The Last Love We Shared
The Last Love We Shared
For nearly a year after that day, Rosaria served as the face of the Holy Kingdom while Canaria served as its shadow, each fulfilling the duties expected of them.
Rosaria handled the tasks delegated to her, wielded her divine power when necessary, and carried out the traditional duties of a Saint.
Canaria, meanwhile, supported her from the shadows, stained her hands with blood when necessary, and reluctantly stepped forward as the Holy Kingdom's weapon when the occasion demanded it.
Had it ended there, the two of them might have carried on untroubled. But cowards are loathsomely adept at clinging to their own lives, and the Pope could not have failed to notice the way they were slowly tightening the noose around his neck.
Not content to heap shackle after shackle upon them, he sought out their weaknesses and subjected them to continual violence and abuse, intent on crushing their aspirations before they could take root.
But the age when such crudely traditional methods as torture could break them was already over. During their time apart, they had endured countless tortures, overcome them, and fought their way to their goals.
"Plucking out fingernails—aren't you bored of it by now?"
Even when her fingernails were pulled, Canaria could mock them.
'...That point where I would have broken from something like this—it's long gone.'
Even when the whip tore into her back, Rosaria remained composed.
He was not insensible to pain. But the sensation of it could not break their dream; instead, it hardened them, condensed their ideals into something denser, and drove them forward.
Their frail weakness—the part of them that might once have buckled under trial—had been erased.
After all, there was someone they loved waiting for them when they returned. Rather than the fleeting agony of the moment, they could endure by clinging to the long days ahead—to the life they would share together within the grand picture they had sketched.
Gouging out one's eyes cannot alter the color of a sky already seen. Cutting off a finger cannot erase the path it once pointed toward. Cutting out a tongue cannot undo the words that have already been spoken.
This was not a love that would crumble beneath any amount of vicious torture.
Neither could the Pope simply tear the two of them apart.
For the only being capable of subduing the Demon King was the Saintess alone.
The upper echelons of the Holy Kingdom knew well the day the Demon King, Serena, had descended into the depths—and they were not ignorant of the sheer immensity of the Demon King's power. They knew that if they separated them and the Demon King ran rampant, if she harbored some other intent and shattered every binding, the Holy Kingdom would cross a river from which there was no return.
Rosaria and Canaria, just the two of them, had risen high enough to readily engage in a tug-of-war against the entire upper class of a massive nation.
Of course, the Heart's Oath kept them from rampaging freely. But from the Pope's perspective and that of the Holy Kingdom, Canaria was a bomb that could detonate at any moment.
And so, they had no choice but to keep her at Rosaria's side—the only person who could handle her.
Thanks to that, the two of them spent every night together in the same room. They could endure the hellish daylight by waiting for those happy nights, when all the day's work was done, when they could finally be with the one they loved.
"...They cut off your finger today, I see."
Rosaria gazed at the hand Canaria had extended at his request. It was a hand that had surely grown without a single scar, yet the mark he had etched onto her finger the night before had been erased.
"...I suppose they can't quite replicate a Saint's divine power, after all. I did try to hide it so you wouldn't find out."
She had not wanted to show him the wound.
And Canaria was not alone in that—Rosaria was no different. He had immediately healed his own back, torn open by the whip, with divine power, and was acting as though nothing had happened.
"...If that's the case, you're just the same, Rosaria."
But Canaria had now become a being who had touched the truth. Those golden eyes of hers perceived the fact that a Saint's divine power had been worked upon his back.
That fact struck her as utterly laughable.
And it kindled in her a rage that was terribly, bitterly cold.
"...Truly, they are vermin utterly devoid of creativity."
Torture of this level was something Canaria had endured over and over in the dungeons. No—if anything, it had been crueler back then. Those had been the days when she still stood exposed on the brink.
Now, a severed finger regrew at once; back then, she had spent days bleeding from the wound.
Now, holy water barely hurt her at all; back then, it scalded as though boiling water had been poured over her. Tortures like flesh seared with a red-hot blade, a body crushed or carved apart—all of it had fallen upon her with an entirely different weight.
And more than anything, back then, Rosaria had not been at her side.
"...How could anyone think of cutting such a beautiful hand as this?"
Back then, there had been no Rosaria to kiss her ring finger so tenderly as he spoke. Nor had there been a Rosaria who, brimming with mischief, bit down on that ring finger to leave a mark.
"...Indeed. I have no earthly idea how anyone could think of violating a back as soft as yours with something like a whip."
Because they remained side by side, they could pass through such things with ease.
They drank each other's tears.
They licked each other's wounds.
They loved one another, and soothed each other's pain.
It was a world apart from that time when they had been torn apart and forced to live separately.
Measured against the sense of loss they had known then, physical pain like this was no more than child's play. And so they did not break.
If anything, they only clung together more inseparably than before.
That day, too, began with a kiss.
And its conclusion, too, ended with a deep kiss.
For the sense of fulfillment—of faithfully advancing toward their goal together with their whole being—gave them an indescribable happiness.
