Chapter 92
There was darkness. I felt like I wandered through that maze for a long time.
In my dream, I was a little girl barely seven years old. I didn’t even have time to wonder why I was so young — I was running away from something. Running and running.
And when I looked back, the Grand Duchy was burning.
‘Mother.’
My dying mother was screaming. The cruel blow of a knight’s club struck her body, which had no will to resist. The woman who had lived as the precious Grand Duchess was beaten mercilessly.
‘Father.’
Winter, the voice that called me until my father’s head was severed from his body. The flames grew hotter.
‘Brother.’
Blood of my kin splattered everywhere, and my eyes were entirely red. Even as I ran, I heard screams. Everything in the dream chased me, trying to kill me too. My breath choked. The imperial city was burning. Flames roared, burning everything into ash.
Smoke filled the sky, pillars of fire rose everywhere, buildings collapsed, and people screamed.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
Suddenly, it felt like I had reached the end of the maze, and my steps halted. Before my young self sat Lucian, twenty-one years old, on a bed, looking at me. Covered with a familiar blanket, crying so beautifully.
“Sister, I don’t want to die.”
“Sister, I don’t want to die.”
“Sister, I don’t want to die.”
Lucian was trapped in that moment like a broken wind-up clock, endlessly repeating the same line. I had to watch my younger brother die and come back to life over and over again.
His head would tilt down, then lift back up, tilt down again, and lift back up…
‘Oh, this is a dream, right?’
“Stop it.”
“Sister, I don’t want to die.”
“No, you’re not going to die.”
“Sister, I don’t want to die.”
“I told you I’d save you! I saved you. I rescued you.”
“Sister, I don’t want to die.”
“Don’t lie, Lucian. Lucian…”
When I approached him, only then did Lucian’s repeating voice stop. His murmuring, like a magic device stuck on a single phrase, ceased, and the eerie tilt of his head remained in silence.
“Get up.”
“…….”
“This is an order, Lucian. Get up.”
Lucian was much bigger than my younger self. In a daze, I grabbed the edge of his blanket, begging over and over again. But I couldn’t reach him. Maybe because I was too small, no matter how much I stretched out my hand, I couldn’t even touch his cheek. He didn’t move at all. He just stayed frozen like he was already dead.
“This is a dream. It has to be. Don’t be ridiculous. This can’t be happening, Lucian.”
“……”
“I was wrong. I—I was wrong. Please, please open your eyes. Please…”
It was all my fault for being so foolish.
This was my responsibility.
I screamed, twisted my whole body, threw everything around me, then collapsed sobbing uncontrollably. I hammered my chest with my fists dozens of times, regretting, laughing amid the blood, and tearing at my hair — but the pain didn’t go away. Trapped in an endless nightmare that never stopped, I felt like I was being executed over and over again.
Flames surrounded me on all sides. The air was thick with scorching smoke. If there was a place that could be called hell, this was it.
How long had I been wailing? It felt like it had been an eternity.
When I finally lifted my eyelids, heavy as if weighed down by a thousand pounds, someone was desperately calling my name. They shook me this way and that, pleading for me to wake up. When I opened my eyes, the sunlight was blindingly bright.
How much time had passed? The revolt that began at dawn had apparently ended by the middle of the day.
‘Could everything really have been resolved so quickly?’
It took a moment for my brain to slowly interpret the images forming on my retinas.
Had I really come back to reality? This was definitely my quarters. Someone had placed their head on my arms while I was lying face down asleep. I saw a woman whose body was marked by multiple stab wounds. It was the Courtesan, cupping the spilling blood with her hands, relentlessly shaking me.
Tears fell. My body reacted before my mind could process the situation. My tongue, still stiff from the paralysis incense, was frozen and I couldn’t utter a single word. The Courtesan — my protector, the one I had thought of as my new mother — was crying out in anguish, her once elegant dress now a ruined mess.
“Leyesha, L-Leyesha…”
I felt the surge of blood spilling over me as my body collapsed. This was no dream. I was not lost in a maze. The Courtesan’s last broken breath had indeed reached me.
The rebellion was real. I had been foolish. I had been arrogant.
‘Lecan… was a traitor.’
A knight, presumably serving Lecan, roughly shoved the fallen Empress aside like trash. My gaze landed on her as she lay on the floor, losing all dignity. That woman, who had only wished to climb to the highest rank, was now being ransacked for the emperor’s bloodstained seal.
Then he muttered to himself, “A former courtesan, of all things.” Passing the seal to another superior, he whispered something.
‘How dare they.’
I blinked. Tears tumbled down.
‘How dare they lay a hand on my people.’
My mouth opened, but no words came out. I had to say something… anything.
A passage from a book I once read flashed through my mind.
“She was a cruel villainess, a depraved woman of low birth who indulged in luxury and decadence, nearly dragging the empire to ruin. History will remember her as nothing more than a vulgar courtesan. Such an end befits her.”
“What about that maid?”
“His Majesty has decreed — take special care of her.”
A knight approached and roughly forced my frozen body upright, showing no mercy as he dragged me along.
I should have at least closed my eyes for her. I should have asked why she came to me just before her death. Why did she call the name I carried last?
Was my name all her final words amounted to? The only thing she summoned all her strength to say was my name?
Where was her own son while she died waking me?
I had always wanted to ask even once — did you truly love me? Or did you only ever see me as a tool…?
“…Imperial…Mother…”
I wished for my voice to reach her, to be heard, to touch her soul in that final moment as she slipped away.
“Tha…nk… you, tha…nk you, tha…nk…”
Though the paralysis made it agonizing, I moved my tongue somehow. If I could have spoken freely, without caring who was watching, I would have run to her, wrapped my arms around her, and whispered in her ear: I’m sorry, thank you, you were more precious to me than anyone else.
I would have told her over and over that she was mine too, my person, and expressed all the thanks left unspoken until the very last second of those seven minutes.
Then I saw tears welling and falling at the corner of the Empress’s eyes. The next moment, the knight dragged me completely out of the room.
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