42. Fetters (1)
One of the fluorescent tubes flickered and died, throwing a shadow across the faces of the men standing at the foot of the bed. An inexplicable sense of wrongness hung over the room.
"……Are you quite certain?" "Ah— yes."
My head was swimming, whether from a hangover or something else. What on earth was going on here?
"You can't remember? As in, actual amnesia?"
I fiddled with the hospital gown stamped with the familiar university crest and scratched my head.
"……It feels more like I drank too much and the night just cut out on me."
A collective groan rose from the men. Out in the corridor, a doctor was explaining something to a middle-aged man.
"……a drug of that class…… depending on the prognosis, we'll schedule an interview and an EEG…… for now, above all, absolute rest……"
"Where is Jung So-ha?"
Someone's question drowned out the doctor's voice.
"Jung So-ha?"
"Yes."
"Well……"
A strange expectancy glittered in the men's eyes.
"Now that you mention it, I think So-ha came to pick me up yesterday……" "Yesterday?"
"Yeah. Around eleven, eleven at night—"
"……Is that all?"
When I nodded, the men exchanged muttered whispers full of disappointment and filed out of the room.
I was left utterly alone in the eight-bed ward. Not a trace of my clothes or belongings anywhere.
I glanced around the room, then looked out the window — and froze.
"……Oh."
The campus lay buried under white snow.
"Haaaah—"
I stretched luxuriously as I surfaced from a deep sleep, and a groan of contentment escaped me on its own.
Mm. How long had it been since I slept this deeply? I was dead to the world, honestly……
Rubbing my eyes, I looked around to find myself in the guest room of the lord's manor, familiar to me by now.
Two people were seated beside the bed where I lay.
The one sitting close to my face was slumped forward, hair hanging loose. The small frame in a white shirt, the slender, elegant fingers, the faint scent of lime — and above all, that cascade of golden hair — made her unmistakable.
Carefully, I brushed Ellen's hair back behind her ear. The long lashes, the delicate nose, the lips breathing softly in sleep, the translucent skin……
The tiny scar remaining on her left ear brought the memories flooding back. The black wolves, Randall's mercenaries, the palace mages, the Anupad Queen, the black passage, Utekwai's foes, and the Dark Knight……
"Mmm."
At my touch on her ear, Ellen flinched and hunched her shoulders. I quickly withdrew my hand and instead stroked her hair gently.
Then, without warning, I turned my head and yelped.
"Agh—! You scared me."
Seated beside the sleeping Ellen was a woman. She sat as still as a painting in a still life, nothing moving but her eyes, which blinked slowly.
"It's been a while."
"Ah, mm—"
I stared dumbly at the woman who had spoken in such a placid tone.
It was the same face I'd glimpsed during that near out-of-body experience not long ago — the very face I'd seen a hundred times on a monitor back on Earth.
But it didn't feel familiar at all. Was it because this was the first time I'd ever seen it this close?
Wow. I can't even speak. How can a person look like that?
While I was still fumbling for words, the sleeping Ellen's brow twitched and she stirred awake.
"Mmm."
She rubbed her eyes and stared at me with a bleary, vacant gaze for a moment. Then she jolted, wide-eyed, and threw herself into my chest.
"Phoi!"
"Ellen."
Ellen stretched her arms around my chest and clung. I patted her back and broke into laughter.
"Were you that worried? What's gotten into you all of a sudden?"
Ellen shot a glance at the woman seated beside us and wiggled her lips.
"……It's not sudden."
"Oh. Mm."
"But are you okay? Nothing feels off anywhere?"
"Off?"
"You were contaminated by otherworldly mana. It was purified right away, but still. Just in case."
She was peering up into my eyes with grave concern, and I gave her a wry smile.
"I'm fine. Just feel like I slept well, is all……"
"Well, obviously. You slept straight through for two whole days."
"Two days?"
"The contamination, too — your body went through a lot. If it knocked you out for two whole days, then……"
No wonder my back felt a bit stiff.
I was kneading my neck when I suddenly lifted my head.
"Oh, right — where's Mungchi?"
"……Utekwai searched the forest and brought her back, along with Zanavas. Both of them."
"She's not hurt anywhere, is she?"
"She did take a bolt from a crossbow, but she's been treated. She's fine now."
I let out a breath of relief, then turned my gaze back to the black-haired woman.
……How exactly am I supposed to treat this woman? Ugh, Kim Seung-soo's emotions and Phoenix's are all tangled up together, and my head is starting to throb.
Skielle, Duke of Ailant and head of House Zahakar, had one younger brother.
His name was Akele — the man hailed as the finest knight in all of Ailant.
Unlike most noble houses, the brothers Skiel and Akele were remarkably close.