...But if the story had continued on in this vein alone, Rosaria could not possibly have died.
In the end, the conclusion of this long and sprawling love story always arrived with stark cruelty. And it began on the day when, for the first time, the Holy Kingdom ordered the Saintess and the Demon King to undertake a ten days' pilgrimage in preparation for the Holy War.
*
Rosaria had always pursued righteousness.
Only by doing so could he hope to drag that unrighteous Pope down and brand him a heretic. To lend weight to his words and his reasoning, he had to demonstrate from his own example a meticulous adherence to the laws of Sacred Scripture.
Nearly to the point of fanaticism, Rosaria pursued righteousness and devoted himself entirely to upholding it.
That was precisely the point the Pope exploited.
He had taken their dear friend Isabella's life as collateral—a backup plan in case the scheme failed—but first he devised a command that a righteousness-obsessed Saintess could not possibly refuse.
"...It's a trap."
A request for Holy War reinforcements arrived without warning.
The Order of Holy Knights stationed there was calling for aid. The new Sultan of the Empire was too strong; at this rate, they would lose the Holy Land. The request—delivered straight to Rosaria—asked that the Demon King and the Saintess be dispatched to help them.
"...We've been checkmated."
Rosaria clicked his tongue and furrowed his brow. Even without Canaria pointing it out, he knew full well it was a trap.
The moment they were sent far away, the Pope would purge every last ally they had painstakingly gathered—that much was obvious as a blazing fire.
Even if that were not the case, no plan cooked up by someone with such foul motives could possibly work in their favor, and so they had no desire to obey an order that would force them to leave their territory.
"...Using the scripture's rules—how cowardly."
Corrupt though he might be, he was still the Pope. He could pluck the laws written in Sacred Scripture from the library of his mind whenever he wished. And so he thrust forward a rule for the Holy War that no Saint could ever ignore.
'...For all his faults, the man really does know how to be Pope.'
He compensated for his lack of power with cunning and experience. Had the Pope not been consumed by greed in turning Canaria into the Demon King, they might well have become his puppets, living out their days like Erika. With meticulous care, the Pope pressed them into his snare.
"...We can't refuse."
But regrettably, Rosaria bore a heavy responsibility. No matter what, he was a Saint, and having resolved himself to follow righteousness and justice, and having preached that to others—
There was no way he could simply ignore the laws of Sacred Scripture. Even knowing it was a cheap farce, he had no choice but to play along.
"...We'll have to trust in Francesco and Erika, then."
Both Erika—who had lost nearly all her strength—and Francesco—who had lost everything—remained, and did they not possess experience rivaling the Pope's? There was no choice but to believe in them, if only with a hopeful heart.
"What if I simply force my way into staying?"
Canaria was a being they could not control. Her idea was to dig in stubbornly, to remain here and protect their nest.
But Rosaria merely shook his head. What the order specified, regrettably, was the Saintess and the Demon King. If she forced the issue, they would trample over her stubbornness and, by whatever means necessary, fling Canaria onto the battlefield.
On top of that, staying would only delay Rosaria's time.
For unfortunately, a Saint was not permitted to intervene directly in a Holy War. If that was how it had to be, it might be wiser to bring Canaria along for certain, end the war as swiftly as possible, and rush straight back.
Even for the Pope, purging all of their people, prosecuting them, and taking all necessary measures would take at least a little time. Maintaining the foundation of the Holy Kingdom while replacing that many people was no simple task.
"...Then let's be quick about it and return."
In the end, the conclusion they reached was a swift, decisive battle.
Finish it quickly and return at once.
And, after all, in the worst-case scenario, it would be possible to send Canaria back ahead alone—as he was thinking with easy complacency while steeling his heart for the coming Holy War—
"...Then, before we go, shall we play for just a little while?"
Canaria gently wrapped her arms around Rosaria's waist.
"...I've been especially worn down today, so I'm dreadfully low on Rosalium."
And then, with aching tenderness, she nipped at Rosaria's earlobe.
"...You're always saying you're running low. You're just making a show of it now."
"...Today I'm running lower than usual. And so... you'll fill me up, won't you?"
With joyful laughter, they gazed at each other. Their faces, caught and reflected in the moonlight, looked so impossibly beautiful and beloved in each other's eyes. Reflexively, they stole each other's lips and shared their love.
...And, grievously, that was the last moment they ever shared such love.
*
It was a miscalculation.
Rosaria had assumed the Pope would purge their forces while maintaining the Holy Kingdom's foundation. But the Pope was a far more despicable man than he had imagined.
The Pope had no intention of maintaining the Holy Kingdom any longer.
The moment he realized that two burgeoning bombs were striving to bring him down, he resolved to eliminate them, discard the now-crippled nation like a wrecked husk, flee to another country, and live out the rest of his days in safe, irresponsible luxury.
And so he sought the aid of the Holy Empire.
If the Holy Kingdom was the nation founded by the Saint, Solomon, then the Holy Empire was the nation founded by his friend, the Hero Cain Seikrid. The Pope had long been cultivating ties and striking deals with the Holy Empire, and had laid the groundwork to cling to them first.
