When the Violet Wilts - 4
"...It seems he's on his way."
It was a cramped little room, lit only by the faintest wash of light. As Theresia murmured those words into the gloom, Cain, who had been watching her, gave a small nod.
He had always known this day would come; the timing was simply a little earlier than expected. Not that it mattered in the least. Every preparation had been seen to long ago, hadn't it?
Theresia's complexion was far paler than before. Such a thing was possible only because she had absorbed the Evil Dragon's power whole while her own self remained intact. The malice the Evil Dragon harbored — having taken all of it into her body, her destructive force was more than enough to be called monstrous.
And yet her expression remained dark. The face that had once brimmed with euphoria when the power was first granted to her now lay in shadow, no longer at ease the way it used to be.
"Is something troubling you, perhaps?"
"Troubling me."
The corner of her mouth twisting, Theresia let out a small laugh. She wasn't worried about anything. She had wanted her revenge on Robert — and now that he was coming to her, killing him when he arrived would be more than enough, wouldn't it?
No, the problem was the memories slowly blooming inside her head. Memories she had never witnessed in the flesh — as if she had only ever heard them secondhand, from someone else's lips.
"Nothing of the sort."
"Then I shall send the others ahead of you. We really must test what you are capable of, after all."
Even as she nodded along to his words, the memories lodged in her mind continued to swell. They were not her memories. And yet they were, unmistakably, her own.
"Robert, did you truly trust me? How foolish of you. To think you'd really hand everything over to a woman — guts and all — just because she had you smitten."
She had been smiling, in that memory. Simply caressing the cheek of Robert as he stared blankly into the air, smiling the way she always did when something pleased her.
What had put her in such a good mood, she couldn't say, but Robert's expression was precisely the one she had painted in her imagination. That despairing look, as though he might crumble at any moment — it was a face she had been sketching since long ago.
"I never loved you, not once — but you were grateful, weren't you? For having loved someone like me?"
Even with the dagger buried in his heart, Robert did not move. His hollow gaze merely traced the empty air. Even as blood ran from the corner of his mouth, even as his heart tore itself apart and death crept over him, those vacant eyes never once turned toward her.
In the end, his chilled body stiffened and crumpled. And there, staring down at the form that would never stir again — a corpse, now — Theresia's memory cut off.
...Then why did she feel pain?
It was nothing but a memory. And yet, as if the dagger were buried in her own heart, blood was welling up and seeping from around her chest.
"So these are not mere memories."
She had no idea what it meant. Nor why the wounds she had inflicted within those memories were now appearing, perfectly replicated, upon her own body. She couldn't even be certain the memories were hers to begin with — so when, exactly, had Robert died?
The welling blood soon began, slowly, to stop. Hers had already become a monster's body; a wound of this degree closed within moments. But the pain lingered.
With each memory that surfaced, it only grew, and so Theresia slowly rose from her seat and stepped forward. This pain would vanish only when Robert died. It had been Robert who tormented her from the very beginning.
No — perhaps the fault was her own, for ever approaching him at all. She had come to him to pick apart his fortune, and so this was the result.
As her face was mirrored in the transparent pane, the corners of Theresia's mouth trembled faintly at the sight of herself. Skin split and cracked — there was no way she could still pass for the woman she had once been. It was far beyond undoing.
Killing Robert, and then meeting her own death at the very end — surely that would be the most beautiful conclusion of all.
"I do hope he hurries. I simply cannot abide waiting."
With every fresh wound that bloomed across her body, Theresia advanced another step. Memories of killing Robert. Memories of Robert dying. In every one of them her actions had been identical — she had always approached him in order to use him. So why had she failed this time? She had always betrayed him and siphoned his wealth away without fail; why, this once, had it been discovered, and left her like this?
She would never know the answer unless she heard it from his own lips. And so she went on. To kill Robert. To erase these memories that surfaced ever more often and wrung her with agony.
One hand pressed over the scar carved into her arm, Theresia slowly opened the door.
Thud.
The door closed behind her, and in the room now empty of everyone, the light began to fade. Only silence remained, and when even the last shaft of light lingering on the chair dissolved, the space sank into perfect darkness and was gone.
I had a fairly good idea where Theresia was hiding. There were only so many places in the South suited for it, after all. Push further south and it became purely non-human territory, which left, at most, the outskirts of this city where non-humans and humans mingled. Having long since committed the local geography to memory, I found every spot that might shelter her in no time at all.
Besides, she was radiating her power as though beckoning me closer — it would have been stranger not to find her.
This energy was unlike anything I had ever felt before. And yet my body was reacting to it as if it were intimately, painfully familiar. I hoped my suspicion was wrong, but the very fact that I responded to this power could only mean one thing.
Yes. Of course. There was only one it could be.
"So it's the Evil Dragon."
I already knew the Crown Prince had taken an interest in the Evil Dragon's malice. He had ordered me to secure the relics precisely so he could use it — which meant whoever had told Theresia of Mirazen's whereabouts could only be the Crown Prince himself.
What a hopelessly tangled web. The Crown Prince had always sought my death, and I had simply ignored that truth while doing my best to look after everyone else. What if I had resolved from the very beginning to kill him instead? A pointless thought — though it might at least have been a faster way out of this gloom.
Perhaps I should have tried living a little selfishly. Even as I grumbled to myself, I knew perfectly well I could never live that way. I had sworn, at the start, to die alone — and somehow, people I couldn't stop caring about kept appearing anyway. If all I had wanted was my own death, there would have been no need to save Adele. No need to grow closer to Adrian, no need to step out alone to rescue Mirazen.
There was no going back now. I had resolved to keep them alive, so it was only right that I be the one who hurt. Pain and I were old acquaintances. Being betrayed, aching in solitude — was there anyone in this world who bore it better than I?
