Winter Bud - Chapter 92

The subordinate who’d carried out the order was prostrating himself with a pale face. Sermione watched him from inside a bathtub filled with ice water. The man kneeling on one knee and awaiting punishment said he’d barely saved his life.

That he’d taken Jerix Rotusi lightly. That if he was given one more chance, he’d do it properly this time. Sermione raised a hand and swept back his wet hair. A few stray strands fell messily over his white forehead.

The clinging of failures was always tiresome. He was generally fair and generous, but that didn’t mean he was a merciful master. Even if he gave the same chance again, he’d fail, and the burden would all fall on Sermione.

Besides, Jerix Rotusi was already in a place where he couldn’t be killed. According to what Thea relayed, Rotusi was currently staying in the imperial palace. Sermione lowered his gaze. He didn’t ask further, but Thea knew he’d sent an assassin to Nanna’s house.

So it meant the emperor knew too.

The maid Thea sent delivered her sharp intent, saying she’d come to bring the medicinal ingredients the empress sent to him after he returned from carrying out the imperial order.

“In addition, Her Majesty the Empress said you should refrain from doing anything that would offend His Majesty’s mood.”

The maid’s composed voice rang in his head again. What Thea meant by offending the emperor’s mood was obvious. Sermione rose from the bathtub. A servant who’d been waiting came over and dried his solid body with a long towel.

Sermione put on a glossy satin robe, then went to the subordinate who was prostrating himself.

“Get up.”

“My lord.”

“Don’t make me give the order twice.”

The low voice was like iron. The frightened man slowly stood. Sermione stared at him for a moment, then swiftly drew the sword at his waist. It was before the man, struck with fear, could even step back. With a trained motion, Sermione drove the blade into his solar plexus.

The man’s eyes went slack, and then he collapsed without even being able to let out a dying scream. Sermione turned around lightly. The servant, without panicking, held out a wet towel. Sermione wiped the blood from his hand and gave an order.

“Clear it away.”

The next evening. After returning from suppressing the rebel forces, the emperor summoned him. Sermione wasn’t curious about what he might say. He just wanted to see Nanna, who’d reportedly attempted suicide.

With that body…. That the woman he loved, who couldn’t die even if she wanted to because she was pregnant, had attempted suicide while carrying a pregnancy. That the woman he loved had attempted suicide even while trembling, even with an unwanted child inside her. Even after hearing the report from the spy he’d planted in the imperial palace, he couldn’t believe it.

It felt like the spy was lying to mock him, and so he couldn’t accept it unless he saw it with his own eyes. But it was true that Nanna attempted suicide. He looked down at the woman lying as if dead.

Her belly was no longer swollen. Because she’d miscarried. He heard they’d pulled out the dead child. Hanging by her neck in the emperor’s bedroom, dangling…. A maid found her like that and barely saved her, but they couldn’t save the child in her womb.

Sermione wasn’t curious about the child in Nanna’s belly. Only Nanna mattered. It felt like he had to take this woman away right now. Nanna had refused, but Aldermort was the most comfortable and happiest time in her life.

If he took her away even by force, she would be able to find peace again. If he wanted a child, he could just make her have a child again. If Nanna refused to get pregnant, Alexis alone was fine. He couldn’t endure the heat pressing in on his twisted face, and he trembled in fine shakes. Suddenly, he sensed a presence.

He slowly turned his head and checked who it was. The reason he couldn’t notice even as they approached this close was probably because it was the emperor. He stared at the other with an indifferent face.

“Orestes.”

It’d been a very long time since he spoke that name aloud. After the man ascended the throne, he hadn’t called him by name even once. It wasn’t because he truly revered him. He slowly cast off the mask that had hidden his irreverence.

Orestes calmly observed the change and opened his mouth.

“I heard from Thea. You tried to take Nanna to Aldermort.”

“Right.”

At Sermione’s low reply, Orestes laughed. It was a face like he’d heard an absurd joke. Sermione didn’t respond further. He stared blankly into the air. He didn’t need to wait to predict what he was going to say.

