Chapter 323
Translator: crow
Chapter Title: The Fox and the Crow 2
I thought I'd misheard her, so I turned to look.
Lyn Canary lay there forlornly, her body turned toward the window.
And yet, she was undoubtedly the strongest knight in the empire after me.
In the pouring moonlight, her back looked terribly pitiful.
No, more precisely, precarious.
As if she were crumbling away on her own.
“In truth, I've never properly slept a wink in my life.”
Lyn's hollow voice filled the dark bedroom.
That chill was knocking at my eardrums.
“Whenever I dream, I'm always on the southern front. Standing in a squelching pool of blood.”
Her voice had grown so matter-of-fact now, devoid of any life.
“I even memorized the number of hands poking up from the pitch-black surface. Twelve of them.”
She always had the same dream.
It was clearly trauma from killing enemies.
“I can tell which ones belonged to comrades if I look closely. They're all hands I trained myself.”
I approached her side as she murmured to herself.
Truth be told, I knew the answer to her condition.
However, putting it into action would require her permission first.
“Lyn. Mind if I get your permission for a moment?”
“Permission...?”
“Yeah. I'll help you fall asleep.”
The woman's black hair gleamed faintly.
She pondered for a moment, then quietly replied.
“If it means I can fall asleep...”
With her consent, I swung my legs up onto her bed.
It felt as soft and comfortable as an imperial bed.
'She must want to sleep so badly.'
Everything in the house was plain, but the bed was luxuriously lavish.
And so, I lay down next to Lyn, who was facing away.
“...!”
Was it because it was the first time in her life lying in bed with a man?
The woman—who had been second only to the emperor in strength until I came along—flinched her shoulders for a moment.
“W-What...?”
I showed no particular reaction to her flustered question.
I just clasped my hands behind my head and stared at the ceiling.
“What do you mean, what. You said you always have war nightmares.”
I didn't even turn my head toward Lyn, just rigidly counted the ceiling tiles.
“Back then, we were always paired up with a comrade, two to a bed.”
“You're not planning to recreate that, are you?”
A chuckle escaped the knight at my deadpan remark.
“Yeah. Entrusting your back to each other made it easier to sleep.”
“True. That was the case for me too.”
Lyn's voice sounded a bit more at ease.
Even on brutal battlefields, some fond memories with comrades lingered.
Pressing our backs together seemed to revive those few good recollections from back then.
“You survived the battlefield alone, didn't you?”
“Yeah.”
The Black Knight pulled the blanket a little closer.
“They all probably said something like, 'At least you survived on your own—what more could you ask for.'”
“Exactly.”
She responded only in short bursts.
However, Lyn soon stopped even those brief replies.
“Words like that probably don't offer much comfort.”
I'd continued as if peering into her very heart.
“I went through something similar myself.”
Of course, it was from my past life.
But since I'd experienced it firsthand, there was no way I couldn't understand Lyn's feelings.
“My comrades, who I'd endured grueling training with right before my eyes. The situation where I watched them die with my own two eyes.”
I gazed steadily at the crown of Lyn's head.
“No matter how strong a knight you are, it's not easy to endure that. And even if you do, it's far from over.”
“True.”
At last, she spoke again.
“If I'd trained just a little harder and grown stronger, maybe I could've saved at least one of them...?”
“Regrets like that crash in like endless waves.”
I added flatly to her words.
Then, she fell silent for a moment.
“How... how can you know that so well?”
She shot back at me in a trembling voice.
“Because I was on the front lines too.”
I answered the Black Knight calmly.
But at that moment.
“No, you're lying...!!”
Lyn spun around with swordmaster speed.
She stared at me piercingly with her one hollow eye.
“I already know all there is to know about you, Veil.”
From her time under Prince Leo.
She had investigated my background in advance.
“You saved five wounded comrades on the battlefield and held the line while minimizing casualties.”
Moonlight pooled in Lyn's beautiful eye.
“I wasn't as capable as you. They were all wiped out. And I survived alone, just like this.”
The knight shook her head, trembling.
Regretting showing me such a side of herself, she whipped her face away.
“I appreciate you trying to comfort me... But I'm so broken I can't even accept consolation laced with lies.”
Her disheveled black hair veiled her face.
“Like a shattered vessel that can't hold anything anymore.”
Tears traced down her soft jawline.
“Maybe that's why I could become the Black Knight. Because normal thinking was impossible for me.”
Lyn, convinced she wasn't normal.
I pondered what I could do for such a woman.
No.
There was no need to think.
I'd already been through the same with the woman before me, and someone had healed me back then.
“Lyn, could you turn around for a moment?”
The Black Knight shrugged at my suggestion.
Then, cautiously turned her face toward me.
At that instant.
She saw me sitting up in bed.
“Here.”
