Chapter 96
Flowers had increased in Horimus’s greenhouse. Deep inside the space—large enough to be called a garden—female efres attended to the Grand Duchess.
A fine-toothed comb tidied her blonde hair, the tips tinged white. Ends that would crumble into multicolored powder at the slightest touch no longer broke apart, even as the comb passed through them again and again.
“Please lift your arm.”
At the efre’s request, the Grand Duchess shifted her body. She looked accustomed to being waited on. The mistress of Horimus, who had long remained bedridden, was now spending a little more time awake than asleep with each passing day.
Around the Grand Duchess’s slender neck hung a pearl necklace made of small beads. Uneven in size, they appeared to be freshwater pearls of low value as gemstones—hardly an ornament befitting her rank by any measure.
Yet the efre’s hands, disentangling strands of hair caught on the necklace, were more careful than ever. Whether aware of their concern or not, the Grand Duchess habitually touched what hung at her neck.
The efres grew anxious, afraid the pearls might be damaged by her hand, but none dared stop her.
It was the feeling of nannies unable to restrain a child of noble birth. Just as they hesitated, the one and only solution entered Horimus.
As the Grand Duchess’s attention wandered to the pearls, Tarahan approached her side without a sound and gently took her slender hand, easing it away from the necklace.
“Don’t take it off.”
The fingers that had been rolling the pearls lost their way. She opened and closed her hand as if the empty sensation felt strange, then smiled awkwardly.
“…Ah. You’ve come.”
“Is it uncomfortable?”
It had been made so it wouldn’t constrict her neck, but the way she kept touching it suggested it bothered her after all.
Tarahan’s gaze naturally drifted to Ninia’s ankles. The skin that had once darkened from shackles had healed without a trace. This necklace must not come to feel like shackles to her.
“It’s not that… It just feels a little unfamiliar.”
As a saint, she had never worn or adorned herself with anything beyond Kaner’s shoulder mantle and white ceremonial robes. Yet it was from the moment she put on this necklace that Ninia had opened her eyes and begun to move properly.
Each bead, unimpressive as it looked, had been forged by condensing holy power and possessed power surpassing even sacred relics.
The pearls—created at the cost of countless priests offered up to magical devices—served to preserve the life force leaking from her shattered body.
After she wore the necklace, other priests poured holy power into her body, and the invisible cracks began to knit together, if only faintly. The shell that had only ever split apart was finally showing signs of recovery.
The physicians of Gilpurse calmed her rampaging core and organs. The sudden surges of fever and the number of seizures decreased.
Everyone had agreed it was impossible. If either the priests or the physicians had been removed, her body would have collapsed at once—yet the fact that she walked and spoke at all was nothing short of a miracle.
“Bear with it just a little longer, until I can make another piece of jewelry.”
The one soothing the Grand Duchess now was the very man who had created that miracle. Fatigue clung to the dark circles beneath his eyes.
From the day he first saw Ninia coughing up blood, he had lived without the sleep or rest essential to humans. There were moments when his vision blurred or his eyes closed, but the visions that followed always snapped him awake.
The visions always ended with Ninia’s death. This was punishment. If comfort or peace ever came to him, it would be proof that Ninia was returning to the goddess’s embrace. So he had to suffer—always—so that she might remain in this world.
“Yes. Benefactor.”
After he had offered countless lambs of the goddess, Ninia lived and breathed. But what Tarahan had offered was not limited to priests alone. She remembered nothing of her past with him. Reflected in Ninia’s blue eyes was a complete stranger.
His pain, too, was part of the sacrifice. Her memories, utterly evaporated, only deepened his suffering.
Perhaps it’s better for her.
To Tarahan, his memories with Ninia were a sea churned with arrogance and rage, self-destruction, and a strange love mixed with regret. If anyone tried to steal that sea from him, he was certain he would slaughter them.
And yet, those memories—his entire life—had become, for Ninia, a horrific past she did not even wish to recall. If her instincts rejected it so fiercely, then even if her body recovered, the chances of her memories returning were slim.
In the end, Ninia had succeeded in completely excising him from herself.
“How long do I have to stay here?”
