The Amber Knight Swears His Love on the Saintess’s Left Hand - Chapter 30

The fog having cleared thanks to Marius, Quill doubled back to the Royal Library and pulled Lars out.

They headed straight for the Royal Castle. Relying on Lars’s formal title as a Royal Guard, Quill requested an audience with the Crown Prince. The summons which lacked even a shred of proper etiquette was granted surprisingly easily, and they were ushered into the Crown Prince’s private reception room.

Quill sat on a lavish sofa that sank far too deep for his liking and waited.

When Leonard finally appeared, Quill’s face darkened with a scowl.

“Why are you alone, Your Highness?”

“Listen here, a Crown Princess isn’t someone who just skips out whenever she’s called. Even for me, if it hadn’t been Lars asking, I wouldn’t have met you so instantly.”

Since Juliana, his primary target, wasn’t there, Quill had no choice. Time was precious. He decided to clear up the other matter first.

“In that case, let me ask you and my brother first. Could you tell me about the time you touched the Holy Sword?”

Leonard and Lars exchanged a look. Both rested their hands on their chins, sinking into thought in nearly identical poses.

“I vaguely remember being in the darkness,” Lars began. “Something undulating and swirling tried to drag the Prince and me inside. Then a light broke through. By the time I realized what was happening, I was already in Lady Olga’s arms.”

“So that is the inside of the Holy Sword…” Leonard muttered.

The Holy Sword had been enchanted with a mimicry of Transference. However, that art was designed to lead the soul within to the outside—not to drag new souls in. That much was clear from the records.

If that’s the case, then what dragged their souls in was King Ringdell’s true Transference.

And his mother, Olga, had saved the two caught in its grasp.

Using the power meant to break sorcery: Dispel.

“It seems Lady Olga forced her own blood into our mouths,” Leonard said. “She called it a Betzyraft charm or some such.”

“That’s right! Putting me aside, Leo had his mouth washed out afterward like he was being water-tortured!”

“…Lars, don’t make me remember that…”

As always, the atmosphere softened when these two were together in private. Taking advantage of that opening to relax his shoulders, Quill asked calmly:

“So, Transference can be broken with Dispel after all?”

Beside him, Lars’s shoulders twitched.

“Qu. Don’t do it.”

Across the table, Leonard leaned forward, closing the distance between them.

“Do not challenge Transference. It will whittle away your very life.”

In response to those stern words, Quill let out a long exhale.

The method to minimize damage and free Lynette was obvious. He had to break Transference with sorcery. The mimicry woven into the sword was likely similar to Dispel itself.

If Quill used his Dispel to tear every Betzyraft soul away from the Holy Sword, the King would lose the means to command the beasts. There would no longer be any obstacle to breaking the contract placed on Lynette.

“There is no other way, is there?”

“It’s only been five days, Qu,” Lars said, gripping Quill’s hand tightly as if to hold him back. “I understand your impatience, but it’s too early to reach that conclusion.”

Lars’s grip tightened.

“That path is the one the King forced upon Lady Olga. Father kept you away from sorcery precisely because he didn’t want that for you. I felt the same, and so did the Prince.”

“That’s why I decided to take you into my personal guard,” Leonard added. “As my subordinate, even the King cannot easily lay a hand on you.”

Their words were kind. That only made them more bitter. This was no time for him to be protected.

“Qu, please understand. Even Lady Olga was risking her life. Let’s find another way.”

Quill knew. It was a gamble with terrible odds.

He had no place to test his sorcery. The practitioners of Betzyraft were gone; he could neither ask for guidance nor touch another’s magic.

In this situation, becoming a sorcerer who surpassed Olga was nothing but a pipe dream.

“I’ll have you research every secret art alongside Sascha,” Leonard said. “That surely will lead to a way to save Lady Lynette.”

At the thought of such a daunting task, Quill clenched his fists.

“But Lady Ceryes remains in the Cathedral. At this rate, her heart won’t hold out.”

“I know. Even if we have to force her, we must send her on the pilgrimage—”

SLAM. The door was thrown open with violent force.

Crown Princess Juliana burst in.

Leonard scrambled to his feet, but Juliana flew past him and threw herself into his arms with the momentum of her entry.

“What is the meaning of this, Leonard!? You told me Lynette had safely departed for her pilgrimage!”

“…I thought if I told you, you would worry, Ria.”

“You lied to me? Then… then Lynette has been in the Cathedral this whole time?”

“Yes. For these five days, Lady Lynette has been in the Chamber of the Holy Sword.”

Juliana’s face went pale, and she collapsed where she stood.

“Stop her. Please.”

“Ria?”

“Stop her. I beg of you! Stop Lynette!!”

Juliana screamed, clinging to Leonard. Quill rushed to her side.

“Your Highness, you do know something, don’t you?”

“Quill? What are you talking about?” Leonard asked.

If Lynette were hiding some secret plan, and if she were to reveal it to anyone, it could only be Juliana, the woman she trusted enough to entrust with her final wish.

“What does Lady Ceryes intend to do?”

“There is one way. Only one. A method to end everything. But—!”

