#79. Don’t Ever Appear Before Me Again
It was more than defiant — it was rude.
Unlike usual, Nikolai didn’t answer.
Only his clenched fist trembled precariously.
‘Calling me a beast? Even if it’s a religious metaphor, there’s no way Nikolai would tolerate that…’
“He’s… inside of me….”
Nikolai’s face, hesitant and swallowing his words, suddenly flashed into my mind.
Nikolai grabbed my wrist.
“Tell that oracle to go to hell. Let’s return to the palace, Elizabeth.”
His hand was still large and hot.
Nikolai seemed unaware of how tightly he held me.
My wrist throbbed more than when it had been tied with rope.
Reading the anger and anxiety in his teal eyes, I pushed him away.
“Not now, Your Majesty. I need to understand what that oracle meant.”
Nikolai’s body wavered as if to disappear.
“Am I not to go with you?”
“Just send me on my way first. Wherever I go, you can find me.”
Nikolai’s hand fell from me.
That simple release felt like all the blood in my body draining away.
From a step back, Nikolai looked lonely and vulnerable.
I wanted to throw my arms around the larger man and hold him.
But I went underground with Akanso.
With each step I took, Nikolai’s voice circled in my head.
The memory of Nikolai’s eyes, swollen red like a wounded beast, hovered before me.
Did Nikolai go back to the palace alone?
Riding the two-person saddle by himself?
Just imagining it made my chest feel like it would shatter.
“Sorry, but I have to go back now.”
I said it like a declaration on the underground stairs.
Akanso looked at me with a furrowed brow.
“This is the entrance to the subterranean chapel.”
A wooden door with a dark, battered lock came into view.
In keeping with the reputation of being the oldest temple, its corner had rotted away.
“If you enter, you will receive an oracle.”
“I’ll listen later. Or maybe I won’t listen at all. I have to return to His Majesty.”
“Truly, His Majesty is terribly harmful to the Saint.”
He spoke in a clinical tone, as if diagnosing an illness.
A flame ignited in my chest.
“Who made you the judge of what’s harmful?”
“If you were offended, I apologize, Saint.”
“Drop the ‘Saint’ title. I don’t want to be entangled with your religion one bit!”
White light, sacred relics — I was sick of them.
I had just barely shaken off Claudia’s nightmare.
I thought I had twisted the original story enough.
I wanted to live my life.
Beside the people I chose.
With the man I loved.
“If you dislike the title ‘Saint,’ shall I call you the Righteous Departed instead?”
My sternum tightened around my heart.
Only the White Light and I knew that title.
White Light. I didn’t know exactly what that being meant, but my life depended on it.
Horrible scenes I had read in the book flashed before my eyes.
All kinds of torture devices and one-sided trials.
Innocent women burning alive.
If I defied the White Light, I could end up the same way.
The air in the underground grew thin to the point of suffocation.
My flesh trembled with fear.
But I steeled my gaze and lifted my chin.
“Call me Elizabeth. That’s my name.”
I didn’t want to miss this second life.
Many times I had wanted to give up, but I had clung to life.
I wouldn’t let others push me around.
Whether they were priests or gods.
“There’s no use denying it. The Saint has already been chosen by the goddess Morasincia.”
“I never asked to be chosen.”
“Humans do not have the freedom to choose that.”
“That’s right. Humans are useless as always. But at least we can choose two things.”
I scoffed and spread two fingers.
Akanso hurriedly withdrew them when he realized it might be offensive.
“To accept fate, or to reject it.”
“Do you truly intend to refuse that holy duty?”
“It may be holy to you. To me it’s just an annoying, bothersome obstruction.”
“Saint!”
“I hate you. What are you going to do about it? Kill me? Do you think I’ll tremble in fear of death?”
Of course it was a lie.
The thought of dying made my limbs go numb.
Having experienced it before, the fear was even worse.
But sometimes bluster is necessary.
To comfort myself.
“Go tell your god plainly this: if you want the relic, ask politely. Don’t come at me with ridiculous threats!”
Akanso looked thoroughly flummoxed, as if he hadn’t expected that.
“I only serve to convey the goddess’s words. I do not possess the ability to communicate directly with her.”
“Then be a good spectator. Don’t pester people.”
Bye-bye.
I waved cheerfully.
Leaving a half-dumbfounded Akanso behind, I ran up the stairs two at a time.
It was a lie that the second relic wasn’t precious.
I felt a brief pang of regret.
‘Should I have stayed? Eh, whatever. I’ll leave later matters to future me!’
There were things I wanted to say to Nikolai.
