Vestige (12)
I managed to drag Levina back to the estate.
With her slung across my back, I kicked the front door open.
It took a moment, but the door swung inward.
The servants saw me, drenched in blood, with Levina draped over my shoulders, and every face went ashen.
Their eyes went wide with shock.
A few let out short screams and stumbled backward.
"Y-Young Master! Heir Apparent!"
A man I took for the butler rushed toward me, hands outstretched to help, his expression aghast.
I shoved the hovering servants aside, hard.
"Move. Get a priest from the nearest church. Now."
My voice scraped out like steel dragged across stone.
Still carrying Levina, I strode into the parlor.
I swept my arm across the tea table, sending cups and saucers crashing aside.
Silverware and porcelain crashed to the floor in a violent clatter.
I laid Levina on the tabletop.
Then I sagged into a nearby chair, half-collapsed, and pulled a cigarette from my coat.
I wedged it between my lips and tried to light it with a snap of my fingers.
But the paper was soaked through with blood. It wouldn't catch.
Tsss.
Nothing but the faint hiss of wet paper scorching.
A spike of pointless irritation made me hurl the cigarette to the floor.
"Bring me liquor! Anything!"
I yelled toward the doorway.
My head spun in a fog I couldn't shake.
A servant came scrambling in and thrust a bottle of spirits at me.
I didn't bother with a glass. I just tipped the bottle back and swallowed several mouthfuls.
The burn tore down my throat and spread through my body.
I let out a long breath.
Bottle in hand, I idly tilted it back and forth, not drinking any more.
The face reflected in the glass didn't look human.
I don't know how much time passed.
A priest who looked fairly young stepped into the room.
There was something awkward and shifty about his face.
"H-how did you end up injured like this?"
His eyes darted between me and Levina as he stammered the question.
"Hunting accident nearby. Just get on with the healing."
I answered, sounding utterly bored.
The priest hesitated, not quite daring to lay hands on Levina's body.
I slapped Levina's cheek, hard. She still hadn't opened her eyes.
Not even a flinch.
I roughly lifted the blood-soaked fabric of her blouse, exposing the torn flesh of her belly, clearly left by teeth.
The moment the horrific wound lay exposed, the priest seemed to finally channel power into the staff engraved with the church emblem.
A faint light kindled at his fingertips.
Though the glow had a slightly reddish cast to it.
Watching Levina's wounds slowly knit together, I spoke.
"Which village did you grow up in?"
"Pardon? I-I'm simply from near the capital..."
"Where near the capital?"
"W-well, it's a quiet spot, so precisely it's..."
The priest fumbled, offering no real answer.
His eyes held something suspicious.
They reminded me of the villagers I'd just seen.
In that instant, he swung his staff at me.
The carved edge clipped my forehead and glanced off.
Blood must have spilled — my right eye's vision flooded crimson.
The priest froze mid-swing, clutching his staff, looking between me and Levina like a man out of options.
I flipped the bottle in my hand and slammed it straight into his face.
A dull crack. The priest crumpled to the floor.
I stared at the bottle, still intact, then poured the last of the liquor over his head.
"Not a single person around here I can trust."
I muttered, low.
I ordered the servants to lock the priest in the cellar or some other suitable place.
"I'll hand him over to a capital priest. Have a carriage ready immediately."
The servants all watched me with terror in their eyes, but they moved as instructed.
By the time I'd lifted Levina's limp body and made it out to the garden, a carriage was swaying toward us.
I loaded Levina inside and told the driver holding the reins to get down.
"Y-Young Master? Then who will drive the horses?"
The driver asked, caught off guard.
"Not your concern."
I shoved him aside, climbed into the driver's seat, and took the reins.
Then I spurred the horses toward the capital.
I was so exhausted I could have died, but I clawed onto consciousness as best I could.
The night's cold air bit into every wound.
My last memory was of abandoning the carriage somewhere, then carrying Levina on foot to the back gate church behind the Academy.
* * *
When I opened my eyes, the sun was up and blazing.
Sunlight poured through the window, filling the room with light.
My body felt impossibly light.
The fatigue and the pain had vanished like a lie.
Someone had changed me into clean clothes, too.
As I sat up, a voice came from beside me.
"Oh, you're awake?"
Estelle.
She was seated in a chair, reading a book.
"I'll admit, I wasn't expecting a brother and sister to show up in the middle of the night covered head to toe in blood."
She closed the book as she spoke.
"My sister?"
"She woke up ages ago."
Estelle answered.
"Wait here a moment."
She stepped out of the room and returned shortly with something to eat.
An apple. Just an apple, but still.
She tossed it to me.
I gave it a cursory wipe on the blanket that had covered me and bit into it with a crunch.
The crisp flesh and the sweet-tart juice spread across my tongue.
