Chapter 42
Kairen entered the bedroom supporting his mother.
Perhaps it was because of the poison in the piece of grapefruit tart.
The slender body of his mother, whom Kairen was supporting, felt as heavy as soaked cotton.
But without saying a word, he carefully seated his mother on the bed.
His hands remained gentle as he covered her with a blanket and propped up her pillow.
As though nothing had happened.
He was merely imitating the way she had tended to him whenever he threw a tantrum because he did not want to sleep.
Yet that silence only tightened the noose around Karla’s throat.
Kairen slowly turned around.
Step, step.
Without a word, he walked toward the door and grasped the doorknob.
Clack.
The Grand Duchess’s bedroom door closed.
Once the servants’ footsteps in the corridor were completely cut off, only a heavy silence remained in the room.
Still gripping the doorknob, Kairen stood there for a moment with his back to her.
The mask of a dutiful son that he had maintained until the moment he seated his mother on the bed.
On the face revealed beneath that mask, only devastation and betrayal remained.
“...I’m sorry…..”
His mother’s tearful voice came from behind him.
“Kairen... I’m truly sorry.”
That apology lit the fuse.
Kairen spun around.
With his furrowed brow no longer hidden, he strode toward his mother.
“Why... Why on earth did you do this?”
“Kairen….”
“Why?!”
Kairen shouted.
“If you were going to be so clumsy about it, you should have hidden it to the very end! Why couldn’t you even keep your expression under control...!”
The son vented his pent-up fury.
It would have been better if his mother had been a horrible monster.
If she had been a cold-blooded woman who lied without batting an eye, his heart would not have been torn apart like this.
He could simply have cut her down and hated her.
But his mother had been far too clumsy.
She had barely managed to maintain her mask until they came down the corridor, and now it was collapsing in front of her son.
That weakness, that humanity, made him resent her even more.
“Tell me. Why my brother? What did my brother do so wrong to you—or to us?!”
At Kairen’s questioning, Karla could not raise her head.
She merely stared down at her hands resting on her lap.
Burn marks remained on every knuckle.
Karla pressed her nails into those scars.
As though trying to cover her guilt with pain.
“This is all... for you....”
But just as she tried to force out that excuse, she closed her mouth.
She had suddenly remembered a lesson from Count Eisen.
『To a child, saying 「for your sake」 will become the cruelest shackle in the world, Your Grace. Sadly, it is not love, but a curse.』
She bit her lip.
She could not curse her son any further.
So instead of making excuses, she decided to list only the cold facts.
“...I was a 「tin bowl」….”
“Pardon?”
“The sixth princess of the Western Kingdom of Slokina…. But I had neither a noble bloodline nor talent... I was a rusted tin bowl shoved into a corner of the royal storeroom. That was what I was.”
Karla calmly confessed her past.
An unwanted princess who had grown up without receiving anyone’s attention.
To her, the marriage proposal from House Northgard was merely a card used to sell her into a political marriage.
“When I first came here, I intended to live as though I were already dead. But....”
Her eyes wavered.
“Your father was clumsy, but he loved me, and young Karl treated me as though I were his real mother…. This castle, which had been cold as ice, became the first warm home I had ever known.”
She had been happy.
It was happiness too precious for a mere tin bowl to dare contain.
Even so, she wanted to sink into that love and let it fill her.
She wanted to sink into it and be filled.
But that happiness did not last long.
“On the day you were born... they came….”
“Who?”
“Slokina’s emissaries….”
Karla continued, forcing down her fear by digging her nails into her flesh.
“They told me that you had to become the Grand Duke, Kairen…. And to make that happen... Karl had to disappear.”
“......!”
“I tried to refuse…. Of course I refused….! Karl was like my own son! He saw me as his mother….!”
Karla shouted with a metallic rasp in her voice.
But soon, her voice changed into a feeble sound that was barely more than a moan.
“But... they had already fabricated evidence that I was the one who had orchestrated the plan…. Letters sent from my homeland, orders I had never issued....”
Karla trembled as she wrapped her arms around her shoulders.
“They were kind enough to tell me how to do it, too….”
Karla’s eyes wavered as they reflected the terror of the past.