There were things I wanted to hear from him.
I didn’t want to gain a festering wound between all the unasked and unanswered things.
Above all, I wanted to see Nikolai happy to see me returned.
I pushed off the stairs toward the surface.
That was when thick drops began to fall from the ceiling.
“Rain…?!”
Drops the size of hail shattered on my head and shoulders.
My collar and hair were soaked in moments.
Shivering from the chill, I looked up at the ceiling.
Akanso’s urgent shout pierced my eardrum.
“The oracle descends, Saint!”
Under a sky full of black clouds, Nikolai bit his lip.
Each step felt like hundreds of awls piercing the soles of his boots and tearing at his skin.
‘Elizabeth must be somewhere below. Not by my side, but with Akanso…!’
An unbearable fury lit his gut.
After the brief flare of anger came a muddy self-reproach.
What was the outcome of his decision to reveal a secret?
He had only caused Elizabeth confusion with a few clumsy, shabby words.
He hadn’t brought out what he truly wanted to say.
‘I meant to ask her to be my wife. To be Empress.’
Empress Elizabeth.
To be the empire’s most exalted woman, wearing Hartman’s heart on her head.
He had ridden toward that dream at full speed.
In stolen moments he traced her name carved on the front of the two-person saddle.
What Nikolai had tried to do was a proposal, but it only brought bitter misunderstanding.
Rational seams split and a whirlwind of emotion crashed in.
Every time, an unwelcome visitor arrived.
“Good thing you didn’t propose, Nikki. She’d have refused anyway.”
The wolf chuckled low.
A beast that had bitten into Nikolai’s past, present, and future.
“She doesn’t want to be Empress. She’s clever; of course she wouldn’t.”
“I can convince her.”
“If she becomes Empress, do you think the nobles will leave her be? They’ll tear her apart. Her life could even be threatened.”
“I’ll protect her.”
Nikolai remembered that day.
When told she was fit to be Empress, Elizabeth had said she would never become one, even if she died.
“You’re arrogant, wolf.”
“Give it up. It won’t be good for either of you. Don’t you see her scent’s clouding your judgment?”
“Elizabeth is the only being who can chase away the scent of the death-flower. Didn’t you agree she’s the last hope?”
Nikolai snapped back sharply.
The wolf played the fool as if nothing had happened.
“If you’d confessed my existence, she might have understood. It would’ve been easier to explain you’re a fake womanizer.”
He had explained the emperor’s duties.
He had explained the cursed nose.
Only one more explanation — of the wolf — and the rest would have been simple.
But he couldn’t bring himself to open his mouth.
“Are you ashamed of me?”
“I’m terribly ashamed.”
“You must be frightened.”
“…”
“If Elizabeth becomes Empress… then a child born between you would inherit me.”
Nikolai bit the inside of his cheek hard.
A dizzying wave that he could neither forget nor escape washed over him.
An eternal burden he could not govern.
An inescapable yoke.
The wolf’s sly whisper continued.
“Poor Nikki. Sometimes you want to hide losing your senses from me, don’t you.”
“Die, wolf….”
“Humans provide the wolf’s food; you must find that distasteful too.”
“…”
“And you inhaled Elizabeth’s scent in full along with me!”
He wanted to throttle the wolf’s throat.
If he could, he would have done it long ago.
He’d liked to hide that fact.
Hide it until death.
But because of that secrecy, he’d earned Elizabeth’s misunderstanding.
He’d hurt her.
So he had no right to feel lonely or to hurt.
He had to pay the price for the secret.
“Hide it to the end. The moment she senses my existence, she’ll abandon you for real.”
Pain like gut-wrenching spasms stabbed him.
Akanso’s words hit his temples like a hammer.
“Isn’t the beast you can’t control more dangerous than I am, Sire?”
By merely becoming Empress, Elizabeth would become a public enemy.
To be Empress meant sharing the Emperor’s responsibilities.
The wolf would have to endure it.
And she would have to pass that wolf on to their child.
Nikolai finally realized he had almost made an irretrievable mistake.
“If you love Elizabeth, forget about making her Empress. If you’ve ever thought about her happiness and safety even once…”
The wolf’s voice impressed each word into his chest.
It had all been selfishness.
He didn’t want to be apart from Elizabeth for even a moment.
He wanted to drown his cares in her scent.
He wanted to soothe old wounds, to share the heavy burden.
So Elizabeth hadn’t been wrong.
She had simply pierced the truth a step ahead of him.
‘Give it all up… Elizabeth, for her sake.’
When his heart decided, something white and bright appeared before Nikolai’s eyes.
