“Oh… Do you mean me, Lord Tavril?”

  The man who Sien was looking at pointed to himself in confusion, so shocked at having been singled out that he forgot all manner of grace.

  “Yeah, you! I knew it; You’re Count Klein, aren’t you?”

  Sien walked a step closer to the surprised Count, looking childish and almost friendly in the way that he smiled and leaned closer to the man. Although he wasn’t sure why it was happening, the Count was pleased that the Duke Tavril, said to be hostile towards absolutely everyone, was seemingly showing him favor in front of all the other nobles like this. He recalled not having much more luck than anyone else at getting close to the Fae Duke, but if there was any sort of chance that he’d been mistaken and that there had actually been some sort of favorability towards him, then the Count was going to hold onto it as hard as he possibly could!

  “Ah well yes, it is indeed me! I’m delighted that you would remember me like this, after such a long time.”

  “Yeah, it has been a long time since we talked, huh? I think the st time was… Oh yeah, I guess it was on that founding day party after my mom died, wasn’t it? When you tried to lie your way into becoming my friend?”

  The Count shivered, immediately realizing that his hopeful thoughts had been completely wrong. There were murmuring sounds from the watching crowd as they closely watched the interaction, and the Count could feel the judging eyes of the others, looking at him as if he were somehow unscrupulous, despite the hypocritical fact that almost all of them had attempted the exact same things at one point or another.

  “W- well, I merely-”

  “You merely wanted to be my friend, right? No matter what it took? Hah, yeah, I get it. I’d wanna be my friend too! But you know what?”

  Sien straightened up, beaming an extra wide and malicious smile to the Count.

  “I don’t like greedy little liars like you! Not a single one!”

  And before anyone could stop him, Sien pulled out his sword, expertly severing one of the man’s arms from his body, and leaving a long red gash across the man’s chest. As screams erupted around him and the heavily bleeding Count colpsed to his knees in both shock and pain, Sien tauntingly waved his bloody sword at him with a look of pure sadistic glee on his face.

  “Maybe this’ll teach you not to try and touch what’s not yours anymore!”

  The Prince immediately rushed forwards towards Sien, roughly grabbing and pulling him back from behind, dragging him away from the heavily bleeding Count. His voice was shaking with fear and disbelief as he yelled apprehensively at his cousin.

  “Why Sien?! I can’t believe you would just… Just…”

  As the Prince swallowed deeply like he was desperately holding back tears and nausea, Sien just let himself be carried, hanging indifferently in the Prince’s arms.

  “Haven’t you heard the rumors, Reece? They made me angry. And I get violent when I get angry.”

  Hearing Sien’s bored sounding words, the Prince immediately let go of Sien as if he were holding something completely disgusting, and his voice cracked as he shouted with indignity.

  “You would attack someone for just a slight annoyance like this?! I tried to defend you so many times in the past, cousin. But if it’s like this… If you’re going to behave like this, then-!”

  “Then I’m a monster just like that say? Is that what’s about to come out of your mouth, Reece?”

  Sien’s wry gaze staring up at him made the Prince bite his lip. He’d been just about to say it, but having been called out on it made him feel almost irredeemable.

  “Hah, yeah. Look at that stupid face of yours; Of course you were gonna say it.”

  Sien crossed his arms for a moment as if he were displeased, but only a few seconds ter he shrugged and gave the Prince a mischievous, almost scheming smile.

  “Hey, but how can I possibly be a monster when a real child-selling one is right there?”

  “...What…?”

  Pointing back behind him to the bleeding pile that was the Count, Sien spoke a little louder, as if he wanted everyone to hear.

  “That guy there, Count Klein. He’s been selling kids off to neighboring countries to make some money. Steals ‘em from their families and everything too. That sounds way more monstrous than me, don’t you think?”

  The nobles that had been compassionate enough to try and help the poor Count all suddenly paused at the damning accusation, sending the man wary gnces as they quickly distanced themselves from him. The Prince, too, shot the Count a quick dirty look before turning his eyes back to Sien.

