Roxana
Chapter 70
Chapter 70
The Way to Protect
the Female Lead’s Older Brother
Chapter 70
* * *
The castle burned.
White, frozen battlements were swallowed by towering flames.
The night’s stillness had long shattered beneath the screech and clash of sharp steel.
Screams and shouts echoing from the tangled fray poured down overhead like a shower of stars.
Flames roared.
The place she was born into, a home she had never once escaped by her own power in this world, was crumbling in flames right before her eyes.
Roxana quietly watched the spectacle.
Perhaps because she had taken large doses of sedatives and painkillers for the first time in a while, her vision was blurred.
Conversely, her sharpened hearing caught the retreat signals sent by the intruders.
Little by little, the surrounding commotion began to subside.
A gentle flutter.
The butterflies she had released into the mansion began returning one by one.
“Good work.”
Having successfully carried out their task of confusing people with illusions, the butterflies fluttered their wings against Roxana as if coaxing for affection.
What she wanted was the downfall of Agriche, not the massacre of the people within it.
That was why she had virtually disbanded Agriche’s private army and evacuated the servants to the annex.
Of course, that was only after she had already eliminated every last person who belonged to Lant Agriche down to the bone, leaving not a single one behind.
Strained from exerting excessive power for the first time in so long, black blood surged up from within and spilled from her lips.
Because she had already vomited blood several times since first unleashing the butterflies, dizziness clouded her sight.
Yet Roxana did not close her eyes. She had a duty to witness the scene before her to the very end.
Was Lant Agriche dead by now?
Judging by how Pedelian had begun to withdraw, they seemed to have achieved their objective, but……
Agriche was in flames, and the people of Agriche had now lost their place to belong.
So, was it over now?
Was everything truly finished?
Wiping the blood trickling from her lips once more, Roxana took a step forward from where she had stood frozen.
With every step she took, the dry grass beneath her feet withered into black decay and died.
Her weakened body could no longer withstand even this degree of power.
Even now, the potent venomous aura emanating from Roxana’s body surged wildly, as if ready to swallow all life around her whole.
It had been quite some time since she could properly control the slaughter butterflies.
Once they had tasted human blood, the slaughter butterflies were prone to running rampant at the slightest lapse in her vigilance.
The real reason she had failed her mission with Deon last year was also because the out-of-control poison butterflies had slaughtered everyone in the vicinity.
Possessing such power, it would have been simple enough to use the poison butterflies to butcher Lant Agriche like livestock.
But officially, Agriche had met its ruin as punishment for the wicked deeds it had committed until now.
And Pedelian was to play the role of the righteous judge in that downfall.
“Sana noona……!”
A voice calling her reached her from the distance.
Roxana reflexively turned her head toward the sound. Jeremy came into view, sprinting toward her.
Immediately after the vast darkness blinding him dissipated, Jeremy had followed the butterflies and succeeded in finding Roxana.
Thanks to Roxana’s butterflies, the casualties were few compared to the scale of destruction.
Yet precisely because of that, Jeremy could not help worrying about Roxana’s condition.
Of course, Roxana had never once shown him any weakness.
But had Jeremy stayed by her side for only a year or two?
Moreover, Jeremy was always hypersensitive to anything concerning Roxana.
Therefore, there was no way he could fail to notice that her body was not what it used to be.
Jeremy felt a wave of relief seeing Roxana. Though blood stained her clothes, she was at least standing upright, seemingly intact.
“Noona, here you were. You’re not hurt anywhere, right?”
Having been heading somewhere, she turned back to face him at his call.
“What are you doing here all alone, anyway? There’s nothing over that way…….”
The next moment, upon meeting Roxana’s gaze, Jeremy abruptly froze in his tracks.
“What……?”
Roxana looked at him with eyes that seemed the same as usual, yet were undeniably different.
Jeremy’s face hardened stiffly. A strange sensation brushed past him.
It felt akin to an ominous foreboding.
“Noona, where were you going all by yourself?”
