Chapter 43
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 43
Chapter Title: Words That Become a Curse
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Kairun supported his mother as they entered the bedroom.
Perhaps because of the poison lingering in that single slice of grapefruit tart.
His mother's body felt as heavy as a sponge soaked in water.
But without a word, he carefully seated her on the bed.
His hands remained gentle as he pulled the covers over her and adjusted the pillow behind her back.
As if nothing had happened.
He was simply mimicking the tender touch she used to give him when he threw childish tantrums, whining that he hated himself.
But that silence only tightened around Carla's throat.
Kairun slowly turned his body.
Thud, thud.
He walked silently to the door and grasped the handle.
Click.
The door to the Grand Duchess's bedroom closed.
With the servants' footsteps in the corridor completely cut off, only a heavy silence remained in the room.
Kairun stood there for a moment, his back turned, hand still on the doorknob.
The mask of the dutiful son he had worn up until the moment he seated his mother on the bed.
Now stripped away, his face bore only devastation and betrayal.
"...I'm sorry..."
His mother's voice, thick with tears, came from behind him.
"Kairun... I'm truly sorry."
That apology lit the fuse.
Kairun whipped around.
His furrowed brow, now needing no concealment, strode toward his mother with purpose.
"Why... why on earth did you do it?"
"Kairun..."
"Why?!"
Kairun shouted.
"If you were going to make such a clumsy excuse, you should have hidden it all the way through! Why couldn't you even mask your expression...!"
The son unleashed his rage.
He wished his mother had been a monstrous villain.
If she were a cold-blooded liar who could deceive without batting an eye, his heart wouldn't be tearing apart like this.
He could just hate her and be done with it.
But his mother was far too inept.
She had barely held up her facade until they walked down the corridor, and now she was crumbling before her son.
That fragility, that all-too-human vulnerability, only fueled his resentment more.
"Tell me. Why Karl? What did he ever do wrong to you—to us?!"
Under Kairun's interrogation, Carla couldn't lift her head.
She simply stared down at her hands resting in her lap.
Burn scars marked every joint of her fingers.
Carla pressed her nails into those wounds.
As if to smother her guilt with pain.
"It's all... for your sake..."
She started to force out an excuse, then clamped her mouth shut.
The Eisen Baron's lesson suddenly flashed in her mind.
"Telling a child 'it's for your sake' is the cruelest chain in the world, Your Highness. Regrettably, it's not love—it's a curse."
She bit her lip.
She couldn't curse her son any further.
So instead of excuses, she recited only cold facts.
"...I was a 'tin vessel'..."
"What?"
"The sixth princess of the western Slokina Kingdom... but without bloodline or talent... a rusty tin bowl shoved in the corner of the royal warehouse. That's what I was."
Carla flatly recounted her past.
An unwanted princess who grew up without a shred of attention.
To her, the marriage proposal from the Northguard Grand Ducal House was just being sold off as a political pawn.
"When I first came here, I wanted to live like I was dead. But..."
Her eyes wavered.
"Your father loved me, clumsy as he was, and young Karl treated me like his own mother... This icy castle became my first warm home."
It was happiness.
A happiness far too excessive for a mere tin vessel like her.
She wanted to sink into that love.
To be filled by it.
But that happiness didn't last.
"The day you were born... they came..."
"They?"
"Emissaries from Slokina..."
Carla continued, suppressing her terror between the nail marks she'd dug into her own skin.
"They told me... Kairun, that you must become the Grand Duke... And for that... Karl had to disappear."
"...!"
"I tried to refuse... Of course I refused...! Karl was like my own son! He saw me as his mother...!"
Carla cried out in a voice like grinding metal.
But it soon turned into a feeble whimper, barely able to form words.
"But... they had already fabricated evidence that I was leading the plan... Letters supposedly from my homeland that I'd never written, horoscopes I never consulted..."
Carla trembled violently, hugging her shoulders.
