The Prince and the Witch (6)
Day by day, Leo gradually adapted to his changed body and this new way of life. After two weeks had passed, he no longer crushed crops by accident, snapped brooms in half, or flung axes while chopping firewood. He had finally begun to pull his own weight.
He still grumbled to himself about craving meat, but he never left any food on his plate. Even if he tried, Joshua’s merciless spoon would never allow leftovers. Watching them from the side, it felt like seeing a mother dealing with a picky son, and it always made me smile.
In front of me, he was always babyish and adorable… but now he was mature enough to look after others. It really hit me how quickly children grow up. In my previous life and this one, I had always wanted to become an adult quickly. But Joshua said she wished I would stay childlike forever. Even for a witch, that might be asking too much.
“I’ve cleaned everything around the house thoroughly. We won’t need another big cleanup for a while.”
“Why do you always schedule the deep cleaning for when I’m here…”
“There you go again. If you keep complaining like that, next time it’ll be the bathroom.”
“Ugh… I thought we were done for today?”
Listening to their conversation throughout the meal made them seem like real siblings. Joshua must have her own reasons. Whenever Leo acted picky about side dishes or tried to slack off, there were times I wanted to handle it my way and be done with it. But since I had decided to respect Joshua’s wishes, all I could do was trust her and wait.
“Mom, today I’m going to that place with Leo.”
“Will you be alright?”
If she meant that place, the only thing that came to mind was the grave where the three women were buried. I had told her the location, but she had never visited before, so I wondered if she simply hadn’t been emotionally ready. It seemed she had finally made up her mind.
“Yes, I’ll be fine.”
“Then be careful.”
There was no real danger inside the barrier anyway. I hugged Joshua tightly as a show of support and gently stroked her hair.
Joshua remained conscious of Leo following behind her the entire way to the graves. ‘If we only work until noon today, we can rest afterward.’ She had told him that working only the morning shift would let him rest, yet right up until they finished the morning cleaning, Leo had been visibly excited about the prospect of rest.
Leo was probably older than her, but he often showed such childlike sides that she sometimes felt as if she had a younger brother. The way he complained about side dishes… and how he beamed with joy whenever she praised him for a job well done…
The princes in fairy tales had always seemed so cool. She was past the age of believing in fairy tales, but actually meeting a prince in real life only reinforced that fairy tales were just that—fairy tales. Still, she believed Leo had things only he could do.
He couldn’t use magic and required a lot of guidance, but the way he steadily improved at unfamiliar tasks was admirable. Perhaps that was why she never once suspected that Leo might have harmed her parents. The idea of someone who couldn’t even handle a broom properly hurting anyone was simply unimaginable.
“We’re here.”
The small graves located along the boundary of the barrier behind the house greeted them like hosts. The flowers blooming on the graves swayed gently in the breeze, as if offering a welcome.
“These people…?”
“They were the ones captured by orcs.”
She couldn’t save them in the end. Swallowing those last words, Joshua approached the graves. Her mother had always comforted her, saying there was no need to feel sad or guilty about their deaths, but she couldn’t help but feel responsible. If only she had done a little better…
Regretting the past would only leave her with lingering attachment, so she shook off those thoughts. She hadn’t come here to lose herself in reflection. She lightly patted her cheeks twice with both hands to snap herself out of it.
“Could you offer a prayer for them?”
“I think it would be better if Leo did it instead of me.”
Leo would surely know the proper prayer for the deceased. It seemed far better for him to do it than for someone as ignorant as herself. Besides, she thought that a prince’s prayer was something even a god couldn’t simply ignore.
“…I will pray.”
He closed his eyes and clasped his hands together. Please forgive me for failing to save you. If there is a next life, I hope you find happiness.
“Do you think the god heard Leo’s prayer?”
On the way back home after the prayer, a much lighter-hearted Joshua subtly moved closer to Leo and asked. Leo couldn’t understand her. The daughter of a witch, praying to a god? When she had first asked him to pray, he had seriously wondered if she was mocking him.
Leo neither knew nor cared who the owners of those graves were or what kind of lives they had lived. It was true that he had gone to find the orc pack to rescue them, but that had only been to gain entry into the Heresy Inquisitors. There had been no deeper meaning.
“The god does not ignore the prayers of those who are sincere.”
In the prayer he had just offered, there had been neither sincerity nor desperation, so he gave the kind of empty response one might hear in a sermon. Come to think of it, Leo’s life had never gone smoothly no matter how earnestly he prayed. On the contrary, the more he prayed, the more trials appeared to block his path. After running away from the kingdom, he had stopped praying altogether.
If Joshua hadn’t saved him, he would probably be standing before the god right now, facing judgment.
“Joshua.”