But at that moment, Jeremy did not know how to express the emotion he felt.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
And so, churning with anxiety inside, he could only part his trembling lips.
“As if…… this is the last time.”
The moment he muttered those words, a chilling sensation crept up the nape of his neck.
Roxana remained silent, steadily gazing at Jeremy.
The face looking back told Jeremy everything.
That what had just left his lips was the truth.
“Noona…….”
Jeremy finally realized that Roxana was about to abandon Agriche.
And that this was what she had desired all along.
No…… had he truly not known? Having stayed by Roxana’s side for over ten years, had he genuinely not sensed what she longed for in the slightest?
It was just that Jeremy had not cared either way.
For no matter what Roxana did from then on, he would follow behind her unconditionally.
But……
The moment he looked into Roxana’s eyes now, he was forced to understand.
“Noona…… are you going to throw me away too?”
That she had no intention of taking him with her.
Amidst the burning Agriche, the two faced each other.
Jeremy stared at Roxana with a look as though he had been struck with a dagger.
Roxana quietly took in the sight before offering a faint smile.
“I shouldn’t have reached out to you back then.”
At first, she had only intended to use him.
If so, she should have remained cold to the very end, just as she had resolved.
No matter how sweetly she whispered or how tenderly she shared warmth with gentle hands, she should never have forgotten that it was all an orchestrated lie.
But at some point, she had failed to do so.
“I shouldn’t have kept you by my side.”
Not every moment they shared was true, but not every moment had been a lie either.
Even in this wasteland where no heart could find rest, a sweet rain would very rarely fall to soak the parched earth, and in a careless moment, she had inadvertently grown attached.
“Jeremy.”
That was precisely why she did not want to take him along.
“I will take nothing from Agriche.”
Because parting ways right here and now would be better for both of them.
“So this is where it ends.”
Jeremy stood frozen in place, listening to her words.
His motionless body, as if drained of all momentum, was heartbreaking, yet she could neither step closer nor comfort him.
“Goodbye.”
Roxana turned her back on the only person she considered family aside from her mother and deceased oppa.
Jeremy did not follow her.
“Noona……!”
The cry behind her nearly arrested her steps, but she walked forward even more uprightly as if nothing had called her back.
“I know you’ve never once smiled from the heart, Noona.”
The voice that followed was certainly the familiar one she had always heard, yet somehow it felt slightly different than before.
“If I…… if I make Agriche into a place where Noona can smile, will you come back?”
Roxana looked back at him one last time. Through her fluttering hair, she saw Jeremy’s figure looking smaller than before.
The unextinguished flames flickered, casting deep shadows over Jeremy’s face.
Thus, she could not tell what expression he wore.
But she thought that was fine.
Roxana gave her pitiable younger brother one final smile.
Warm, benevolent, and gentle, just as he loved. And then she turned away once more.
Because she could promise nothing, she spoke not a word.
Stepping across the ruined land of Agriche, she moved farther away from the one who was surely still standing behind, watching her leave.
Could anything ever be revived in this ruined land, even in days to come?
Though spring naturally returned even to earth deep in winter, this was a place that had felt endlessly bleak and cold to Roxana even in the warmth of spring, making such revival impossible to imagine.
She only wanted to leave this place now.
Thoughtlessly, simply free and unburdened.
She had lived here for merely nineteen years, yet it felt as though she had been bound to far too much for far too long.
The sensation of breaking free from the swamp in which she had been deeply immersed since birth was exceedingly strange.
An ambiguous feeling—neither total liberation nor complete emptiness—clung slushily to her chest like half-melted snow.
A rush of wind blew past.
Her vision blurred in the white wind sweeping past like an arrow. As if pushed by it, Roxana’s body swayed for an instant.
She could not collapse here, yet her consciousness began to drift away slowly.
But just as her limp body crumbled, someone caught her.
Roxana closed her eyes before she could even confirm who it was.
Before her vision completely faded to black, she thought she caught a glimpse of a vivid, brilliant gold—gleaming like a beacon amidst the blizzard.