Evelyn Rosetta's Past (5)
Even after returning from Lumen Village, I spent three full days pretending to do nothing. More precisely, I made certain it looked as though I were doing nothing at all.
On the surface I trained as usual, attended my lessons, and answered Edrick’s questions at the dinner table with short, clipped replies. Of course Selena had noticed, when we first came back from Lumen Village, that one of my gloves was missing; she had laughed, and I had simply told her I had lost it.
Behind that peaceful routine, however, I moved with quiet urgency.
I ordered the tax ledgers of Lumen Village re-examined. I compared the donations that had entered the cathedral against the medicine that had actually been paid for. I traced the travel routes of the Temple’s pilgrimage parties. And the reports my Rosetta informants brought back were dirtier than I had expected.
The Temple was looking for Liana.
More precisely, they were hunting children who possessed a talent for healing. Beside the name Liana Bell of Lumen Village, a small star had been marked. The report did not explain what the star meant.
But I already knew.
Heroine.
Saintess.
Sacrifice.
The names this world would hang around her neck.
I turned those three words over in my mind for a moment.
Heroine is such a convenient word. It turns someone’s misery into part of a story and lets you excuse it by saying she will be happy in the end. Saintess is no better. It transforms one person’s hands into everyone’s salvation and never asks how badly those hands are trembling.
In short, a sacrifice.
In the original novel Liana had been loved.
But being loved and being protected were not the same thing.
The crown prince had called her light. The Temple had called her saintess. The empire had called her hope. Yet among all those grand names there had never been a single place for a child named Liana Bell simply to breathe.
I did not like that fact one bit.
“My lady.”
Noah set down a fresh stack of documents.
“There’s more.”
“If you’re about to waste my time, don’t.”
“…I’m sorry, but this has to be said.”
I lifted my eyes.
Noah looked exhausted. After days of driving the informants, he clearly had barely slept either.
“The Temple side has erased the birth records of Lumen Village. The names of the Bell mother and daughter have already been transferred to an internal cathedral list.”
“Meaning they’re preparing to take them.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“As soon as within a fortnight.”
I quietly set down my quill.
A fortnight.
Far sooner than I had thought.
Much earlier than the original.
I could not tell whether the world itself had grown impatient or whether the novel had simply shown me the events late. Only one thing mattered.
If Liana was dragged into the Temple, it would be over.
Under the pretext of raising her as a saintess candidate, they would cut her off from the world. Martha would vanish in exchange for treatment, and Liana would grow up believing every kindness she received was a debt she owed. One day she would stand before the crown prince.
And the original story would begin at last.
I rose to my feet.
“Prepare a guardianship contract.”
Noah’s eyebrows climbed.
“For whom?”
“Liana Bell and Martha Bell.”
“My lady.”
“I know it’s dangerous.”
“…If you know that—”
“I’m doing it anyway.”
Noah studied me for a long time.
“May I ask why?”
I did not answer.
Why.
At first it had been to avoid the original plot. If Liana was taken by the Temple, the story would start. Hide her, and my own execution ending would recede. Or so I had thought.
But if that had been all, I would not have been this angry.
The child kneeling in the snow. The face that had smiled and called an oversized glove warm. The voice that had refused when I told her to forget my name. And Martha Bell’s eyes, still trying to protect Liana even with a sick body. The Temple was coming to take that child away.
Just thinking of it twisted my stomach.
I looked at Noah.
“I will not stand by and watch the Temple drag people off as they please inside Rosetta territory.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all.”
Noah’s face said he did not believe me.
But he asked nothing further. Fortunately the guardianship contract proceeded quickly with Selena’s help. She read through the papers and spoke as if it were nothing.
“Bringing a commoner mother and daughter under our protection is not difficult. The real question is why the Temple wants that child so badly.”
“They say she has a healing talent.”
“That alone would not make the Temple hurry like this.”
As expected, Selena was sharp.
I drank my tea instead of answering. She smiled as though she found it amusing.
“You don’t want to talk about it.”
“It’s closer to something I cannot talk about.”
“Then it means danger is coming soon.”
She signed the documents.
“Still, if this is what you want, go ahead.”
I looked at her in surprise.
“You’re not going to ask why?”
“If asking would have gotten me an answer, you would already have given it.”
