Winter Bud - Chapter 74

“Do you know how you looked at me? Thea said the same thing.”

“….”

“That you admired me. In truth, the reason you feared me was because you were afraid I’d notice your feelings for me.”

Her eyelids twitched faintly. Nanna, who had been staring blankly at him, looked at the man with her lips stupidly parted. That face that looked so severe…. Even in the moments he held her like a beast on the bed, a face that didn’t look like a ‘man’ now looked like any other man standing in front of her.

“Why didn’t you just say you wanted to lie in my bed instead?”

“What….”

“You were always busy running away.”

He laughed a little. Nanna, with a tense face, tried to read his emotions, then shook her head.

“I’ve never dared to dream of doing such a thing with Your Majesty.”

“….”

“It’s true that I loved you, but that didn’t mean I wanted to become Your Majesty’s woman.”

It’s the truth. Nanna lowered her gaze and licked her dry lips. After vomiting it all out, it felt like her insides were empty. But it didn’t feel refreshing or relieving. Instead, her throat burned in the bizarre silence.

“So?”

Just as Nanna tried to lift her eyes little by little, her chin was grabbed roughly. The breath that had been rattling froze between her lips. Feeling a chill, Nanna looked up at him. She thought the face without a single distortion was like an awl.

***

“Alex. Aah~”

Stella broke a cookie and held it out toward her little sibling who was crawling along the floor. Alexis looked at the golden-brown baked cookie with round eyes, then reached out with sticky hands. Before her baby sibling could take the cookie, Slan snatched it from his sister’s hand. Startled, Stella snapped her head around.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Alex’s nanny said not to give Alexis cookies.”

“One piece is fine. Alexis wants to eat it too.”

Stella snapped back sharply. Slan looked at his fuming sister, then scooped up the sibling who was wobbling as he tried to stand. The baby was very heavy. It felt like holding a heavy water bag.

Suddenly, he remembered when Alexis was born. Alexis was a child born after Freya passed away. Slan and Stella thought that while Alexis was in the belly, he was Freya’s reincarnation, so he’d be a girl.

But the baby who was born was a boy. Still, they were happy because his face resembled Freya’s. It really felt like Freya was reborn. Slan looked at his younger brother, who opened his eyes wide like a rabbit and smacked his lips. The baby wasn’t whining and was quietly held in his arms.

Then Alexis’s nanny, who had stepped away, came back. Slan handed the baby to the nanny and brushed his hands off.

“Your Highness.”

Alexis’s nanny called Slan. He turned his head to look at her. Pointing at the door with her finger, the nanny said that His Majesty’s guard knight was waiting to take him to the detached building. Slan looked at the finger she was pointing with, then slowly moved his feet. Outside the door, just as the nanny said, a guard knight with a familiar face was waiting for him.

Short hair and brown eyes. A face he often saw when his mother was in the Western Palace. Slan stared blankly up at him, then opened his lips.

“You’re Sir Jerix, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

At Slan’s question, the knight answered with a bow. Slan stared at the man darkly. He was a man with short hair as black as crow feathers. Maybe because his build was substantial, Slan sometimes thought of his father, but his cheerful brown eyes always made him forget in the end.

“His Majesty ordered me to escort Your Highness to your mother in the detached building.”

“Are you friends with my mother?”

The quiet question was like the sound of fallen leaves crumbling. Jerix stared at the little boy who asked so neatly. The Crown Prince’s voice wasn’t bright and innocent like a child’s. Nor was it a fabricated solemnity meant to imitate a master, like other noble children.

It was simply calm, without any crookedness. It made him think, unexpectedly, that he really was the emperor’s eldest son, and it left him with a strange feeling. But he couldn’t answer easily. He slowly chewed over only the question the boy had thrown. Then he thought that this quiet question, too, didn’t feel like a question a seven-year-old would ask. He was left speechless.

“…By His Majesty’s order, I often looked after the madam’s life in the Western Palace.”