As though waving me onward, the mana thickening in the air grew stronger by the moment, and I followed it at an easy pace. I gripped the sword I had commissioned specially for this journey and let my power rise. The street was eerie in its stillness; when I pressed my mana-laced palm against a wall, the space began, ever so slowly, to warp.
In a heartbeat the street changed hue, and what emerged was a vast, empty estate. Finding a gap in the rust-eaten iron fence, I slipped through — grass that looked untended for decades stood taller than a man. I walked on, cutting through the wind-blown stalks. A soft crunching reached my ears, and as a presence drew steadily nearer, I tightened my grip on the blade.
"You've come."
When I crossed the overgrown grounds and stopped before a dilapidated manor, the one there to greet me was a masked man. I was fairly certain I'd seen him once before — back when I was investigating matters in the South, I'd received reports of masked figures moving about. I was still weighing whether he was one of them when I sensed the crowd closing in around me, and a small laugh slipped out.
"...It seems I have rather a lot of people welcoming me."
"I have a rough notion of why you've come, of course. But even so — one must properly prepare before an audience with the lady, I should think."
"About twenty of them, is it?"
"They are quite another matter from the non-humans. I confess you surprised me a little that day, but this time, you may very well fall here."
We had never met, and yet the silky way he spoke to me grated on my nerves considerably. I tried to read his presence and found nothing there to read. What did trouble me was how fiercely the relic's energy nested in my body was reacting. What waited inside the manor was surely Theresia — but a similar aura clinging to this masked man could only mean one thing: he was tied to the Crown Prince.
There was no need to make an enemy of him here. Before I could kill the Crown Prince, I first had to become his most indispensable confidant. Whatever I settled here had to look, to any observer, like a matter concerning Theresia and nothing more.
So I buried the hostility. After one soft, easy smile, I opened my mouth toward the masked man at a leisurely pace.
"Must I cut through you as well?"
"If the lady wishes it, then perhaps. Unfortunately, I have duties of my own to attend to, so I shall withdraw for today."
"In that case, I'd like you to carry a message back to His Highness."
At the words His Highness, the light in his eyes changed. He knew better than anyone whom I meant. It was true that I intended to become the Crown Prince's man. But I also knew full well that he watched me with suspicion — which meant that across all those regressions, it had almost certainly been him conjuring every variable. I knew him. And there was every chance the Crown Prince knew a fair amount about me, too.
I had no intention of baring my hostility, but I refused to be taken for a fool. Having one's hand read this openly, being prodded and sounded out like this — from the receiving end, it was anything but pleasant.
"Tell him that next time, there's no need to send people separately. I'll see the relics secured beyond a shadow of doubt."
"......"
I smiled, letting the barb show, but the masked man gave no answer to the very end. Even Keitel, hearing this, would not fly into a rage, I judged. He would grow warier of me — I had already accounted for that. But he would not be able to cast me aside. Everything I did redounded, in the end, to Keitel's benefit, and he knew perfectly well that discarding me anyway would be the act of an idiot.
And the day I had drawn that close — the day I could finally stand at his right hand — that would be the day the Crown Prince died.
The masked man studied me a moment longer, then slowly turned his back. And into view came the true faces of the presences that had been closing in alongside him. Each and every one bore a sun emblazoned across the chest — a display so nakedly obvious that a laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
"So they're done even pretending to hide it."
The sun was the mark of the Evil Dragon, and the one who had surfaced leading these beings was the Crown Prince's own underling. Perhaps Keitel assumed I would never guess who that underling was — but even so, appearing like this was too brazen by half. This was an empire that worshipped the Moon. The Temple of the Moon stood within reach of this very spot, and still he would parade men bearing the Sun Sigil out into the open.
The intent was more shameless than I had imagined, and a scoff slipped from me. There was no focus to be found in the eyes of those advancing on me. They were simply hollow — carrying nothing but a single-minded resolve to kill. The so-called failures, then: those who could not fully withstand the malice, spent like discarded tiles.
"Twenty."
I murmured the count as I opened the throat of the nearest one. It was true that they were stronger than the non-human warriors. Each of them carried mana far more potent, and the slightest misstep would have left me at a disadvantage. But that had been the me who fought the non-humans. Three weeks in the North, one with the Order, another here in the South — in barely a month, I had done nothing but take one more step forward, over and over again.
"You should have brought two hundred."
All twenty of them together left me with the impression of hardly anything at all. With every sweep of my sword, a life ended along the arc it drew. Blood sprayed, brains burst — and my expression never wavered. Only my thoughts grew tangled. The more keenly I felt Theresia's presence, the closer I came to the manor, the deeper my mind sank into memory.
I knew it myself: this life was utterly unlike every one before it. Adele, Adrian — speaking as though they were recalling the past. In all my lives, that had never once happened. What would change, if they truly remembered my past? And yet my thoughts kept circling back to a small question I had raised for myself alone. If you came to know my past — if you saw the sins you yourself had committed, and felt my agony as your own — what would you feel then?
Regret is the emotion of what cannot be undone. However one weeps after the fact, the feeling born of irreversibility is regret. Whether a woman called Theresia Violet was even capable of such an emotion was anyone's guess. The odds of her watching me die and repenting her own sins were smaller still. But what I hoped — what I truly wanted — was for you not to regret at all. If instead you looked upon it and laughed at me, I could kill you without a flicker of hesitation.
That was the kind of pair we had always been, after all. We met in lies and ended in lies — a bond fated from the very first to close in tragedy.
When I finally looked around at the silence that had fallen, I realized no one else was left standing. Cold air slid down into my lungs, and the breath I released carried a hollow ring with it.
It was time to meet you now.
Time, at last, to erase you.