Lingering Fragrance (3)
Lingering Fragrance (3)
Rain was falling.
The sky was a flat sheet of ash, thick drops hammering the window in endless rhythm.
The world looked gray. At least, it did to Levina.
She stood at the tall window of her room, looking down at the garden through the rain. The trees and flowers, soaked dark, seemed heavier than usual. Everything had sunk into stillness.
A coffee cup rested in her hand.
It was empty.
She simply stood there holding it out of habit, motionless.
Her mind was a snarl of unfinished thoughts. Ravin's death. Ravin's fiancée, Serepina. The Saintess, whose gaze carried a chill Levina couldn't account for. It all tangled together and gnawed at her.
She hadn't slept. Not a moment. Closing her eyes only conjured Ravin's hanging body, and Serepina's hollow face as she held him.
It was because of you.
She didn't want those words spoken aloud. She couldn't deny them anyway. Couldn't offer up excuses. She was incapable of lying—not unwilling, simply unable. Maybe that was just stupidity. She didn't know. Dwelling on it now changed nothing. The dead did not return. No one knew that better than she did.
A knock broke through her thoughts.
"Come in."
The door opened and the old steward entered—Delliam, a man who had been with the estate since before she was born. The lines carved into his face ran deep, but his back was still straight.
"My lady."
He inclined his head with practiced deference.
"I told you to call me Heir Apparent."
"Forgive me. To me, you have been 'my lady' since you were a child."
"Fine. So—why are you here?"
"I have tidied Young Master Ravin's room. I came to ask how you wish his belongings handled."
Levina turned slowly.
"Are there belongings worth the name?"
"A few items."
The steward placed a tray on her desk. It was lined with velvet, and on it lay an assortment of objects.
A heavy revolver.
A crumpled sheet of stationery, a bottle of nameless liquor still sealed, and a handful of odds and ends.
Levina's gaze settled on them. The revolver was the one she had returned to him—his mother's keepsake. And the letter. That was Serepina's.
"Is this everything?"
"Yes, my lady. The room held little else."
Levina approached the desk and picked up the revolver. The weight of cold metal pressed into her palm. She checked the cylinder. Empty.
She took the crumpled stationery. The paper was a wreck—discarded once and retrieved, judging by its state. She smoothed it open with care. A faint trace of lilac lifted from it.
To Ravin.
The handwriting was clumsy, hurried. Ink had bled through in places.
Levina began to read.
The broken engagement—I brought it up to my father first, and I'd already told Lady Levina. I'm sorry. But I'll try to stop it somehow. It might take time. It might not work. But still, still—I'll find a way.
Nothing is going on between me and Kyle. Truly. We just ended up hunting the same monster and traveled together for a while. Lady Levina was there too, so if you really doubt me you can ask her. I'm sorry. I keep making things difficult for you.
I never meant to hurt you and it always turns out like this. I don't know if you'll read this, but I'm writing it anyway. I just wanted you to know how I feel.
We can't go back to the way things were, but still, still, I...
The crumpled letter cut off there. The paper near the final lines was torn away.
Levina looked down at it without expression. Delliam stood quietly at her side. He asked nothing. He merely waited for his mistress's decision.
"I'll keep these," Levina said.
Her voice was steady, cool as ever.
"Empty the room completely. Leave nothing. If the school fusses about it, call in a priest."
"Understood, my lady."
The steward inclined his head once more, took up the tray, and withdrew. Silence crowded back into the room.
Levina returned to the window and watched the rain fall over the garden. Serepina's letter was still in her hand. She read it again, and again, turning each word over like a stone. She couldn't know what expression Serepina had worn while writing it, what Ravin had thought while reading it, why he had left these things behind.
The rain kept falling. The world stayed gray.
She placed the letter deep inside her desk drawer. That was all she could do. At least for now.
She set down the empty coffee cup and sat at her desk once more.
There was work waiting for her. As heir of the family, as student council president, as the Heir Apparent of Edelgard, she had no time to sink into grief or guilt. She had been raised that way. She had lived that way.
Still, her footsteps had dragged heavier than usual. Her shadow stretched long down the corridor, swallowed by the rainy dark as if she carried an invisible weight.
Papers towered in piles—family financial reports, territorial management issues, preparations for Ravin's funeral and the upcoming social season. Tasks she would have handled with practiced efficiency felt punishing today. She couldn't even protest to her father that this wasn't her job. These days, he spent more time coughing in bed than upright. She didn't need to bother telling her mother. The woman barely had thoughts at all.
Levina picked up her pen. The familiar grip of the fountain pen. But her fingers wouldn't hold their strength. Ink bled into the paper, spreading like the murk in her head.
She set the pen down. Closed her eyes.
In the dark, Ravin's face surfaced. Not the hanging image. This was much younger: a child in the estate garden, laughing in the sunlight.
Back then, he used to follow her everywhere. Noona. Noona. He called after her so relentlessly that her mother had once remarked it was a wonder she hadn't had the idiot put down. One day, he held out wildflowers he had picked in the garden—a clumsy little bouquet bound by inexperienced hands.
She hadn't taken it.
Instead, she'd spoken coldly. I'll tell Father to assign you a tutor in etiquette. Being my brother doesn't exempt you from knowing your station. You need to learn your place.
At that, the smile had vanished from Ravin's face. He said nothing. He laid the bouquet on the ground and turned away, his small shoulders slumped. She could still see the image of his back.
Only after he was gone did Levina retrieve the flowers, carry them to her room, and arrange them in careful display—though they withered soon enough.
Why had she done it? Had accepting one small kindness truly been so hard? Maybe she should have ignored her mother's words. Every single day, whenever she was alone with Levina, her mother hissed that Ravin's mother was a vile whore who had deceived her father, that Ravin took after that woman and was just as depraved and wicked, that the bastard would try to drive her out and claim the family headship, that she should slip poison into his cup and be done with it.
Her mother hadn't been sane then, and she wasn't sane now.
No matter how Levina turned it over in search of an excuse, the truth remained: she had killed him. Serepina was right. It hadn't been treatment. It had been caging. It had been nothing but selfishness.
Levina opened her eyes. The room was still dark. The rain showed no sign of stopping.
She rose from her chair. Opened the drawer and took out Ravin's revolver. She loaded the bullets she had set aside.
She pressed the muzzle to her temple.
The chill of the metal was sickeningly vivid. One pull of the trigger and it would be over—the guilt, the emptiness, all of it.
She couldn't pull it.
She was afraid. She wasn't the kind of person who defied her mother. She was a coward. She had played the perfect person to hide what she was, burying herself in study while others played, acting as though praise were nothing remarkable. Afraid. She had truly believed her mother's words—that Ravin might one day try to cast her out or kill her. She was a coward and a wretch, and she'd assumed he was capable of the same things she was. So she crushed him underfoot. Ground him down, treated him as though he could never be her equal. Ugly and repulsive, exactly as Serepina had said.
No—she wasn't a coward. She was the Heir Apparent who practically led House Edelgard, the student council president, the family's pride since childhood. Pulling a trigger was well within her means.
Levina shut her eyes, shifted the barrel into her mouth, and drew frantic, trembling breaths.
Then she lowered the revolver. She wiped her face and exhaled.
She was afraid. A coward who hated pain. A coward who feared death.
She walked back to the window and stared into the rain-soaked garden with empty eyes.
I'm sorry, Ravin.
No voice came. She only repeated it inside her heart, over and over. But the apology reached no one. Buried beneath the sound of rain, it dissolved into empty air.