Delusion (27)
Delusion (27)
A few days had passed since Kyle's death.
I was in the greenhouse garden again today, gazing at the flowers over a cup of tea, a book open in my lap.
Beyond the glass ceiling, the sky was a flat, murky gray.
I'd been tracing the same line of text with my fingertip for what felt like an eternity when Levina found me.
She approached without a sound and stopped across the table.
"You look perfectly at peace."
Her voice was worn thin.
Instead of answering, I lifted the teapot and filled an empty cup.
Steam curled upward as I set it on the vacant spot before her.
Levina frowned, but she sat down and took a sip anyway.
She lowered the cup and spoke.
"You have to leave. Right now."
"How exactly would the head of House Edelgard do that?"
I didn't look up from the book.
The words weren't reaching me anyway.
"Are you in your right mind?"
"Yes. More or less."
Levina swept her hand across the table.
The teacup hit the tile with a sharp shattering sound.
White porcelain fragments scattered across the floor. Tea pooled in a dark stain.
"You never gave a damn about being Family Head or any of that!"
Levina's voice cracked as it rose, bouncing off the glass walls of the greenhouse.
"People change their minds at the end. It happens all the time."
"The demons are about to overrun this place and slaughter every human being here! You! Me!"
"Are you afraid?"
I set the book down and looked at her.
Levina paused, steadying her breath.
Then she stepped closer.
"Why do you think I'm still here? Why do you think I've kept living like this?
Because of you. Because of you, and nothing else."
A thin tremor ran through her voice.
"All of you — Serepina, you, Estelle — none of you are in your right minds."
"I never expected to hear that from you."
"The one person I care about is going to rot in this worthless estate and die for no reason at all, and I can't stop him, so why the hell would I agree to stay? I can't understand it."
She glared at me as she said it.
I didn't react.
"Maybe there's a way to live.
Maybe if we fled to the ends of the earth, we could just barely survive."
She kept talking, then let out a hollow laugh.
"Fine. I'm afraid. Afraid you'll die."
I smiled faintly at that.
"That's a relief, actually."
"What do you mean?"
"This might sound a little disgusting, but I feel like I've finally become someone important."
Levina went silent at that.
A long stillness stretched between us.
Servants slipped in quietly, cleared away the broken porcelain and glass, and brought fresh tea.
Neither of us said a word until they finished and vanished.
"You were always important. At least to me."
Levina drank the scalding tea without bothering to cool it.
"I didn't plan on living like this, not after handing over the headship."
She moved closer.
She backed me into the corner, one hand braced against the wall, the other stroking my cheek as she leaned in and caged me there.
"You never needed the headship.
You never gave a single shit about House Edelgard's honor or its obligations."
I could feel her breath on my face.
"You watch someone long enough, you figure them out.
You took my position and still let me live. You keep doing idiot things, keep choosing the idiot words."
I tried to push her away. She pulled me toward her instead, and I lost my balance and fell against her.
When I tried to get up, she pulled me back down.
"Who could have known? After you spared my life, I thought maybe a few years down the road you'd finally start opening up to me. I didn't count on the world ending."
Each word came with a brush of warm air.
It smelled faintly of the bitter tea she'd been drinking.
"I don't want to die like this. And I don't want you to die like this either."
A faint hum of a spell stirred somewhere in her body.
"But if we're going to die anyway, I want to do the things I've wanted to do first."
Levina locked her arms around me and tried to force a kiss.
I turned my face away. She caught my jaw, held it, and pressed her lips to mine.
Lips only.
Her mouth wasn't as soft or warm as I might have imagined.
It was slightly chapped, almost dry.
She held perfectly still, like she had no idea what came next — just her lips resting motionless against my own.
The silence turned awkward.
She seemed to feel some obligation to do more. Her lips moved clumsily, a few uncertain shifts.
Her eyes were squeezed shut. I felt her lashes fluttering, tiny tremors.
She was either holding her breath or had forgotten how to breathe entirely — not so much as a twitch.
