Vestige (19)
Not long after graduation, Levina became the Family Head.
She complained endlessly that I'd ruined everything, but it was a far better outcome than me taking the title.
Power suited her.
It was clear at a glance that the household ran ten times smoother than it ever had under my name.
And the marriage talks with Serepina and Estelle kept getting postponed on one pretext after another.
Fortunately, the excuses were plentiful.
Right on cue, demons breached the borderlands and wiped an entire territory off the map. A kingdom collapsed. Refugees flooded into Edelgard lands in numbers that verged on chaos.
Though nobody realized at the time that one in four of those refugees was a heretic.
In any case, no one was in a position to bring up marriage or children.
It made for a convenient shield, and the two of them knew it.
Neither of them said a word.
They were too busy keeping knives at each other's throats every single day.
Still, I was satisfied enough.
I never had to stand in front of Estelle after the wedding and say I had no intention of having a child with her.
I didn't have the stomach to see that expression twice.
Time passed with the problem left conveniently buried, and somehow, spending my days shuttling between Estelle and Serepina became routine.
When Estelle grew restless, a little more physical closeness was enough to settle her. With Serepina, it was enough to wander from place to place together the way we used to, just to keep her company.
Not that we had much time for strolls once the demons poured in.
The situation was worse than I'd realized.
Like a pinhole in a dam that drowns the whole valley, the world was falling apart beyond anyone's ability to stop it.
The demons pressed in on one front, while behind us, heretics kept crawling out of every crack despite all the purges and burnings.
And during all of this, I'd been locked up in the manor playing Family Head.
Playing with magic stones, diligently.
Oblivious that any of this was happening.
On the bright side, I did pick up some magic. Though I can almost understand why those peasants banded together and tried to kill me back then.
A strange thought to have right now, but the sky was painfully blue.
Two clouds, maybe. Not cloudless. Pleasant shapes drifting across the sun, warmth settling gently onto the ground. Lying here, it almost felt like heaven.
The soft grass cradled my whole body.
Something about the damp warmth made me drowsy.
My eyelids turned to lead.
A part of me wondered if I was about to wake up back in that hellhole of a room—the stale stench, the cigarette ash, the envelopes scattered across the floor.
I lay still and stared at the sky.
Blue so sharp it stung.
Across it, like ink splattered on canvas, countless arrows traced their parabolas overhead.
Behind them came fire and lightning in every color—spells made for tearing people apart, embroidering the heavens.
Red and blue and green streaks ripped across that blue paper.
The sounds were muffled.
My hearing might have been gone.
Faint screams. Death rattles. Something bursting open somewhere.
I couldn't hear them, but the big ones still rattled through my bones.
The wet sound of flesh and blood erupting. The crunch of bone. Someone begging for their life.
The droning was hard to listen to.
"Ravin! Get a grip! Do not close your eyes!
You fall asleep here and you'll sleep forever, just like your mother!
Open your eyes, you fuck, open them!"
Levina shrieked, grabbing me by the collar and slapping me across the face.
Crack!
The impact snapped my vision clear for a single instant.
Her face was covered in scratches as she clung to me.
Her eyes were shot through with blood. Her lips were cracked and dry.
Breathing was a struggle. I groped at my chest with the one hand I could still move and felt rough bandages wrapped crushingly tight around my ribs and stomach.
The pressure felt like my ribs were about to give.
"Estelle will be here soon. I shot a spell straight into the sky telling her to come right now. She'll have seen it.
Don't close your eyes. Fuck. Don't you dare close your eyes, you goddamn bastard. You don't get to leave me alone—if you die on me I'll kill you!
If I don't have you, I—"
But her words were droning, and I couldn't make them out clearly.
Everything felt distant, like hearing noises underwater.
Levina's face blurred at the edges.
Not long after, something burst in the air and a shadow fell over us.
Estelle arrived in her black clothes, spattered head to toe with blood and gore, her face urgent.
She was shouting something as she began pouring warm light over me.
Sacred light enveloped my body.
But she looked flustered.
Seeing her expression, I forced myself to lift my head out of curiosity.
Even moving my neck was a battle.
I tilted my head and looked down. The wounds had started to close, then simply stopped.
The torn flesh was knitting itself slowly, but at some point the healing stalled.
The drowsiness came pouring down. I let my head rest and shut my eyes.
* * *
To my considerable relief, when I opened my eyes again I hadn't returned to that wretched room.
