Winter Bud - Chapter 93

Defending was the best he could do. His forearm and the area near his abdomen were cut. The more the poison spread, the slower his movements became. He saw Nanna behind the man, stirring as she woke. In that instant, grotesquely twisted fury swallowed him. He drove his fist into Orestes’s solar plexus, then struck his face in rapid succession.

Then he knocked him down and snatched the knife from his hand. A grueling struggle began. Orestes gave a vicious smile as he looked at the knife that reached his neck. Sermione twisted his mouth as he trembled, trying to drive the blade into his throat.

Orestes looked at the man straining with all his might to slash his throat. Even though the poison must have already spread quite a bit, Sermione’s strength was considerable. He crudely twisted his face and began to push the man away. It was the moment when offense and defense were about to switch again.

Nanna, awakened, stared at them, blankly parting her lips.

“…Nanna.”

Sermione turned to her. The man who’d lost the knife panted as he approached her. Nanna was staring at them blankly like a woman who’d lost her soul. A blood-soaked hand gripped both her cheeks.

“Are you all right?”

“….”

“Answer me.”

“Duke?”

Nanna called him as if groping through a dream. Sermione felt indescribable ecstasy. Maybe this, too, was a symptom of poisoning. They said that sometimes people infected with Ruberin poison saw hallucinations or felt incomprehensible ecstasy before they died.

They said it was the body’s reflexive response to forget the terrible pain. To forget the unfamiliar sensation of a deadly poison, he kept the woman in his eyes. He wondered what it would’ve been like if he’d just kept her by his side and tried to earn her love.

If he’d become a tender man, just as Nanna wanted. But even if he did, he wouldn’t have been able to win Nanna’s heart. Because to Nanna, he was someone who couldn’t become a man. Since his daughter was Thea, Nanna wouldn’t have looked at him as a man.

Rather, she would’ve been ashamed of his love, and would’ve felt it was disgusting. With a twisted smile, he felt his face turning pale.

“I’m sorry.”

“….”

“I violated you however I wanted. I didn’t treasure your feelings.”

Sermione recited it, letting out a labored breath. Nanna didn’t seem to understand everything he said. The heat still clung to her. He slowly pulled the woman into his arms. Nanna settled into his chest without resistance. He raised his hand and slowly stroked the slender woman’s back. Like putting her to sleep, the patting touch was tender.

***

Until the funeral was finished, the empress didn’t shed a single tear. She wore a neat mourning dress and acted carefully like a widow with a black veil over her face. The place where Duke Everhardt’s body was found was in the back garden along the path leading to the emperor’s audience chamber.

The chief investigator of the Inspection Bureau announced that he’d been assassinated by an assassin’s hand while entering the palace alone. But wasn’t it strange that such a heavily armed man, and in the imperial palace at that, died like that? No matter how many enemies the duke had, he was a seasoned knight. There were countless assassination attempts on him as well. He was a great noble with a considerable standing even before Falcomere was founded.

And yet such a futile death. Even so, the empress held no deep doubt. Rather, until the investigation was finished, she tried to calm the swelling public opinion.

The Inspection Bureau said they found Ruberin poison in the duke’s wounds. That even with just a graze from the blade, the poison would have easily paralyzed his nerves. The families that came up as suspects were those that had constantly clashed with Everhardt in the past.

Crosus. Talinde. Van Oris…. One after another, they were summoned to the Inspection Bureau. One of Everhardt’s attendant knights testified that they had always wanted to remove Duke Everhardt. It didn’t take long for physical evidence to be manufactured, and for lies to be turned into truthful testimony. Using his father-in-law’s dubious death as a weapon, the emperor began to eliminate political enemies he considered thorns in his side. The empress, by turning a blind eye, secured her natal family’s power intact.

Nanna felt her empty belly. Even after the dead child was taken out, her belly hadn’t returned to normal yet. Nanna lowered her gaze and looked at the red line drawn across her pale skin. The doctor said to avoid touching the wound if possible. That if she touched it often, it might fester.