'It's not as though I didn't account for a day like this.'
From the very moment he had become Pope and witnessed the Saint's miracle—he had accounted for scenarios in which those two would aim for his throat, and even the possibility that the ailing Holy Kingdom might collapse entirely.
He was a son of a bitch, but he was not an ignorant one.
To safeguard his meal ticket and his lifeline, he had pulled innumerable strings.
The evidence was his dealings with the Imperial family of the Holy Empire and its various nobles. He had embezzled indulgences, Holy Kingdom armaments, and collected taxes little by little, building friendships with them as he went.
In the worst case—if the Holy Kingdom fell—he had secured a safe future for himself among them, and the moment that guarantee was in hand, he set this plan into motion.
"Your expression is far from bright, Zeke."
The Emperor of the Holy Empire addressed his son.
Jik Seikrid.
The pride of the Holy Empire, the Hero who had lifted the Holy Sword, and the First Imperial Prince who had been ordered to kill either the Saint or the Demon King if one of them ran rampant after the other's death.
His expression was markedly grim.
He was a Hero, and therefore a man of upright character. He could not nonchalantly accept the pitiless command to kill two young women. And when the command was founded not on some noble cause but on filthy calculations, it did nothing but disturb his heart.
The Empire had been promised the Holy Kingdom's land and its people. The offer had come directly from the Pope, its de facto ruler, and he had guaranteed the deal with an oath sworn by his own name.
The Emperor—grown weary of the Empire's role as the Holy Kingdom's shield—had accepted the bargain.
After all, had they not protected it for many long years?
His mindset was that, in return, he might as well take the Holy Kingdom itself as payment.
"Zeke, a king must be a creature of avarice. Only through avarice can a nation prosper, grow stronger, and become a better place for all its people. A feeble sage-king does not exist in this world. Remember: a mighty tyrant-king is the true sage-king, the greatest of rulers."
Unlike his son, his father the Emperor was far from virtuous.
Whether the high seat had ruined him, or whether he had been ruined enough to climb to that seat, was unclear. But however it had happened, that supremely arrogant, twisted, and self-serving way of thinking was what had made him Emperor and kept him alive.
And so he was continually, artificially correcting the feeble nature of his first imperial prince—Zeke, whose vessel held the potential to exceed him.
It was, in itself, a kind of suggestion.
And it was the command an Emperor gave to the sword of his empire.
"Slay the Saint and the Demon King—and make the Empire greater still."
As he spoke, the Emperor passed Zeke a box he had received from the Pope. Inside were two blades with rusted edges. Zeke, already briefed in advance, knew what they were.
The weapon capable of killing a Saint: Longinus.
Two swords forged from its divided blade. One was a dagger intended for the Saint; the other was a curved sword meant for Zeke himself.
With the self-sacrifice dagger and the subduing sword in his grip, Zeke began to meticulously overlay scenario after scenario in his mind.
Scenario one: the Saint takes her own life with the dagger, and the Demon King runs wild. In that case, he would subdue the Demon King with the Holy Sword at his hip.
Scenario two: the Saint kills her irreplaceable friend, the Demon King, and then runs wild herself. In that case, he would kill the Saint with the sword he had just received.
Zeke closed his eyes and began to repeat the hypotheticals. Weaving together the account he had heard from the Pope with the scripture he knew so well—and factoring in every variable, one after another—
Again and again, he fought battles of pure fantasy inside his head.
"...I trust you will carry this out well."
Sunk deep into a state of intense concentration, Zeke gave no answer. He did nothing but continue to grow, running through combat after combat in his mind, until the appointed hour arrived. The moment he finished his ten-thousandth simulated battle, he rose to his feet. It had been exactly one full day since Zeke had received the Longinus.
And it was the day Rosaria and Canaria's tragedy began.
*
That day, as always, snow was falling.
The day he had first arrived in this world. The day he had parted from Isabella. The day he had promised Canaria they would go together to the convent. On all of those days, it had snowed.
...And on the day they were torn apart for a year, and on the day they finally reunited and Rosaria was formally recognized as the Saintess, it was the same.
Those days, too, had been cold like this, and snow had fallen.
As they traveled, they reminisced. Chatting about this and that, they looked back on those days, and in the warmth of those memories—memories only the two of them could share—they forgot the cold entirely. It was a moment of happiness.
—Saintess! Emergency!
A soldier, one of the spies they had planted, contacted Rosaria urgently through the communication device he had been given beforehand.
—The Holy Kingdom... it's been attacked by the Holy Empire!
More quickly than they had anticipated, and in a direction they had not foreseen, events began to unfold.
First, they halted their advance toward the Holy War.
What they needed now was to return to the Holy Kingdom without a moment's delay. The army of the Holy War, which had been marching toward the Holy Land, swiftly turned its carriages around and began the journey back.
...It was the moment when the finale of this long, long story began to draw near.
Inside Canaria, the Demon King let out a soft, quiet laugh.