Third Arc: Thirty-Ninth Chapter

"Michael?! Why are you here?!"

Leaning on the flung-open door, breathing hard, was Michael, who should have been on his sickbed. Seen after so long, his already slim body looked thinned further by the illness, gaunt and worn. His face was deathly pale, his lips dry and cracked. But in that hollow face, only his jet-black eyes had kept their shine.

A feebly raised hand reached toward me where a guard held my arm. I wanted to take it and hold him up, but the guard's grip bit into my arm too hard to shake off, and it was maddening.

"Cosette... cough... are you... all right...?"

"Michael! Never mind me, worry about yourself! Why did you come!"

"Because... I can't leave the one I love in danger all alone, now can I?"

He said it and smiled weakly.

I stretched my hand out desperately, but Dunhill's cane struck it down with a smack.

"Ow...!"

"Cosette!"

"Well now, if it isn't His Majesty the King. Welcome. I'm delighted you'd come all this way to our house."

"You...!"

At Michael's hard glare, Dunhill snorted a laugh. Then he shrugged with an exaggerated "oh dear."

"But are you a fool? In a body eaten through with poison like that. Love makes a man a wreck, as the old folk used to say. If you were this useless, I needn't have crossed such a dangerous bridge at all."

"What did you say!"

"But it saves me the trouble of finishing you off. In a way, you might be a fine king, letting me take it so easy! Hahahaha!"

Watching Dunhill laugh on like a madman, I ground my teeth in frustration.

After that, the guards took us to a room inside the mansion. Michael, who seemed to find even walking hard, was marched along with a guard gripping his arm roughly, and bound the same way myself, I could only watch, and it gnawed at me.

It was a room on the same floor as Lyonetta's private room, on the opposite side across the stairs. The door opened and we were shoved in as if thrown, but instead of the cell I'd expected, it was a spacious room. The furnishings were made for a man, though the layout was almost the same as Lyonetta's, so perhaps it was the room for the mansion's master.

"A fine room, isn't it? Rest easy until morning. You've only a little sliver of life left, after all."

His tone alone was deeply pitying, but he was laughing as he said it, and moved to shut the door. At his back I flung a curse like a sore loser.

"Not killing us at once, how very kind of you! We might escape, you know!"

"Of course I'd love to make so happy a report right away, but Lady Lyonetta hates being woken. Ah, I'll post guards, so I don't think you'll be escaping that room. Rest easy."

With that, Dunhill shut the door for good this time. A key turned with a clack, and the footsteps faded away.

Once we'd seen him off, Anje and I carried Michael between us, an arm over each of our shoulders, to the bed in the next room.

"Michael, are you all right?"

"Anje, thank you. And Cosette... I'm sorry. To make you spend a night in a shabby room like this. I wanted our first night together to be a wonderful memory... ngh..."

"That night is never going to come, so don't trouble yourself. You seem lively enough."

"Haha... cough"

"Michael!"

"Michael!"

I'd nearly relaxed, thinking he had it in him to banter, when Michael suddenly coughed hard, and a drop of blood stained the pure white sheet.

"You're not lively at all! Why did you come in a body like this!"

"...I told you, didn't I? I can't leave the one I love in danger all alone."

He said it and tossed me a wink, and at last I sighed, exasperated.

"Haah... never mind that, how do you feel? Elliot said you weren't allowed any visitors."

"Yeah. Thanks to the medicine Elliot scraped together, I came round. And then I heard you'd slipped in here. Couldn't very well sit still after that, could I. So I slipped out too."

"Don't slip out! But I'm relieved you're livelier than I feared... wait, what a fever!"

"Uuuh... well, maybe a touch feverish."

As my mind, stirred up by one upheaval after another, began to cool, the sheer heat of Michael's hand startled me. His hand burned, and big beads of sweat rose on his fine brow before my eyes.

"Such a high fever...! We have to get a doctor!"

"Lady Cosette! Please calm down. But what do we do. There's no way they'd call a doctor for us..."

"I'm all right. More to the point, Anje, were you able to take it?"

"Huh? Y-yes... what is this?"

What Anje drew out, saying so, was a small parcel wrapped in black cloth.