Nanna wasn’t afraid of pain. She thought it might be even better if she suffered like that and died. She recalled the knife that had split her belly and gently traced the place where the blade passed with her fingertips. Suddenly a maid came in, pulled Nanna’s hand away from her belly, and said, “You can’t do that.”

“….”

Why couldn’t she die? Why did she have to live? The pain she felt from being alive was far greater than the joy she could feel from being alive. It wasn’t as if she’d always been this pessimistic. At one time, she also held hope and wanted to live happily with the person she loved. Even if they were children she didn’t want, she wanted to become a good mother, and she tried to do her best with everything she was given.

But she had no choice but to be frustrated again and again. She wanted to shake off these meaningless, unbreakable, stubborn misfortunes now. If the only way was death, then to the point where she could willingly endure it. She wanted to leave her body and be free….

As nothing but death floated through her head, Nanna suddenly lowered her gaze. She looked at the spot where Sermione had been. The place where he’d been dying. Bleeding, with a finely trembling hand, he’d stroked Nanna’s cheek.

The one who should’ve died was her, but that man died instead. He was a man who they said was the busiest in the world….

She groped through the flickering dawn. Even then, she thought she was wandering in a dream.

Sermione’s bloodshot eyes didn’t look like his usual ones. Those green eyes… it looked like there was moisture gathered in them. Maybe it was also possible that she was mistaking blood splatter for that. Nanna rewound the man that had remained in her blurred vision.

The maids said his funeral would be held at the imperial palace. That as the “national consort” who, together with the emperor, brought down the Old Empire, all the officials and court nobles, as well as attendants and servants, would wear mourning clothes to pay their respects.

But even after hearing that, Nanna couldn’t believe it. That Sermione was dead…. He seemed like he would never die, like he would be alive somewhere in the world. So it wasn’t that she was sad, it was just that she couldn’t believe it.

Suddenly, she heard the sound of the door opening. Nanna turned her gaze to check who it was. Orestes, dressed in mourning clothes, narrowed the distance.

“…Nanna.”

It was the first time since she attempted suicide, and since her belly went flat. Orestes’s gaze was detached. It was a little different from usual, but if you looked closely, it wasn’t all that different. Nanna stared at him blankly. His mourning clothes were neat. As if he hadn’t killed Sermione. He even seemed to carry something like the sorrow of mourning within that solemnness.

He went down on one knee. A long hand gripped her small hand that lay carelessly.

“I know you’re sad the baby died.”

She wasn’t sad. Nanna couldn’t feel anything. Tears didn’t come, and she didn’t feel guilty. If she could feel those things, Nanna wouldn’t have done that. She couldn’t understand why Orestes thought that.

No matter how foolish she was, it wasn’t like she had no emotions except maternal love…. Did he see her as nothing but a woman with nothing in her head but “baby”? But she didn’t want to go on and on about feelings like this. There was no reason to. She turned her gaze away.

“Nanna.”

He called Nanna again. Orestes stared silently at the woman who looked like she might crumble. Before Sermione’s funeral ended, he planned to move Nanna to a villa in the south outside the capital. He intended to make her live a somewhat more proper life there.

The imperial palace wasn’t a place suited for Nanna to live. She’d said she hated it from the start. He swallowed dryly, like swallowing thumbtacks. The trace of death left on Nanna’s neck was chilling. What if he hadn’t found her? He didn’t even want to imagine it.

He’d never thought about losing Nanna that way. A chill so strong it made his stomach churn washed over him. He tightened his grip on the hand he was holding. Nanna didn’t look back at him. Because she knew she no longer had the right to beg. Something like her heart.

When Nanna said she didn’t love him, he realized it. The sensation of his blood going cold made him realize that for a long time he’d been begging Nanna for love. Because he felt rapture at the idea that Nanna naturally loved him, desired him.

For a long time, he believed that this woman wanted to possess him. But Nanna no longer loved him. That was only natural. He knew what he’d done. All along, he’d abused this woman. He tore down everything that could be torn down.

So there was no way the woman could love him. Wanting Nanna to forgive him was extreme selfishness.