TLFR 08

Chapter 8

Moreover, they could not simply blame Eleanor alone—the place where that woman had stayed was Lezan’s imperial palace. The imperial family likewise could not escape responsibility for having neglected the palace’s security.

Thus there was no proper outlet for their frustration.

“…So what if we cannot find her? She is already gone.”

Edgar answered calmly to the emperor’s bitter muttering.

“The duchy cannot be left abandoned for long, so even my brother will gradually give up.”

So she only needed to endure until then.

The reports Edgar had been secretly receiving showed no particular danger signs.

Except for the content that said she was in a little pain.

It did not seem severe enough to prevent her from moving about, but seeing as she had not left the place where she first appeared for several months, the symptoms were clearly not mild.

Since even the specific name of the illness could not be determined, it felt as though a lump of lead had settled in one corner of his chest.

‘If possible, I wish she had gone far—across the sea to the eastern continent…’

Edgar’s sigh deepened. The day he would depart for Genear was set for fifteen days later.

Time flowed relentlessly.

Even by the time the Lezan delegation including the Crown Prince departed for Genear, Ines had not been caught.

The sluggish time of failing to find her stretched on for three more months beyond that.

“You child, you will not live long.”

A voice heavy with worry settled in the small, peaceful herbal room.

Ines coughed lightly and opened her eyes wide. She had been in the middle of organizing ingredients in the cupboard.

“Ah… how did you know?”

When she asked in bewilderment, the old man let out a deep sigh. Complex emotions swirled on his wrinkled face.

Ines belatedly realized she had asked a foolish question. The old man, Robert, was a physician who had studied medicinal herbs for over fifty years.

He had probably known the very day she arrived in this small seaside village and took shelter in this house.

After carefully setting down the spice jars she had been holding in her arms, Ines climbed down from the ladder she had been standing on.

“I’m sorry. I asked something unnecessary.”

“…That habit of speaking.”

Robert clicked his tongue and turned his head the other way.

Ines smiled brightly and approached him. When she thrust her face into his line of sight, he grew irritable.

“Go away. What is there to be so cheerful about?”

“Mm, but since you already know, there is something more I would like to ask.”

When Robert moved his seat over toward the herb preparation table, Ines followed closely and sat across from him.

“Robert. How much longer can I live?”

Her cleanly smiling face and clear eyes held no despair.

There was neither the venom nor the cunning nor the world-weariness that poor women of that age would naturally possess.

Robert felt a sharp ache in his chest and deliberately replied gruffly.

“How would I know that?”

“You do know.”

“…How could you live long when you will not even put on weight? No matter how much I feed you all these good things—your body will not accept them…”

“Is that so? Still, if I try harder from now on, could I manage about ten years?”

“Then… five years?”

By any measure, it was not the face of someone gauging her remaining days.

Pity welled in the old man’s eyes as he looked at Ines. When someone who has been given a death sentence is serene, there are two reasons.

Because they cannot believe it, or because they have already given up on many things.

Ines was clearly the latter.

It was half a year ago now that the woman with a pale complexion and a twig-like frame had appeared in this village.

Robert had found her in the grass near the shore. She had looked awkward, as though she had been a runaway and yet not.

She wore a dirt-stained white dress, her black hair loosely disheveled, but strangely her hair had a sheen and her fingernails were neatly trimmed.

She was alone. With nothing but her own body, she had been trembling among the dry grass stalks in the salty sea breeze, and he had brought her home.

Once he brought her home and examined her, her condition was serious.

She had suffered from malnutrition for quite some time, so her immunity was terribly compromised, and on top of that, the blood flow throughout her body was strangely tangled.

This was because her heart—which should have been sending blood throughout her body at a steady beat—was failing to function properly.

Only after she had taken medicine to untangle the knotted pulse for a full month was she able to come down from the bed.

“…Your medicine today.”

“I took it. Thank you. But Robert, you still have not answered my question.”

Robert avoided looking at those transparent blue eyes directly.

Even with proper care—without overexerting herself, without suffering mental shock, eating only the finest medicinal ingredients—it seemed difficult for her to reach ten years.

For now he was caring for her with all his heart, but the problem was Ines herself.

No matter how much he scolded her, that accursed thing simply did not know how to take care of her own body.

“If you keep coming out to the herb room and doing pointless things like this, you will not even last until next year.”

“But…”

Ines smiled with a troubled face.

“How could I stay in my bedroom for half a year? I want to return even a quarter of a quarter of what you have done for me…”

“You do not need to.”

“And you said yourself that a short walk is fine. Moving my body to this extent is all right. Really.”

“You never listen to a word anyone says, do you.”

“If you tell me how many years I have left, I will listen.”

She looked docile but was stubborn. When Robert glared sternly, Ines drooped her eyes sullenly.

Seeing that, his heart wavered helplessly.

“…I wish you had only been as tenacious as your personality. Fine. Ten years at the longest.”

“Ten years…”

“Only if you never overexert yourself, obediently take your medicine, and behave—that is ten years at most. Do you understand, child?”

“Mm, yes. I understand.”

Ten years. Ines repeated the number silently to herself a few more times. Then she smiled brightly.

“Ten years is better than I thought. Thank you, Robert.”

Thank you, and I’m sorry—these were Ines’s habitual phrases. Robert eventually let out a helpless breath.

