Ch#176
The healing sorceress stammered, her gaze fixed firmly on the floor.
He watched her, one hand resting against his temple, before giving an instruction in a dry voice.
“Sit for a moment. There was something I wanted to ask you anyway.”
The woman looked up at him, her eyes wide with surprise.
“Are you speaking to me?”
“Yes.”
He leaned back against the chair and gestured with his chin toward the seat across the desk.
The woman froze in a half-standing posture for a moment before cautiously lowering herself onto the edge of the chair.
“It seems you’ve grown quite close to the Grand Duchess lately. Was there a particular reason for that?”
Whether it was an unexpected question or not, the woman cast a bewildered look at him.
“It wasn’t because of a specific event. It’s just that I’ve helped her quite a bit with caring for Khan… I believe she has come to feel more comfortable around me than before.”
“I heard she spends a lot of time at your hut. What does she usually do there?”
“She takes naps with Khan in my quarters or brings books to read. Sometimes she watches me prepare medicines. And occasionally…”
The woman, who had been stammering, suddenly shut her mouth.
He arched an eyebrow.
“Occasionally, what?”
“Occasionally, she helps me with my work.”
The woman spoke as if confessing, her voice hesitant.
He asked back, sounding as if he couldn’t believe it.
“She does menial labor at your hut?”
“She… she seemed interested in what I do. Sometimes she helps me trim herbs or prepare reagents.”
He let out a hollow laugh.
She was a woman who had used even him, the heir to the Grand Duchy, like a servant. The absurdity of hearing that such a woman was helping with a lowly servant’s work washed over him.
He had been receiving regular reports about her, but because he didn’t want her to feel like she was being watched, he had instructed them to focus only on her physical well-being.
Since the reports mainly covered whether she had any inconveniences in her life or if she had encountered any difficult or unpleasant situations, he knew almost nothing about the specific details of her daily routine.
Suppressing a strange irritation rising within him, he continued his questioning in a stiff tone.
“How was she with the deceased healer?”
In an instant, a flash of intense tension crossed the woman’s face. It seemed she finally realized she was being interrogated.
Barkas, who had been leaning back, leaned toward the desk and added dryly.
“She didn’t seem particularly grieved by that woman’s death. I take it they weren’t on good terms?”
Gulp. The healing sorceress swallowed hard, stalling for time before carefully opening her mouth.
“She got along well with Marisen-nim until last year. However… after the Grand Duchess promoted me to the position of exclusive healer instead of an assistant, some friction arose.”
“Friction?”
A look of hesitation clouded the woman’s face. She looked concerned that she might give testimony that would harm the Grand Duchess.
After hesitating for a long while, the healer continued in a cautious tone.
“Whenever Marisen-nim and my prescriptions differed, Her Grace began to follow my judgment more frequently. Marisen-nim expressed her dissatisfaction because of that… and Her Grace became furious, which naturally caused the two of them to drift apart. It was during that time that Marisen-nim met with her accident…”
“And so the rumor spread that my wife’s pet wolf killed her.”
Barkas finished the sentence coldly.
The woman hurriedly stepped forward to defend his wife.
“She didn’t show it outwardly, but the Grand Duchess was very distressed by Marisen-nim’s passing. The mere fact that someone she was close to died must have been a great shock, but then everyone began giving her those subtle looks of suspicion…”
“Are you truly certain that the wolf is innocent?”
The woman’s face stiffened slightly at the question he tossed out casually.
She looked down at the floor, pausing for a moment, before raising her head and speaking firmly.
“Yes, Khan is innocent of any crime.”
He stared silently into the healer’s dark brown eyes.
The woman spoke with a voice full of conviction.
“Khan is a very intelligent monster. He understands that if he harms someone, he cannot stay by Her Grace’s side. Therefore, he would never attack a person without reason.”
Barkas, stroking his chin with a thoughtful expression, nodded slowly.
“That seems like a sufficient answer. You may go now.”
The healer stood up with a look of relief.
Once she left the room, he turned his gaze back to the desk. The reagent the healer had left behind was shimmering under the light.
He picked it up and stared at it for a long time before opening the cap to check the contents. As the bitter scent of herbs brushed against the tip of his nose, buried memories came flooding back.
As if to shake them off, he closed his eyes tightly and downed the medicine in one gulp.
