TSMT 59

Chapter 59

A Bloody Reunion

Diana Brienne.

Anne.

Anne, my master.

He still remembered vividly. Those loathsome silver-gray eyes brimming with tears as they looked at him.

Her body, standing with the light at her back, glowed faintly around the edges.

At that time, the warmth of the girl’s hand was so, so warm that it branded his chest like a burn. Feeling warmth directed solely at himself for the first time in his life, Giscard cursed himself for craving it so desperately.

“Giscard.”

Whenever her gentle voice reached him, he crumbled helplessly.

Diana Brienne had promised to call his name freely, without hesitation. She taught him letters, saying she would become his master.

“Diana Brienne.”

Those were the first words Giscard ever wrote. He wrote her name even before he wrote his own. Yet, embarrassed, he hid under the desk and filled the underside with her name.

“Diana Brienne”

Looking at those letters, with their strangely warm curves, Giscard sometimes lay beside the paper where her name sprawled across, simply staring at it.

The letters seemed to protect him, like a magical talisman.

Time passed as he stayed by her side. Again and again, he wanted to ruin her, this girl who extended kindness to him. She was the daughter of the man who had cast him into hell, yet she dared to act kind. It was disgusting.

But her uprightness only shone brighter against his twisted desires.

Looking back, she always seemed to know what he needed. She taught him letters, taught him swordsmanship, shielded him from being killed by monsters, and even strained to protect him from being sold.

Everything he learned there was useful for his survival. She was a strange person indeed. She tried to shrink herself, to remain unnoticed, yet the more she lowered her head, the more she stood out.

A queen.

She had said that’s what she would become. But wouldn’t she fit better as a king? Someone standing at the very top, gazing down at everyone else? Still, if her wish was to be queen, then there was no choice but to grant it.

Diana Brienne. She was a woman who would never be a period in his life.

Faint yet enticing, she made him want to possess her, and yet she slipped from his grasp, driving him mad.

Through nights dark as pitch, through moonlight falling upon the window. Even when he rejected that light, calling it part of the night, in the end, he gathered it into his arms because it was too precious.

Because of that light cast down in the darkness, he could breathe, he could live.

He could not possess her, wanted to break her, yet cherished her for fear she might shatter.

But in the end, he was abandoned. The truth was, they were never bound by any promises. It had always been his one-sided desire and greed.

He was the one who settled for the complacent relationship of slave and master. So in the end, to her, he remained a pitiful man.

“Is that how you were dumped, then?”

Breaking into the young king’s thoughts, the knight Rogaphel asked. Giscard gave the curious young knight a cold smile. At that, the others’ faces turned pale as snow.

Their king, the hero of the Kingdom of Lodbrok who had slain the dragon. The abandoned prince. Even he had one painful past.

In the past, because of his mother Herya’s wrong choice, he had lived as a slave in the household of Duke Panborough. And he had owed much to that duke’s eldest daughter—Diana Brienne.

After the war, Giscard had ordered his men to pursue that woman of the duke’s house, but her whereabouts remained unknown. Seeing their king’s abnormal obsession, the new knight Rogaphel, smiling innocently, had asked what kind of woman she was.

Was she his first love?

It was a question shocking enough to horrify everyone else, but Rogaphel was pure. And surprisingly, Giscard had candidly spoken of her.

The woman who made him a slave, who ruled as his master, and who finally abandoned him. And yet, ironically, what displeased him was not the question itself but that Rogaphel had dared to ask about her. It felt like a childish possessiveness—like having a jewel and not wanting to show it off.

In the end, all the knights could do was listen to their king’s story and ask about his circumstances and feelings.

Rogaphel’s conclusion was simple: their king, Giscard Lodbrok, had fallen in unrequited love and been dumped.

“Dumped?”

“Yes, wasn’t that what happened?”

“…”

“You wanted the relationship to continue, but she unilaterally cut it off, didn’t she? Normally, that’s called being dumped.”

But Rogaphel was still just a young knight. He had spoken the cruelest words out of sheer innocence. Giscard was known as a strict enforcer of military law—surely he would draw his sword against this insolent boy…

“That may be true.”

Giscard admitted it calmly. The knights silently vowed to instill more caution in the new recruits. A puppy too young to know to fear the lion—that was Rogaphel.

“You—you’re insane!”

“Why, what did I say?!”

“You really…!”