How did I end up picking up something so worrying? She will surely go before this old man does…

“…Do not carry heavy things like medicine boxes, child. Go out and place an order at the mill. The wheat has all run out.”

“Yes!”

Ines nodded and rose from her seat. She looked happy to have something to do.

Robert watched for a long while as the child—standing precariously on the boundary between girl and woman—smiled like sunlight and went out the door.

This place, a port city situated toward the eastern part of the continent, was called Hiran.

Hiran was a fairly famous city in the Kingdom of Apael, located southeast of Lezan. It was far from both Lezan and Genear, and since it faced the sea leading to the eastern continent, it was an optimal place for a fugitive.

Ines walked along the narrow path in front of the shore, carrying a basket full of potatoes and corn.

The salty sea breeze scattered her black hair, neatly cut at shoulder length.

“I’m glad I came here, Kian.”

She whispered to the being that could not reveal itself but was always by her side.

Fleeing here at the cost of half her lifespan was the first thing Ines had ever chosen with her own hands in her life.

Each day here was peaceful like a dream. Robert, the herbal physician who cared for her, was kind, and the neighbors were friendly toward her as well.

They knew nothing about her. Not that she was a bastard born carrying a curse, nor that she was a fugitive who had dared to run from Lezan’s imperial palace…

A heavy resonance rose from her left breast. Kian, who had been silent lately, spoke.

[Don’t trust anyone, Ines.]

“I know.”

Her belief that there was no favor without a price remained intact. That was why Ines deliberately moved her body to help with work in the herb room.

Receiving only made her anxious. She had to prove her worth somehow.

It was not particularly difficult work. No matter how vigorously she moved in this warm place, the physical fatigue was far less than when she had been rolling about in Genear.

Ines drew a deep breath.

“If I can live like this… even just ten years would be so, so wonderful.”

For the first time in her life, she learned that the air outside the imperial palace was this clear and cool.

Even compared to the luxurious days she had enjoyed in Eleanor’s room in the Lezan imperial palace, her heart was far more at ease now.

‘…Eleanor.’

The smile that had caught on Ines’s lips faded at the surname that suddenly came to mind.

Actually, to be quite honest, sometimes she… wondered what it would have been like if she had stayed in that room in Eleanor.

If, just if.

If she had chosen Rayeon Eleanor as her husband…

If she had become his wife.

Whenever she thought of that man, she always remembered. The day he had given her the emerald necklace. That kiss that had deeply mingled breath and saliva.

Even knowing that to him it was a contact that meant nothing.

After she left, had that man looked for her?

Ines slowly recalled their first meeting. It was an autumn night eight years ago, when a masquerade ball was being held in Genear.

She had been on her way down to the kitchen of the detached palace, hoping to beg for even a piece of dry bread since she was hungry. She had seen him in the small garden attached to the front of the detached palace.

<What is your name?>

<I’m Ines. What is the name of the wonderful person in the white mask?>

<Ah, my name. That’s right. Since I have learned your name, it is only proper that I reveal mine as well.>

The old conversation was faintly recollected.

<Rayeon.>

<Rayeon Eleanor.>

The person who had asked her name for the first time, and told her she was lovely.

<Ines. Somehow, I have a feeling we will meet again someday.>

After so much time had passed, she could not clearly remember what his face, voice, or build had been like then.

What she remembered was only the name he had pronounced himself and the short conversation they had exchanged.

The man who had been deeply engraved in her young heart in that brief moment left a new trace on her eight years later.

“…Useless thoughts.”

Ines shook her head from side to side and quickened her steps. He was someone she would never meet again anyway. It was better to bury it only in her heart.

But the moment she entered the village entrance, a crack appeared in her languid peace.

“Die, you crazy bitch!”

Smack. The sound of a slap was painful just to hear. Ines faced the situation unfolding before her eyes in bewilderment.

The one who had fallen was a young woman.

“You dare deceive me? Do you know how hard I’ve worked, breaking my back, to feed something that isn’t even my own child?”

“That, that’s not…”

The person beating her mercilessly appeared to be her husband. Smack, smack, smack. The woman’s face spun left and right without pause.

Ines’s body went rigid. She barely grabbed the collar of the person next to her and asked.

“What… what is happening?”

“Ah, you’re the young lady from the herb room.”

A middle-aged woman with a warm impression who ran a fruit shop shook her head.

“Don’t even mention it. He raised her thinking she was his daughter for ten years, and it turns out she was a bastard. They say that woman was a maid who worked in a count’s household… She must have hidden her pregnancy and remarried. Tsk tsk.”

“These days, they say bastard issues are causing a stir both inside and outside the country, and here too it’s like this.”

Ines barely moved her lips.

“Inside and outside the country—did something… happen, perhaps?”

“Seems news reaches this place a bit late. You know, the thing—Genear in the center and Lezan in the northeast… They say it’s a situation on the verge of exploding. Ah, and Lezan’s Eleanor too.”

The names of familiar countries tumbled out in succession.

“Why would those countries…”

She did not need to ask to know the reason those powerful nations had come into conflict again. Because Ines—who was nothing less than the symbol of the ceasefire agreement—had run away.

The woman’s following explanation was not greatly different.

“They say they’re searching the entire continent for that missing Genear imperial blood. With strange persistence. Recently, Eleanor even sent a cooperation request to Apael here?”