Chapter 34
Lottie reached the door and gripped the massive padlock.
Her hands fumbled as she searched through the countless keys in the bundle for the right one.
After five or six failed attempts, the lock finally clicked open. The heavy iron mass fell to the floor with a loud clang.
The door groaned heavily as it slowly swung open.
At that exact moment, someone lunged toward Lottie with lightning speed.
“……!”
The sharp pen nib Calyx was clutching stopped right before Lottie’s eyes.
“Ah….”
She was too startled to scream, nor did she make a fuss asking why she was there. Only a long, shaky breath escaped her.
The man before her was the same.
How are you here?
‘Why…’
Why are you standing there with such a desperate expression?
“……!”
Realizing belatedly that he was pointing a weapon at her, Calyx hurriedly backed away.
The chilling realization that he could have killed her with his own hands struck him a beat late. He found it difficult to breathe.
Calyx’s face contorted with pain.
“Charlotte.”
It was an incantation, one that woke a princess from a deathly slumber.
With that, Lottie snapped back to her senses.
Thump, thump. Her heart, which felt as if it might burst, finally began to ache.
‘He’s alive….’
The man who had died so horribly time and again in her visions was standing there, perfectly fine….
Lottie approached Calyx with a dazed expression. More than the bewilderment of how she had gotten here, the reality that the man before her was alive and breathing reached her first.
She traced the line of his jaw, which had grown a bit sharper since she last saw him, with her fingertips.
It felt vivid. Even this simple fact felt overwhelming.
Something hot surged up within her.
In that instant, gruesome scenes flashed over the man standing before her.
A man collapsed on a cold floor, blood pooling at his feet, a mysterious figure standing over him, a knife in hand, and rising flames.
“You—you have to run.”
Realizing her purpose for being there, Lottie spoke urgently.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Run without looking back. If you linger, you’ll die. No one will even know the cause of your death. After they kill you, they’re going to set the prison on fire so not even a corpse remains!”
At those words, which spilled out with a pathetic tremble, Calyx’s heart plummeted.
The handcuffs were removed in a silence where even their breathing seemed to stop. Lottie grabbed Calyx’s arms and shook them wildly.
“He’s coming soon. There’s no time for this. Hurry…!”
“You’re saying someone is coming to kill me.”
His reddish-brown eyes didn’t blink even once. Lottie sensed that if she didn’t offer an explanation, he wouldn’t move a single step from this spot.
“I saw you dying in a dream!”
Lottie cried out frantically.
“I know it’s hard to believe. I know! But just once… just this once, do as I say. Please.”
“……Return home.”
“Your Highness!”
“If what the Young Lady says is true, you shouldn’t be here all the more. Go. Quickly.”
“How can I leave you and go alone?!”
Her fierce voice rushed at Calyx.
Her eyes were as desperate as her voice, so Calyx had no choice but to recall his earlier question rather than wondering how this woman had managed to come to such a terrifying place alone.
‘Why.’
Why are you so desperate? Why…
“Why go to such lengths to save someone like me?”
“I don’t know.”
“…….”
“I’m so frustrated and anxious because I don’t understand myself either. I still resent you, I dislike you, and I’m even afraid of you. I don’t know why I’m suffering like this to save a man like you, who supposedly only used me. But!”
Lottie’s face crumpled as if she were untangling a mess of knotted emotions.
— Did you feel so unbearably sorry for that bastard whose head is about to roll for a crime he didn’t commit? Or did you want to be called a great Saintess for saving him?
She felt as though she finally knew the answer to the question that had tormented her countless times.
“But….”
Calyx held his breath, not missing a single subtle movement of hers.
Even in this urgent situation where his life might be at stake, he was seized by a powerful premonition that nothing could be more important than this.
“The words you said to me….”
“…….”
“When you said there was no way you would kill everything you loved with your own hands… those words are stuck here, and they keep stabbing at me. What am I supposed to do?”
Lottie placed her hand over her heart. She tapped it a few times. Thump, thump.
With every beat, Calyx’s heart surged.
So violently that it was hard to remain standing on his own two feet.
“That’s right. I’m pitying you right now. When I was treated like a temptress for a crime I didn’t commit, when I had to watch not only myself but my precious loved ones suffer because of it… I’m saying that I dare to understand your solitude.”
Very, very violently.
“So you must live. You must survive to the very end and let the world know you are innocent. Because that is the greatest revenge you can take on this world!”
Standing before him were clear, transparent light-green eyes that could never be a lie.
Ah.
