Belated Regret
How much longer had I slept?
Sunlight knifing through a gap in the window stabbed at my eyes and dragged me awake.
"Are you fully with us now, Lord Cassian?"
Someone who had sensed the shift approached the bedside. It was the girl who had given me her name while I drifted in and out of consciousness earlier—Elara. In her hands she held a wooden bowl, steam curling gently from its surface.
"You can lie down a little longer if you need to. How are you feeling?"
She asked as she studied my condition. That pure, unguarded concern was so unfamiliar that I could only stare at her blankly.
"...I'm fine."
My voice came out cracked and rough.
"I'm glad. Here—try to eat a little. You've lost so much blood; you need to replenish your strength."
Elara scooped soup with a wooden spoon and brought it to my lips. I tried to take the spoon myself, but my arm held no real strength.
"Don't push yourself. I'll feed you."
She smiled kindly and offered the spoon. Warm liquid slipped between my lips. The heat sliding down my throat felt good, but my tongue registered no taste at all.
"How does it taste? I added herbs from the South—I hope it suits you..."
Carrying Isolde's curse had long since dulled my sense of taste along with the rest of my body's sensations, but for her sake I nodded.
"It's good."
"I'm so glad."
She beamed. The smile was so bright I almost wanted to look away.
"...Why did you save me?"
At the question that slipped out unbidden, the hand stirring the soup went still.
"You must have seen what I look like. You should know I'm not the kind of man anyone should take in lightly."
Back in the North, Victor's help had somehow kept it hidden. Without him, and with the full weight of the curse now mine alone, my condition had grown far worse. Anyone could see I was a man being consumed by dark magic. And yet Elara had not cast me out. She had nursed me.
She set the bowl on the table and answered.
"I'm not cold-hearted enough to turn away from someone dying right in front of me. And... you can't judge a person by their appearance alone."
"..."
"Besides, while you were sleeping, you kept calling out for someone—worried about them. Anyone who frets that desperately over another person must be kind and good at heart."
For a moment, words failed me. Pure faith, untainted by suspicion or prejudice—something I had never seen in the North. An unfamiliar emotion swelled in a corner of my chest.
"Your body still hasn't fully recovered. Don't push yourself—just rest comfortably."
She reached out and gently brushed my sweat-damp, tangled bangs from my forehead. I did not refuse the touch. I simply accepted it. Her warm body heat seeped through, and even the painful memories of the North began to fade, soft and distant.
At the same moment. A corner room on the second floor of the Northern Grand Ducal Manor.
Isolde sat crumpled on a floor soaked with blood. The magnificent dress that had once lit up the banquet hall was already heavy with the blood from the boards, dyed deep red. She did not care.
"Hah... hah..."
Isolde clutched something to her chest, gasping for breath. It was Cassian's bloodstained shirt, discarded in a corner of the room. She buried her face in it.
The scent of blood laced with the perfume of rotting roses. A smell she once would have recoiled from as if it were a drug—now she inhaled it until her breath ran out. Without even this scent, she felt she would go mad at any moment.
He had spilled so much blood, and yet there was no corpse. Nowhere was there definitive proof that he was dead. Clinging to that single fact, she tore through the floor like a beast starved for days.
Then her fingertips, sweeping across the boards, caught on something gritty and foreign. At the edge of a vast magic circle, half-soaked in blood, white fragments and powder lay scattered—so thoroughly crushed their original form was nearly unrecognizable.
"This is..."
Isolde gathered the strange powder with trembling hands. A faint residual pulse of mana still clung to it. A Grand Duchess's refined magical senses identified the remnants at once: the remains of a spatial transfer scroll—an artifact for moving through space.
The instant she understood, Isolde's ragged breathing stopped cold. Light began to kindle in eyes that had collapsed into despair.
"Ha... haha...!"
He was alive somewhere. As long as he still drew breath, that was enough. She would find him somehow and throw herself at his feet to beg.
Even if he hated her and refused to forgive her, she would never leave his side—even if it meant crawling after him like a dog for the rest of her life. The salvation he had given her: now it was her turn to repay it with her entire life.
"Your Grace..."
From beyond the open door came the cautious call of the knight commander, who had been standing rigid at attention. Watching his lord unravel amid the carnage, he finally managed to speak.
"Regarding the false priest locked in the underground dungeon—please give your orders on how he is to be disposed of."
Julian. At that loathsome name, Isolde's shoulders went still. Then murderous intent gathered in her unfocused eyes.
"Throw him in the deepest cell."