Orestes’s gaze landed on his left forearm. It was a wound he’d gotten during the suppression. The reason he’d barely avoided a fatal injury was because he was a seasoned warrior. He’d passed through countless brushes with death, and he had tolerance for most cuts.

Even so, the axe that struck at him felt quite dangerous. He recalled the moment he read the killing intent lodged in the other’s eyes. From the start, he had been aiming for Sermione’s life. It had to be him, and it seemed like nothing else mattered.

That could be the case. The forces that wanted to raise the Old Empire again were the emperor’s vassals and military retainers back then, so they viewed Everhardt as an irreconcilable enemy for betraying them, supporting Enroy in the North, and forcing Falcomere into being.

But there was no such fury in the man swinging the axe. In that moment, Sermione sensed that there was a certain purpose behind his actions. So the reason he had to kill him wasn’t something like revenge for a dearly loved lord….

“It must be unpleasant that I came back alive, Orestes.”

Sermione smiled crookedly. Orestes stared at him, then laughed as if saying, “You caught me.” His eyes weren’t surprised.

“If you don’t give Nanna back, in the end, I’ll have no choice but to find a way myself. I’d rather not come to blows with you over something like this…. Aren’t you my son-in-law?”

The beloved husband of his only daughter. That was Orestes. But he and Orestes could never become that kind of relationship. He lowered his gaze for a moment. Orestes was slowly circling around him like a beast searching for the other’s weakness.

“…Orestes.”

“So, is that why you refused when I told you to move Leaxos’s warships to Trebian?”

Orestes examined him with sharp eyes. An inch, an inch, as if carving him out…. Once, he was a man who showed him loyalty as the head of the great nobles, to the point where he was called the emperor’s hound. Orestes never trusted him, but at least he thought his aims aligned with his own.

He said the glory he could gain at Enroy’s side was so alluring he could never refuse it. But even that had become a blurred matter now. Orestes didn’t want to keep him alive. Even so, there was no need to ruin Everhardt as a whole.

If he wanted to bring down such a great house, he would’ve had to drive out Thea first. Setting aside how difficult that was, there was no reason to do that. But Sermione himself was someone he couldn’t tolerate.

Because he got in the way of him taking Nanna entirely for himself. He thought for a long time about how to deal with this man. Even when he took Nanna and made her pregnant with Alexis, he briefly had this thought. So, should he kill him? Should he kill him and remove him from in front of his eyes?

Back then, Thea was asleep, and unlike with Sermione now, their relationship wasn’t bad. Then he felt doubt at the fact that he’d had such an impulse. Nanna, that woman was nothing. It could be that the woman’s nasty habits provoked the Duke Everhardt’s lust, and yet he’d thought this.

So he consciously buried it. In truth, he could also see it as Nanna being unable to abandon her promiscuous habits and mixing bodies with her former master, but that wasn’t something he needed to feel unpleasant about, was it? That was what he thought. But now he wanted to have Nanna. He didn’t want to share her. Even hearing the words that he wanted to take her back was unpleasant. So the answer was clear.

He pulled out the military knife he’d been hiding. It was a blade honed so sharply that even a brush of a fingertip would split flesh. Sermione looked at him indifferently. He moved fast, as if he would drive the knife into his abdomen.

Sermione, with his brows drawn together, grabbed the knife. Orestes twisted his lips. He yanked the caught knife free and aimed for his throat. But Sermione avoided him easily.

“You….”

He spat out a curse as if crushing it. Orestes parted his lips with a crazed face.

“You ordered the assassins to use Ruberin poison.”

He gave a crooked smile. Sermione glared at him sharply. The numbing sensation felt like it was paralyzing his nerves. Sermione looked at his deeply cut hand, then lifted his gaze. He wanted to raise his hand and snatch the sword from his hand, but with his hand already numbed by the poison and slowed, it was impossible.