The Sand Bride - Chapter 79

Even at Karzhen, who returned in broad daylight holding his brother’s head, the father was not surprised. Instead, he let out a joyous exclamation and praised Karzhen.

“Now you will be the King’s child! My son will be the eldest son of the royal family!”

“It was you.”

Karzhen looked at the man, his own father, with an utterly frigid smile. At his cold, contemptuous eyes, the man flinched and stared back at Karzhen.

“You were the one who said if I took my brother’s head, I could become the King’s child.”

“Th-that……! I knew you would win! So!”

The man couldn’t finish his sentence, and warm blood splattered on Karzhen’s body again. He disliked those who tried to use him, but more than that, seeing his father’s repulsive state completely turned his stomach.

“You are indeed my blood.”

Karzhen’s mother, Sayar, unlike others who gasped at the patricide, smiled faintly and acknowledged Karzhen’s lineage. She already knew about Karzhen’s father’s conduct.

“From now on, you are the eldest son of the royal family.”

Thus, Karzhen was recognized as the King’s child. He cut off the head of his brother, who had tried to kill him but then clung to him in terror at the moment of death. And he cut off the head of his father, who had tried to use him and then looked at him with fearful eyes when exposed.

He felt no love for them. Because they had made him that way. Pretending to be strong, desperately hiding their fear.

But Esther was different. Karzhen already knew she was weak. He had seen her eyes wide with terror countless times. Yet, he had still grown to like her.

He liked how she would timidly watch his expression, then subtly pull her favorite food closer to eat it. He liked how she would be startled by even the smallest things and habitually comb her hair. Most of all, he liked how hard she tried to please him.

At first, he thought he was simply satisfied with the weak offering him submission, but that wasn’t it. It seemed like affection, and that’s what he liked.

That truth was revealed only after his illusion was shattered. During the days when Esther was gravely ill because of him, Karzhen realized that he no longer wanted her to be afraid, no longer wanted her to be terrified.

He hated it when the weak became weaker.

He hated Esther becoming weak.

For that, he felt it would be alright if he acted a little, no, if necessary, very weak in front of her.

But the opponent before him was Hakan, and Karzhen, concealing his true feelings, scoffed with an arrogant face. As Hakan said, whether he went after Esther, knelt before her and begged, or confessed his love, it was none of Hakan’s concern.

“What concern is it of yours, whether I do or not?”

“Brother…….”

However, at Karzhen’s words, Hakan looked up at him with a pale face, then unsteadily rose to his feet.

“Brother.”

The repeated address carried a terrible weariness. As if he had never expressed strong emotions, Hakan’s face, looking at Karzhen, was pale, and his rigidly fixed pupils made him look more like a motionless statue than a living person.

Karzhen caught the strangeness in Hakan’s demeanor. Hakan was filled with the unique tension and gravity of someone revealing a very old secret, one they absolutely never wanted to expose.

“Brother. My sister’s man…….”

That man. Karzhen realized who Hakan was referring to. It was clearly Hemor’s dead lover. But no matter how he recalled the man, only his daffodil-like blonde hair came to mind. Why was that bastard being brought up now?

Other than being from the southeast, there wasn’t a single resemblance between that man and Esther, from their gender to their hair color. Karzhen thought he might strangle Hakan if he dared to suggest that Esther might also die from an illness. But Hakan said something else.

“Why didn’t that man of my sister’s just end his life immediately?”

“What?”

“Brother. That man did not die from an illness.”

Hakan painfully opened his mouth and spat out the truth.

“He committed suicide, Brother…….”

It’s the Lepiran flower.

Hakan gritted his teeth. His sister, with an excited voice, told him the name of the flower, and its meaning, when he asked. The flower’s meaning was ‘the end of hatred’. However, the man did not tell his sister that the flower was also called the flower of death.

When the man fell ill, Hemor focused solely on nursing him, paying no attention to anything else. Hakan, finding his appearance unbearable, investigated the man’s illness himself, hoping the man would recover quickly, but he only heard from doctors that the illness was unknown.

Finally, as the man’s condition, initially diagnosed as a common cold, grew increasingly severe, and Hemor abandoned all her duties to stay by his side, Hakan grew anxious.

With Sayar’s position being discussed, Hemor had no time to sit by a patient day and night. Moreover, whispers about Hemor were already circulating among the elders.

However, Hakan, unable to make Hemor give up what she wanted to do, ordered a more detailed investigation into the man’s illness, and suddenly thought of calling a doctor from the southeast, since the man was from there.

But his idea was thwarted even before that doctor could examine the man. The man did not want to meet a Southeast Islander.

“He said he was ashamed and didn’t want to.”

Hemor said with a troubled face.

“He said he felt ashamed of himself when he saw people from his homeland…….”