So the moment Skiel ascended to the dukedom, he showered his younger brother with offices, including the title of Blood Count.
As a count, Akele served as security commander of Tauz Den, the third Admiral of Ailant, and Grand Captain of the Ducal Guard.
Akele was every inch the trueborn son of the twin royal houses. He worshipped strength, relished slaughter, and was as coldly ruthless as a serpent.
Yet there had been a woman who stole that man's heart. He met her while sweeping pirates from the seas — a beauty reduced to slavery.
Drawn first by her looks, Akele took the woman into his bed, and soon fell deep under the spell of her character.
The woman called Lira possessed such abundant tenderness and goodness of spirit that she dyed the unfeeling Akele through and through.
Akele and Lira fell hopelessly for each other, and before long came the fruit of their love. She was with child.
Akele then defied the cold opposition of his cousin and lawful wife and took Lira as his concubine.
Lira, once installed in the palace, bore a healthy son — but she could not overcome childbed fever, and she died.
That child was Phoenix.
……And yet, a question nags at me.
However deep I dig into Phoenix's memories, I can't find a single moment where he grieved for his dead mother.
Did he simply not remember her?
Or was it because Phoenix rarely let his true feelings show?
Or — failing that — did he truly feel nothing at all?
The very fact that the question arises tells you what kind of child Phoenix was: the blood of the twin royal houses ran thick and cold in his veins.
He was indifferent to people, delighted in the martial arts, and never once let a chance for slaughter slip away.
His innate mana and talent for Blood Craft were somewhat lacking, but as he grew, he developed a frame larger even than his father Akele's.
The chill of his bloodline was beyond his control, but in his mother's likeness he grew strikingly handsome.
By his father's consideration, Phoenix was raised alongside the other children of the house, and at fifteen — the age of majority — he was betrothed.
To his cousin, Heila.
Heila of Valuin. A daughter of the house paired with Zahakar, and the younger sister of the man who would become the next Duke of Ailant — Kysis of Valuin.
Heila was famed as the most beautiful and cleverest girl in Raszil, yet Phoenix felt no joy whatsoever.
Because what he wanted was not Heila, but her elder sister, Aila.
Probing at it as Kim Seung-soo, it was a baffling feeling — a way of thinking hard to wrap one's head around.
Heila and Aila were so different you would never have believed they were blood sisters.
The younger sister, Heila, was beautiful as if an angel had carved her — but the elder, Aila…… well, honestly, she was a woman you couldn't call beautiful even as a joke.
And yet Phoenix wanted Aila. To be precise, he wanted her smile.
Aila was a mutation.
She laughed with delight when the wind was fair, wept softly when her beloved horse died, and flared up like fire whenever her cousins turned blades on one another.
That was what Phoenix wanted. He believed Aila could fill the void inside him.
Seen through Kim Seung-soo's eyes, Phoenix probably loved her, in his way.
But Aila was married to Gannix — Phoenix's elder brother and Akele's legitimate son. She had been marked as the Incarnator who would bear the duke-after-next. A breeder, so to speak.
The day Aila was wed.
Phoenix wept for the first time in his life. In the shadowed garden of the ducal palace, until the moon had fully set.
Fortunately for Phoenix, his own marriage was postponed — thanks to his bride-to-be Heila falling ill with some nameless sickness. An illness, they said, that devoured ambient mana of its own accord.
And five years passed.
Just as Phoenix — boasting the finest abilities of his generation — was finishing his squire's training and about to be knighted.
Aila hanged herself.
The moment the funeral rites ended, Phoenix left the ducal palace.
Having sorted through the memories, I scratched my brow and spoke up.
"Heila, right?"
"Yes."
Heila was staring straight at me. Those expressionless eyes seemed to be picking me apart to the very bone.
……She's figured it out, hasn't she?
Yeah. She definitely has.
Heila was Phoenix's cousin, and they were once engaged besides. There's no way she doesn't know his personality. The me of right now is far closer to Kim Seung-soo than to Phoenix. Not some cold, calculating bastard like Phoenix — just an ordinary small-time citizen, through and through.
Unless she's a fool, she'll have noticed at once that beneath this shell I'm a completely different person from Phoenix.
Mm. For now, let's make the most of Phoenix's memories. As for the personality…… I'll just insist it changed over the course of the journey. Yeah.
"Mmmm— it has been a while. Five years, was it?"
"It was."
Heila blinked quietly.
Was it because of that beautiful face?
Even the smallest blink struck me as endlessly fascinating.
The way her lids moved, the way those long lashes crossed one another — it breathed a faint, almost imperceptible spark of life into a face that might have been a painting or a sculpture. As sudden and striking as a single drop of crimson ink falling onto a blank white page.
Her calm voice tickled at my ears.