I gently placed my hand on her head.
Then naturally rested it on my thigh.
“What I said earlier... it wasn't a made-up lie.”
Just like the princess who had stayed with me in my final moments in the past.
“You might've heard, but I went through reincarnation like His Majesty.”
I softly straightened her black hair.
After running around all day, a faint scent of sweat mingled with sweet soap rose up.
“I heard. That you returned to now with Her Highness Irina...”
“Back then, I lost all twenty of my guard knights. Driven by the single-minded mission to protect Irina.”
Prince Leo the Crown Prince, carrying out a bloody purge under the vengeful command of Rozanna.
The faces of my subordinates who opposed them came to mind.
“And finally, after successfully evacuating her and being left alone...”
Dragging up that day's memory made my chest ache.
But for the woman who'd shared the same experience, I dredged it up with effort.
“Do you know what that felt like?”
Lyn blankly looked up at my lifeless eyes, just like hers.
Feeling the warmth of my thigh against her nape.
“A sense of accomplishment...?”
I slowly shook my head at her answer.
“No, it was utterly hollow.”
We'd sacrificed our lives—mine and my men's—to protect her safely, yet that achievement felt empty.
Lyn, lying down, tilted her head.
“At first, watching her back as she departed safely made my heart burn hot. But when I was left alone in the empty palace...”
I hesitated on my response for a moment.
Then, exhaling deeply, I said.
“I could feel my own existence cooling, growing cold.”
I still couldn't forget that vivid emotion from back then.
Perhaps even now, married to her and living leisurely, it felt like a fleeting dream.
“I felt my existence dying. From then on, a maddening fear came rushing in.”
“And that fear was probably loneliness?”
I nodded at her precise answer.
“Exactly. The desolation of being left alone at the very end of my life.”
I cautiously reached out my hand.
And gently enveloped her cold hand.
“But luckily, Irina came back to me. And she held my hand like this.”
“You must have felt warmth even as you were dying.”
Lyn's lips curved into a faint smile.
“Yeah, thanks to that, I could meet my end happily.”
“So you're helping me die happily too?”
The knight tossed a mischievous joke my way.
However, I decided to take it as a win.
No matter how cheeky, it meant she'd regained enough spirit to joke.
“If you die happy, isn't that a good death at least?”
“You're a total bad guy.”
Lyn, pillowed on my thigh, let out a deep breath.
Then, still holding my hand, she quietly added.
“And yet, you marry five others while keeping a prince like that by your side.”
As expected of a swordmaster—her jab cut sharp.
In atonement, I squeezed my eyes shut tight and replied.
“Yeah... I really am a bad guy.”
But.
I soon opened my eyes again.
“Still, if you think about it as saving five more that way, it's hard to condemn me outright.”
Lyn had interpreted my life in quite a magnanimous way.
“A good yet bad guy.”
My reflection shone in the Black Knight's once-hollow eyes.
“Truly good... truly a bad bastard, in this way.”
She raised our clasped hands demonstratively.
Embarrassed, I tried to let go.
But Lyn intertwined her fingers instead and murmured softly.
“Since you're a bad guy... make just a little room for me in that big heart of yours.”
My lips parted at her wistful words.
Pity or sympathy?
No, it wasn't that.
Simply...
Her precarious gaze felt so much like my own past life.
If I'd luckily survived back then, while even Irina died.
Would I have lived like Lyn?
“...”
I gently pulled her into an embrace.
And closed my eyes together with her.
What I could offer this knight, who'd shouldered a heavy burden alone.
Not hundreds of consoling words, but sharing body heat.
“Veil...”
She who'd never been held by anyone in her life.
Who'd never voiced her pain to another soul.
For such a her, this first warmth since her little brother made her chest ache sweetly.
At first, she feared whether she even deserved to feel this warmth.
But soon, the crashing drowsiness made her slowly release the tension from her body.
I felt the same.
We drifted off to sleep together like that, under one blanket.
「――――――」
The next day arrived.
Under the warm sunlight, I slowly opened my eyes.
“Whew...”
It felt like the first good night's sleep in ages—mood lifted.
As I tried to sit up.
For some reason, my body felt chilly.
'Hang on... The sunlight's this warm, but my body's cold...?'
With that odd feeling, I lowered my head toward my body.
And at that moment.
“...!!”
I saw myself without a shirt on.
And moreover...
A woman sleeping beside me, with smooth shoulders and a beautifully voluptuous figure.
*I'm done for.*
My eyes twitched beneath.
I'd clearly meant to just sleep quietly.
But I'd lost myself in ecstasy amid the Black Knight's onslaught of affection.
“Veil...”
Yet, Lyn slept on with an utterly blissful expression—blissfully oblivious.
As if her heart were at peace, despite the mischief we'd gotten into.
“Thank you.”