Jerix, who had barely managed to answer, looked at the young crown prince. Not only his hair and eye color, but even his very contours showed the emperor’s blood clearly, yet the Crown Prince said nothing of assent and only stared at him. Then, all of a sudden, the Crown Prince turned his steps away.

“Do you have a fiancée?”

“Yes?”

“Or a lady you’ve set your heart on.”

The small Crown Prince walking down the long gallery was expressionless. Jerix tried not to walk ahead of him and looked at the round back of his head. He’d been relaxed because he was a child not even eight yet, but the boy was difficult in many ways. He only kept asking questions that carried meaning.

“Your Highness.”

“What do you think of my mother?”

“…What do you mean?”

The Crown Prince turned around. His mouth went dry. Still, Jerix looked at the boy blankly. ‘My mother’, meaning the Crown Prince’s birth mother…. For no reason, his heart started pounding so hard his lower eyelids even trembled. What did the Crown Prince know to say that? Was he probing him by imperial command? He couldn’t tell.

“Can you keep looking after my mother in the future too?”

“Well….”

Unlike the boy’s clear face without a single blink, cracks slowly began to form in Jerix’s expression. What was this tiny brat even saying? But his head was full of the woman’s face. Drifting around like a buoy…. Beautiful, yet seeming like beauty was all she had, that lonely woman.

“Let’s go.”

The Crown Prince, who had been watching him as he shut his lips with a stiff face, turned his head away. Jerix didn’t respond and slowly followed the boy. The detached building they soon arrived at was still beautiful, but its greenery wasn’t brilliant as usual. Slan looked at the sky, packed with dark clouds like it might rain, then hurried toward his mother’s quarters.

“Slan?”

A clear voice rang in his ear. Jerix pressed his lips tight, forcing down his heart that was pounding reflexively. Had it been ten days since that incident? That is, the unpleasant thing that happened in the detached building. By the Empress Dowager’s order, they’d barely managed to clamp down the servants’ mouths, but even so, it wasn’t like you could put a gag in everyone’s mouth.

Even he, who had no special interest in court gossip, knew about it, so the noblewomen of high society, and even the painters and poets they favored, would know too. Jerix stared at the woman waiting for her son with a dark face. Wearing a muslin chemise dress, the woman’s belly was a little more swollen than before.

Jerix looked at her straight on instead of letting his gaze slant away. A fragile joy surfaced on the woman’s face, then disappeared at once, like snow melting in rain. She twitched her lips as if to greet him, then looked down at her son.

Slan left him and went to his mother’s side. The child with the gentle face smiled as he grabbed her hand.

“Aren’t you cold? It looks like it’ll rain this afternoon.”

“I’m fine. More importantly, has your cold gotten better, Slan?”

“It wasn’t a cold, I just wasn’t feeling very well. I’m completely better now.”

Slan smiled faintly. Jerix thought even that smile wasn’t childlike. What should he call it? It was an overly crafted smile. Like he was steeling himself to reassure his mother. Even if he dressed it up, the innocence he’d lost wasn’t something he could get back.

Jerix turned his gaze away, looking at the child who seemed ill like the woman.

The Crown Prince was too composed. No matter how you looked at him, he didn’t seem like a seven-year-old child. His heart hurt like it was going to break. He didn’t know whether that was simply because of a feeling that rose up like wildfire, or because of pity born from the shadow he’d experienced in his own childhood. But whatever it was, his heart throbbed so much he couldn’t endure it. The Crown Prince wasn’t a bastard, and even though his birth mother’s circumstances were better than his own mother’s, it was still like this.

So there was no place for him to step in. The emotion that surged up to his throat until he felt dizzy was excessive. Whatever shape it took, whatever form that sincerity settled into, he had to calm down. Even if the Crown Prince’s mother blushed in front of him, they weren’t a relationship that could ever be tied.

He was the emperor’s guard, and she was a woman carrying the emperor’s child. Even if she hadn’t been granted the title of concubine, she was in a place he couldn’t reach. He was grinding down the ache and lowering his head when, suddenly, the Crown Prince looked back at him.