Only to Keep Me Alive
Life-Transfer Conversion Art.
A forbidden art, once used by sorcerers who drew the lives of others into themselves to lengthen their own. It had demanded the sacrifice of countless lives, and in the end it was entered upon the Empire's index of banned texts and condemned as a forbidden sorcery that had cast aside every claim of human decency.
But Ludville had used that art in precisely the opposite way. Not to steal another's life—to offer his own.
Odelli drew slowly nearer and laid her hand upon the floor. Beneath the skin a strange current moved.
……So it really was here.
In that previous life, Odelli had spent five years in the annex beyond the castle walls, for Ludville had written into the contract both the quarters where she was to remain and the limits of where she might go.
All at once his voice rang through her mind.
"Why are you here?"
It had been a day when the sunlight was unusually warm. Spring in the north was still a cruel thing, and yet even that had felt warm to Odelli—a world that, from childhood, had never once been permitted her. A place the sun could touch.
She had thought that if she went only for a moment, the very briefest moment, he would never notice. But it had been a single hour, and Ludville had not missed even that short gap. He knew at once that she was gone, and without a word he dragged her back to the annex. His hand closed hard around her shoulder as he bit the words at her.
"I am quite certain I told you never to step beyond the annex."
"A plain breach of contract. Do you wish it voided?"
"Do not cross this boundary again."
Cold, as always. Pitiless.
Even then she had still believed it—that she had been shut inside this prison of an annex because she was a nuisance to the woman he loved. That day the tips of his fingers had trembled, ever so faintly, and his face had looked pale and strangely unsteady. She had misread even that as a lover's dread of souring the mood of the one he adored.
But now she knew. What he had feared, to the very end, was nothing else in the world but losing Odelli.
Odelli had been required to remain inside the annex for exactly five years. Only then could the art function in full. Which meant that when Ludville set a contract of five years and all but imprisoned her in that annex……
……it had been for one reason alone. To keep me alive.
The art that transferred life was no simple sorcery, sprung in an instant by a single incantation. Force another's life into a body all at once, and it might bring on side effects, or shock—much as a reckless transfusion of blood can kill by rejection. That was why he had kept Odelli near the array. Her bodily rhythms and the circulation of her mana had to be tuned slowly, over a long span of time. Her whole body had to be changed into a receptacle, so that life from outside might seep in without the feeling of something foreign.
For all of five years Ludville had carried on that preparation in silence, because he believed the life before this one was his last chance. And when every preparation was finished, he divorced Odelli, just as he had planned.
And then……
Over the course of about a year, Ludville offered Odelli what remained of his lifespan. All of it. Every last measure. The reason her health had returned, little by little; the reason her body had grown far hardier than before—all of it was because she had received Ludville's life.
"……"
So the very first thing Odelli had to do, before anything else, if she meant to protect him……
was to undo this art.
To complete it, Ludville had already poured out half his life force. The price he had paid—that half of his life—she had to take back, without fail.
It hasn't activated yet. If I release it now, his life force ought to return to him as well.
But to do so, one thing was indispensable: the key that would unmake the array.
According to his memories, it was kept in Ludville's private vault.
Odelli turned at once and left the hidden chamber.
"……She said she would stay in the annex?"
The blade halted in empty air. Ludville did not loosen his stance; he only turned his head, slowly. From across the floor came the sound of the knight who had been sparring with him swallowing a sigh of relief.
"Yes, Your Grace. The young lady requested it herself."
"Already up to something peculiar."
Ludville muttered it, indifferent. The annex—a building set apart at the castle's edge, long left to neglect. He had never set foot there, not after he became archduke, and not before.
"Wasn't that place a storehouse to begin with?"
"As you say, of late it has been used as a storeroom for spare goods."
The butler gave a small cough and went on, looking somewhat abashed.
"Originally, however, it was a suite meant for envoys from outside."
Yet Ludville showed no particular reaction even to the news that the young lady had walked into a storeroom of her own accord. He felt nothing at all. It was absurd, of course.
I seem to recall saying I would marry her if she caught my interest within a fortnight.
And right afterward she hides herself, of her own will, in some place cut off from everyone. Has she given up already? Or is there some design in it? Flight, endurance, some calculation or other—he could not even begin to tell.
But……
It won't last.
Ludville had already lost interest. He was not particularly curious why she had chosen as she had. He even wondered whether he had pointlessly granted her a whole fortnight's grace.
Just as I thought. It was nothing.
The day he first saw her, he had felt an unfamiliar shock, as if something had caught hard in his chest. The vision wavering before his eyes had seemed, for an instant, to sharpen, and he had even reached out before he knew what he was doing……
……All of it must have been a mistake. The delusion of a madman, the sort that came often enough when he had drunk far too much. Nothing more than that. Nothing less.
"Leave her be."
He gave the sword a single turn and let it rest across his shoulder. Boredom seeped into his face, as if everything had grown dull in a moment—as if there were no longer any reason to fight, nor anything worth a thought. He turned to leave the training yard at once, and then……
His feet paused. A thought had struck him.
Didn't they say that young lady was sickly?
He had heard she was so frail she had never once set foot beyond her house. Could a flower raised under glass last a fortnight in a storeroom like that?
No. She was missing for three whole months and came through perfectly well. What am I thinking.
A woman who had crossed the north and shown not even a trace of weariness.
The tale of her frailty is probably an empty rumor too.
House Cardel's excessive coddling, or something of the sort.
No one had forced her in. If she had gone of her own accord, there was even less reason to trouble himself. Nothing was likely to happen in a mere fortnight.
And there his thoughts ended. As if he no longer had any reason to remain where he stood, he walked on, unconcerned.
Odelli walked without rest until she reached the place where the vault stood. At last she was before it. She steadied her breath and carefully reached out—and the instant she followed memory and closed her hand around the handle—
"……!"
In Ludville's memory she had clearly seen it sealed with mana, yet she felt no resistance at all. There was none of that familiar, prickling recoil.
The seal is gone?
The seal that ought to have been protecting the vault from any intrusion…… had already vanished. Odelli wrenched the door open. With a thin creak, the vault door swung wide, easy to the point of emptiness.
And then……
……It's gone.
The small case where the necklace should have been. Inside, it was utterly empty—as if someone had already stripped it bare.