Joshua, who had been walking ahead, stopped and turned around.
“Why did you save me?”
He had wanted to ask this if the chance ever came. There had to be some motive—money or something else. There had to be. Otherwise, he would feel far too pathetic. If she was the child of a witch, he wanted her to show her true colors.
“Would the answer ‘I just wanted to save you’ be too insufficient?”
Joshua had been about to give a vague reply, but seeing Leo’s serious expression, she steadied herself. If not now, they might never confirm each other’s true feelings.
“When I first saw you, Leo, it reminded me of myself as a child. I told you about that, right?”
It brought back the story of how the witch had saved Joshua after she lost both her parents and was left all alone.
“The truth is, our village would have all died if not for the witch’s help. After she came, even though we were poor and had almost nothing to eat, we had bountiful harvests every year. My parents at the time even liked the witch more than the god.”
The village was always full of energy, and everyone lived happy days without ever worrying about going hungry. Joshua recalled those times and tried to soothe the aching pain in her chest. The once sparsely populated village gradually grew lively, even attracting large merchant caravans.
She had been very young, so she didn’t remember the details clearly, but those happy moments remained vividly in her heart.
“There’s no way a witch would do all that for free. She must have demanded sacrifices or placed curses…”
“Curses? The witch only asked for medicinal herbs or strange weeds she had never seen before. Oh, and she told us never to tell strangers about her. So the only inconvenient part was that when outsiders came, the children had to stay inside and play. Other than that, it was wonderful.”
She would rescue children who got lost in the forest, and she would come down to the village to treat the sick. The village children even used to say they wanted to become witches when they grew up.
Leo thought Joshua was making up a story to deceive him. A witch helping people? Joshua continued without stopping.
“……Now that I think about it, everything changed after Tony and Rebecca died.”
Rebecca? The name sent a wave of unease through Leo. It was a common enough name, yet… a chill ran down the back of his neck, and cold sweat broke out.
“That day, I barely survived thanks to Mom’s help… but I only found out later that the Heresy Inquisitors had come to the village.”
“I hid in the storage shed and listened to the villagers’ screams. It was terrifying. I passed out from the fear.”
The screams and cries of the villagers had been too much for young Joshua to bear. By the time she regained consciousness, the village had already been reduced to ashes.
“All the women in the village, regardless of age, were thrown into the lake and drowned… and all the men were impaled on huge iron skewers and burned alive. My parents too…”
“The Heresy Inquisitors of the Holy Kingdom would never kill innocent people…”
Leo didn’t want to believe it. The inquisitors always judged evil, and Lady Lucia’s sword would only ever pierce the hearts of witches. He remembered how, when he was young, Lady Lucia had knelt on one knee before him and sworn to punish all evil.
“You were the prince of the Holy Kingdom, weren’t you, Leo? But… this is the truth. We were never cursed, and we never hurt anyone. We were simply people who managed to survive thanks to the witch’s small acts of kindness.”
“……”
“The reason I saved you, Leo… was because I saw myself in you—the girl who sat crying in front of her parents’ graves, waiting only for death. The hand Mom held out to me back then… it was definitely warm.”
Leo felt as if his head was spinning. His stomach churned so violently he thought he might vomit at any moment, and his breathing grew ragged. If possible, he wanted to run away from this place right now.
“Haa… Haa…”
Joshua had no intention of letting him go. One step at a time. Slowly. Like a snake gradually tightening around its prey’s windpipe, she closed in on Leo.
Joshua barely held back the tears threatening to spill as she stood before him. For the sake of the mother who had trusted and waited for her… she could no longer keep avoiding this.
“Leo… you weren’t involved with the inquisitors back then, right? You didn’t kill my parents, did you?”
When she was little, before the merchant caravan that visited the Holy Kingdom left, she had thrown a tantrum demanding a present. She had found a crumpled letter inside the merchant leader’s pocket—one completely lacking any royal etiquette.
‘Your Highness, that letter has no owner!’
‘Then I shall find its owner!’
The contents of the letter had clearly been… a plea for help, claiming that a witch had appeared, deceived the villagers, and devoured her little brother. There were tear stains smeared across the paper. And at the very bottom of the letter was the name Rebecca.
‘Lady Lucia! Lady Lucia!!’
The one who had run up to Lady Lucia upon her return from a mission and handed her the letter that should never have been delivered was none other than… Leo.
“That was…”
His mind was in complete chaos. That’s right. If he killed Joshua right now… wouldn’t he be free from these feelings? Even if the inquisitors had killed innocent people, if only Joshua disappeared…
He was losing his mind.
“Leo…?”
The moment his trembling hand reached toward Joshua’s neck—
A dark crimson magic circle began to glow near Leo’s heart.