Chapter : 49
Nobles were allowed to maintain and operate their own knightly orders within the scope of their estates according to the size and wealth of their houses, but their activities were restricted to their territories, and they were forbidden from stationing troops in the capital.
Only a few escort knights for minimal personal protection were permitted to reside in the capital.
Thus, the Duke of Brockburke had stationed only three or four knights at his Everen mansion and had no forces prepared to resist an assault.
In other words, for the duke to oppose the empress, he would have had to either join forces with the crown prince like Marquis Dalton or retreat to his own estate.
But before the duke could even leave Everen, he had already been surrounded and cut off in his mansion by the empress.
Why the empress delayed her strike against the Duke of Brockburke was unknown. She had swiftly secured the loyalty of the imperial knights and, through them, even gained the support of the nobles.
Perhaps she had been attempting to win the duke over, to persuade him?
Yet the duke’s actions were no less bafflingly slow.
Why had he not escaped Everen before the empress’s encirclement closed in?
It could not have been that he was waiting for the crown prince’s return when no news of victory at Aoleum had yet arrived.
To outsiders, both sides’ incomprehensible decisions seemed unfathomable. Yet behind them lay the same reason.
That reason was none other than Kaelyn Brockburke.
On the empress’s side, Grand Duke Rion had hesitated to strike at the Brockburke family because of Kaelyn’s existence, while the duke himself could not abandon the capital before his daughter’s return.
In any case, their grace period was over, and the siege had begun.
If the encirclement started at dusk, then at least three or four hours had already passed. By now, the duke’s household might already have fallen.
The only sliver of hope lay in the order Calix had given immediately after learning that the Duke of Brockburke had turned away from the empress.
He had commanded the remnants of the crown prince’s knightly order in Everen to defend the duke’s family.
But even that hope could not be counted on too heavily, for most forces had to be marched to Aoleum, leaving only the barest minimum in Everen.
With a grim expression, Calix asked one thing before setting off for Everen.
He had his suspicions, but he needed certainty in order to determine his course once he entered the capital.
“Marquis Dalton, why did you and the Duke of Brockburke turn away from the empress in the end? You betrayed me and sided with the empress and Grand Duke Rion—no one more actively than you.”
Marquis Dalton’s face flushed red.
He bowed his head and spoke.
“Your Highness, I committed the crime of disloyalty, a crime repayable only with death. If you take my life, I will accept it. But I beg you, punish me alone, and spare my children, for they only followed their fa—”
Calix cut off the marquis’s rambling words like a blade.
“I asked why you opposed the empress. I have no time to listen to your excuses.”
The sharp, icy words had barely fallen when Aby, standing behind them, suddenly rushed forward and shouted.
“Your Highness! As soon as Grand Duke Rion ascended the throne, he demanded that the Duke of Brockburke hand over Lin—Kaelyn Brockburke.”
Aby was visibly agitated, and in that same moment, Calix’s fists clenched so tightly that the veins bulged across his knuckles.
As I thought…
It was just as Calix had suspected.
Aby paused to catch his breath, then spat out more words.
“When the duke said he would never allow Lin to become Rion’s empress, Rion demanded she be dragged to him at once. And when he learned that Kaelyn had gone to Your Highness—”
Aby trembled and fell silent mid-sentence.
Calix’s voice, cold as ice, urged him on.
“And when he learned? What then?”
Shuddering at Calix’s cutting voice and fierce gaze, Aby stammered on.
“He… he said if she would not become his empress, then he would seize her and kill her. Such cruelty… The duke opposed him from that moment and declared his support for Your Highness.”
No sooner had Aby finished than Marquis Dalton added hastily,
“I have stood with the duke from the beginning. I never truly served the empress.”
But Calix no longer heard him.
A blazing light burned in his eyes, seething hatred churning within.
The veins in his hands bulged, his left fist shaking visibly.
With a thunderous voice, Calix gave his command.
