73. Nightmare
Feeling Katya’s voice sounding somewhat lonely, Nikolai deliberately spoke playfully.
“Should I write you a contract? Would you believe me then?”
No answer came from her.
He quietly listened for his wife.
The sound of steady breathing echoed through the quiet room.
This time she had really fallen asleep.
No wonder she had seemed half-asleep since earlier.
Nikolai let out a small laugh and gently stroked her head with the hand serving as her pillow.
“Tia, there was something wrong in what you said earlier.”
“……”
“It wasn’t the strawberry scent—I just liked you from the start.”
Though none of his confessions to her had been insincere, today’s confession made his chest throb warmly even as he spoke it.
The day he first met Katya felt like yesterday.
Come to think of it, so many things had happened with her during what felt both short and long.
Like when a drop of paint falls into a cup of water, slowly spreading until you come to your senses and find the water’s color has changed.
That’s how helplessly he had fallen for her.
If he had known from the start that he would come to love her this much, could he have stopped then?
No, that wasn’t true.
‘Even if I knew everything and went back to that time, I would fall in love with you again.’
Having finished his inner monologue, he quietly rose from the bed.
Actually, holding her tight while sleeping was just a mischievous joke—he hadn’t really intended to do it.
Well, it was his hope, but still.
When the arm pillow disappeared, Katya stirred, seemingly uncomfortable with her neck.
Looking for something to replace the pillows he had impulsively thrown, Nikolai picked up the thin blanket spread on the bedding.
He carefully lifted her head and rolled up the blanket to support her neck in place of a pillow.
Then he closed the window where sunlight was pouring in and drew the curtains.
Katya’s face, which had been scrunched up as if the light bothered her even in sleep, gradually relaxed.
“Sweet dreams, Tia.”
Having completed his duties as her sleep guardian, Nikolai finally lay down on the sofa by the window to sleep.
Though it was woefully short for his height with more than half his legs hanging off, he soon forgot the discomfort due to exhaustion.
As he fell asleep away from Katya, the nightmare visited him again without fail today.
Every night, Nikolai had the same dream.
When he fell asleep, the nightmare demon would always throw him back to that day 13 years ago, as if it had been waiting.
***
13 years ago.
“How dare you try to stop me, you brat!”
His father, consumed by rage, approached Nikolai.
Having struck fear into enemy soldiers while roaming battlefields in his youth, he had an enormous build even among the people of Hersen.
When his father approached him, the dark shadow cast by that exceptional physique would swallow young Nikolai whole.
An angry father aroused more terror in him than anything else in the world.
Though he had never been physically struck by his father before, the Yuri de Vasily of that time made not only Nikolai but even the palace servants and boyars tremble in fear by his mere presence.
After discovering the treason plot orchestrated by his trusted wife and her family, Yuri de Vasily was no longer the warm father in Nikolai’s memories.
Since former Grand Duchess Tatiana was expelled from the palace and imprisoned in Pavlovsk Monastery, he had been gripped by manic paranoia, though he seemed to briefly stabilize when he brought in Oksana, his first love, as the new Grand Duchess.
But the madness that began with obsession and feelings of betrayal toward the woman he had loved showed no signs of ending even after Tatiana’s death.
No, rather his symptoms worsened after she died.
The year she was deposed, a flood struck the region where Pavlovsk Monastery was located, and Tatiana drowned in her room, unable to escape the submerged monastery.
Yuri, who had been living with hatred for her, lost the target of his hatred.
“You truly must want to die. I shall personally grant your wish.”
After that day, whenever someone displeased him, whether commoner or boyar, he would draw his sword and cut off their tongue, arm, and sometimes even their head.
Severed heads rolled across the central carpet, turning the audience chamber into chaos, and with people screaming and running through the sea of blood, it was truly a scene from hell.
Though Nikolai had only heard about it rather than seeing it directly, it was enough to make his father become the most terrifying existence in the world.
Knowing that his father was reminded of his mother whenever he saw him, Nikolai lived like a ghost in the palace, keeping quiet and unseen.
On the rare occasions they did meet despite his avoidance, his father always looked at him with eyes full of murderous intent.
Just remembering those chillingly cold eyes made his legs weak, so Nikolai rarely left his chambers.
Then the incident happened.
“How dare you!”
Seeing his father draw his sword as if he was about to stab him, Nikolai stepped backward.
At that moment, the door burst open from outside.
“Father!”
It was his eldest brother Ruslan, who’s seven years older than Nikolai.
As the child of the first Grand Duchess Yevgenia, he was Yuri’s most beloved child.
