Chapter 7
He pleaded with Ezra, who was gasping in misery. No—he only pretended to.
“What are you doing? Move at once.”
At his order, given without even turning around, the maids who had been standing at a distance hurried up the stairs. They moved so quickly that before long they were holding out clean cloth, lukewarm water, and ointment in front of him.
“Open it.”
“Yes.”
At his nod, a maid barely managed to undo the latch with trembling hands. Hippolytus bent down and entered the small prison, knelt on the rough stone floor, and easily gathered the weakened Ezra into his arms.
“N-no… I don’t want to.”
Perhaps ashamed of her naked body so plainly exposed, the woman turned her face away from him. It was pitiful how she tried to cover her chest with her thin arms, arms that looked as if they might break if squeezed too hard—but everything shameful had already been revealed. Tears streamed past her ears. He stared at them without thinking, then stiffened.
Even the foal he had once held hadn’t felt this light. The emaciated woman was lighter than he had expected.
Even so, her body stirred something in him, holding a faint warmth. If he held her tightly, she felt so fragile she might vanish like an illusion. The subtle feeling scattered quickly. He soaked a clean cloth in water and began wiping away the bloodstains one by one.
“Does it hurt?”
Her tiny face was caked with dried blood. He wiped her battered forehead, her cheeks swollen and bruised purple, her split lips beaded with blood… even the tears that kept flowing without pause. He wiped it all away.
“…No.”
“That’s a lie.”
“It’s true. Your Highness’s touch is like a feather. It doesn’t hurt at all.”
At her slow reply, his hand hesitated for a moment. Just earlier she had been crying like a child, and now she was talking so well through torn lips.
“Even if it hurts, bear with it a little.”
Ezra struggled to lift her swollen eyes and looked up at him. Even in this pitch-dark underground, the man was still dazzling. Like a bird breaking free of its shell and seeing light for the first time—a single beam of light descending into the darkness.
A light that made her want to simply gaze at it, to reach out her fingertips, to cautiously step closer.
So it was all right, even if he looked down at her with such indifferent eyes.
She seemed to have completely given up on covering herself. Hippolytus gently applied ointment to her closed eyes. One might expect her to groan or at least flinch, but the woman in his arms smiled foolishly.
With tears that suited her unbearably well, spilling freely beyond all restraint.
Not once did she say it hurt. She only burrowed a little deeper into his arms.
So perhaps it was later that he realized—whenever she suffered, she burrowed in, again and again.
As dusk fell, the woman sitting by the window and gazing at the castle walls was bathed entirely in vermilion light. Around her, the maids who stood bent over, unable to move one way or another, were frozen stiff with fear, unable to blink.
“Letting the prince discover the underground prison wasn’t enough—you even let him learn that I was behind it.”
“I have no excuse, Your Majesty. P-please, just spare my l-life—”
“Life? Life, you say.”
The queen mulled over the word, then abruptly covered her mouth. Her hunched back shook with a choking sound. The laughter that followed, like something scraping her insides, made her narrow back tremble.
At last she threw her head back and burst into loud laughter. The laughter that echoed through the silence seemed almost demonic. That was how the terrified maids felt.
After cackling for a long while, the queen finally steadied her breath and asked,
“You make such a mess, and now all you can do is beg for a life no better than a worm’s?”
Mineth, who had been sitting for so long, slowly rose to her feet. The queen’s footsteps approaching—click, click—sounded ominous.
“So. You dare wish to live?”
“Y-yes! I w-want to live. Please spare me, Your Majesty!”
At the shrill cry, the maids who had been trembling like aspen leaves dropped to their knees. As they bowed deeply and gasped for breath, Mineth suddenly became calm.
“If you want to live, then tell me. Who was it that tipped off the prince about that place?”
“Your Majesty! We truly know nothing. That was the first time we had ever properly faced His Highness.”
“T-that’s right. He came suddenly—we had no choice.”
Suddenly came, indeed. Her chest rose and fell with anger-roughened breaths. Brow deeply furrowed, teeth clenched, Mineth lifted her chin and turned toward the window.
With eyes closed, the recent past replayed before her. The stone tower she had entered in high spirits, imagining the whip fitting snugly in her hand—and the unexpected person she encountered.
‘Queen Mineth.’
Yes. That damned prince.
The moment she opened the rusted door, Mineth came face to face with a man climbing up from the underground stairs. Taking in at once even the limp female body slumped in his wide arms, Mineth briefly lowered her eyes.
‘…What brings Your Highness here?’
She asked with feigned composure and a demure attitude, but the end of her voice trembled faintly. Only a fool wouldn’t grasp what was going on. In her coldly sunken red eyes lingered hatred she had yet to erase.
‘And what business brings Her Majesty here? I came because I was told something had happened to Princess Ezra.’
At the words “I was told,” Mineth bit down inside her mouth. Who dared speak of this aloud? The likelihood that some mere maid had done so was slim. Then…
Having lost all reason to hide it, Mineth glared venomously at the unconscious Ezra in his arms.
‘I didn’t realize it was such a serious matter.’
At his continued words, Mineth raised her gaze to meet Hippolytus’s. It felt as though all her base intentions had been laid bare. When Mineth narrowed her eyes and glared, Hippolytus curled one corner of his lips, as if he knew everything.
‘Shall I inform Lord Hieros of this?’
A clear threat. He tilted his head and shrugged.
