106.
By the time we returned to the lodging late that night, every one of us had our hands piled full of something.
In the end, all four of us came into the inn wearing this and that on our heads, arms laden with all sorts of souvenirs.
The innkeeper, who had not yet gone to bed and was still at the front desk, laughed when he saw us.
“Looks like you had yourselves quite the time.”
“Ahaha, I suppose we did.”
When we first arrived at the inn, and even when the first fireworks began, we had merely stared blankly like people with nothing to do with it—only to return looking as though we had enjoyed ourselves more thoroughly than anyone. It was no wonder he laughed.
Back in the room, I dumped the items onto the table in a clatter, sprawled out on the sofa, and began looking through them one by one.
When I unrolled a rolled-up sheet of paper, out came the portrait we had paid to have drawn on the street.
To be honest, the drawing did not capture even a quarter of a quarter of the real thing.
‘Why spend money on this when I could just draw it for you?’
‘Because then you wouldn’t be in the picture.’
For a moment, I wondered if I should have listened when Zaka tried to stop me, but then I let out a little laugh.
There had been lines of people waiting in front of the other artists, yet somehow there had not been a single person in front of the artist who took us. As it turned out, there had been a reason for that.
Although the quality was low, the drawing speed was extremely fast, so the four of us were able to come away with four portraits side by side.
As for the other items, they were honestly just miscellaneous odds and ends, none of them particularly useful.
The food we had packed up because it had tasted good when we tried it, thinking we could eat it as snacks on the road, was among the better purchases.
I leaned my head back against the sofa, then, feeling something bulky there, lifted a hand to the top of my head.
My hair became slightly mussed as the headband came off.
Remembering the moment we bought the headbands, I made a strange sound and chuckled.
‘Why? Zaka, what’s wrong with this?’
‘I don’t want to. It doesn’t suit me at all.’
‘No, it really does suit you. I’ll even buy it for you.’
‘Why are you only doing this to me and not to the other men?’
Zaka, looking sullen, turned around and was left speechless.
Because Prien and Isitan were not resisting the reality before them at all; in fact, they were even choosing what they wanted to wear.
The duke had a hairpin with a flower decoration tucked into the side of his hair, and Prien was wearing a strangely shaped hat of unknown identity, tying its strings beneath his chin.
And so Zaka ended up wearing the headband I had chosen for him, with a cute red tomato attached to it.
‘Then, Baron, you should wear one I pick out for you.’
‘I won’t wear anything weird.’
‘How could there be such a thing?’
With his ears flushed bright red, Zaka seemed to have finally found his chance and began holding all sorts of headbands up to me.
‘In that case, I’d like to choose one for you too.’
‘One I choose as well.’
And the remaining two naturally joined in on that.
“Ah…… I’m so tired.”
How long had it been since I had played so excitedly, exhausted myself, and fallen asleep like this?
“Still, I have to wash, wash up before sleeping…….”
I carefully placed the headband I had bought and wrapped for Julie deep inside my bag, then staggered off to wash.
Half asleep, I lowered myself into the hot water and let out a groan.
‘The Paraton family, which managed the nearby territory until twenty years ago.’
That family, which had also been keeping Merinis’s Heart, had seen its line die out and was naturally on the path to extinction.
But the lover of that last descendant was still living there.
On top of that, there was the mysterious man who had appeared, claiming he would serve as that lover’s guardian.
‘Was Margaret’s suggestion right after all?’
Was that man truly of the Paraton bloodline? Was he really the woman’s lover, the one who had sworn love to her?
I was not pleased by the fact that I had to dig into that secret in order to obtain “Merinis’s Heart.”
Staring at the pale steam filling the bathroom, I closed my eyes.
‘I don’t have any other way now.’
* * *
“What did the count say? Is he coming to see the young lady today?”
Meriana Peregrine’s close attendant shook her head with a mournful expression.
“You told him exactly that the young lady is ill, that she’s refusing all food and drink right now, didn’t you? And he still said he won’t come?”
“Yes……. What should we do now?”
It was then. From inside the room, a faint voice called for the attendants.
They hurried into the room.
The room, where a faint fragrance lingered, somehow gave off a bleak impression.
Perhaps it was because its mistress had not left her bed for several days.
“My lady, did you call?”
“Are you uncomfortable anywhere……?”
Worried that she might have heard the hushed conversation they had shared in the corridor, they approached the bedside in a state of tension.
The young lady, buried beneath the blanket all the way to the top of her head, lay as still as if she were dead.
“There’s no need to call the count.”
“Huh? Pardon?”
