Roxana
Chapter 83
Chapter 83
The Way to Protect the Female Lead’s Older Brother
Chapter 83
* * *
The next day, an unusual commotion stirred near the main gate of Pedelian.
“What is the matter?”
Cassis asked Isidore, who had come to see him.
“Lord Orca Hyperion is requesting an audience, claiming a personal acquaintance with the Young Lord.”
At those words, Cassis’s brow furrowed.
“Turn him away.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Isidore turned on his heel as if he had expected nothing less.
A personal visit at a time like this. It was impossible to tell whether the man harbored an ulterior motive or simply lacked common sense altogether.
Of course, it was not as though he had no acquaintance with Orca Hyperion whatsoever.
Yet they were hardly close enough to warrant granting him entry under the current circumstances.
In the end, Orca received no welcome at the Pedelian gates and was turned away cold.
About an hour later, Orca was caught attempting to scale the fortress walls atop an aerial beast.
“Oh dear, my goodness. It seems I’ve been terribly rude, quite unintentionally.”
Naturally, he was apprehended and bound by the Pedelian guards.
“I was so absorbed in scouting a beast habitat in the vicinity that I had no idea this wall rising before me was the Pedelian fortress gate until I’d already crossed it. What an unfortunate mishap, wouldn’t you say?”
Yet Orca showed not the slightest hint of tension, spouting such absurd nonsense with a shameless smirk.
“Orca, you… You crazy bastard…”
Pandora, who had been dragged in alongside him, gritted her teeth in fury.
When Orca had asked her to briefly transfer command of her beast, Turobe, she had never imagined he would pull a stunt so utterly bizarre.
She felt thoroughly betrayed, as though struck a heavy blow from behind.
“Do you honestly expect me to believe such utter nonsense?”
Just then, Cassis entered the chamber where the two were being held.
Having overheard Orca from outside, his voice was chillingly low.
“Ah, the Young Lord of Blue!”
In contrast, Orca beamed at the sight of Cassis.
“My dearest friend, the other half of my soul! How long has it been? I was so heartbroken when you cruelly rejected my request to visit. What a sheer delight it is to see you again like this!”
“Dearest friend? Since when did you and I ever share anything resembling friendship?”
Orca smiled cheerfully, completely unfazed by Cassis’s icy reception.
He was always like this whenever they crossed paths, so his frivolous antics were hardly a surprise.
Refusing to be drawn into Orca’s rhythm, Cassis interrogated him in a dry, businesslike tone.
“State your true purpose for attempting to visit Pedelian in the first place. Only then will I decide what to do with you.”
“Ah, that? It’s nothing grand. I just happened to be in the area and thought I’d drop by to say hello.”
A radiant smile bloomed across Orca’s face. Cassis’s expression, on the other hand, turned only colder.
“Well, that really is everything, so there isn’t much more context to explain. Still, since I am technically a trespasser, I suppose you’ll have to investigate, won’t you? In that case, I’ll be in your care for a while.”
It seemed Orca’s goal had never been to sneak into Pedelian undetected in the first place.
He appeared entirely content simply to have gotten his foot through the door.
Indeed, had he intended to act in secret, he wouldn’t have so brazenly flown in atop an aerial beast for all to see.
Cassis narrowed his eyes at Orca for a moment, then turned to Isidore.
“And the captured beast?”
“It has been locked in a cage, my lord.”
Having become an accomplice out of nowhere, Pandora glared furiously at Orca beside her, seething with indignation.
Cassis did not forget to confiscate all the items used as mediums to maintain bonds with imprinted beasts from Hyperion.
Orca remained leisurely as ever, taking off and handing over the string of ornaments draped across his body.
There were so many that the pile taken from Orca alone formed a sizable mound.
Pandora had no choice but to swallow her pride and take off her bracelets and necklaces to hand them over as well.
“You will be detained until a response arrives from Hyperion.”
“Of course, rules are rules, after all. My cousin and I completely understand. Isn’t that right, dear cousin?”
Orca smiled slickly, seeking Pandora’s agreement.
Cassis engaged no further with the uninvited guests and left the room.
“By the way, is the food here good? I’ve been surviving on jerky and wild greens for days now, and my stomach feels completely hollow.”
Once Cassis was gone, Orca shamelessly asked the guards escorting him away.
