Lingering Trace (1)
Lingering Trace (1)
Levina walked unsteadily through the corridor.
After Ravin had left the room, she allowed herself only the briefest moment to catch her breath before pressing on.
The gunshot wound in her chest throbbed.
Blood still seeped from the wound she had roughly sealed with a spell, staining her blouse wet and red.
She had long since shaken off the servants who rushed to her side in alarm.
They were only in the way.
Their sluggish footsteps grated on her.
The corridors were strangely empty of staff.
And the floor was slick for no reason she could name.
Levina nearly slipped more than once, but she pressed forward, steadying herself against the wall.
At last, the shattered door came into view.
The Duchess's room.
Levina paused to breathe.
Then she stepped inside.
The scene within was far more horrifying than she had imagined.
Floor and walls were drenched in blood, the air thick with the metallic tang of gore and the acrid sting of gunpowder.
Her mother and her uncle lay sprawled on the floor, bodies caked in red.
And at the center of it all stood Ravin.
He leaned back against the window frame, staring vacantly into empty air.
His face and clothes were flecked with blood.
The revolver still rested in his hand.
Before him stood Kyle.
Kyle's face was blank with shock, staring at the scene as though unable to believe it was real.
"Still, I'll do better next time."
Ravin spoke toward Kyle.
His voice was eerily calm.
And then, without hesitation, he tipped his body backward.
He moved as naturally as someone greeting a moment long awaited.
"Ah..."
A short, broken sound escaped Levina's lips.
She tried to scream something, but her voice would not come.
She heard Ravin laugh.
A clear, unburdened laugh.
The sound hung briefly in the air, then cut off against a dull, heavy impact.
A crash.
The noise of something striking the ground echoed, and then the mansion fell silent.
Levina snapped to her senses and ran to the window.
Kyle followed her to the sill.
They looked down.
Down in the mansion garden, across the carefully tended flower beds, Ravin lay crumpled.
From a distance, he looked intact.
His clothes were undisturbed. His hair was not even mussed.
But his body was twisted at an unnatural angle — like a doll crushed carelessly underfoot.
His eyes stared blankly upward at the pale sky.
Beneath him, red slowly spread, soaking into the white petals of the garden flowers.
Levina stared down at the sight for a long while.
Her face held no expression.
No tears fell.
She simply gazed, empty-eyed, at what had been her younger brother.
She trudged out of the room.
She brushed off every servant who told her she needed treatment and made her way to the garden.
Then she knelt and wrapped her arms tightly around Ravin's cooling body.
The stench of blood rose thickly around her.
Levina drew a breath and stroked his hair for a very long time.
She had the uncanny sense that she had seen this scene before — more than once.
It was the first time it had happened, and yet a familiar grief pressed down on her.
She wanted someone to blame.
Her mother. Her father. Her uncle. Serepina. Kyle. Rineta.
But every trail of accusation circled back and ended with herself.
Everything had come to this because she had brought Ravin to her side. That was where every thought terminated.
She wished she could be stupid.
She wished she could stop thinking entirely.
But she was already stupid — a broken, worthless woman too incompetent to protect the one younger brother she loved, too useless to keep him alive — and growing any stupider than this did not seem an easy thing to manage.
Levina held Ravin close and stroked his hair until blood rose in her throat and her vision blurred.
She did not want to let go of the body growing colder in her arms.
* * *
It was a catastrophe: the Duchess dead, a blood-relative of the family dead, a bastard son dead. Yet the affair never escalated. It was buried with remarkable quiet.
Neither Levina nor the Duke wished otherwise.
The mansion servants sealed their lips, and the rumors never climbed the estate's high walls.
A few days later, Levina dined alone with the Duke.
The vast dining hall held only the two of them.
The silence was broken only by the sound of knife and fork against porcelain.
"Are you at all well these days?"
The Duke spoke first.
"There is nothing left that could be well."
Levina answered without raising her head.
"Speaking of which—may I call you Father?"
Her voice was as composed as ever.
The Duke's hand paused mid-cut through his steak.
Without a flicker of surprise or anger, he regarded her.
"You've gotten rather direct."
He lifted his wine glass and took a sip.
"You are my daughter. My seed as well.
If you have doubts, summon a competent priest to verify it.
That woman was repulsive, but she was not stupid. You know that, Levina."
"Are you aware that your 'not-stupid' mother was found tangled up with your uncle?"