“Ride at full speed to the Duke of Brockburke’s estate! Leave not a single man encircling it alive! And then we march on the palace. Grand Duke Rion and the empress need not be captured—kill them on sight!”
Rion had dared to usurp his place. For that alone, he deserved no mercy.
Yet until now, Calix had not thought his younger brother must necessarily die, knowing that Rion had been made emperor only through the empress’s ambition.
But that man—!
That man had dared to order Kaelyn seized and killed!
Dared!!!
There was not a speck of mercy left in Calix’s heart.
If he could, he would have stormed the palace at once and severed Rion’s head first.
But rescuing the Duke of Brockburke came before all else.
He was Kaelyn’s father—the man she had begged Calix to protect.
Spurring his horse as he gave the order, Calix and his knightly order, along with Marquis Dalton’s forces, charged at full speed toward the duke’s mansion.
The relatively small size of the mansion gave some defensive advantage, but the Brockburke estate was entirely surrounded by imperial knights. The crown prince’s knights who remained, a few of the Brockburke family’s own, Duke Brockburke himself, and Earl Luke Ford fought back the advancing enemy but were already on the verge of collapse.
The mansion had only one entrance at the front, so the defenders held the main hall, fending off the rush of enemies. But their numbers were too great, and the defenders were nearing their limits.
Clang. Crash!
The sound of shattering windows rang throughout the house.
Blocked from entering through the narrow front, the imperial knights tried to force their way inside by breaking the windows.
Household servants rushed to stop them but were driven back by the armed knights’ ferocity.
The breach of the front hall and the invasion through shattered windows happened almost simultaneously.
At last, the imperial knights launched a full-scale assault and completely overwhelmed the mansion.
Only death remained.
Kaelyn…
The duke stood back-to-back with his son, glaring at the enemies closing in.
On the brink of his final moment, only thoughts of his beloved daughter filled his mind.
Fate was cruel.
All of this had begun with Kaelyn’s love.
For the sake of Grand Duke Rion, the man she loved, she had sided with him rather than the crown prince, the rightful heir.
But once the wheels of treason began turning, Kaelyn abandoned her love, fleeing to Calix.
And when Rion, robbed of her affection, ascended as emperor, he was consumed by a maddened obsession—if he could not have her, he would kill her.
That a once-gentle, rational man could fall to declaring “If I cannot possess her, she must die” was horrifying.
And the woman he meant was his own precious daughter, Kaelyn.
The Duke of Brockburke could no longer support Rion, and though he had dutifully upheld his promise even in aiding Ethan Darkus’s invasion, what he received in return was betrayal from his daughter and the madness of a new emperor intent on killing her.
Though his daughter had abandoned him, a father could not watch the death of the child he loved.
Thus, he chose to oppose Rion—and even now, facing death, he prayed only that Kaelyn would survive.
Back-to-back with his father, Luke thought of Kaelyn as well, and of another woman.
Aby…
Luke knew nothing of the Dalton family’s fate.
He had only heard that after rejecting loyalty to Rion, Marquis Dalton declared his support for the Duke of Brockburke.
After that, the two houses had been isolated, with no means of contact.
Aby, survive somehow…
Luke swung his sword desperately, praying with all his heart.
Crash! Smash! Rumble!
With a deafening roar as if every window shattered at once, enemies surged in from all sides. The duke and Luke charged toward them.
But then—
From behind the mass of imperial knights came dying screams.
In an instant, confusion erupted. The imperial knights’ assault suddenly shifted.
Those who had been charging at the duke and Luke now turned their backs, stumbling backward as if driven by some unseen force.
It was a bizarre reversal—the duke and Luke cutting down imperial knights from behind as they retreated toward them.
Uncomprehending but undaunted, the duke and Luke pressed their attack until, soon enough, only heaps of imperial corpses littered the ground.
And then they saw the ones who had come to their rescue.
It was none other than Crown Prince Calix and his knightly order.