『Your Grace, I hear that Young Master Karl enjoys the sweets you make yourself, especially grapefruit tart.』
The emissaries smiled as they held out a bottle containing poison.
『The bitter taste of grapefruit makes an excellent disguise. Mix this medicine into the filling. It may taste a little bitter, but no one will suspect that it is poison.』
It covered everything, from planning the assassination and selecting the menu to concealing the poison.
“They said they would send that evidence to the Grand Duke if I refused. And... they said you would be in danger.”
“Me...?”
“Yes…. Since I had already learned of the plan…. They said they could not leave me alive, in case I testified…. They threatened to eliminate the newborn baby in my arms….”
Karla continued, suppressing the urge to vomit.
“In the end... to protect you... I... Karl.... Ugh...!”
The moment she spoke, stomach acid surged back up.
Karla covered her mouth.
Those were the words she had vowed never to utter as she remembered Eisen’s teaching.
‘For your sake.’
But in the end, she had said them.
The most cowardly excuse, one that rationalized her crime and planted a sense of indebtedness in her son.
She could not bear the fact that its roots lay in twisted maternal love, or that she had hidden behind that excuse.
“......”
His mother’s confession was, in the end, maternal love.
A tragedy in which she had to kill her stepson to save her biological son.
But no circumstances could serve as an absolution.
Kairen’s hand groped at his waist.
A sword.
He needed a sword.
He wanted to cut through this horrible, sticky situation with a single stroke, but there was no sword at his waist.
“Was my brother’s leg... your doing?”
Kairen bit his lip until it bled as he asked.
Karla shook her head, then nodded.
“The accident... was their doing…. They tampered with the carriage wheel. But... when Karl succeeded in rehabilitation and stood up again, they pressured me again.”
Tears streamed from her eyes.
“They told me to finish it for good this time…. Otherwise.... They said they would take you away. So I... put a neurotoxin in the grapefruit tart....”
“Stop!”
Kairen screamed.
He could not listen anymore.
She had been the mother who shed tears of joy when his brother stood again, happier than anyone.
And yet, behind those tears, she had been preparing the poison that would force him back down.
And to think that he was the cause of all of it.
‘It’s because of me....’
If I had never been born.
If I had disappeared.
Then neither my brother nor my mother would have become unhappy.
Guilt surged like a wave and swallowed his reason.
There was nowhere for him to vent his anger.
He could not harm his mother, and the Slokina bastards were not here.
The only one left was himself, the cause of it all.
Clasp!
Kairen seized his own throat with his hand.
“Urk... ngh...!”
Then he tightened his grip with all his strength.
His nails dug into his flesh and pressed against his windpipe, cutting off his breath.
He wanted to kill himself.
He wanted to erase this cursed bloodline, this horrible being that had grown by devouring his brother.
“K-Kairen?!”
Karla rushed at him with a scream.
Her eyes went wild at the sight of her son harming himself before her.
“No! Stop! Please, don’t do this!”
Karla grabbed Kairen’s arm and clung to him.
But she could not overcome the strength of the boy who was growing into a young man with each passing day.
Kairen’s face turned purple.
“Strangle me instead! I’m the damned woman who should die! Saying I did it for you is just an excuse! I did it because I was a coward!”
Karla wailed as she desperately tried to pry her son’s hands away.
“Please... please, my baby... Mother was wrong....”
At the plea that slipped out, the strength drained from Kairen’s hands.
“Cough! Cough!”
Kairen coughed and collapsed onto the floor.
Vivid blue bruises stood out around his neck.
“Haa... haa....”
He panted harshly as he braced himself against the floor.
But then.
“Mother?”
Karla, who had been trying to stop Kairen, had slumped onto the floor and could not get back up.
She tried to put strength into her legs, but her lower body would not move at all, as though she were paralyzed.
Just like Karl.
“What is... happening....”
Kairen staggered toward his mother.
His mouth began to dry from a sense of foreboding.
“Mother, your legs... what’s wrong with them?”
“N-no, it’s nothing... I just lost my strength when the tension let up....”
Karla hurriedly tried to cover her legs with her skirt.
But Kairen saw.
Her fingertips trembling faintly and her pupils unfocused.
The poison in the grapefruit tart he had eaten—the same poison his brother had been consuming all this time.
The symptoms were exactly the same.
