Chapter 140
For Sione, Valar was not part of the plan.
After all, the children of high nobility are all raised by nannies, and siblings don’t tend to be close.
Sione wasn’t sure she’d like having a little brother or sister.
However, she realizes that she’s partly to blame for her brother being born at the worst possible time and not being touched by her mother.
So she just came to look after him and take care of him.
‘Brother!’
The new baby brother was so cute.
Shione fell unexpectedly in love with the baby’s bright smile.
It was a different kind of love than the one she felt for her mother. Whereas her mother had made her want to be silly and be loved, Valar made her want to do anything and everything for him.
‘Sister Sione!’
From the time she was a pouting baby, Valar would smile at her without a care in the world, but when she started walking and talking, she would always look for Sione and follow her around.
She wondered if she was that good.
‘Do you like me that much?’
‘Mmm!’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re my sister!’
Probably from then on.
It was then that she decided that when she grew older, when she became an adult, when she had the chance, she would leave this shithole of a family, and she would do it without reservation.
‘I like you, too, Valar.’
Even when Valar was chasing her all day, every day, and destroying her things, Sione found him to be more than a nuisance, more than an annoyance.
‘I’ll raise him well.’
Speaking of being a child herself, Sione looked at Valar and thought to herself.
‘I’ll take care of you.’
‘Yes!’
She’ll raise Valar very well, and she’ll make him a good man, nothing like their trashy father.
Sione made a new resolve.
She would do whatever it took to make sure that her sweet little brother, so gentle and gentle, so unlike Halbern, didn’t grow up to be a filthy mess.
‘You can’t be like him. Do you hear me?’
‘Yes, sis.’
Fortunately, her brother, who had grown up with nothing but love, grew up to be a child who knew how to share it.
Sione was happy to see that, so she took care of Mehen, whom her brother had picked up.
‘Mehen, it seems like you’re having a hard time living a normal life.’
‘What?’
How did you end up in Halbern?
You might as well have been rolling around in the streets.
Sione felt sorry for Mehen, but she was also relieved to have someone to keep Valar company in her absence.
With Valer in her life, Sione no longer had to offend Morden.
She was already on the outside looking in, but she played the tongue in her cheek, trying to plan for the future. She didn’t want to draw Morden’s attention to this.
Morden’s attention was all on his mother anyway, so he didn’t care what his children did.
Sione thought.
For her own wish, for her mother’s revenge, for Valer’s future, Morden must be destroyed.
‘Then I might as well do it with my own hands.’
Not with her mother’s hands, which were already too weak to lift a finger, or with young Valar’s.
Sione wanted to give Valar only good things.
She wanted to teach him only happiness and love.
Because those were the best things she’d ever had.
‘My sweet little brother.’
She’ll change this shitty house for him, Sione vowed.
Just a little more.
When she is an adult and can exercise her rights as a member of Halbern.
She will organize everything and give Valar the best of Halbern.
That day is not far off.
‘Sione, I have a message for you.’
The cunning father struck the player.
‘Marriage?’
All of Sione’s preparations had been undone by Morden’s decision.
How fitting.
‘You’ve already been found out.’
‘He knew about all my plans to push him away and kill him.’
There was nothing he could do to help Sione, who stood at the edge of a precipice.
‘Do you want to run?’
Her old friend held out her hand, but she couldn’t take it.
‘If I run away, you can go…’
‘…’
“That man will kill Valar.
‘… How do you know that?’
‘Because I’ve already tried.’
The fact that Valar was Morden’s son didn’t affect him much. He was a terrible man who would not hesitate to take Valar’s life if it meant punishing his daughter for creeping up on him unawares.
‘Ageni, my only friend. Take good care of my brother.’
‘Sione…’
‘You must marry someone you like. Okay?’
Sione was willing to die for Valar, but she couldn’t allow him to die because of her.
And so it was that she became a Southern Empire Pythal.
Ludwig, the man she would take as her husband.
‘Love?’
She risked her life, lost everything she had, and he dare to speak of love to her?
Sione laughed hollowly.
‘Love.’
How can she feel love for a man who looks like her father?
Even when she asked him to take her back, he wouldn’t. His words of self-preservation were just a joke.
If you really cared about yourself, you’d send her back, even if it meant dying, wouldn’t you?
‘Valar…’
She couldn’t sleep for a moment, worried about her brother and how he might be ruined by his father’s hands.
Anger bubbled up.
‘It’s my life.’
She didn’t ask to be born in Halbern, and so far she has been crushed by her father, unable to live the life she wanted.
Even this marriage wasn’t what she wanted.
The helplessness, anger, bitterness, and pain of not being able to choose anything.
More than that, she was robbed of her beloved brother.
‘And love?’
He want her to love him?
‘I love you just as much.’
Sione knew all too well that if she lived, she would be Valar’s leash.
For as much as she loved Valar, Valar loved her.
So Sione decided to die.
After a lifetime of being at the mercy of others’ choices, it would be nice to be able to call death ‘my own’.
‘I can’t just die.’
She should die alone, away from the eyes that watch over her.
How could she die well?
Sione’s gaze drifted to the southern part of Pythal, to the land of the dead, where no one approached.
A forbidden place in Pythal, where a forgotten god had died.
***
A sudden noise interrupted the movie-like memory of the past.
The once-real landscape was quickly shrouded in mist.
“They say there’s a monster that kills humans if you come here… Are you a monster?”
Sione’s figure was clearly visible, but it was impossible to tell who she was seeing through the fog.
“I apologize for asking if you’re a monster at first, but are you sure you don’t kill people?”
“I can’t do that.”
“I have to die.”
When she started reading her memories, she didn’t think she had much courage, but she could feel it as she watched her.
Who talks about dying and smiles like that?
Their conversation slowed, and she couldn’t make out what they were saying over the noise.
‘What’s wrong with the transmission?’
She was writing an impression.
“Well…”
Shione smiled and looked out over the fog.
“Give me a hug.”
“…?
She shook her head, thinking she’d heard something she shouldn’t have.
“I’d like to fuck some monster that thinks my body belongs to him. Can you help me?”
No, Mom?
She froze, not knowing where to turn, and then she heard Shione say something in Moorish again.
She couldn’t hear her clearly over the noise, but she was laughing.
At one point, she could see her holding onto her stomach.
The transmission was so bad that she could no longer make out her thoughts, but she wasn’t stupid enough not to recognize the truth of this obvious scene.
‘Wasn’t Duke Regent my biological father?!’
“I was going to die…”
Sione had postponed her own death.
“My baby.”
“Forgive your mother.”
She looked up at the sound of Sione’s voice. Sione couldn’t see her, couldn’t know her as she is now, but the calmness and nonchalance with which she stroked her full-term belly made her sad.
“For your sake, it would have been right not to give birth to you. I’m sorry I brought you into this world, but you came to me, and I wanted to give birth to you.”
“I’m going to miss you, seeing you grow up, seeing you mature, seeing you grow old.”
“But I won’t regret it. You are everything I chose to be.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you.”
“Mom…”
Shione’s smile, visible beyond her crossed memories, made her sad.
She really did love her.
“I love you.”
“This is all the love I can give you.”