  “...You’re telling the truth about this?”

  “Hey, I’m a Fae to you people aren’t I? I couldn’t possibly tell a lie.”

  The Prince scowled at Sien’s mocking tone, and took one st distrusting gnce between Sien and the Count, as if he were trying to make up his mind on what to do.

  “...And you’re absolutely sure that you’re right about this? How do you know?”

  “Oh that? That’s easy.”

  Sien looked past the Prince as he slowly spoke, menacingly scanning his eyes over the nobles so that the threat in his words would be perfectly clear.

  “I hear about the stupid things these nobles do all the time.”

  There was no one in the room who didn’t understand what he was saying. It wasn’t hard to find a noble, who believed themselves above almost everything, that had committed some kind of atrocious crime. They weren’t so stupid that they didn’t know they could easily become the next Count Klein if they crossed Sien the wrong way.

  This time, no one was willing to get in Sien’s way as he left with Ritt.

  ~~~

  “...Sien?”

  “Hmm?”

  “...What just happened?”

  Ritt had been silent for a long while as Sien dragged him along by the hand, but he couldn't allow himself to be quiet any longer; If Sien was going to give him the right to ask questions, then he felt that now was one of the most important times to utilize it.

  “...Oh right, you saw that too, didn’t you?”

  Sien huffed and ruffled his hair, letting go of Ritt’s hand and stopping for a moment. He’d been so absorbed in his own little world of self satisfaction that he’d completely forgotten to control what he showed of himself in front of Ritt.

  “Yeah, of course it makes sense that you’d wanna know what was happening, huh?”

  Ritt nodded quietly, with his gaze absolutely locked onto Sien’s face. Seeing this, Sien couldn’t help but sigh and take Ritt’s hand again, redoubling his efforts to get them both back to his room as he marched on.

  “Well, let’s just say that they made me angry, so I made an example out of the Count.”

  “...Is that so…”

  Ritt both wanted to believe and disbelieve it. He’d seen the cruelty that Sien was capable of, both on the battlefield and towards those who’d served him. He’d seen up close a maid being beheaded just because she pried too harshly, so it made sense that even a noble wouldn’t be allowed to commit such a sin to the almighty seeming Sien either. Ritt had seen proven time and time again that the strong could freely trample on the weak as they liked. And just like with the maid, he truly did believe that it wasn’t his pce to try to preach to Sien when he was just a powerless freeloader here.

  But then there was the side of Ritt that didn’t want to believe such things.

  For all that he’d once thought of Sien as a monster, he’s seen unending kindness and many moments of wisdom from the man. Ritt wanted to believe that Sien was actually not the monstrous killing machine that he was portrayed to be. He wanted to believe that there was something more, something greater, behind Sien’s actions. Because if that weren’t the case, and Sien was actually just as capricious as people cimed him to be, then that meant that Ritt didn’t truly know Sien like he thought he was beginning to in the first pce.

  Such a realization would be too heartbreaking for Ritt to bear.

  Gncing back and seeing how pained the quiet Ritt’s face had become, Sien once again stopped in his tracks. He’d said his excuse flippantly, not really thinking very much of it, but the thought that his actions and words might have suddenly made Ritt see him in a negative light was terrifying. He absolutely didn’t want Ritt to begin to think of him like a monster like everyone else did!

  It was hard for Sien to stop himself from yelling as he whipped around and took a hold of Ritt’s shoulders.

  “No, I’m sorry, that’s not it! There’s more to it, I swear, but… I just can’t tell you about it here.”

  “Ah… Is that true?”

  Seeing Sien gravely nod, Ritt couldn’t help the small hopeful smile that blossomed on his face. It seemed that he’d been right to believe in Sien as he had, and that fact tickled at Ritt’s heart. Perhaps he really was beginning to understand Sien like he’d hoped.