Chapter 88
A familiar headache slowed Valar’s steps.
The peculiar pain, like nerves being gnawed away, was a side effect of Halbern’s powers.
-Valar.
And then there were the hallucinations and auditory hallucinations.
The hand pressing down on his temple stops.
The brain, which always gave him shitty visions, sometimes showed his things he wanted to see.
-Valar, how are you?
Soft, flowing platinum hair and sweet. A gentle smile he thought he’d never see again.
“…Sister.”
Even if it’s just a hallucination, he is happy for this moment.
-My sweet brother.
Valar let out a ragged breath, still staring at the vision facing him.
“Sis.”
Even though he knows it can’t be real, with the transcendent senses he attained through his swordsmanship, he can’t help but be mesmerized.
“Shione.”
The one person who always makes him feel like a little brother.
His dreadlocks.
The vision reaches out and wraps itself around his cheek. It didn’t feel warm, but it was damn warm.
-You need to be happy.
The more he stayed still, the more he didn’t see blood, the stronger the hallucinations became, which was fine when he was in the Northern Castle.
Things he couldn’t see when he was slashing monsters and getting covered in blood every second.
Perhaps this explains his instinctive reluctance to return to the ecliptic.
-You should be happy, my brother.
The voice echoed like a gourd, thin. Valar dropped his head, feeling like he might cry.
“I couldn’t even protect you.”
Why did she always want him to be happy?
When he was a child, neglected and abandoned, the only person who cared for him was his sister, four years older than him.
Sione. She was his mom, his friend, his teacher, his god.
She was the only humanity Valar had until he picked up Mehen.
“It’s crazy around here.”
Sione hated Halbern.
“Everyone is crazy but you and me.”
Not the secrecy, not the closeness, not the family’s refusal to see people as people, not his father, the patriarch and dictator of the house, and not his inability to defy him even once.
Gaju Morden could not stand everything his daughter did.
Visiting his mother in her boudoir, tending to his sister, going outside against orders, going against he will time and time again.
The relationship between Morden Halbern and Sione Halbern was at its worst, and in Valar’s memory, the two were always fighting.
“You will not be a failure like your sister.”
The end of their hateful confrontation was a foreordained catastrophe.
His father, who treated his daughter, who didn’t even call his father her father, as a long horse, finally drew his sword.
He had no hesitation in selling his daughter, who was only sixteen and had not even paid her debutante, at a high price.
An unwanted arranged marriage.
Naturally, Sione Halbern reacted furiously.
“I told you I didn’t want this marriage!” she said.
“Be useful for once, Sione Sigria Halbern.”
Sione was carried away in a faint, unsuccessful attempt at suicide, a last ditch escape.
It was the last thing Valar remembered of his sister.
“Your sister has served her purpose, and she should be happy. Don’t worry about useless things, my son, and focus on your duties.”
Valar shuddered at his helplessness, at his inability to do anything.
It was the first time he learned that being powerless, being weak, being unable to help, could be so painful.
It wasn’t until he lost what was most precious to him that he realized, in hindsight, the painful truth.
When it was too late.
And then…
“How dare you… how dare you.”
He wanted to make it right.
Sixteen, when Valar succeeded to the Archduke of Halbern after Morden Halbern’s accidental death.
At the age when his sister was forced into a marriage she didn’t want, Valar took all of Halbern under his wing.
For his sister.
“Accidental death? How ridiculous.”
The whole world in his hands, but only one thing.
The day hid wife, the one thing the man who couldn’t hold on to love clung to and wanted, finally died and freed herself.
Valar killed the man.
“You, you have no feelings for your mother, who left us! How come you don’t shed a tear?!”
“My father.”
“Big…”
“I don’t have a mother.”
He hated her so much.
“You took her away.”
He ended up looking like him.
“You killed my whole family.”
No mother, no sister, no father, not even the last bit of love and respect she had for him.
After baiting Sione into marriage, Gao Zhu was forced to marry her off, and Mehen took the name.
It was this that sobered Valar, who had been driven mad by the pain of loss.
‘I cannot lose even Mehen.’
The only friend he had, not given to him by Halbern.
Valar Sigria Halbern’s last shred of humanity.
It erased all hesitation.
His sister’s strength, his mother’s means, and Valar’s determination combined.
By the time Gazoo realized the poison he had swallowed, it was too late.
His wide-eyed last words were a curse.
“Your children, too, will kill you one day.”
He remembered what he said then.
“I really hope so.”
“At least, you don’t mean I’ll be alive by then.”
“I still want to die.”
His father won. Valar was broken. He couldn’t fix it because he didn’t know where or how it was broken.
He was just desperately pretending to be okay.
“At least it’s okay.”
Because no one knows he is crazy.
-My sister.
If only his poor sister could resent him for once.
The vision faded away.
He reached out to grab it, but he couldn’t. It was never there in the first place.
He laughed in vain, and then he heard laughter in the breeze.
He followed, drawn in, and there, dancing in the moonlight, was a small group of people.
Deep violet eyes flickered.
It was a vision.
Valar looked up to see his ‘daughter’ smiling, arms crossed.
“I’ve never seen you smile before.”
Or maybe she was smiling at Mehen.
Searching his memory, Valar looked away again. Arellin was there, still smiling happily.
Peaceful and at peace.
Something he had once had, something he would never have again.
***
Mehen was huddled in a corner of the ballroom, trying to sort through his thoughts. Despite the liquor he was pouring into his stomach, he was not getting drunk, but his mind was becoming clearer.
‘Is it low proof?’
He wanted to get drunk to escape the shitty reality, but it wouldn’t let me.
He stretched and stared into space, then let out a deep sigh that drew him back up from the edge.
‘Valar…’
It was all confusion, starting with the answer he’d heard the day before.
“You’re right, she’s not my daughter.”
“But she is my daughter.”
Valar simply laughed at Mehen’s look and asked what the hell that was, not a riddle.
“So, you’re saying she’s not your biological child, but you consider her your daughter anyway?”
“That’s clever, Mehen.”
“Then whose daughter is she?”
“If she’s not my biological daughter in Halbern’s immediate line, then there’s only one left, isn’t there?”
No, no, no, no, it’s not what he thinks it is, is it?
“Haha?”
“There’s no way my smart ass wouldn’t know.”
He denied it, turned away from it, evaded it, but nothing changed. The only thing left was the obvious one.
“They have the same eyes…”
Mehen buried his face in his hands in frustration.
“That’s right, she’s my sister’s daughter.”
“Valar, you crazy bastard.”
What the hell was that bastard thinking?
Sione was currently the Grand Duchess of Regent Locke, the most powerful man in the Southern Empire of Pythal. And Arellin was his daughter.
‘Are they planning to go to war?’
If Regent Locke found out about this, would he stop? He’s got a temper of his own.
But Valar? Do you think the Archduke of Halbern will take his ‘sister’s daughter’ at all?
“Perhaps I should resign.”
