2
7. The Corpse in the Next Room
What could that sound be? Both the noise and the smell filling her nostrils now were ominous beyond words. What had been brushing past the tip of her nose was the fishy scent of freshly spilled blood—a smell Daphne knew from her childhood.
The moment Ashelad set foot in the room, the glowstones flared to life.
"Aaaaagh!"
Daphne let out a truly agonized scream and tried to tear herself from the arms holding her. But Ashelad had no intention of letting go.
"Seems it took him a while to die."
Looking at Fabian, who had died bound to a chair with his eyes wide open, Ashelad smiled grimly.
"Aagh, aaaaagh!"
If he was to become Daphne's entire world, then there had to be nothing else in Daphne's world.
Daphne saw Fabian's corpse. It was unmistakably Fabian. She struggled with all her strength to go to him, but Ashelad would not release her.
"Let go, let go! Aagh! Let go of this!"
She screamed like a madwoman. As though drained of every drop of blood, Fabian's corpse was white—no, past white, an ashen blue.
"No, it can't be! It can't be!"
"He was alive until just a little while ago."
She wanted to at least tend to Fabian's body, but Ashelad did not let Daphne go. She struck roughly at his body.
"Why? Why! Why on earth!"
Daphne screamed as if wailing. Watching her, Ashelad spoke flatly.
"I kept him alive as long as I could, Daphne. He died slowly, bleeding out."
"Ah—hk!"
Daphne looked at the monster holding her in his arms. In her widely opened eyes, she saw Ashelad—no, a monster. The monster grinned. Tears fell from her two eyes.
"That's right. When you and I were rolling around together—"
"……."
"This bastard was in the next room, dying. I don't know whether he could hear the sounds you and I were making."
Daphne tried to struggle free and was seized by him once more. All she could do was make sounds, unable to move as she pleased.
Screams of misery, screams of agony—Daphne's legs moved.
"I hate it, I hate it now!"
"……."
"Stop it, please stop it! Just kill me instead!"
Daphne screamed. Ashelad observed her state as though it were amusing. Fabian, bound to the chair, dying as he bled.
Fabian had committed no wrong.
His only sin was that he had tried to save her—her, who had simply happened to be born into misfortune and lived unhappily—simply because he loved her.
Her misfortune had devoured Fabian whole!
"Daphne."
"Get away! Get away from me!"
Poor Fabian! In this moment, Daphne screamed without hesitation at the man who had cast her life perfectly into the abyss.
"Your Highness, I hate you! I hate you!"
Daphne screamed as she looked at Ashelad. Watching her, Ashelad spoke with a puzzled expression.
"Do you have the right to hate me, Daphne?"
It was the same gentle tone as always. And that was what made Daphne feel she was going mad.
* * *
The place Daphne was returned to was once again the stuffy maids' chamber. A place no one cared to visit—Daphne's lonely site of misfortune.
"Daphne."
At Sara's voice, Daphne opened her eyes. She raised herself on the creaking bed. Sara held out water. Daphne gulped it down greedily. Her parched, cracked lips met the water, and soon it tasted of fishy blood.
"Are you all right, Daphne?"
Hearing Sara's concerned words, Daphne did not know what to say.
She had been made to carry another's death. She would bear the guilt for the rest of her life. And she had lost a friend—lost the one person who had pitied her, who had shown her something like love.
She had lost everything.
Because of her wretched life—because of that worthless life of hers—she had dragged an innocent person into it and gotten him killed.
Daphne knew that Fabian would never vanish from her heart for as long as she lived.
"Fabian. Fabian is dead."
"……."
"Someone died because of me."
Daphne spoke to Sara without meaning to. Sara listened quietly to her words.
"Someone... died because of me."
Daphne had no one left to trust. No one but Sara, who showed her kindness only at intervals like this.
"It isn't the first time, is it."
Sara's gentle voice was smooth as a serpent's scales. When Daphne nodded, she heard a sound like air leaking out.
Daphne thought it was a sigh.
"It's all right, Daphne."
"……."
"It's not your fault. Poor Daphne."
Sara embraced Daphne and stroked her hair. When Sara patted her back, Daphne lifted her head weakly.