“No way... Mother... you too...?”
“......”
Karla could not raise her head.
Unable to affirm or deny it, she could only sob.
Ever since Karl had begun leaving the tart because he had no appetite.
Karla had eaten the leftover tart instead of throwing it away.
To destroy the evidence.
And.
So she could follow Karl into death when he died.
To lessen her guilt.
As the barest atonement she could offer as a mother who had fed poison to her son.
She had swallowed the same poison Karl had, enduring the same pain every day.
“I’m insane....”
Kairen clutched his head.
Everyone was killing one another while claiming they were doing it for each other’s sake.
If it had not been for House Northgard…
If the clothes he wore had been cheaper and lighter.
If he had lived in an even colder room in this cruel world.
Maybe he would never have been given a reason to be born, despite being someone who should never have been born.
“Where is it?”
Kairen’s eyes went wild.
This was no time to be lost in sentiment.
He had to find an antidote immediately—or at least the vial so he could find out what poison it was.
He began roughly rummaging through his mother’s clothes.
“Where is it?! That damned poison bottle!”
“K-Kairen... it hurts....”
Her clothing was wrinkled, and her jewelry was torn away.
Karla’s flesh was caught and bruised.
But she endured it without uttering a single groan.
She thought this, too, was punishment she deserved.
But.
“It’s not here... Why isn’t it here!”
The poison vial was nowhere inside her clothes.
Kairen despaired.
“No... no... where on earth....”
Soon, he looked around the room like a madman.
Then he suddenly remembered the moment his mother had staggered in Karl’s office earlier.
“Don’t tell me....”
Kairen’s face went white.
“Did you drop it... in my brother’s room?”
“......!”
Karla’s eyes widened.
That reaction, too, confirmed it.
“Damn it!”
Kairen sprang to his feet.
He had to run to his brother’s room immediately.
What if his brother picked up that bottle?
What if he learned that his mother was the one who had made him ill?
His brother would shatter.
Not only his body, but his heart as well.
He had to prevent that.
It was enough for the criminal and the criminal’s son to bear the pain in their hearts.
His brother was already carrying pain he never should have had to bear.
Kairen immediately started toward the door.
But.
“Uuugh....”
The groan of his mother, collapsed on the floor and gasping for breath, held her son back.
Kairen’s feet stopped.
When he turned around, his mother was sprawled across the cold floor.
Unable to hold herself upright, perhaps because of the poison.
‘Damn it... damn it!’
Even at this desperate moment, he resented his own soft heart for being unable to abandon the mother who had tried to kill his brother.
“Damn it!”
Kairen spat out a curse and spun around.
Then he swept Karla up and laid her on the bed.
He roughly pulled the blanket over her as well.
“Stay still! Please, don’t do anything!”
Kairen shouted.
This brief delay—this situation so horrible that it made him regret even the most basic decency—was too much to endure without screaming.
“Wait. I’ll save both my brother and you.”
Kairen left the bedroom after those solemn words.
Rat-a-tat-tat—!
Kairen’s footsteps thundered through the corridor as he ran.
His breath rose to his throat, and his heart felt ready to burst.
‘If only someone would kill me.’
Knowing all these filthy secrets, he wanted to be struck and killed by a carriage within the lord’s residence, where no carriage ever went careening about.
The physical pain seemed as though it would be less than the pain in his heart right now.
But.
He did not truly want to die.
He wanted salvation.
He wanted someone to resolve this hellish situation.
Someone to hold him up.
Suddenly, he remembered the enormous back that had shielded him from the carriage flying toward him at the borderlands.
The man who solved everything with overwhelming force.
‘Varg....’
My ideal—the son of Gorgon.
Surely, if it were him, he could give me an answer even in this hellish situation.
And there was one more person.
‘Master....’
My master, whose cold, clear reason could set everything right.
You would be able to give me a clear answer, wouldn’t you?
‘Aaaaaaah!’
Kairen ran, forcibly swallowing the scream rising from his throat.
Through his tear-filled eyes, he saw the door to the annex.
Please let me not be too late.
Please let my brother not have picked up that bottle.
Praying, the boy’s shadow raced onward.
Perhaps because the sun was setting.
The boy’s shadow stretched longer than yesterday’s shadow.