Selena set down the quill. In that moment her expression belonged not to Evelyn’s mother but to the Duchess of Rosetta.
“Just remember this, Evelyn. Bringing someone inside the walls of our protection does not mean only hiding them.”
“Then what does it mean?”
“It means you are also bringing in their enemies.”
She was right, of course.
Protecting Liana would draw the Temple’s gaze as well. An action meant to escape the original story might only drag that story closer, faster.
But it was already too late.
I had given Liana my name. If something called fate existed, we had been bound from that moment.
A week later the Bell mother and daughter were moved without incident into a small manor inside Rosetta’s protected lands. On the surface it was a ducal charity project to treat a frail commoner woman.
In truth it was isolation—severing the Temple’s reach.
The manor was not large.
But its walls were thick, its windows sturdy, and every night Rosetta guards patrolled it in person. Even if someone from the Temple tried to enter behind a prayer, they could be stopped at the door. Even if an imperial official demanded papers, the Rosetta seal would hold first.
As I chose the place I told myself again and again:
This is not emotion.
It is a protective measure. A strategy. The most efficient way to twist the original plot. Yet the moment Liana stepped down from the carriage, that excuse felt a little ridiculous.
Liana climbed out and looked around.
Snow still lay on the ground, but this place was warmer than Lumen Village. The walls were thick; a fire burned in the hearth. A healer immediately guided Martha into an inner room.
Liana stood quietly, taking it all in.
I walked over to her.
“Don’t like it?”
“No.”
“Then why that face?”
Liana looked up at me.
“Because it’s too good.”
I was left speechless. She was not smiling. If anything, she looked as though she were fighting not to cry.
“I don’t know if I’m allowed to accept something this wonderful.”
“Accept it.”
“But—”
“Liana.”
For the first time I spoke her name.
Her eyes went wide.
Even so, I had no choice but to speak coldly.
“If you refuse, it becomes a nuisance for me. The papers are already finished, people have already moved, and I’ve already manufactured a pretext to shove in the Temple’s face. If you say you can’t take it now, the mess only gets bigger.”
What a joke.
I had protected everything there was to protect and still said something like that. Even if the child looked hurt, I had no right to complain.
I just hope she doesn’t hate me too much. Conflicting feelings churned through my head as I watched her reaction with quiet tension. For a moment she simply stared at me.
Then she smiled, small and soft.
…She smiled?
“Evelyn-nim says the strangest things.”
“What do you—”
“You do kind things and then pretend you’re not kind at all.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“I told you not to get the wrong idea.”
“Yes. But I think I’m going to get the wrong idea again.”
She was far too honest.
I gave up on answering and started to turn away. That was when Liana seized my wrist with surprising strength.
This time it was not through a glove; it was bare skin. Her small hand pressed over a training scar. Warmth seeped in. I jerked my hand free on pure reflex.
“Don’t.”
Liana froze in shock.
I looked down at her hand. A faint light was fading from her fingertips.
Healing power… divine power.
…So it has already manifested.
“Never.”
My voice dropped low.
“Never use that power in front of anyone.”
Liana’s lips parted.
“But your wound—”
“You’re in more danger than any wound.”
“Why?”
I could not answer.
Liana looked straight at me.
“Evelyn-nim, how do you know things like that?”
The question was not a child’s simple curiosity.
Though she was only ten, Liana had already noticed. That I moved like someone who knew the future. That I understood what the Temple wanted, what her power meant—things an ordinary young lady of a duchy should never know.
I wrapped my wrist on instinct.
The scar had almost vanished. Even in that brief moment she had healed me. Looking down at the nearly closed wound, I let out a quiet inner sigh and spoke firmly.
“You don’t need to know.”
“Will you tell me someday?”
I looked at her.
The child I had met in a snow-falling village was now gazing up at me inside a warm room. So small, so fragile, and yet somehow she refused to step back.
I chewed on my words, and what finally left my mouth was a lie.
“No.”
Liana lowered her eyes for a moment.
Did I hurt her?
The instant the thought crossed my mind, she smiled again.
“Then I’ll find out myself.”
That may have been the first time I felt a true flicker of unease. Liana Bell was far more stubborn than the heroine I remembered from the original story.
And perhaps—
While I was pulling her out of the original plot, she was already pulling me out of my own plans.