Her lips, no less than her blinking, drew the eye. When those red lips parted and white teeth flashed beneath them, my heart pounded for no good reason……
"Phoi?"
"Ah—? What?"
I turned around in a fluster to find Ellen gazing up at me with a worried expression.
"You look pale. Are you okay?"
"Ah, mm, I'm fine."
I nodded a couple of times and managed a grin.
"Perfectly fine. Really."
"Mmm……"
Leaving Ellen to her dubious grumbling, I turned my gaze back to Heila.
……Right, let's avoid meeting her eyes as much as possible. For some reason it scatters my focus.
"Sorry — what did you say?"
"I said this is the first I've seen you since Gannix and Aila's wedding."
"Ah."
I nodded awkwardly and sank back into silence.
Mm. However far I dig through Phoenix's memories, there's nothing special about Heila in them. Maybe because the bastard was so indifferent to people in general.
Then my thoughts turned to Heila's companions.
"Ah — the Blood Knights? Where are they?"
Remembering how my own body had run berserk on pure instinct while my mind was gone, embarrassment washed over me. But I pressed on brazenly.
"I think I blacked out for a moment and made a mistake."
"It's fine. We healed them with potions."
"Good. I'd like to at least apologize to them. Where is everyone?"
"Mount Graduil."
"……Mount Graduil? Why?"
"To avoid people's eyes."
What was she talking about?
I narrowed my brows and asked her.
"Avoid people's eyes — why?"
"Anyone who sees the Blood Knights will think of Raszil's two great houses."
"So?"
"If Blood Knights are seen near you, people will start guessing at your identity."
When I still wore a baffled look, Heila continued.
"You are the Incarnator of House Zahakar. The fact that you received your knighthood from the prince of the Zeorre royal house must never, ever come to light."
……Ah. Right.
After Zeot of Zeorre, the Conqueror, subjugated Ailant, the once-royal houses of Zahakar and Valuin had been reduced to merely very grand nobles.
And so the two houses had traditionally nursed a quiet hatred for the Zeorre crown. Which meant that their successor-siring Incarnator pledging loyalty to it was, naturally……
……Hold on.
"Wait — I'm the Incarnator?"
"……Huh?"
"What are you talking about all of a sudden?"
Rifling through my memories at speed, I spoke to Heila.
"The Incarnator is Gannix and Aila. Well — no, I mean, I did hear that since Aila died without bearing a child, you'd become the Incarnator, but—"
Seeing my confusion, Ellen cut in from the side.
"You didn't know? This woman's been going around saying she's your fiancée."
"Fiancée? Oh. Right. That was a thing."
At my words, Ellen's eyes flashed.
"Was?"
"The engagement was voided when Heila was designated the new Incarnator. Continuing the succession matters a great deal more than some bastard son's betrothal."
"……Ha."
Ellen gave a scornful little laugh, then whipped her head around to glare at Heila.
"And here I was wondering what came out of nowhere — she's your ex-fiancée?"
Heila, still facing me, didn't spare Ellen so much as a glance. She simply nodded and answered evenly.
"It very nearly wasn't voided."
Or was I imagining it?
Heila's immaculate black eyes undulated, dark and gloomy.
"But when Gannix died, you were designated the new Incarnator."
"……What?"
"And the engagement was never dissolved in the first place. You left without a word, Phoi — and I had no intention of breaking it off."
I clutched at my head and waved my hands.
"Hold on — hold on. Who died?"
"Gannix."
I hauled Gannix up out of Phoenix's memories.
Triangular eyes, a hard scowl, a petty-minded young man. Phoenix's half-brother, three years his senior. The pathetic older brother who, after getting thoroughly beaten in sparring matches, would seize on every conceivable pretext to torment him. The idiot who married Aila without a single thing to his name worth admiring.
That was the sum total of what I knew about Gannix.
"Gannix is dead? How?"
"He caught a fever."
"……A fever? Gannix may be a worthless excuse for one, but he's a Blood Knight in name, at least — and he died of a fever?"
Heila merely nodded in silence.
"When did it happen?"
"April."
"April? So right after you two were married—"
"No."
After that curt shake of her head, silence fell for a moment. Heila blinked three or four times, then spoke again.
"He died the night before the wedding."
"Ah."
"Duke Skiel passed away that same day."
"……The Duke is gone too?"
With such unexpected news arriving in a row, my head was starting to burn.
To Kim Seung-soo they were strangers; even to Phoenix they had never been people he much cared about. And still, I couldn't help feeling thrown.
"There's no need to overthink it."
Heila went on in a perfectly level tone.
"Kysis is the new Duke now. And you and I have been charged with the duty of producing the heir."
"No, hang on, that's—"
"That's all there is to it."
Meeting those gleaming black eyes of Heila's, I swallowed dryly.