It has to be expensive... What if it gets added to my debt!?
“This dress isn’t mine!” I protested, trying to push them back.
“It’s fine, the one who told us to do this is really high up!” Mister Curly puffed his chest out as if proud of his words. Should he really have been telling me something like that? Oh, the leader punched him again!
While Mister Short-and-Stout ripped the sleeve up with the fang, Mister Droopy-Eyes took out a small knife and cut his own arm, splashing blood over both the sleeve and the ground. They seemed to be trying very hard to make it seem as if I’d been killed by a monster, but I didn’t think it would work very well.
In the first place, no one would believe that a single monster got into the heavily guarded palace and quietly killed multiple people; but they were doing it so brazenly that maybe their “higher up” had it all factored in, so they’d get away with it without anyone questioning it...
With my escape route blocked off by the group as they planned on kidnapping me, and the immediate threat of death off the table, I just stood there, not sure what to do. It seemed as if they’d keep me alive and hide me as long as I had Soap, but I wondered if they’d be alright with just letting me go instead.
“Ah!”
While I stood there worrying, a blade of wind suddenly shot before my eyes. There was the sound of the air ripping, and then a spray of fresh blood. Fresh blood... What!?
“Uwargh!” Mister Short-and-Stout screamed as he fell to the ground. The hand that had been holding my sleeve instead went to holding his own leg. When I saw the red blood dripping through his fingers, I realized that the blade of wind had cut through his leg.
“What’s happening!?” Seeing Mister Short-and-Stout’s injury, the leader turned angrily in the direction it came from. The person standing there was someone I knew very well.
“Get away from her!”
“Sir Celes...!”
With a flash of the short sword in his hand, more blades of wind shot towards the group of men. Sir Celes did say he could use a bit of magic. Is this what he meant?
The moment the wind slashed through their legs was the same moment that Sir Celes got over to me. Since the men had all fallen, clutching their legs, they couldn’t stop me from running over to him. “Lucia, are you okay?”
“Ah, yes. I’m fine... Mostly.”
“Mostly!?”
I answered that way because while I myself was unhurt, the dress wasn’t, but I ended up needlessly worrying him.
“What did you do to her?” Sky-blue eyes shining with rage, Sir Celes glared at the men. Scary!
It was a different kind of fear than what I had felt because of the group of men. Rather than a creeping chill, the fear froze me to the core. It was completely different than when he had gotten angry with me in Sherezo, or after His Highness teased us! Both the group of men and I shook at the sight of Sir Celes’s rage. Though it wasn’t directed at me, it was still terrifying.
“Agh...” the leader groaned.
✦ ✦ ✦
“I asked you, what did you do to her?” Sir Celes stepped forward and touched his short sword to the leader’s throat.
Seeing this, I quickly clung to him. “Sir Celes!”
At this rate, I’d end up seeing more blood, and I couldn’t take it!
“We can talk about it later, Sir Celes! First, we need to tie these people up. They said that they attacked a gatekeeper, too. But we can’t give them over to Dal Canto! There’s a good chance they’re connected to someone higher up!”
“Higher...up?”
The attendant who had given me to the men had said it was for the princess, and the men themselves said that the person who hired them was someone important. If we handed them over to the authorities like normal, it would probably get swept under the rug. It would have been one thing if they had just been targeting me, but someone else was injured, and it would be a huge problem if Miss Maria was the real target.
“That doesn’t sound good.” While I was trying to calm Sir Celes down a bit, a certain knight and mage popped out of the bushes. So they came when they saw my Soap...!
“Sir Gaius!”
“Hey, little lady. Me and the Captain saw your Soap over here while we were looking for you, and he just ran off... He’s way too fast.”
“What the... Did the Captain do this? Gross, he just cut the tendons in their legs!?” Eric said, recoiling back. “That’s not something you should be showing a girl.”
“He was probably holding back from cutting either their heads or limbs straight off. So, what now? Should we bring ’em back to our prince?”
Knowing that not only Sir Celes, but Sir Gaius and Eric came running to save me, I weakly dropped to the ground. I’d been so tense. It was pitiful how much my hands were shaking.
“Lucia!”
“I...I’m fi—”
“Don’t tell me you’re fine. You don’t have to handle things alone... I’m sorry it took so long for us to find you. You must have been scared.” Looking at me with his sky-blue eyes, the burning rage that I had seen before was completely gone.