After that, I stood and stretched.
"I heard you ran into heretics. Lucky you made it back alive."
"Yeah. Barely made it."
"Levina went to that village with one of the holy knights from our side."
"The priest at the local church there looked like a heretic, too."
"Ah. I'll pass that along so they can check."
Estelle replied.
The situation felt like it had spiraled far beyond anything I'd anticipated.
Rineta might have already been like that. The village was in that state. And the heretics might have already wormed their way into the church.
For all I knew, there were no heretics at all, and I'd simply mistaken a decent clergyman and brained him with a bottle. But if I went back to that moment, that prickling sense of menace crawling across my skin would probably make me do the exact same thing.
"Anyway, why pick this church of all places? Nobody ever comes here, and there's no resident priest."
Estelle asked.
"It was the only church I could remember."
"Really? A bigger one in a busier part of town would've been better.
Lucky for you I was here."
I looked at Estelle.
"Thank you."
Color rose in her cheeks, but she stepped closer.
"If you're grateful, let's start with the lips like usual... like usual?"
Confusion flickered across Estelle's face.
Her eyes wavered.
Watching that, I let out a hollow laugh.
I'd caved in Rineta's skull with a rock until she was unrecognizable — the girl who had leaned on me that way — and barely made it back, only to find Estelle standing in front of me now, all her memories gone while her body alone clung to scraps of what used to be.
With every repetition of this cycle, a hollowness settled into places I hadn't even thought to examine at first.
At least it wasn't anguish yet.
But it didn't feel far off.
Still, this Estelle in front of me was without question the same Estelle who had once poured herself into loving me, announcing it with every part of her, no deception, no hesitation.
I stepped forward.
I closed the distance to Estelle, who was still flushed and blinking in bewilderment, and I kissed her.
Her lips were soft. Warm.
Her eyes went wide. She was clearly thrown, utterly flustered, but she didn't push me away.
If anything, she wrapped her arms tight around me with an alarming familiarity and tangled her tongue with mine.
When we finally broke apart after a long stretch, Estelle fumbled for words.
"Th-this is... s-suddenly not just lips but tongue, tongue...?"
"Pervert. You seem pretty used to it, though?"
I said it like I was teasing her.
"Th-that's not — my body just moves on its own! A-and pervert — you're the pervert!"
Estelle shouted, face blazing.
"Thanks for the help. I'll get going."
"......Nn. Mm. Yeah."
* * *
After that, a few days passed as if nothing had ever happened.
Levina checked once to make sure I was in one piece, then seemed to drown herself in work — locked away somewhere all day buried in documents, dashing between family holdings in a frenzy.
The whole affair of church-hired priests turning out to be heretics was impossible to contain. The ripple effects were inevitable.
Whether Levina had been diligently spreading word that I was the one who uncovered the heretic village, or whether it had been publicly announced somewhere, there didn't seem to be anyone left unaware of the incident — or of my involvement.
To the point where Serepina showed up with a grim expression and stuck by my side all day, asking if I was all right.
None of that really mattered to me.
I was tucked into a corner of the dining hall, minding my own business and enjoying a perfectly fine lunch.
At least until Kyle, with that unappealing, slightly unhinged look of his, and some female knight whose name I couldn't remember planted themselves across from me.
"Every time I see you, you're always draped in women."
I spoke first.
"I came here because I have something to ask."
To my surprise, Kyle didn't snap. He spoke with weight instead of irritation.
I shoved the remains of my bread into the stew and got up from the table.
Kyle was not someone I cared to talk to.
I imagined the feeling was mutual.
He rose and started following me.
I dropped my bowl off at the tray return and walked all the way toward my room, both of them trailing the whole way.
I sighed, stopped, and turned.
"What do you want to ask?"
"I heard... you were the one who identified my hometown as a gathering place for heretics."
"Yeah. You heard. And?"
As I walked, I spotted a bench and sat down on it.
I pulled a cigarette from my coat, casually lit it with a flame at my fingertip, and drew in the smoke.
The female knight beside him flinched slightly and stared, but given the atmosphere, she kept her mouth shut.
I exhaled the smoke slowly.
"Yeah. 'Identified' isn't quite the word, though."
"Rineta... there should have been a girl in the village. Two or three years younger than me."
Kyle's voice held a tremor.
"Ah, there was. There definitely was. Worked at my estate, even."
Kyle ground his teeth.
I smiled at the sight of him.
No matter how I looked at him, he was infuriating, obnoxious, enviable, and fucking unbearable.
"But what can you do? Whatever you two were to each other — she was a heretic."
"Even so, if it's Rineta..."
I cut him off.
"And why does that matter to you? Heretic or not, if I said she was a heretic, she was a heretic."
Then I let it slip out, low, like I was talking to myself.
"I killed her, after all. That girl."