Chapter 47
“...Whoa...”
The quiet murmur escaped Yuki before she could stop herself.
Her anger and grief had been overwhelmed by sheer admiration for the strength now blazing before her.
At her side, Antonius stepped forward and spoke quietly.
“That strategy against the Dragon of Doom... was devised by Lord Drake himself.”
Theodoros continued with a faint smile.
“And the one who forged it into a functioning battlefield doctrine was Commander Chaire.”
His expression softened ever so slightly.
“Truly... that man never ceases to astonish us.”
Surrounded by roaring soldiers, Andronicus answered their cheers one by one with steady smiles—
even as part of him remained fixed upon the western sky.
Then, only for an instant, his gaze drifted back toward the western sky.
The shadow of that colossal body was already gone.
And yet—he still saw him there.
Saw him off.
Then Andronicus turned back toward the balcony.
Antonius stood there watching over him.
Yuki beside him.
Andronicus drew himself upright once more—and offered them both a deep, flawless bow.
After returning from the battlefield and issuing orders for the wounded and the cleanup, Andronicus stepped back inside—only for Yuki to throw herself at him without the slightest concern for the eyes around them.
“M-My Lady!?”
Andronicus nearly lost his footing in surprise, yet her overwhelming strength did not ease in the slightest.
“Ando… I’m sorry.”
“…My Lady? What troubles you so?”
At last Yuki drew back. Then, more gently this time, she rested the horn upon her brow against his own.
“We should’ve told you from the beginning. What had been placed upon your shoulders… what everyone hoped you would become.”
Her golden eyes lowered slightly.
“I just… didn’t want you getting hurt any more than you already had. I kept thinking you were still too young. I convinced myself that keeping you safe was enough.”
A faint, pained smile crossed her face.
“But I was wrong.”
This child had been far stronger than any of them had realized.
No matter how harsh the truth might have been, he would have faced it head-on. He had deserved the truth from the very beginning.
They had tried to shield him from every winter wind, believing kindness meant sparing him from pain. But in doing so, they had shut him away from the world itself.
And in the end, they had left him unable to breathe.
Yuki and the others had believed they were sparing the young Dracling from truths too heavy to bear.
But no matter how painful those truths were, Andronicus had always had the right to know them.
And because they had hidden those truths from him—because they had made those choices in his place—everything had slowly begun to unravel.
If he had known the truth from the start… would things with Drake have turned out differently?
Would Drake, this time, have chosen to remain beside them and live on?
Would Andronicus have been spared from losing the father he had only just found?
A century ago, they had forced only their own feelings onto Drake, never truly standing beside the grief and despair he carried within him.
And now, without even realizing it, they had repeated the very same mistake with his son.
Andronicus met Yuki’s gaze directly.
Then, quietly, he lowered himself onto one knee before her and took her hand.
He placed a gentle kiss upon the back of the hand covered in iridescent scales that shimmered with shifting colors beneath the light.
“My Lady Yuki… it was you all who found me. Who guided me all the way here.”
His voice was calm. Steady. Unshakable.
“No words could ever express how grateful I am.”
The small Dracotyrannus they had once tried so desperately to protect smiled then—
and for the first time, he bore the face of a fully grown man.
“I’m certain my father feels the same.”
Yuki listened to those words with tears threatening at last to spill from her eyes.
And once more, with all the tenderness she could no longer keep hidden, she softly rested her horn against his brow.