Levina asked.
The Duke shrugged, as if the matter were of little importance.
"Greed-blinded beasts find each other, and such things happen.
Though at least it seems it wasn't while you were being born."
"You speak as if you'd known all along that Mother and Uncle had that sort of relationship."
"Does it matter?
When a woman you don't even love calls herself your wife, the word doesn't land with much weight.
Though you can pretend to love her, certainly."
The Duke continued.
"Such trifles don't matter.
What matters... is that my son is dead."
He downed the wine in his glass in one swallow.
Then he picked up the bottle himself and refilled it.
"You are my child, and I love you — but not the way I loved Ravin.
That boy was the child of a woman I loved.
Which is why your mother's jealousy was so vicious."
The Duke's voice carried no emotion.
He spoke with the detachment of someone recounting an old tale.
"I thought it was for the best that he was illegitimate.
He wouldn't have to live in this dreadful place. Some quiet, secluded corner somewhere, yes.
I once passed through the Belluz domain — it looked peaceful, remote, livable.
And there happened to be a girl of suitable age there."
"Then you shouldn't have brought him into this mansion.
Plenty of wealthy commoners, not just fine noble families, have quiet places to offer."
Levina said.
"If you had left him there, Ravin would have grown up happy."
"A child raised without his parents' hands could never be happy."
The Duke's reply was indifferent.
"Plenty of children raised by their parents' hands are hardly happy either."
At Levina's answer, the Duke studied her for a moment.
Something in his gaze seemed to waver — faintly, almost imperceptibly.
"Levina. Did you love him as a sister?"
Levina faltered.
The Duke saw her reaction but said nothing further.
"My beloved son — the son I couldn't help even when I wanted to — is now truly and completely dead."
He said it was sad, but there was no sorrow to be found on his face.
"If you loved him so much, you should have helped him when Mother tormented him. When I threw him around like a ragdoll."
Levina's voice rose slightly.
"The reason I sit in this seat is because your mother put me here.
I cannot rise at will. I cannot hand it off at will. You know that as well as anyone."
The Duke spoke quietly.
"And yet you are the Family Head!"
"How easy the world must look when you're born the legitimate daughter of Edelgard with a powerful maternal family at your back."
"Yes. It looked very easy.
If I sat in that seat you occupy, I felt as though I could do literally anything."
Levina answered without hesitation.
At that, the Duke smiled faintly.
"It seems you are suited to this kind of seat after all.
I was never a man fit for it. That is precisely why your mother chose me."
"Then what kind of person am I, Father, if you say that of yourself?"
The Duke did not answer.
He rose from the table, leaving behind only the remark that she should prepare to become Family Head soon, and walked out.
It felt as though he had replied that she was not a person at all. The emptiness inside Levina seemed to grow even wider.
She was left alone in the dining hall.
She stared blankly at the cold, untouched food.
Afterward, Levina summoned Kyle, who was still lingering at the mansion.
She knew he was waiting for Rineta's funeral. But Ravin's own funeral could not even be properly held, and she had no intention of pouring energy into burying some maid he happened to like.
"Rineta's been laid out nicely in a coffin and embalmed, so take her and go.
I'll lend you a carriage. Dump her by the roadside, throw her in the water, hold a funeral — do whatever you like."
Kyle gave no answer.
He simply stared at her, hollow-eyed.
"You talk like you're telling me to bury a dog you used to keep."
Kyle's voice was low.
"What's the difference?"
Levina answered.
Her voice was stripped of all feeling.
Kyle was speechless for a moment.
He looked at her blankly, then let out a hollow laugh.
"Suddenly the whole village is dead, branded as heretics. I come here after hearing my childhood friend — someone I loved like family — killed herself in this mansion, and right in front of me, that worthless punk goes and kills people like you. Fine, upstanding nobles. Exactly the kind of humans you are. And then he kills himself.
Are all nobles like this?"
"I thought they weren't."
Levina lifted her eyes from the documents and met Kyle's gaze directly.
"It seems they are."
She rose from her seat and walked slowly toward Kyle, who glared at her with open hatred.
She stopped directly in front of him.
"All of them, vile. Vermin.
They know nothing of honor, haven't a shred of nobility — just broken things born to the right parents, swaggering around calling themselves aristocrats.
And I'll be one of them from now on."
Levina looked Kyle straight in the eyes as she spoke.