What was she supposed to do now? What would become of her? Daphne panted for breath for a long while. She could no longer see even an inch ahead.
After crying for a long time, Daphne realized that Ashelad was not the only ordeal she faced. The Emperor. The Emperor had his eye on her.
Swallowing the urge to bite off her tongue and die on the spot, Daphne asked,
"What about His Majesty? Did he say nothing?"
If the Emperor had learned that she was trying to flee, he would never have left her be. Hadn't the Emperor been treating her as a substitute for her mother, at that?
She had been seized and brought here by Ashelad. And she had joined her body with his. The Emperor might well have learned that Ashelad had slept with her.
Sara, watching Daphne's face grow distant, spoke in a calm voice.
"Daphne."
"……."
"His Majesty the Emperor fell from his horse during rehearsal for the festival rites. He has not yet regained consciousness."
Daphne's eyes went wide. The Emperor had collapsed?
"Her Majesty the Empress and His Highness the Crown Prince are tending to affairs of state."
Her world, which she had believed would stand firm forever, was somehow shifting. Ashelad, always so silent, had finally begun to move.
* * *
The Emperor, though he had suffered a fall from horseback, regained consciousness—but he continued to lose consciousness frequently. The young Empress grieved over him and took sole charge of his care.
The medicine to be fed to him and applied to him, the dishes, the food—she checked each and every item meticulously with her own hands. Those who knew Callista's arrogance, her contempt for all others, thought the Empress had finally matured.
Others said she was exerting herself like this only because she would surely be cast out once the Crown Prince ascended the throne. It was only natural.
The reason the Emperor had taken the young Callista as his wife was to check the Crown Prince.
By age, it should have been Callista and Ashelad who married; instead, the Crown Prince of the nation was left unmarried, with no reliable maternal family and no wife, while the Emperor alone remarried.
In any case, to the eyes of those who came to inquire after the Emperor's health, Callista looked grief-stricken. The Empress who had always narrowed her sharp eyes and sought to crush everyone beneath her had vanished without a trace, and the figure of a woman trembling in fear of losing her husband drew considerable sympathy.
"Poor Her Majesty the Empress."
"And she's been here less than a year, too......"
The nobles clicked their tongues as they looked at Callista and departed. Callista took up a clean cloth and wiped the sweat from the reclining Emperor's brow.
The sight looked quite tender, but once the people had gone, Callista clenched the cloth tight and burst into laughter.
"Ha, haha! Hahahaha!"
She flung the cloth onto the sleeping Emperor's face.
"Truly hilarious old man. Disgusting. Won't even die."
Callista looked down at the Emperor's face. The collapsed Emperor's face was dark red. He was barely drawing breath. If there was one thing she had learned in this country, it was that everything Ashelad said had been right.
Callista had no one on her side, and she lacked the strength to escape her fate. Talassa, her homeland, had abandoned her. There was no way for her to return.
Callista wept loudly, cursing her own fate—but doesn't a person grow, after all? She took Ashelad's hand.
"Husband, die quickly."
Callista smiled, beautiful as poison.
"Your Majesty. His Highness the Crown Prince has arrived."
Callista rose from her seat. Facing the mirror on the side table, she smoothed her hair.
The stray strands annoyed her, and she quickly swept them back. It was the gleaming gaze of a woman on the verge of fluttering anticipation—a look she had never once given even when facing her husband. She inspected her face and took a deep breath. It was a face far too animated for a 'mother' looking upon her 'son.'
"Tell him to come in at once."
The door opened and Ashelad entered. For an instant, Callista felt her breath catch. Dressed in a magnificent garment of red and gold for the festival rites, Ashelad looked like the incarnation of the sun god. He was that beautiful, that bewitching.
"How is my father?"
"Who can say. How might he be?"
At that voice, coquettish and seductive, Ashelad's smile deepened all the more.
Callista had learned that nothing went the way she wished. She had learned that nothing unfolded in the ideal form.
She had also learned that when one strove and seized something, the pleasure of it was immense.
For her, it was a very dangerous path......
She coveted this entrancing man before her. What would it take to conquer this man?
Ashelad was, truly, a captivating man.