Chapter 5
And so, after Lexion and Dominique left the Crown Prince’s palace, some time passed. Kirie quietly gathered the smile that had crept onto her lips.
‘I had my doubts… but just as I expected.’
In the end, the Crown Prince never showed himself, even as the time for the banquet arrived.
No doubt he’d slipped away through a side door, knowing full well how she disliked crowded places.
Perhaps he assumed she would remain here, waiting endlessly for him, unaware he’d gone.
This wasn’t the first time he had evaded her like this.
“Better this way, really.”
Kirie recalled the long years she’d spent chasing after Lexion.
He’d always been so willful, grumbling that she was tiresome, yet when she sat beside him, he would idly brush her shoulder or graze his hand along her arm.
As if to remind her that he held the power to choose, and she was merely the one receiving his favor.
He seemed to forget that he, too, relied on her to deliver names into his hands.
And those young noblewomen she had disposed of for him, he had used Kirie to eliminate them, hiding his own indiscretions behind her notorious reputation.
Yet whenever it suited him, he would slip away like this, vanishing without a word.
Even if she entered the banquet hall now, it would be near impossible to meet the Crown Prince alone.
Kirie toyed with the pendant warming in her palm.
She thought back on all the years she’d spent chasing after happiness, never truly knowing what that feeling meant, yet tirelessly striving toward it.
“You simply haven’t met a real mad dog yet, Your Highness.”
Lexion wouldn’t have known, but Kirie had been contemplating this kind of situation for a very long time.
She’d expected from the start that he wouldn’t keep his promise so easily.
No doubt, he planned to toy with her for some time yet before finally raising the matter of marriage.
“As if I’d ever let him have his way so easily.”
But Kirie, too, had one final move reserved, a method left untouched until the very last.
This time, it might not end with mere infamy.
There was a real chance it could cost her life.
‘Whether I die dragged off to a convent or die like this in the end, what difference is there?’
To Kirie, the two fates held no real distinction.
And with that paradox, she resolved in that moment, to become a true mad dog.
Turning her steps away from the banquet hall, she started walking in the opposite direction.
Now, when everyone was gathered at the banquet, the moment was more opportune than ever.
⋆˚✩☽⋆⁺₊✧༚❃༚✧⁺₊⋆☽✩˚⋆
Bang!
The gunshot ringing out at the center of the banquet hall might have been deemed wildly inappropriate on any other occasion, but not tonight.
The night had ripened, and the intoxicated crowd babbled excitedly.
“An incredible marksman, your Highness!”
A bullet had narrowly missed the center of a target displayed in the hall’s center.
And hanging at the bullseye was a small bird inside a cage.
Lexion, reloading a newly developed musket, clicked his tongue at the sight.
“Missed by a hair.”
Flutter.
Startled by the shot, the bird flapped its wings, its feathers gleaming silver in one light, blue in another.
“Look at that!”
“Haha!”
No matter how desperately the little creature beat its wings, the onlookers simply laughed.
A few offered token expressions of pity, but none of it ran deep mere posturing, nothing more.
“I heard that bird was the national bird of that kingdom His Highness subjugated, isn’t it?”
“It was a spectacle, apparently. Fought to the bitter end, I’m told.”
‘It was more than just a spectacle.’
Dominique thought impassively, his gaze fixed on the target.
From earlier, eyes had followed him, the sharp, unmissable presence of a man who stood out wherever he went.
Yet none dared approach.
The cold, lofty air that clung to him created an invisible barrier all on its own.
“Take another shot, won’t you?”
“Shall I?”
Dominique’s gaze settled on the chattering Crown Prince.
Lexion was once again loading a live round into his musket.
There had to be reasons why the Emperor would prepare such a vulgar display at a banquet, reasons as transparent as glass.
‘So obvious.’
The kingdom recently conquered had been selected by the Emperor as a lesson, a public example.
Its royal family were distant kin to Dominique, sharing ancestral blood.
When the kingdom showed signs of shifting toward a constitutional monarchy and republican ideals, the Emperor had ordered Dominique to bring it to heel, with Lexion at his side.
And Dominique had done so, without hesitation.
He’d burned the royal palace to the ground, executed the royal family without trial, and brought the national bird back to this place.
