Exiled Prince and Hi Chapter 53: You will be executed

Chapter 53: You will be executed

The entire inn went silent.

Not gradually — all at once, like soone had reached into the room and pulled the sound out of it. Every head turned. Every conversation died. The fire kept crackling in the corner, indifferent to the situation, which Renji found personally offensive.

Kaede’s hand found his arm before he could move. Her grip was imdiate and iron.

"Don’t cause a scene," she said quietly, close to his ear. "That man’s probably a noble."

Renji’s jaw was tight. "And how exactly do you know that?"

She gestured — barely, just a small tilt of her chin — toward the man’s coat, the cut of it, the way it draped. Toward the rings on his fingers, each one catching the lantern light with the quiet confidence of sothing extrely expensive.

"Because nothing he’s wearing looks cheap."

The man had been watching them murmur between themselves with visible amusent. He smiled now, wide and self-satisfied.

"Smart woman," he said. "You should listen to her more often."

Then his gaze moved. Slowly. It traveled from Renji’s face sideways to Kaede, and stayed there, and the smile shifted into sothing that took its ti looking.

"Actually," he said, almost to himself, lazy and unbothered, "I think I want this one." A pause. "There are plenty of things I’d enjoy doing with her."

Sothing in Renji’s chest went very quiet.

Then it snapped.

He was moving before the thought finished forming — before Kaede could tighten her grip, before anyone in the room could pull in a breath to say anything. His fist connected with the side of the man’s face with a sound that was sharp and imdiate and deeply satisfying.

The noble crashed sideways into a table. Cups went over. Soone scread. The inn erupted.

They hit the floor together, and Renji did not stop. The man swung back, caught him across the jaw, and Renji answered it twice over, pinning him down against the floorboards, his knuckles finding purchase again and again while the room dissolved into shouting and the scraping of chairs being shoved back.

The noble’s friends surged forward from across the room, three of them, the kind of n who stood near powerful people for exactly this sort of occasion. They grabbed for Renji’s collar, his arms, moving to haul him off and return the favor at considerable interest.

"Enough."

The word wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

An old man’s voice, dry and unhurried, landed on the chaos like a stone dropped into water. The ripples went outward. People stopped. The noble’s friends stopped. Even Renji paused, breathing hard, still crouched over the man on the floor.

An elderly villager stepped through the parted crowd, calm as soone taking an evening walk. He looked at the noble’s friends first, then at Renji, then at the general wreckage of the table, with the asured disappointnt of a man who had seen this particular type of stupidity many tis before.

"It is not proper," he said, "to answer wrongdoing with more wrongdoing." He shook his head slowly. "The law is clear. Take the matter to the village chief."

The noble’s friends exchanged a look. The calculation behind their eyes was visible — weigh the options, consider the old man, consider the crowd of witnesses, arrive at an answer.

They reluctantly agreed.

Renji straightened up. His jaw was starting to ache. He turned around.

Kaede was standing a few feet away with her face buried in one hand.

She stayed like that for a long mont.

"Amazing," she said, without looking up. "I specifically told you not to do this."

Renji scratched the back of his cheek with one finger. "I tried." A pause. "Apparently keeping a low profile isn’t my strength."

She looked up at him. Her expression was the specific kind of tired that had moved past frustration and arrived sowhere almost philosophical.

"You punched a noble."

"He deserved it."

"In a full inn."

"He really deserved it."

She stared at him. He t it. Sowhere behind them, Rei made a small, pained sound, and Aya watched the whole thing with an expression of serene, unhurried interest, as though she were observing weather.

The village palace was modest in the way that things built with genuine confidence are modest — dark timber and fitted stone, clean lines, lanterns placed where they were needed rather than where they looked impressive. No gold. No marble. Guards at the entrance standing with the posture of people who were actually paying attention.

Inside, the hall was quiet and warm and considerably more dignified than the last room Renji had been standing in.

The village chief sat on a raised seat at the far end. He was old — deeply so, the kind of old that accumulated slowly over a life that had seen a great deal — with wrinkles carved into a face that had once been severe and still rembered how. But it was the air around him that made Renji’s instincts pay attention. Still, heavy, settled. The kind of pressure that didn’t announce itself. The kind that had simply been there so long it had beco part of the room.

Beside him sat a composed woman of similar age, and a younger woman — the chief’s daughter, clearly — who watched everything with the careful attention of soone filing it away for later.

Lord Vaelric spoke first, because of course he did. He delivered his version of events with the practiced indignation of soone accustod to being believed — a minor accident, an unprovoked attack, a completely unreasonable escalation. His face was already swelling on one side, which Renji observed with quiet private satisfaction.

When he finished, the chief turned his gaze to Renji.

Renji held it.

"My group are hunters," he said. "We were passing through. I bumped into him near the exit — an accident. What ca after that wasn’t."

He left it there. Simple. The chief didn’t look like a man who needed things explained at length.

The old man studied him. Then Kaede. Then Aya and Rei, each in turn, with the unhurried thoroughness of soone who had spent a long ti learning how to read people and was still practicing.

"Hunters," he said.

"The best," Renji said.

The chief leaned back slightly in his seat. The room was very quiet.

"This village," he said, "is currently plagued by a dangerous beast."

No one spoke. The lanterns held still.

"If your group truly are fearso hunters —" his eyes returned to Renji, sharp and steady beneath all that age — "then kill it."

Renji’s expression did sothing complicated and then went very carefully neutral.

"If you succeed, you may stay within this village freely." The old man’s voice didn’t change tempo or weight. It delivered the next part the sa way it had delivered everything else. "If you fail — you will be executed."

Sowhere beside him, Rei made a very soft sound. Aya’s breath caught almost inaudibly.

Renji stood there.

He swallowed once.

The finest hunting team in every kingdom, he thought, with feeling. I really need to stop saying that.