She asked with innocent eyes. Ninia’s memories were fixed at the time she had been a saint. He had told her that while continuing her pilgrimage, she had been caught in a terrible accident, lost her holy power, and was instructed to recover inside the greenhouse.
It wasn’t such a strange situation. Horimus housed many priests, and the efres of Gilpurse attended her while wearing trainee-priest robes. Ninia accepted anything said to be the temple’s command without question. Revulsion welled up at the temple that had conditioned her so—but he was using that conditioning himself.
“Until your body returns to normal.”
“…I see.”
Ninia lowered her gaze. She was deeply unsettled by the absence of the mighty holy power she once felt within herself. Though she had been led to believe it would return as she recovered here, what was empty could not be filled all at once.
Still, Ninia quickly erased her anxiety. Smiling as if nothing were wrong, she looked up at him.
“You’re helping me, aren’t you?”
At that question, Tarahan fell silent. He was the one who had planted this fabricated reality in her. He had spun lies with ease. Yet meeting those eyes made his self-disgust surge.
“I’ve never received help like this outside the goddess’s grace before… I couldn’t even thank you properly. They said you saved me then. Truly, thank you.”
Ninia regarded him as her benefactor. A member of a minor tribe who had protected her on the battlefield and now cared for a woman who had lost her holy power, asking nothing in return—it was a ridiculous lie, but she believed it.
“…I—”
His throat tightened, words failing him. As if saying an answer wasn’t necessary, Ninia slowly shook her head.
“It’s all right. I thought you might not believe in the goddess.”
She assumed the reason he swallowed his words was resistance toward the goddess. Even so, to Ninia he was a benefactor—a saint who showed mercy to her despite her lack of holy power.
“And yet you’re helping me, aren’t you? So many saints have shone throughout history, but… to me, you seem the brightest.”
Her blue eyes shone brilliantly. What lived within them was a demon wearing the guise of a saint. He tried to look away from Ninia, but no matter how desperately he turned his head, he could not tear his gaze from the ugliness reflected in those blue eyes.
His stomach twisted and churned. He could not endure his own revulsion. That warped turmoil burst forth through an ugly voice.
“I’m not a saint.”
His trash-like nature refused to let the praise pass. Reflected on the impossibly clear surface was a version of himself so vile it made him sick. He knew every word he spoke now would become regret—yet he could not stop.
“Are you naive, or just foolish? Do you not know why priests and physicians are both here? Do you truly believe the temple sent you here?”
Hurl insults at me. Look at me with contempt.
At her most exalted, she had been like the sun that embraced all things. His whole body had burned away in that pure fire—and still he kept drawing closer, like a moth willingly offering itself to the flame.
She fell silent for a moment, seeming surprised and flustered. Yet that natural reaction made Ninia look less like a saint and more like an ordinary woman.
“I didn’t bring a saint here… I brought you, Ninia.”
As the revulsion ebbed, his true nature surfaced. He had sworn to give up anything to save Ninia, but the moment even a sliver of possibility appeared, he wanted to cling to her as if nothing before had mattered.
“…I don’t quite understand what you mean.”
It was a cautious question. Her earlier confusion had long since been hidden again behind the saint’s bare mask. She had been trained to exclude emotion; within her there was no room for selfhood or love.
She had been invited to countless parties and social gatherings across nations, yet no one had ever confessed love to a saint or made advances one would toward a woman.
To harbor feelings for a saint—one would have to be courting disaster.
There were rumors that anyone who entertained base desire beyond the blessings she bestowed would suffer misfortune worse than an early death. Bees naturally flocked to a beautiful flower, but knowing its nectar could not be drunk, they cursed and mocked her instead.
The saint was truly a perfect doll. He found himself wanting to turn Ninia back from a doll into a person. Words he never could have spoken if she remembered everything spilled from his mouth.
“I have feelings for you.”
What if they could start over from the beginning?
A wish buried deep beneath countless longings finally rose to the surface.
Just as she had taught him love, he wanted to teach love to the Ninia who had lost her memories.
It was a filthy excuse. Yet his yearning surpassed even his revulsion. Gritting his teeth, he took Ninia’s hand and pressed his lips to it.
Just once—give me a chance.
He would surely fall into hell. Even if he burned for eternity at its deepest level, he still reached out his hand toward that radiant light.
