The Sand Bride - Chapter 77

Ⅵ. Cobbled Path

Esther’s escape became known as soon as the vanguard left the capital.

The servants who had been attacked and knocked unconscious, as soon as they regained consciousness, without even having time to compose themselves, saw Esther’s empty room and reported it to the guard unit. The captain of the guard, recalling the carriage from earlier, ran to Sayar with a deathly pale face and reported the fact directly.

When such a thing happened not in just any palace, but in the inner palace of the central palace, the entire palace was turned upside down. The servants who had heard the guard captain’s report together swallowed dryly and watched Karzhen’s expression.

“…….”

However, Karzhen, who seemed about to rage and throw a fit at any moment, remained silent for a long time after receiving the report, keeping his lips tightly shut. Then he slowly rose from his seat and spoke in his usual tone.

“I need to see Hakan.”

“I will follow you.”

“No need.”

The guard captain, who had been kneeling, stood up, but Karzhen raised a hand to stop him. The guard captain, looking up at him, flinched and stiffened. Karzhen was smiling.

“You, tell the Aldana Temple to prepare to go out.”

“Yes, Lord!”

With those words, the guard captain bowed towards Karzhen’s departing back, but he felt a chill down his spine. He knew well what the Aldana priests’ outing signified.

* * *

“I heard the news.”

Hakan greeted Karzhen with an unconcerned face. It was the servants attending Hakan who looked uneasy. They bit their lips and looked at Karzhen, and the Aldana priests who followed him.

All the Aldana priests were armed. They stood in a line behind Karzhen with mask-like, expressionless faces, exuding a suffocating intimidation.

Their white robes were chilling, like a widow’s handkerchief. But Hakan, instead of falling into fear like the other servants, smiled faintly as if this was inevitable and said to Karzhen:

“If you are in a hurry, brother, perhaps you should take another w***e tonight. Of course, the runaway w***e will be captured and receive her just deserts—”

“W***e?”

Karzhen, cutting Hakan off, let out a hollow laugh.

“W***e, you say?”

“Brother…….”

Hakan’s face hardened. Karzhen bared his teeth fiercely at Hakan calling Esther a w***e. At the same time, Hakan saw Nair, one of his subordinates behind him, glaring at him, and realized that Karzhen knew everything he had done.

“You shouldn’t have let her out of there in the first place.”

However, Hakan did not beg for forgiveness. From the start, what he feared was not Karzhen knowing what he had done, but knowing something else. And Hakan knew that Karzhen had found that out.

He had tried so hard to stop it. He had tried so hard to prevent the past from having the same ending as reality. In the end, it has come to this.

Hakan laughed hollowly and retorted.

“If you had just kept her locked in the West Tower basement, none of this would have happened, would it?”

However, before he could say that he should have just killed the woman back then, a fist flew towards Hakan’s face. It wasn’t just a playful swing, but a fist imbued with such force as if to shatter his head, and the sound it made was brutal.

“Lord Hakan!”

As Hakan crumpled helplessly to the floor, his trusted subordinate cried out in dismay but dared not step forward. Hakan, whose lips and the inside of his mouth were torn despite being hit only once, wiped his profusely bleeding mouth with the back of his hand only after regaining consciousness.

Cough, he spat out the blood in his mouth, seeing it pool thickly on the floor. But before he could finish spitting out the blood, he was grabbed by the collar and forced to his feet again.

“Get up.”

Seeing the blood, Karzhen’s eyes narrowed as he smiled. The fangs visible between his slightly parted lips were like those of a beast just before slaughtering something. Hakan swallowed dryly.

“It’s a problem if you collapse already from one little touch. That little rat who scurried diligently under you has to see his limbs torn apart before he kicks the bucket, little brother.”

Hakan knew that Karzhen had already dealt with the young servant. If so, he must have secured a testimony, so was there any need to come to him directly? But as soon as Hakan briefly opened his mouth, bang, Karzhen grabbed Hakan’s neck and slammed him against the wall.

Unlike earlier when he had superficially smiled, his eyes, wild with rage, gleamed as if they would choke Hakan’s neck at any moment. Hakan’s face showed resignation.

“You seem to know everything already, but ask what you want to ask…….”

“It pleases me that you don’t make pathetic excuses for yourself. …Hakan, then answer me. Did you give the pass as well?”

“What is that about…….”

Hakan, who had silently assented to everything else, opened his eyes at those words and looked at Karzhen. Whatever else, he swore he had never given the King’s pass to anyone.

“A report came in that the King’s pass was presented from the carriage suspected to be carrying Esther and that w***e. I’m asking if you were the one who issued that pass.”

“It wasn’t me!”