The knights scolded him, but Giscard, ignoring the commotion, stared blankly ahead. Already, seven years had passed. Such a long time.

The slave boy with youthful traces was gone. His once unripe gaze now carried the cold sharpness of a drawn blade.

The king of Lodbrok, the land of swords, had never once forgotten his master. Deep down, he was still that same slave of his youth.

“Your Majesty, one more question.”

“…Rogaphel!”

The commander, Clover, tried to stop him, but reckless youth cannot be restrained.

“Speak.”

“So then—did you remember the kindness that young lady showed you when you stood with your sword?”

“No. Not at all.”

Giscard smiled bitterly.

Even if he had been a hidden prince, how could he not take revenge on that wretched household that abused him knowing who he was? Even aside from vengeance, once he had ascended the throne, it was inevitable that Panborough and House Brienne would face punishment.

“So, in the end, Your Majesty chose revenge.”

The girl with hair pale as moonlight, with eyes holding silver stars. When he swung his sword, he remembered her gentle voice. And yet his blade, as if naturally, cut toward Panborough.

“That house was truly vile.”

“…”

“When I was gone, they had already found another slave.”

He smiled coldly, recalling the blood-soaked dungeon and the duke’s last moments. A man so depraved, so sadistic, that it was hard to believe the same blood flowed in the woman’s veins.

Kindness.

She had begged him to remember kindness. But how could he? That household’s evil deserved nothing but death.

“To ask me to remember kindness, knowing her father’s crimes—what a brazen request it was.”

“Indeed.”

As if she had foreseen this day, Diana had left him with that plea. And Giscard Lodbrok had answered it with bloody vengeance.

Kindness was ignored, replaced with revenge. That was the end of their relationship.

“No wonder she’s so hard to find.”

Giscard muttered. In the end, he never found his master. About a year after his escape, Diana Brienne left home.

Officially, it was said she was recuperating due to ill health, but in truth, it was her younger sister Alexa who had been in care. Diana had vanished, simply evaporated one day.

And she never reappeared.

He knew why. She did not forgive him.

She had never forgiven him for trampling Panborough and House Brienne.

But what could he do? Giscard still wanted to fulfill Diana’s promise. The slave had never abandoned his identity. Like a dog with its nose to the ground, he kept tracking, tracking, tracking his master’s scent.

And then, at last, he caught the faintest trace.

Giscard’s horse stopped at a place: the Neustria Academy, run by the Grand Duke of Blake in the western Lodbrok kingdom.

There stood pristine white buildings, plain and clean. The academy, quiet within its iron gates, stood in cruel contrast to the knights on black horses.

“Has the Grand Duke of Blake been informed in advance?”

At Clover’s cautious question, Giscard gave no reply.

“Sigh. We have yet to receive a reply.”

Chancellor Ribus, who had been silent until now, spoke, displeasure dripping from his voice. Clover could imagine his frustration.

“And the Grand Duke himself?”

“They say he’s away inspecting the territory. Supposedly, he’ll be back in three days.”

This place was practically the front yard of the ducal residence. Even as king, barging in with troops could spark unknown consequences. Ribus pulled at his hair.

“Your Majesty, why exactly are we here?”

The knights asked. Looking at the academy, Giscard smiled brightly for the first time in a long while.

“To fetch my bride.”

The king’s amethyst eyes glittered.

Yes, the slave had found his master.

The one he had longed for so much that even the sticky, rotten sweetness of his slave days felt like a cherished dream. The one who had built him a beautiful hell at the cost of everything.

The master who had hated him so much she never came back. Diana Brienne. His wife.

He had found her at last.

And so, just as he had once invaded Panborough, he intruded upon the Grand Duke of Blake’s academy, his inner court. Quietly, he dismounted and walked through the campus.

If he made too much noise, his master might refuse him once more and vanish. And then, his face lit with a strange gleam.

Ahead, he saw the back of a woman with reddish-brown hair. The color had changed, but that proud, upright bearing was the same.

He crept closer.

At last, to embrace that long-imagined moment of reunion. But the scene before his eyes froze his face.

“This is training you how to respond. Now, smile.”

The moment he saw it, Giscard did not hesitate—he swung his sword. A man screamed in agony as his arm was severed. Blood sprayed in all directions.

Their reunion was neither beautiful nor a desperate cry of curse. It was simply drenched in blood, reeking of iron—a blood-soaked reunion.

Giscard had finally found his master.