A Fear Without a Name
A voice she knew—and yet it was shaking violently.
Odelli barely managed to lift her head. Ludville's face was bloodless, his breathing ragged. He did not even pause to catch his breath before he dropped to his knees in front of her, drew a length of thin cloth from his belt, and pressed it hastily over her mouth and nose.
"The very heart of a plague's source—and you did not even cover your airways...!"
"......"
It was the sharpest voice she had ever heard from him, keen enough that she could almost feel the killing intent in it. Every breath he drew laid his feelings bare, raw and unguarded. And yet his hands moved with a practiced, natural ease, doing nothing but shielding her, as if the motion had long since worn itself into habit.
"Do not ever do this again. If you do..."
If I do?
"If you do, then I will..."
The words broke off. In the end Ludville could not finish them. He pressed his eyes shut and drew a long breath, the gesture of a man forcing his feelings down by whatever means he had left.
"...If you are curious what I would do to you, then by all means, try it again."
He pulled her hard against him, as if to cage her inside his arms, and muttered the threat. The words left him like a sigh, tangled with worry, with anger, and with an obsession too damp and shadowed to pass for any ordinary concern.
Ah. This was a disaster. That was the first thought that struck her. Judging by the way he had reacted...
Has he laid the Blue-Eyed Woman over the sight of me now?
Stricken, she gathered what little strength she had left and forced her fading mind to hold. Then, pretending nothing at all was wrong, she spoke with careful calm.
"...You already knew I could purify it."
"I thought you would have guessed well enough that the plague could not touch me, either."
At that, the light in Ludville's eyes went cold as ice. His mouth twisted. Between his brows a savage furrow dug itself deep.
"And you call that an answer? Now?"
His voice was low, but an anger he could not suppress seeped through every word. Then they poured out of him all at once.
"Why would you go and do something no one even told you to do!"
Odelli had nothing to say. She had never imagined he would chase her this far. Even if her luck failed and he caught her at the scene, she had not expected fury like this. If anything, she had hoped he might call it remarkable. She had stopped the plague completely, after all.
Was this not getting off cheaply? When she had been forced to purify again and again in Cardel, brushing against death had been an everyday matter. Beside that, coughing blood and fainting seemed to her a very minor side effect. He, it seemed, did not see it that way at all.
...Do I look that ill? Did she look frail enough, as she was now, to call up the blue-eyed phantom still lingering in his mind? Or else—was the trouble simply that I slipped away without a word to him, meaning to save people?
In that instant a very old scene rose before her. Among thousands of regressions, there had been a turn in which Ludville raised a rebellion and took the imperial throne. The man he had been then held Odelli as she collapsed with blood on her lips, and spoke.
"Your body cannot possibly endure this."
"Please, stop. It does not have to be you."
"So long as it is not you. That is enough..."
He had forced the words out with a face so agonized it might have been Ludville himself who had coughed up the blood. His voice had shaken violently. He had clung to her with the desperation of a drowning man, and his will to keep her alive—by any means—had reached her whole.
...But this was not then. The man before her now remembered nothing. He did not know that purification gnawed at her body, nor that each time she repeated it she grew weaker.
Odelli bowed her head. She said nothing, forcing down a breath that wanted to tremble. This man was not the Ludville of before. And he had to remain that way.
He must not remember. She repeated it to herself. Someone like me must not be remembered. If he recalled that he had loved her, he might throw himself away all over again, trying to win that love back—his life, his heart, the whole of the life he lived. Was that not too cruel an ending? Better, then, that he go on like this, never remembering her. Better that he forget who he had been, and everything he had borne, and fill that place instead with warmer, lovelier, gentler things. Only then, she thought, could he live.
Odelli drew her cloak closed and tried to rise. But—
"...!"
"Do not move."
With that blunt word her body left the ground. More precisely, Ludville had swept her up as if she were a bundle of cargo.
"Your Highness?"
Flustered, Odelli protested under her breath. Ludville did not answer. He simply strode on.
"Your Highness..."
"Be quiet. Do you have any idea how you look right now? Pale as a corpse..."
His voice was low and firm, but his breathing trembled in a strange way. He could not begin to name the source of the feeling whirling through him like madness. It was not anger. It was not sorrow.
Worry? No. This was—
...fear.
Yes. For as long as Ludville could remember, he had never once in his life felt the emotion called fear. And yet now, unmistakably, he was afraid. Merely because Odelli had been out of his sight for a little while. Merely because she had swayed before his eyes. He, who had not so much as blinked on battlefields where ally and enemy died tangled together, had never imagined he would come apart like this over a single young lady.
Faced with a feeling he could not explain even to himself, he drew her deeper into his arms and set her inside the carriage that had followed him.
The air inside the carriage was quiet to the point of awkwardness. Odelli looked at Ludville with a heavy heart. She knew why he had come running, why he was angry, why he was carrying her off in the carriage, and yet—
This must not happen... The thought pulled her deeper. She had to stay close enough to keep him from taking his own life, and at the same time hold the line so carefully that he would not recover his memories of her. Was there a contradiction more impossible than that?
That was when she heard him. Ludville, who had been staring out the window, spoke in a low, cracked voice.
"...Damn it."
He glared into empty air for a moment, then fixed his gaze on her at last. His eyes looked as if something in him had yielded, the edge of his temper broken.
"...I will acknowledge your ability, my lady."
And then he said it.
Odelli blinked.
"...What?"
"That contract you spoke of. Do you have it with you?"
Dazed, she looked at him, then slipped a hand inside the hood she wore. As she drew the contract from her bosom, the necklace at her throat spilled out over her dress. Ludville's eyes went to it for an instant, but the neatly folded contract she held out blocked his view.
"Here it is."
He looked down at the papers for a moment, then back at Odelli.
"Let us add a new clause."
"What sort of..."
He took a fountain pen from his coat and wrote the new clause on the spot.
When going out alone, the route and the expected time required shall be reported in advance, and word confirming one's return shall be left upon coming home.
Provided, however, that if the destination or the circumstances are judged dangerous, or if elements of psychological or physical unease are deemed present, the other party shall have the right to accompany, and no objection may be raised thereto.
In the event of a violation, the party concerned shall bear every consequence and all responsibility arising therefrom.
"......"