Chapter 78
“I was, a parasite of the Rosenvester family. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Lexion’s lips moved slowly, and Sereniel quietly looked at him.
“I don’t know how my mother ended up meeting the Duke. I never asked, never wanted to know. The only thing certain was… that they all didn’t welcome us. Even when I was in my mother’s womb, and after I was born.”
He could still vividly recall it. His mother being humiliated by the Duchess and Royden. And even her hand trying to stop him, with a tearful face.
“The Duke just stood by. Maybe he thought he had already done everything he could as a father. Anyway, he didn’t reject us. It would have been better if he did.”
So, Lexion, you have to endure.
He had heard those words countless times throughout his life.
“I wanted to leave home so badly.”
“….”
“My mother disagreed. I didn’t understand back then, but I do now. She probably wanted to give me the noble status, somehow.”
Lexion smirked bitterly.
“But it was really hard. There wasn’t a single moment that wasn’t difficult.”
“….Is that so.”
“That day… Maybe Royden, with his friends, used me as a target for their arrows.”
At the unexpected revelation, Sereniel hesitated.
“The arrows narrowly missed, and Royden sighed. If he had put a little more force into it, he could have hit my forehead, he said.”
“….”
“I wasn’t really angry, being persecuted like that was a common occurrence. But… it was a bit sad.”
Until when do I have to live like this?
With emptiness and helplessness, Lexion ground his teeth. And then he went to see his mother.
“I begged my mother tearfully. Please, let’s leave this house.”
I don’t want to spend even one more day in a place like this.
At Lexion’s words, his mother looked at him silently. Then she hugged young Lexion and comforted him, saying:
“You made a promise. If you went to war and piled up merits… then you could leave the mansion, you said.”
Lexion knew too well with a sick and ailing mother, and as a young and powerless person, there was nothing he could do to leave the noble household.
But, as his mother said, if he went to war and piled up merits, he could somehow strive for a way out. The Carteria Empire favored such individuals regardless of their status.
“So I started going to war. The first war was for Royden’s sake.”
“….”
“The first battlefield I saw… was a nightmare itself.”
Even if he was Lexion, witnessing such relentless brutality with his own eyes was unbearable.
Some days he saw hallucinations, and other days he heard voices. It was the screams of dying soldiers pierced by his sword, and the expression of a child who lost their parents to war, staring at him like an animal.
“I wanted to cry, but tears wouldn’t come.”
“….”
“Maybe I felt like I didn’t deserve to cry.”
Sadness lingered on Sereniel’s face as she stared at him. Lexion knew she was thinking something.
“I’m okay now.”
Lexion cautiously reached out his hand and wiped away the tears on Sereniel’s cheek.
“Now I know. I was just doing what I had to do at the time.”
[Sometimes there were days like that. When I wanted to blame myself even though I knew it wasn’t my fault, I could only blame myself.]
Suddenly, a memory flashed by. It was something Lexion once told me from a cliff.
[On days when I wanted to hurt myself, even though I knew it wasn’t my fault. When there was no one, not even a being I could pour everything out to, it got worse.]
So….
[But the more I felt that way, the more I had to focus on what I could do right now, and what I had to do. It’s easy to get consumed by helplessness, but it’s hard to get out of it. As time goes by, it only gets harder.]
That’s what he said.
Sereniel finally realized. The words from that day, which felt like he was talking about his own story, were indeed his story.
“And then… one day after returning from the war, I heard the news.”
“….”
“While I was away at war, my mother passed away… a maid informed me.”
Even the news was delivered by a maid. Among the few who dared to show resentment towards the Duke’s mistress, she was one of them.
“There was nothing but an empty room to welcome me back. As if it had been cleared out neatly.”
The maid said that my mother caused a ruckus as soon as she died. If there was anything dirty, it needed to be disinfected.
Treating it like some kind of pathogen.
“I asked where my mother was buried.”
“….”
“And I begged. I knelt down on my knees.”
Please… Please, I beg you.
Until he was battered so harshly that he was soaked in blood, Lexion kneeled down, a position he had never knelt down to, even when he had been beaten before.
“My existence is worthless, but if only they told me the location… I promised I would leave this mansion immediately.”
It was literally a plea.
“But I was asked, why do I need to know even though it’s just a dirty concubine who died.”
But Lexion couldn’t find out anything.
“And then he immediately talked about the next war.”
“….”
“From then on, even the Duke already knew rather than rejecting me like that, it was much more beneficial for him to keep me by his side somehow and use me.”
The former Duke.
So Lexion’s father, unlike Royden, didn’t torment Lexion recklessly.
Instead, he saw him as a tool he could use when necessary.
“It was partly my own will to go back and forth on the battlefield, but it was also what the former Duke wanted.”
“Duke….”
“Of course, I never thought that I would come back from war and use that as a basis to seize the family, though.”
“….”
“And I regretted it. If I knew I would part from my mother like this. If I knew when I saw before going to war was the last moment… if I had known, I would have hugged her one more time, said something more affectionate.”
Would it have been less painful then?
Probably not, even knowing that fact, Lexion regretted and resented it deeply. He couldn’t even say a proper farewell to his mother.
“The former Duke fell ill and was suffering. I received news from the battlefield that he seemed to be at the brink of death.”
Lexion continued speaking.
“I thought about what choice I could make this time to leave no regrets. And there was only one choice. To seize.”
“….I see.”
“I also had a desire for revenge, but that wasn’t all. I wanted to touch you at least a little.”
It was truly a golden opportunity. Lexion finished the war as quickly as possible and returned to the Rosenvester family.
And then…
“I saw him die.”
“….”
“People thought I killed him, but I didn’t. There was no need to kill him.”
Lexion quickly, very quickly, took over the mansion.
He tied the feet of the soldiers following Royden and the Former Duke, and immediately went to the Duke’s bedroom.
“I felt something strange neither the Duchess nor Royden was there.”
The Duke, alone on the bed, was already dying, without Lexion dirtying his hands.
“I watched him gasp for breath and collapse. It felt empty.”
“….”
“Maybe I wanted to laugh. I don’t know. Just as they didn’t tell me where my mother was buried, they wouldn’t tell you where you were… maybe I wanted to say that. But there was no need. Royden had already run away. How amusing.”
There was nothing to say or hear. Lexion watched the Duke die like that. That was all.
“And then, I immediately went after Royden.”
I wanted to kill him, as much as Royden.
“Again, I found him.”
But….
“As I pulled him down and aimed my sword at his throat, he said something like that.”
[Are you going to kill me like this?]
“If you kill me like this….”
[But then you’ll never know.]
“You won’t know until you die.”
[Talking about where that dirty concubine was buried!]
“Where my mother was buried.”