She acted as if simply pressing her lips to mine was all there was.
I could hear the faint click of teeth grazing teeth. That's how clumsy it was.
After a long bout of that excruciatingly awkward kiss, Levina caught a glimpse of my expression. She flinched, flushed scarlet, and yanked herself away.
She looked like someone who'd learned everything about romance from novels.
Levina looked at me and asked again.
"Are you really going to just stay here and die?"
"Yes."
I gave her a single word.
Levina started to cry.
"I don't want it to end this way.
If it had to be like this, I would have rather died by your hand."
I left Levina weeping and wiped my lips with my sleeve, then rose from where I'd fallen, picked up my book from the floor.
"I don't want to die either."
I walked out of the greenhouse without looking back.
I could hear her sobbing behind me, but I didn't turn around.
* * *
Another day passed.
Estelle lay beside me in the same bed, stirring a little in her sleep.
I watched her for a long while, then sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed.
When I went to wash up, no water came from the bathroom tap.
I considered calling for a servant, decided it was pointless, and just let out a sigh instead.
I filled a small cup with water using a simple spell, rinsed my face, and got dressed.
Out beyond the window, distant sounds filtered in now and then — screams, hideous wails, something detonating.
I walked into the study. Documents were piled so high on the floor you could trip over them. I kicked a path through, slumped into the chair in the center of the room, and propped my feet up on the desk.
I kicked the papers off the desk too, then pulled my pipe from my coat.
I packed the bowl tight with leaf, lit it with a flame from my fingertip, and drew deep.
Through the window, I watched a flaming chunk of stone arc in from somewhere, crash near the estate grounds, and roll end over end across the lawn.
"There you are."
Estelle stepped into the study, her face still soft with sleep.
"It'll all be over today or tomorrow. How do you feel?"
"Terrible."
I answered.
"Why? You were the one who refused to run."
"It's not that. It's just... this time around, I feel like I did nothing but make an idiot of myself."
Estelle leaned against the wall and watched me.
She was smiling.
"No. I was happy. Being with you.
Was meeting me an idiot move, too?"
"No. That was... one of the few things I got right."
"See. Our first meeting had some problems, but we did okay, in our own way."
Estelle picked up a fallen sheet of paper, glanced at it, and tossed it behind her.
It fluttered back to the floor.
"They say an ancient religion believed people were reborn into something new after death."
She walked toward me slowly as she spoke.
"If the god I believe in turns out to be a lie... if rebirth is real, I want to be your wife.
I want us to have children."
She took the pipe from my hand and drew on it until the bowl was ash.
She coughed, but she didn't stop.
Smoke bloomed from her mouth.
"I'm sorry."
I said it.
"Why are you apologizing?"
I buried my face in her shoulder and apologized again.
And again. My shoulders barely moved.
Estelle held me for a long time, patted my back, then gently pulled me away.
"Oh, right. I told your former fiancée everything. Everything I did.
I thought she might slap me, but I guess even she couldn't bring herself to hit the Saintess."
Estelle pressed the pipe — now full of nothing but ash — back into my hand and stroked my cheek.
"This is payback, I suppose. Or maybe not. I'm not sure what to call it."
She took a breath, then pointed toward the window, where light still flickered beyond the glass.
"I'm going out there. I want you to live. Even just a little longer."
Smoke still rose from beyond the window. Distant screams still seemed to drift on the air.
"I've decided to leave you with your former fiancée, just for a while."
Estelle's lips began to tremble.
And then, the right hand that was brushing my face began to shake.
I wondered what I could do for her, now, at the end of everything, and found there was only one thing left.
I pulled her tight and kissed her.
Slowly, holding each other, for what felt like a very long time, long enough to forget to breathe.
Estelle's cheeks were flushed as she looked at me. She held my gaze for a long moment, then walked out of the study.
I moved to follow, like a man under a spell, but Serepina had been waiting just outside the door. She stepped forward and blocked my path.