And he deeply cared for his young brother Nikolai.
“Stop!”
Sensing the sword drawn to kill his innocent brother, Ruslan jumped at his father with a pale face.
“Let go! Today I shall finally remove that one from my sight!”
“Father…!”
As Ruslan held his father’s arm from behind while the latter thrashed in madness, he urgently called out to his brother.
“Nikolai, get out now!”
“Stop! You dare defy my orders!”
Yuri warned furiously as Nikolai tried to move away in tears.
Though Ruslan was seventeen, a year away from his coming-of-age ceremony, he still struggled to overcome his father’s strength.
If he fell out of favor with his increasingly mad father, even his life would not be safe forever.
Moreover, the tip of his father’s sword wavered precariously as if he was about to pierce his face at any moment.
But he risked his life to stop his father in order to protect his brother.
“Nikolai, hurry!”
At his brother’s voice, Nikolai snapped to his senses and started running toward the door.
Yuri, his arms restrained by his eldest son, shook his body in rage to break free and struck him across the face with his palm as large as a pot lid.
Nikolai, who had been running away, stopped at the sound and turned around.
“Ruslan, do you look down on me now too? Have you grown so big that you don’t recognize your father!”
“Father, please come to your senses…!”
Ruslan cried out while holding his father who was consumed by madness.
“You’re the one who doesn’t recognize us!”
“…What?”
“How long will you keep doing this to that poor child? Don’t you feel sorry toward Mother?”
“Why is that woman your mother!”
“After Her Highness Grand Duchess Yevgenia passed away right after giving birth to us, she raised us siblings, who weren’t even her own children, just like Nikolai! No, even more carefully than Nikolai, putting all her care into us. If she’s not my mother, then who is?”
Tears flowed from Ruslan’s eyes.
Like a breaking dam, his long-suppressed longing for his stepmother poured out endlessly.
Branded a traitor, she hadn’t even received a proper funeral, and mentioning her had become taboo in the palace, so he couldn’t even cry out loud.
If this was how he felt, how must young Nikolai feel?
“We were all deceived by that woman! You and I both!”
“No! Father, you’re wrong!”
“What did you say?”
“Why didn’t you trust Mother? Why! When she only loved you…”
Hearing those words, murderous intent suddenly filled Yuri’s eyes.
He threw a punch at his son right then.
Nikolai could no longer run away.
If he turned his back now, he felt his father would surely kill his brother.
He ran behind his father and shouted.
“Father, hit me instead! Please let brother go…!”
As Yuri reached for the child who was the seed of all misfortune, Ruslan blocked his father from reaching his brother.
Having endured the brutal assault and even taking the punch meant for Nikolai, he collapsed weakly to the side.
It happened in an instant—Ruslan’s falling head struck the marble table.
The pure white carpet under the table began turning red.
An ominous feeling came over Yuri as he slowly turned his body.
“Brother!”
Nikolai, who first discovered Ruslan, screamed.
Yuri approached his son lying on the carpet bleeding with trembling steps.
Though he came to his senses too late and took his beloved son in his arms, his son had already breathed his last and became a cold corpse.
Finally realizing what he had done, Yuri embraced his dead son and wailed.
“Ruslan…!”
Nikolai wished all of this was a dream.
But happiness was always distant like a dream, while the horrific and close was always reality.
After his mother was deposed, when even palace servants looked down on him, his brother had always been the only one to take his side.
“Brother…”
“Ahhhhh!”
At that moment, Princess Klavdia, who had entered the reception room due to the commotion, screamed upon seeing her brother dead.
Nikolai slowly approached the father and daughter crying out for Ruslan in the blood-soaked space.
Yuri harshly knocked away the small hand reaching toward his dead brother.
“Get that hand away! Because of you, Ruslan…!”
“Father…”
“It’s all your fault! You should have died! Get out of my sight right now! Now!”
Shocked, Nikolai stumbled backward before finally turning and running out of the reception room.
As he ran into the corridor, he bumped into someone and looked up to find Grand Duchess Oksana standing there.
She knelt down and embraced the crying child.
“Oh my, how frightened you must have been.”
“Hic…”
She whispered softly in his ear as he sobbed.
“Nikolai, you should never have been born in the first place.”
Though Nikolai, now coming to his senses, struggled to break free from her, Oksana tightened her arms around him.
“You should have disappeared along with your mother. Then you wouldn’t have had to see this.”
“……”
“Should I thank you since Ruslan died so early?”
When Nikolai finally escaped from Oksana’s embrace, she was clearly smiling brightly.