"And they so kindly even told me how to do it..."
Her pupils shook, reflecting the horror of the past.
"Your Highness, young Lord Karl loves the sweets you make yourself, doesn't he? Especially grapefruit tarts."
The emissaries smiled as they offered a vial of poison.
"Grapefruit's bitter tang makes an excellent disguise. Mix this into the filling. It might taste a bit bitter, but no one will suspect poison."
From the assassination plan to menu selection to hiding the toxin.
"If I didn't comply, they'd send the evidence to the Grand Duke. And... you'd be in danger."
"Me... you mean?"
"Yes... Now that I knew the plan... they couldn't leave me alive to testify... They threatened they'd have to eliminate a mere newborn like you..."
Carla fought back nausea as she pressed on.
"In the end... to protect you... I... Karl... Urk...!"
Acid reflux surged the moment the words escaped.
Carla clamped her hand over her mouth.
That phrase she had vowed never to utter, recalling Eisen's teachings.
'For your sake.'
But she had spat it out anyway.
The most cowardly excuse to justify her sin and burden her son with guilt.
The fact that it stemmed from her twisted maternal love—and that she loathed herself for hiding behind it—was unbearable.
"......"
His mother's confession was, ultimately, an act of maternal love.
A tragedy where she had to kill her stepson to save her birth son.
But no backstory could grant absolution.
Kairun's hand fumbled at his waist.
A sword.
He needed a sword.
To slash through this horrific, sticky mess in one stroke—but his waist was empty.
"Was it you... who crippled Brother's leg?"
Kairun bit his lip until it bled.
Carla shook her head, then nodded.
"The accident... was their doing... They tampered with the carriage wheel. But... when Karl recovered and stood again, they came back pressuring me."
Tears streamed from her eyes.
"This time, finish it for good... or they'd take everything. So I... put nerve toxin in the grapefruit tart..."
"Enough!"
Kairun screamed.
He couldn't hear any more.
His mother, who had cried tears of joy more than anyone when his brother stood again.
Yet behind those tears, she was preparing poison to seat him once more.
And the root of it all was himself.
'It's because of me...'
If I hadn't been born.
If I had disappeared.
Neither Brother nor Mother would have suffered.
Guilt crashed over him like waves, devouring his reason.
There was nowhere to vent his anger.
He couldn't harm his mother, and the Slokina bastards weren't here.
All that remained was the cause himself.
Crack!
Kairun seized his own throat with his hands.
"Guh... krrk...!"
He squeezed with all his might.
Nails dug into flesh, crushing his windpipe until breath failed.
He wanted to kill himself.
This cursed bloodline, this horrific being that had devoured his brother to grow—gone.
"Ka, Kairun?!"
Carla screamed and lunged forward.
Her eyes rolled back at the sight of her son self-harming before her.
"No! Stop! Please, don't do this!"
Carla grabbed Kairun's arms and clung desperately.
But she couldn't match the strength of the boy growing into a young man by the day.
Kairun's face turned purple.
"Strangle me instead! I'm the one who deserves to die! 'For your sake' was just an excuse! I was a coward!"
Carla wailed, prying at her son's hands with all her might.
"Please... please, my ba— I mean, your mother's wrong..."
Her pleas weakened, and Kairun's grip slackened.
"Cough! Cough!"
Kairun collapsed to the floor, hacking.
Bruises bloomed darkly on his neck.
"Hah... hah..."
He gasped ragged breaths, propping himself on the floor.
But then.
"Mother?"
Carla, who had been holding him back, had slumped to the floor and couldn't rise.
She tried to put strength in her legs, but they wouldn't move—like a paralyzed lower body.
Just like Karl's.
"What... is this..."
Kairun staggered toward her.
A foreboding dryness crept into his mouth.
"Mother, your legs... what's wrong?"
"N-nothing... It's fine. Just tension releasing..."
Carla hurriedly tried to cover her legs with her skirt.