Calyx realized belatedly that the gasp had come from his own mouth. What followed was a hollow laugh, like that of a madman.
A certain spring day when they had sat haphazardly on the grass, looking out at the Contra River.
Those light-green eyes, which seemed to have brought along all the spring of Matila, were looking at him now.
The eyes that had revealed her inner thoughts so transparently, without even a hint of shame, were like glass beads, and he wavered before them without any sense of propriety.
The single-minded determination to tear Patrick down should have been enough, but he wanted something more from her.
The ‘him’ of that time did not realize it.
Without even knowing exactly what he desired, he constantly craved and thirsted for it.
He was slowly going mad, knowing she was a woman who would never give him even a single shred of what he wanted.
He knew that if he didn’t let go of that desire, he would be destroyed before he could complete the mission that had kept him going until today.
He cut it away.
Loading all the hatred and resentment he had built up inside onto her, he slashed at the innocent woman. And then….
— When you said there was no way you would kill everything you loved with your own hands… those words are stuck here, and they keep stabbing at me. What am I supposed to do?
He suffered a crushing defeat.
He finally realized what it was he had been craving so much. It was trust.
It was the hand of salvation pulling him out of the horrific hell of having killed his own father with his own hands.
It was understanding and warmth.
It was the clear eyes that looked at him without contempt.
It was love.
“……Ha.”
Leaving behind a realization that could only become a belated regret, Calyx let out a low sigh.
If what Lottie said was true, there was no more time for bickering.
No, even if every word out of her mouth now were a lie, he would have no choice but to follow her path.
Calyx gently pulled the hands that were gripping him.
Exhausted to the limit from running without rest, she was pulled along without being able to offer any resistance.
“If I’m the one he’s after, he’ll chase me to the ends of hell. It’s best to see this through to the end, whatever it may be.”
“What does that mean…!”
“Don’t worry. I have no intention of dying easily at anyone’s hands anymore.”
When Calyx lifted the mattress of the old bed, a space large enough for a person to lie down appeared.
After pushing Lottie into it, Calyx whispered softly.
“Close your eyes and count to a hundred.”
As the mattress was lowered, the surroundings were blanketed in pitch-black darkness.
Before Lottie could even protest, someone burst in. Then, the sensation of someone hesitating at the sight before them.
Even without seeing, she could tell the intruder had appeared.
“What the. Why is the door open— Gaaah!”
Thwack! The sound of a sharp point piercing soft flesh.
As if there were no time to wait for the scream to stop, it happened again in succession. Thwack, thwack.
“My eyes…! My eyes…! Aaargh…!”
The intruder’s screams distorted, as if they were clutching their face.
There was a crashing sound, and then footsteps receded outside the solitary cell.
Soon after, the sound of multiple footsteps ascending the stairs from afar could be heard. It was surely the prison guards and sentries who had finally caught on to the commotion.
“Wh-What in the world is…!”
“Seize him. He is an intruder who dared to attempt the assassination of royalty.”
His voice was markedly different from when he had told her to count to a hundred.
Only the moans of the suffering intruder could be heard; no one else spoke easily.
It was likely because the scene before their eyes was so gruesome it was hard to believe it had been wrought by human hands.
“Investigate thoroughly and uncover who is behind this. If you do not, I will hold you accountable for your negligence in not knowing this man walked in here until now.”
A moment later, familiar footsteps approached the inside of the cell again.
Standing before the bed, Calyx lifted the mattress.
The darkness, thick with the smell of dust, cleared, and light pierced Lottie’s eyelids.
“Open your eyes.”
She only realized she had been keeping her eyes closed through his whisper.
When she slowly opened them, she saw Calyx. He looked clean, without a single drop of blood on him.
The smile he directed at her seemed painful for some reason, making a corner of her own chest ache.
Not knowing what to say, she felt faint for a moment.
“……A hundred seconds have passed.”
The words she finally managed to squeeze out in her urgency to say something were nothing special.
“I’m sorry.”
She hadn’t exactly wanted to hear an apology right away. Calyx, looking down at the sheepish Lottie, slowly added one more thing.
“I’m sorry… for being late.”
Was it such a great sin to be a few seconds late from the promised time? A moment of confusion washed over her, but she decided to solve that mystery later. In any case, now was not the time to be sitting leisurely atop a pile of dust.
Lottie reached out her hand to Calyx, indicating for him to help her up.
After a moment’s hesitation, he took her hand.
As skin touched skin, a tremor ran through them.
It was a sensation they both felt, almost simultaneously, without one preceding the other.