Having dragged myself all the way to a battlefield, the prospect of winding up back at the manor fending off another round of banishment and broken engagements was more than a headache could fix.
I woke in a makeshift ward packed with the wounded.
There were actual beds, which suggested we hadn't lost the battle.
The air was thick with blood and herbs and the faint smell of death.
Someone had changed my shirt, but my trousers were the same ones I'd worn onto the field.
Still caked in dirt and blood.
To call it a bed was generous—a rough wooden frame with a blanket thrown over it, but it was something.
I was a noble in name, so they'd hung a curtain around me.
A dirty scrap of cloth. Still better than nothing.
I drew the curtain aside slightly and scanned the room. Bodies everywhere with missing limbs or sides. The groans I didn't want to hear came from all directions.
And beside me... Serepina was watching.
She sat in a chair, utterly still, her eyes fixed on me.
When she saw my eyes open, she ground her teeth.
A harsh grind.
She looked furious.
"Ra—Ravin. I told you. I told you to stay behind me. Not to go to the front."
"I said I didn't want to."
My voice came out in shreds.
My throat was dry.
"Fr—from now on, whatever you say, I'm locking you in the r—rear."
There was something in her eyes that reminded me of the way she used to look at me back when she still wore the eyepatch.
A look I didn't recognize.
"Wh—why, why do you never think about your own body? You can't even fight properly, but you're al—always, why are you always—!
You could stay in the r—rear and you still f—fight at the front!?"
Serepina's voice cracked.
It was trembling.
"Where are Levina and Estelle?"
"......."
Serepina exhaled and spoke.
"Her Excellency the Duchess went to p—pick a fight with Kyle's people for su—supposedly failing a task, and the Saintess is... b—burying the dead."
I wanted to talk while looking at her face, so I pushed myself upright.
I braced my back against the wall, and a dull sting flared through me as the fresh white bandages began to redden again.
Serepina sighed and began unwinding the bandages wrapped around my body.
She called someone over, took the new bandages into her own hands, and started binding them tighter than before.
"You—you don't seem to care about yourself at all.
You act like someone who's al—allowed to die. Like you just ch—charge forward without thinking."
"I still killed two demons this time."
"Th—those were the kind even a stu—stupid street beggar could kill if you handed him a spear."
I tried to answer, but Serepina pulled the bandages tighter so I couldn't.
My breath caught.
"Think about us, too. Not just me. Estelle.
The S—Saintess loves you. Both of us. You said you love us both. Didn't you?
You said you love us both. You said you don't know who you love more. You said you don't know who you like better.
You said you don't know who to marry, and then suddenly you come to a warzone, and when Her Excellency the Duchess says she'll follow you, you don't refuse—you welcome it. You should be in the back shooting a gun where it's safe, but instead you go to the front with your pathetic magic skills and cast spells that don't work. If that's what you wanted, you might as well have aimed at the sky and fired, hoping to hit someone. But when I tell you to do that, you can't even cast properly, and you only shoot when you're grappling with demons, and on top of that you complain about your meals and chain-smoke all day, and you never give a straight answer when I ask you something, and when you're with the Saintess you make expressions you never make with me... wh—why? Why are you doing this?"
Serepina grabbed my shoulders and shoved me against the wall.
She looked straight into my eyes.
"You don't really love anyone, do you? You don't care about us at all. All that talk about love was a lie, wasn't it?"
I caught her wrists and pulled.
She stumbled forward into my arms.
"This right here—this is because I love you, Serepina.
I'm doing this because I love you.
I'm pulling these stupid stunts and doing things I've got no right to do because I love you more than anyone."
She was pressing against my wound and the pain was insane, but I didn't want her to see me squirm.
Moving would have been pathetic.
Serepina stared at me with a blank expression, so I leaned in and kissed her lightly.
After the kiss, after our lips parted, she touched her mouth for a long time before she spoke.
"You're just brushing it off again."
I let a smile touch my lips.
"I'm not brushing it off. We'll keep fighting like this and sooner or later the heretics and the demons will all be dead."
"......."
"Once things are settled enough, let's get married."
"......Are you going to say the exact same thing to the Saintess?"
She was grumbling, but her face had turned a faint shade of red.
I just smiled.
What does it feel like to love someone who's fine with dying?
This time, I wanted to be the one who died first.
Watching the people I knew walk away from me, telling me to live just a little longer—it had never been pleasant.