But Kairun had seen.
Her fingertips trembling faintly, pupils dilated.
Exactly like the symptoms from the grapefruit tart he had eaten—and that his brother had consumed for so long.
"No way... Mother... you too...?"
"......"
Carla couldn't raise her head.
Unable to affirm or deny, she only sobbed.
From the moment Karl lost his appetite and started leaving the tarts.
Carla hadn't thrown them away.
She ate them herself.
To destroy the evidence.
And so that when Karl died, she would follow.
To ease her guilt.
As the mother who fed poison to her son, this was her minimal atonement.
The same poison, the same pain—swallowed daily.
"You're insane..."
Kairun clutched his head.
Everyone claiming to protect each other, yet killing each other.
If this weren't the Grand Ducal House...
If the clothes he wore weren't so expensive and heavy.
If he lived in a colder room in this cruel world.
Would there have been no reason for someone like him—who shouldn't have been born—to exist?
"Where is it?"
Kairun's eyes rolled back.
This wasn't the time to wallow in sentiment.
He needed the antidote— or at least the vial to identify the poison—now.
He began roughly rummaging through his mother's bosom.
"Where is it?! That damned vial!"
"Ka, Kairun... it hurts..."
Her clothes crumpled, jewelry tore free.
Bruises formed where flesh was pinched.
But she endured without a groan.
Thinking this too was punishment she deserved.
But.
"It's not here... why isn't it here!"
No vial emerged from her bosom.
Kairun despaired.
"No... no... where the hell..."
He scanned the room like a madman.
Then he recalled the moment in Karl's office when his mother had staggered.
"No way..."
Kairun's face drained white.
"Did you... drop it in Brother's room?"
"...!"
Carla's eyes widened.
That reaction confirmed it.
"Damn it!"
Kairun sprang up.
He had to rush to his brother's room now.
What if Karl picked up the vial?
If he learned it was his mother who poisoned him?
His brother would shatter.
Not just his body, but his heart into pieces.
That alone he had to prevent.
It was enough for criminal and criminal's son to bear heartaches.
His brother was already enduring unnecessary pain.
Kairun turned to bolt for the door.
But.
"Ugh..."
His mother's groan—collapsed and gasping on the cold floor—snagged his ankle.
Kairun's feet halted.
Glancing back, she lay sprawled, unable to control her body from the poison.
'Damn it... damn it!'
He cursed his own soft heart for not abandoning the mother who had tried to kill his brother even in this crisis.
"Damn it all!"
Kairun spat the curse and whirled back.
He scooped Carla up and laid her on the bed.
Roughly yanked the covers over her.
"Stay put! Please, don't do anything!"
Kairun yelled.
In this brief reprieve, even basic human decency felt regrettable—this horrific situation forced him to scream just to endure.
"Wait here. I'll save Brother... and you... both."
Leaving those resolute words, Kairun burst from the bedroom.
Tat-tat-tat—!
His footsteps thundered down the corridor.
Breath burned to his jawline, heart ready to burst.
'I wish someone would just kill me.'
Knowing all these filthy secrets, he wanted to die crushed by a carriage inside the manor where no rough rides happened.
Bodily pain seemed lesser than this heartache.
But.
He didn't truly wish for death.
He craved salvation.
For someone to resolve this hellish mess.
To seize him.
Suddenly, that massive back shielding him from the carriage hurtling toward him at the border.
The man who crushed all problems with overwhelming might.
'Barg...'
My ideal, son of Gorgon.
Could that man find an answer even in this hell?
And one more.
'Master...'
My teacher, who rights all with cool reason.
You could give a clear solution, right?
'Uwaaaah!'
Kairun swallowed his bursting scream and ran.
Tears blurred his vision, but the annex door came into view.
Please, not too late.
Please, Brother hasn't picked up the vial.
Praying, the boy's shadow raced on.
Was it because the sun was setting?
The boy's shadow stretched longer than yesterday's.