A voice so vicious it could kill with sound alone.
"Give him only enough foul water to keep him barely alive. Until I bring Cassian back, he is not to die. That wretch's punishment will be delivered by my husband himself."
The knight commander bowed his head with a solemn face.
"...Understood."
Hearing the reply, Isolde buried her face once more in the bloodstained shirt. Within the room, only a grotesque yet tender laughter—aimed at a husband still alive somewhere—echoed with a chilling resonance.
From that day on, daily life in the South was peaceful to an almost unfamiliar degree.
Over the next several days, the pain that had constantly stabbed at my chest and the blood I coughed up reeking of rotting roses both subsided noticeably. It was strange. My body was still in a state where dying at any moment would not have been surprising.
Perhaps this was the final flare of life that comes before death—the last peace granted before the heart stops completely. Whatever it was, I decided to accept this brief respite that had been allowed me.
"Lord Cassian. The weather is lovely. Would you like to come outside for a bit?"
Elara poked her face through the open doorway. Wearing the shirt she had washed clean for me, I stepped slowly out of the cabin. The open southern forest stretched before me. In one corner of the yard, Elara was spreading freshly gathered herbs to dry. Her honey-colored hair glittered in the sunlight.
"Here—sit down."
Elara patted a wooden chair and looked at me. When I sat, she took my hand naturally in both of hers and held it firmly.
"...The veins must look hideous."
"I told you I don't care about appearances. Besides, your hands are so cold. I'll just hold them until they warm up."
Elara smiled with gentle eyes. From time to time she would take my hand and not let go for a long while. When she did, a strange warmth would seep through the withered, twisted vessels. It was only holding hands. And yet that soft warmth, which made even the agonizing memories of the North fade away, had become the sanctuary of my daily life.
"Thank you, Elara."
At my sincere thanks, Elara's cheeks flushed pink. Warm sunlight, a pleasant breeze, and a girl pouring affection toward me. Everything was satisfying.
I had settled every debt I owed Isolde. I had signed the divorce papers—we were no longer husband and wife. Right after the chaos of the forced extraction, I had no idea what excuses that fraud of a man might have spun. Whether Isolde had learned the truth or was still being deceived by him—either way, it was no longer my concern.
Feeling Elara's warmth, I smiled easily for the first time in my life.
Crack.
At the same moment. The study of the Northern Grand Ducal Manor. The quill Isolde was holding snapped in half.
"It's been days. The North boasts the finest intelligence network on the continent, and you still can't find my husband? Is that supposed to make sense?"
Isolde's eyes gleamed with a sinister light. Before her, the guildmaster of the Northern Intelligence Guild knelt trembling from head to toe.
"I-I beg your pardon... The residual mana in the spatial transfer scroll remnants Your Grace provided was so thoroughly depleted that it took several full days of hounding the old masters at the Magic Tower to reconstruct the destination. But we have finally identified where it led!"
The guildmaster reported with his forehead pressed to the floor, sweat beading on his skin. Only then did the vicious aura in Isolde's gaze subside.
"...So where is my husband?"
"Th-that is... the southern continent. The place where the Forbidden Forest lies."
Having revealed that the place they had finally tracked down was, of all locations, a den swarming with venomous magical beasts, the guildmaster squeezed his eyes shut.
"The Forbidden Forest..."
Isolde's eyes narrowed. Of all the countless territories in the South, why had he gone to such a deadly place? But the question was quickly forgotten. Whether he had gone there prepared to die or the scroll had malfunctioned—it did not matter. All that flashed through her was the joy of having finally found where he was.
I found him. My Cassian. My savior and my husband.
She rose from her seat. She wore the navy uniform that had been stained with blood countless times, a magic sword belted at her waist.
"Knight Commander. Prepare the entire Black Knights for immediate deployment."
"What? Y-Your Grace, please reconsider! To reach the South, we must cross the heart of the Empire! If a large armed force marches south without Imperial permission, they will immediately brand it treason and send a suppression army! And what of the defense of our own territory...!"
Grasping the gravity of the situation, the knight commander urgently tried to stop her. But to Isolde, who had lost all reason, political concerns and the safety of the territory no longer registered.
"Even if the entire territory is trampled by magical beasts, I no longer care. If the Imperial Court stands in my way, I will smash through the Imperial Palace and go."
Isolde glared southward with glittering eyes.
A man who had walked away without a second thought, and a woman determined to seize him again no matter what.
But Isolde did not yet know what awaited her at the end of the path she was throwing everything away to pursue.