Another attendant jabbed the waist of the one who had made that foolish sound with her elbow, then bent at the waist and answered.
“Yes, understood, my lady. We will let them know that you will not be receiving visitors for the time being.”
“……Yes.”
Meriana answered briefly.
Then she remained silent until the attendants tactfully withdrew.
She did not want even her attendants to see her bloodshot eyes, which had not slept properly for days.
The desire not to show such a wretched appearance to the one she held in her heart, and the desire for him to come anyway, despite her refusal, to look in on her with concern, crossed within her countless times.
Without rubbing her raw eyes, Meriana clenched the bedsheet tightly.
‘Do you truly want to know, Meriana?’
Even now, if she let her guard down for the slightest moment, fragments of that day’s memories surfaced in her mind.
“Ha, haha…….”
To think that the thing running down her cheeks right now was hot tears could be so humiliating.
There was no need for any other place; the very place where she stayed was hell.
‘The count never truly loved you, not even for a single moment.’
‘Oh, you’re not really going to stand there and make excuses, saying you never sensed that, are you?’
Meriana could not so much as part her lips.
‘Why are you so surprised? Do you not understand what your brother is saying? Fine, then perhaps I should put it this way…….’
‘The count drank a potion. A potion that made him fall in love not with that woman, but with you.’
The moment she heard the whispers pouring from the mouth of her blood kin, wearing the mask of tenderness,
Meriana, unbelievably, found those words far too easy to believe.
She could have perhaps dismissed them as lies, or turned away and declared that her brother had gone mad.
‘What’s wrong? Have you forgotten that you mixed the drug into the tea the count drank with your own hands that day?’
'Not even knowing whether it was poison or a love potion, utterly consumed by the thought of tearing those two apart.'
'The pathetic, giddy figure wondering if perhaps he might finally turn to look at her—how absurd it had been.'
Rogiche laughed quietly, covering his mouth. But soon, uncontrollable laughter burst forth violently.
Eventually, he even wiped away the few tears that had trickled down with his fingertips.
'I don't know why everyone is in such an uproar over imbecilic trifles like love, but.......'
'Why.......'
'I'm doing all of this for you, aren't I, Maryana?'
It was horrifying.
Maryana buried her face in her pillow.
Desperately wishing that the ugly truth of that day would never surface again.
If only she could, she wanted to excise even the choice she had made afterward from her mind.
'I made sure you finally got that man in your hands, just as you wished, and even then, this brother kept the secret all this time so you could swell with sweet dreams alone.'
A voice that had seemed sweeter than honey suddenly turned terrifyingly cold.
'You don't like it?'
Rogiche himself knelt before Maryana, who had staggered and collapsed, and grabbed her shoulders.
'Then go and tell them.'
Like a demon's whisper, his voice constricted Maryana's throat.
'Go tell the people. Go tell the Count. That Rohinas Kanesion was made to love you by a love potion. That you fed that man a love potion.'
'.......'
'That the one the Count truly loved was, in fact, Anastasia Roxan.'
The moment that truth was pronounced, Maryana truly felt as though her breath had stopped. Her entire body trembled uncontrollably.
She had hoped that alone would not be true.
Even if everything else was fine, that alone...
'Then...... then...... that wasn't...... a love potion?'
'As if. What good would it do me to make the Count fall for such an unsightly woman?'
'.......'
'Ridiculous as it is, Maryana. The Count truly loved that woman. Enough to abandon his family. Come to think of it, I suppose that was exactly the truthful, honorable love you always spoke of?'
'.......'
'Of course, whether to reveal this truth or not is entirely your choice.'
What Maryana chose was silence.
From the beginning, there had been no other choice.
The mere thought of that truth being revealed to the world terrified her enough to make her fingertips tingle with fear.
Maryana was not confident she could endure it.
She had witnessed everything Anastasia Roxan had ultimately been reduced to.
Just thinking that she might suffer even one ten-thousandth of that humiliation herself...
By any means necessary, whatever it took...... she had to ensure no one ever knew.
Before she knew it, she was already thinking that way.
'One does not resort to such despicable and dishonest methods simply to obtain what everyone desires.'
'Do you truly feel no shame at all?'
Looking back now, it was laughable—those very words had been pointing at Maryana herself.
Even while passing several sleepless days and nights in that horrific sense of contempt and shame, Maryana ultimately did not change the choice she had made.
Perhaps Rogiche, too, had known more clearly than anyone.
Just what kind of person his younger sister, born of the same blood, truly was.
Maryana watched as the arrogance and pride that had long formed her very foundation shattered into pieces and crumbled away.
Yet she did nothing.