Bang!
This time, Lexion’s shot struck the top of the cage, ricocheting away.
Flutter.
The bird again flapped its wings.
Each beat of its silvery feathers shed loose plumes, which drifted down to the cage floor.
“One more shot….”
“That’s enough.”
Just as Lexion moved to load another round, a voice interrupted.
A voice that had remained silent all this while, yet whose presence rivaled even Dominique’s in its oppressive weight.
An old man.
“But, Your Majesty….”
The Emperor, raising his palm, instantly commanded silence, stealing the attention of the entire hall.
Lexion scowled, displeased but unable to protest, and handed the musket to an attendant.
The Emperor, gesturing indifferently, said:
“It was Grand Duke Haswell who taught the Crown Prince to shoot, wasn’t it?”
“……”
“This time, the Duke should take a turn.”
He looked directly at Dominique.
In an instant, hundreds of pairs of eyes rolled toward him.
Yet Dominique remained serenely unbothered.
No matter how the nobles strained to find a flicker of unease on his face, all they saw was the air of a man too accustomed to being placed above others, a kind of innate arrogance.
And truly, Dominique felt no pressure, their stares were meaningless to him.
These nobles who clung to the capital, dangling like baubles from the Emperor’s throne. to Dominique, they were no more than the Emperor’s furniture.
Adornments meant to enhance the shine of imperial authority, or trophies meant to make the palace seem grander.
Dogs who’d traded their family’s fortunes and personal freedoms for a gilded life inside the imperial pen.
He, too, was a hound of the palace, but unlike these lapdogs, his fangs remained.
Who, after all, would feel burdened by the gazes of mere furniture?
And so, with unhurried steps, Dominique approached the musket.
Lexion bit down on his lip as he watched the opportunity slip away.
“……”
Before the attendant, Dominique slowly ran his palm along the sleek barrel, as though coaxing or taming it, a touch so restrained yet somehow suggestive.
Gasp.
Someone in the hall audibly caught their breath.
Dominique, feeling the coldness of the metal beneath his fingertips, answered evenly.
“I accept.”
What happened next was so swift, few in the room could follow.
Click, clack.
The musket’s long barrel spun gracefully around the trigger.
Dominique reloaded it in a blur, his cloak unfurling behind him like a dancer’s ribbon.
In that moment, all eyes were caught by the sweep of his cloak.
Click.
The barrel slowly swung to aim at the Emperor.
“……”
A suffocating silence fell upon the hall, the cheers and heat of the evening instantly extinguished.
A few nobles darted uneasy glances, sensing something was amiss.
Just as a quiet ripple of dread spread through the crowd….
Bang!
Dominique abruptly turned the musket toward the target and fired.
Unlike his earlier perfect, precise movements, the way he shouldered the weapon and squeezed the trigger now held an air of deliberate exaggeration.
And yet, because it was Dominique, the motion seemed neither clumsy nor absurd.
Even those trained in firearms felt, for a fleeting second, as though his stance might belong in some forgotten manual, so natural, so graceful was the gesture.
As if mocking something.
Flutter!
The bullet veered wide, striking a pillar.
The silvery bird inside the cage flapped once, then stared directly at Dominique, a gaze filled with quiet, desperate yearning for life, hidden behind a mask of calm.
It reminded him of someone he’d seen earlier.
Realizing he was projecting emotions onto a mere bird, Dominique gave a dry chuckle.
‘A foolish thought.’
Perhaps he should have killed it outright.
Mocking himself, Dominique passed the musket back to the attendant.
Wiping the trace of gunpowder from his hand, he offered a slight bow.
“It seems I’ve fallen short, and in so doing, caused concern for His Highness the Crown Prince.”
“……”
His self-effacing words left the onlookers perplexed, unsettled.
Despite his humble tone, his dignity remained utterly intact.
Lexion stared at his cousin with a stiff expression, as though trying to decipher his intentions.
But Dominick ignored the gaze without a flicker and spoke again.
“That bird’s rather fortunate, isn’t it?”
“……”
“Unlike its miserable masters, it seems destined for a different fate.”
The Emperor’s eyes gleamed ominously at those words.