His nonchalance left Pandora and the guards utterly dumbfounded, letting out incredulous chuckles.
* * *
“What is wrong with you? What were you thinking?”
A short while later, locked in a cell, Pandora demanded fiercely in a hushed voice.
Orca, however, was entirely preoccupied with ravenously devouring the meal provided by Pedelian.
“Don’t glare at me with daggers like that, cousin. Just think of it as a brief vacation for a few days. The food here is actually pretty good, too.”
“Vacation, my foot! Did you even think about the awkward position you’re putting Hyperion in?”
“If our family could be brought to its knees over just one person like me, we would have fallen long ago.”
Pandora was rendered speechless.
She didn’t know whether to call him immature, brazen, or just plain out of his mind.
She had explicitly explained what had happened between Agriche and Pedelian just recently, yet the moment she turned her back, he had acted with such utter recklessness!
Hyperion had not yet decided its official stance on the matter.
In the midst of all this, with Hyperion’s heir, Orca, breaking into Pedelian, the Head of White would surely clutch the back of his neck in fury upon hearing the news.
“Did you… did you use me?”
Then a sudden, chilling suspicion struck her.
Could his plan have been to pin everything on Pandora and wash his hands of it if things went south?
Perhaps that was why he had used her beast to cross the fortress walls.
A cold dread crept through her, and Pandora bit her lip.
Yet Orca shamelessly countered as if she should have known all along.
“Hm? Of course I used you. But didn’t you agree to it, cousin? Why act surprised now?”
“You…!”
“I don’t have an aerial beast, so without you, I would have had to give up on that Poison Butterfly even after spotting it. Isn’t this clearly fate? Now, all I have to do is find that Poison Butterfly while freeloading here for a few days…”
Orca muttered to himself, sinking into a world of his own.
“No matter how I look at it, that Poison Butterfly clearly had a master. Is there a Beast Tamer in Pedelian I don’t know about? Could it be the veiled sister of the Young Lord of Blue?”
Watching him, Pandora felt her anger subside just a little.
“If that’s the case, killing them to snatch it away is completely out of the question…”
It seemed Orca hadn’t used her with the sinister intentions she had feared.
“Wait, could a Poison Butterfly that already had a master even be tamed again once the imprint was severed…?”
Indeed, while Orca possessed all kinds of highest-grade beasts, he had a bizarre lack of affinity with aerial beasts.
Thus, he had likely only thought of Pandora’s Turobe as the easiest way to get over the fortress wall this time.
“By the way, cousin, do you have no appetite? Can I eat yours, then?”
“Shut up.”
Still, no matter what, it was impossible to look favorably upon Orca, who was utterly carefree after landing her in such a mess.
Pandora sharply slapped away Orca’s hand as it sneaked toward her tray.
Then, with deliberate defiance, she began shoveling the food from her tray into her mouth.
Beside her, Orca, who had been eyeing her meal with greedy anticipation, slumped in despair, but naturally, she couldn’t care less.
* * *
“Did you have guests? It seemed rather noisy outside today.”
At Roxana’s casual remark, Cassis’s gaze snapped straight to her.
She seemed to have noticed that he had been lost in thought over the matter with Orca.
“Not guests—uninvited intruders.”
Cassis spoke dismissively.
“So they won’t be using the annex?”
“As I said, they are not guests.”
Cassis’s response was so resolute that Roxana nearly laughed despite herself.
Even so, wasn’t this treatment a bit too dismissive?
“They are from Hyperion, after all. Is it really all right to treat them like that?”
Cassis’s hand, reaching for the water glass on the table, froze.
He stared at Roxana as if asking how she knew.
Then, remembering what he had momentarily forgotten, he let out a soft breath.
Roxana blinked with an innocent expression.
Just as Cassis suspected, she had already learned through her Poison Butterflies that Orca Hyperion had come to Pedelian.
Though whether one could truly call it a visit was debatable.
“Well, it’s none of my concern anyway.”
Roxana lowered her head once more and resumed eating. Cassis, too, said nothing further about the matter.
Partly because Roxana had asked for no explanation, but even without that, Cassis simply did not want to speak of Orca to her.
Yet he could not understand why he felt this way.
No…
In truth, it wasn’t that he didn’t know. He was merely pretending not to.
Having somehow lost his appetite, Cassis furrowed his brows faintly and looked down at the plate before him.