Before long, the effects of the medicine began to creep through his body.
Feeling his travel-weary body relax into a languid state, he leaned against the armrest of his chair. A bluish, glowing full moon entered his gradually blurring vision.
The moon had looked like that when he first slept in the same bed with her after spending the night together.
The sudden thought felt like a blade cutting across his chest.
He stood up, tugging at his shirt collar that felt like it was suffocating him.
For a split second, the insane thought of going to find her crossed his mind.
It wasn’t that he intended to do anything with her. He simply wished he could hold her quietly in the moonlight and seek sleep. Just like they used to…
Barkas, lost in such idle thoughts, soon let out a weak laugh.
She did not need him. And he did not want to disturb the wife who had finally regained her stability.
He turned his steps toward the bedroom attached to the study.
The room was spotless, as if the servants had cleaned it in advance.
Barkas let out a bitter sigh and threw himself onto the bed without even changing his clothes. He was deathly tired.
He realized he was once again counting the fragments of his past.
At some point, for him, dreaming had come to mean the same thing as repeating old memories.
Occasionally, unrealistic fantasies would mix in, but the dreams he had were always based on a recreation of the past.
It was the same this time.
The past version of himself was sitting in a stiff chair, staring at something.
On a simple, long desk of the type commonly used in the priest’s quarters, ancient documents were neatly spread out.
The priest standing behind him pressed down hard on the back of his head with a large, calloused hand, forcing him to look at it.
“Look closely. This is the evil committed by the ancient Khan people.”
On the old parchment documents, gruesome illustrations were vividly drawn.
A corpse hung upside down over an altar made of piled human heads, and beneath it stood black-haired priests catching the blood dripping from the corpse’s neck in golden basins.
“For a long time, the ancient Easterners kept other tribes as slaves and sacrificed their lives to the spirits. They cut off the victims’ heads and hung the bodies upside down to drain all the blood from their bodies. They believed that the earth spirit, Tiramer, would gain even greater power by drinking human essence. Until they were integrated into the Empire, they brutally slaughtered thousands of sacrifices. And through such wicked rituals, they were granted abilities that defied the providence of God.”
He twisted his head and glared at the priest with a rebellious gaze. The priest, returning a cold look, added in a chillingly dry tone.
“Such impure energy flows within your blood. That is why you feel no guilt even after harming a person.”
“I did nothing wrong.”
He shouted like a growling beast.
“That man dared to touch my body. He deserved to die.”
“If that is true, then my brother’s soul shall also burn eternally in the fires of hell,” the priest replied calmly.
“But that does not mean your sin disappears. Young Master, you crushed the Dreiban brothers’ heads so brutally they were unrecognizable. An ordinary child could not commit such a heinous act. Just as the Grand Duke feared, the savagery of the Khan tribe continues to flow through your blood.”
He bit his lip. He couldn’t remember that moment exactly.
The moment the priest’s rough hand crawled inside his clothes, his vision had turned blood-red with rage. And the next moment, he was looking down at the fallen priest while clutching a blood-stained candlestick in one hand.
Perhaps, just as this man said, something terrible dwelt within him. His father had recognized it. But he did not want to admit that fact.
He repeated himself.
“I did nothing wrong. If anyone tries to do that to me again, I’ll crush their head too.”
“…Then I suppose I have no choice but to wait until you change your mind.”
The man dragged him roughly from the chair. Then, grabbing his struggling wrists, he dragged him into the punishment room. He resisted with all his might, but he was no match for the strength of a man who had once been a paladin of the Holy War Defense Force.
The man pushed him into the narrow stone chamber.
“If you repent for the sin of slaughter even now, I will let you out.”
He kept his mouth shut and stared intently at the priest’s face with eyes that shone fiercely.
As he stared into the man’s grayish-brown eyes for a long time without moving, a tiny crack appeared in the expressionless face that looked like a mask.
“What are you looking at like that?”
He carefully chose his words in his mind. And finally, he came up with the words this man would fear most.
“Your destiny.”
The man’s hollow cheeks twitched faintly.
He deliberately wore a smile on his lips.
“I see you hanging upside down with your head cut off, pouring out blood.”
The priest, wearing an expression as if he were facing a terrible demon, slammed the iron door shut with a loud bang.
In the darkness, he let out a dry laugh filled with a sense of victory.