Mineth’s body trembled with humiliation beyond endurance.
‘Ah, but Princess Ezra asked that this not reach her father’s ears, so I suppose I cannot.’
Hippolytus stepped closer and brought his lips near Mineth’s ear.
‘So, Your Majesty. Please take good care of Princess Ezra. If those lowly maids dare attempt something like this again, I won’t be able to merely stand by and watch.’
Though he knew she was behind it, the prince spoke thus.
Stripped raw by the unmistakable warning, Mineth had no choice but to turn her back on him.
“Ah, yes. This is my fault for trusting fools like you.”
Ending her recollection, Mineth pressed a hand to her forehead and spoke theatrically. Of course, she knew well that the maids were not truly at fault. Those trembling figures would never have approached Hippolytus. But the rage boiling within her had to go somewhere—otherwise it would devour her instead.
“Take them away. Beat them until all their blood spills out, then bury them.”
“Lady Mineth!”
“Aaah!”
At the merciless order, the two maids instinctively struggled, but it didn’t last long. The other maids who had been standing behind struck them unconscious with clubs, gagged them, and dragged them off somewhere.
Only after clearing those annoyances from her sight did Mineth lie back on the bed, her mind slightly eased. She meant only to catch her breath, but behind the squalid emotions, memories of the past came flooding in.
Not long after Skene had been disbanded, she had once looked down from a window overlooking the garden at a woman stroking her swollen belly. Beside her stood the man she loved, smiling as if he owned the world.
A woman who didn’t know her place, stepping into a position that should have been hers. A lowly dancer daring to toy with her husband with nothing but a pretty face—and even conceiving a disgusting child. Just thinking of it made her teeth chatter; she felt she could do anything if only she could crush that brightly smiling face.
So she prayed. Die. Die with your eyes rolled back. She groaned in anguish, wishing for the woman’s very existence to disappear. Night after night she harbored poison in her heart, wishing misfortune upon her—sometimes even weeping. She resented the two people who made her so wicked.
Lost in recollection, Mineth pressed the back of her hand to her eyes and sneered. It felt as though the man’s sobs, vivid as yesterday, still rang in her ears. Beyond the dim torchlight, the woman’s slackened form. The man collapsing before her, wailing. Don’t go. Take me with you. His desperate pleas were so thick with despair that she could do nothing but stand beyond the threshold.
The woman who died unable to endure the pain of childbirth reeked of metallic blood. In the midwife’s arms, bowed like a criminal, lay the infant. The child, born not with blessings but branded with a lifelong curse, did not cry—as if it already knew its fate.
Watching that chaos, what had I said? Perhaps I silently shed tears while looking at the man’s back as he sobbed uncontrollably.
‘I should have killed you. If I’d known you would steal him from me, I would have killed you long ago.’
The man, eyes blazing as he raised a dagger toward the baby’s neck, soon met green eyes—and his legs gave out as he collapsed to the floor.
‘Ah… I never wished for this. Truly, all my life… I only wished for you.’
Listening to his powerless sobbing, I felt regret for the first time. If only that woman had not died. Death is eternal; to you, she would remain an eternity for the rest of your life.
‘Still… don’t cry.’
What I wanted was for you to look at me. I never wished to see you cry.
Ezra dreamed. Realizing it was a dream, she watched her younger self in the corner, blowing on her chubby palms. How old was she then? She couldn’t tell exactly, but perhaps five or six.
Her pale palms were always full of small and large scrapes. Living in the stone tower, it was common to be rubbed raw by rough stone. But no one paid attention to such minor wounds. She would mutter to herself and blow on them again and again.
Why was it, though—though it was a time she had already lived through—that she wanted to run over and hug that small back tightly? That foolish child who didn’t even know what loneliness was. That foolish self who always lay in the corner of the bed, staring up at the barred window, yearning for something even she didn’t understand.
It was a dream, yet she couldn’t act as she wished. And yet—he reached where she could not. He came to her.
A man’s shadow fell over the small figure. The man who had once held her under the night sky, gently stroked her hair, and whispered at the end, “Smile,” into her ear.
When he held out his hand, the young Ezra lifted her head and looked up at him. Standing beneath a radiant halo of light that seemed to banish the darkness at her feet, she couldn’t help but take his hand. When she lightly touched him with scabbed fingertips, a large, solid hand wrapped around hers in comfort. Even though it was a dream—only a dream she herself had imagined—the warmth of another person was so vivid it brought tears to her eyes.
Only then did she understand. What she had wanted, over and over, was nothing more than the warmth of another human being. And the first person who had ever given her that—I would probably never forget him for as long as I lived.
Ezra opened her eyes after emerging from the dream she didn’t want to leave—three full days after losing consciousness. Dazed, she stared at the high ceiling and blinked several times. What was this? What had happened? Without even dreaming, she had suddenly returned to reality.
Yet everything around her felt unfamiliar, almost as if it were still a dream. The ceiling should have been low, made of dark, rough stone. The bed should have creaked ominously with even the slightest movement.
After staring blankly at the ceiling, she slowly raised her upper body. A burning pain shot through her back, but she swallowed the groan automatically.
“Where is this—ugh!”
As she tried to speak, pain flared in her parched throat. Unable to continue, she rolled her eyes around to grasp the situation—and noticed a strange man sitting by the window, nodding off.
“E-excuse me.”