Juliana’s hands gripped Quill’s arm with a strength unimaginable for her delicate frame.

“My Lord, please, break the contract right now. Lynette is going to die!”

＊　＊　＊

Two years of pilgrimage. Four shrines. At the very first one, all emotions were shaved away. The remaining three shrines were mere ornaments; the Saint’s journey through Eiklant served only to prove the Cathedral’s necessity.

Whether for the Cathedral or the Royal Family, the Saint was used as a tool of convenience. Lynette had only truly understood her position after she had lost the ability to feel any emotion about it.

She had neither the will to flee nor the grief to break. To the doll-like Lynette, the Holy Sword had told her the “fairy tale” of how things came to be.

The more she heard, the less it made sense to her that she and the First Girl were the same soul.

Did souls truly cycle as they were? Even if they did, wouldn’t they be rewritten into something new upon being born into a new life? When she threw that question at him, the King sleeping within the sword answered with a laugh.

—Now that you have become a doll, you should be able to hear it. The voice of the pitiful girl within you.

As instructed, she turned her consciousness inward.

At first, it was faint. Then, it became clear.

A voice damp and full of constant weeping—cried out that Eikraezen were cowards, that they had not believed.

During these five days, Lynette had called out to that voice sleeping within her many times.

Gently. Saint-like.

She had tried to comfort the grieving sixteen-year-old girl, calling to her over and over. She used her social smile, pushing at times, pulling at others.

And yet, the voice ignored her. It whined about how sad it was, how lonely it was. Eventually, it even started claiming that even the King was a figure of pity.

After having ravaged people so thoroughly. After having defiled her so completely.

To call that pity.

“Don’t make me laugh.”

She had never expected a miracle like the Betzyraft’s power of Dispel. She hadn’t intended to beg for it.

But he had given it to her. He had restored to Lynette the anger she needed to resist.

The hero of Lynette Ceryes. Quill Langbart.

“I suppose I couldn’t use it without a heart full of rage. It’s irritating, but I suppose that’s just how it is.”

For generations, they had been discarded solemnly without anyone resisting. Taken in by the Royal Family as refined dolls. Dying, being born, and being trampled again.

Despite such a powerful weapon sleeping within them, countless Saints had perished without ever using it.

If she hadn’t met Quill, Lynette might have been just like them.

But she had met him. Therefore, she could fight.

“I will be the one to use it.”

Just as Betzyraft had sorcery and Ringdell had Transference, Eikraezen also possessed a technique that acted upon the soul.

A power held only by the daughters of the King. A secret art without even a name, sealed away because their emotions had been stolen.

A fierce flame that incinerates any soul.

“Hand it over.”

Lynette commanded the First Saint sleeping within her.

If pushing and pulling wouldn’t move her, then she would not negotiate. She discarded the mask of the Merciful Saint and demanded it as the shrewd Lynette.

No matter who the soul belonged to, the one standing here was Lynette Ceryes.

“Stop wailing for eternity and hand that secret art over to me!”

Quill burst into the Black Knights’ station and ran toward Geis’s office.

His former subordinates, wondering what was happening, began to follow him. By the time he reached the Commander’s room, a small crowd had gathered behind him.

“Commander!”

With a rudeness worthy of Sascha, he forgot both to knock and greet, kicking the door open. The hinges of the old door gave way, and the wood skidded across the floor at an odd angle before coming to a halt.

“You look well,” Geis said, his eyes wide with surprise.

Quill lowered his head.

The desperate gap in protection that would follow the moment the contract was dispelled—for the current Knights, it would be a total war on a scale never seen before. That was the possibility.

He was about to ask for something terrifying. From the comrades who had accepted him.

“…I have come to ask you to lend me the strength of the Knights.”

“Oh? And what do you intend to do?”

Geis asked, as if watching something highly entertaining. As Quill raised his head, for some reason, he saw Lynette’s back in his mind’s eye. Her dignified figure in the rain, spine straight, having cast aside all hesitation.

He straightened his own collar and planted his feet firmly. Looking Geis straight in the eye, he spoke.

“I am going to fetch my fiancée.”

Instantly, a cheer erupted from behind Quill.

“That’s more like it!”

“Hey, someone get the Captain’s uniform!”

Ignoring the festive chaos typical of the Black Knights that began to break out around him, Quill tried to protest.

“Wait! I have resigned from the Knights—”

“We’ll just leave the rank insignia off! You can’t protect a princess without at least wearing your armored coat!”

“No, but—”

A familiar sword was thrust before the flustered Quill.

It was Sascha, grinning broadly.

“Well, everyone’s been waiting for this.”

Cries of “Exactly!” and “He’s right!” supported Sascha. Geis closed his eyes as if choosing to look the other way, and a familiar black knight’s coat was draped over Quill’s shoulders with a flourish.

“There you go. Acting Apprentice Knight Quill Langbart. We Black Knights, though bathed in blood, find no silver or gold?”

Prompted by Sascha and pushed by his comrades, Quill took the sword in hand and answered with a wry smile.

“…Only in our bonds do we find eternal wealth.”