Duke of the Beast and the Vicarious Bride - Chapter 77

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※ This work contains depictions of coercive relationships, explicit language, and other graphic content. Reader discretion is advised.

Fiona still only encountered Caligo in darkness; she had never seen his features. Imagining the husband whose face she did not even know in combat was nearly impossible.

“When I take that beast into battle, I expect only one thing from him.”

Jayden tilted his glass, taking a leisurely sip of wine before continuing.

“Annihilation.”

The crimson liquid in the rounded goblet swirled like monster’s blood.

“Not a single monster that comes within the beast’s range survives. I grant you, your husband makes a useful hunting hound.”

Though she found his attitude—using Caligo thoroughly while still treating him as a lowly beast—distasteful, it was not mere displeasure she felt. It was unease, in the name of worry.

Was this what it meant to care for a husband, even one she resented? The news of an expedition that might last days stirred concern within her.

The retaliatory couplings with Caligo had continued until recently. Fiona still harboured resentment towards him, yet at the same time, a strange new feeling had begun to take root.

It was his manner—oddly docile and gentle, for all his rough actions. Their obligatory marital relations were still marked by thoughtless entry and brutish movements, yet beyond that, there was no further violence, no cruelty.

Caligo was uncouth, but not vicious. He never hurt her beyond endurance, never deliberately did what she disliked. He simply, like a golem wound with a single command, performed insertion and emission, then withdrew when the act was done.

That strange incongruity kept giving Fiona pause. She found herself nurturing a hope—a wish to interpret things differently. Was it truly hatred that had driven him? Could it be that his actions had not, in fact, been coloured by emotion?

Thus, of late, her relations with Caligo had not been entirely arduous. No, if she were honest—as she had been from the start—the troubling truth was that she rather enjoyed the act.

“A widow’s face already, mourning a husband not yet gone? Quite a sight.”

Whatever expression had crossed her face while lost in thought, Jayden chose to interpret it with this provocation. Irritated because his words were not entirely groundless, Fiona snapped back with extra venom.

“It is nothing of the sort, so shut up and eat your food.”

Her response being unremarkably typical, Jayden merely shrugged.

Fiona turned her attention back to her plate. But Jayden’s words about forming a patrol for spring circled endlessly in her mind.

* * *

Jayden, it seemed, had not shared that information without purpose.

As soon as spring properly arrived, the keep was thrown into a flurry of activity, assisting in the preparation of supplies for the patrol.

With so few hands available, even Marie was conscripted to help with packing, and the kitchen, where Fiona lent her labour, grew correspondingly busy.

“They want rations for a full fortnight, they say. Young lads like that, if the food runs short, there will be hell to pay.”

One of the kitchen women grumbled in a booming voice.

At her brash tone, a “young lad” standing awkwardly in the corner of the kitchen flinched. He was a young soldier in imperial armour, perhaps just twenty years of age.

“Why is he here?”

Fiona asked quietly, puzzled by the unfamiliar man’s presence in the kitchen.

“Ordered to inspect the supply preparations, I expect. As if standing there gormlessly will tell him anything useful.”

Whether the dull-faced soldier was aware of Morin’s acerbic assessment of him, he simply stood his ground, carrying out his assigned duty.

Fiona snorted softly and began helping the kitchen women, keeping her head down.

Morin explained that normally the camp’s cooks handled meals themselves, but in times of urgency, they sometimes requested assistance in this manner.

As she worked, a question occurred to her.

“Where does all the food come from, for so many men?”

She had heard that the emperor had dispatched ten thousand troops for monster subjugation. Half that number—five thousand—were already here as the advance force.