74. Something More Frightening Than the Nightmare Demon

They held Ruslan’s funeral.

Standing before the altar, Yuri briefly kissed the forehead of his pale son lying in the coffin.

Tears rolled down his cheeks onto Ruslan’s face.

Turning around, he saw his daughter-in-law, widowed in the flower of her youth, sitting in the front row in mourning clothes, crying.

Klavdia, Ruslan’s sister, embraced her sister-in-law who could barely hold herself up after losing her baby from the shock, and wailed.

Yuri had no idea his daughter-in-law was pregnant.

Understandably so, as the couple had only told the palace servants, being careful in early pregnancy.

Only then did Yuri feel regret for everything.

Why couldn’t he control his anger?

Though he bitterly regretted it, the truth that he killed his son remained unchanged, and those who stepped into the land of the dead never returned.

‘My son, the gods took you in place of your sinful father…’

He had lived only righteously.

He had been a filial son to him and a reliable eldest brother to his siblings.

Ruslan, who was to become a father, departed this world on the same day as Yuri’s grandchild.

While the mourners, including Yuri, were immersed in grief, the Archbishop ascended the altar.

As they observed the funeral rites, Nikolai burst into the temple chapel.

Hearing the sound of his footsteps, all eyes turned to him at once.

Unable to believe his brother was dead, Nikolai had spent the night sleepless before finally dozing off, and no one had woken him, causing his late arrival at the chapel.

Now that Ruslan was dead, he had no allies left in the palace.

Even Klavdia, who had been affectionate toward her brother before their brother’s death, completely turned away from him after their father shouted that Ruslan died because of Nikolai.

Seeing his sister-in-law and sister looking at him with eyes mixed with resentment and hatred, Nikolai felt his breath catch.

Yuri, who turned around last, immediately began raging when his eyes met his son’s.

“Lock him in the tower immediately! I never want to see that creature again!”

Nikolai got dragged away by the guards without even getting to say a final goodbye to his dead brother.

The funeral rites, briefly interrupted by the unwelcome intruder, resumed.

Mikhail, the youngest, sitting next to Oksana, kept glancing at his brother until his mother pinched his arm hard, making him turn back to the altar with a tearful face.

“Father! Please let me see Brother’s face just once! Please!”

Though the child cried pitifully, the boyars inside merely sneered while continuing the service.

Among them, only Duke Smirnov, who felt sympathy for Nikolai, tried to turn around, but his friend grabbed his arm.

“Hey, man. Eyes are everywhere. If word gets to His Highness the Grand Duke that you showed sympathy, you won’t even be able to collect your bones.”

“But…”

“Think of your wife and children. You especially need to be careful. Your wife is ill and couldn’t attend His Highness Ruslan’s funeral with you.”

At those words, Baptiski Smirnov finally turned back to the front, closing his trembling eyelids.

Though he might act differently alone, he couldn’t act rashly out of personal feelings when thinking of his sick wife and two daughters.

“Father…!”

Besides Duke Smirnov, one other person reacted to the child’s cry.

Luka, seeing his friend being dragged away, jumped up from his seat but was immediately forced back down by his father, Duke Oblonsky.

Painfully pressing down on his thoughtless son’s shoulders, he warned in a low voice.

“You still want to remain that creature’s friend?”

“Creature? He is His Highness the Prince, Father.”

“Prince?”

The Duke mocked his son’s words.

If the former Grand Duchess were still alive, perhaps the capricious Grand Duke might have considered reinstating her out of lingering attachment, but she was already dead.

With Nikolai’s maternal family completely wiped out, no one remained to protect the young prince.

“Who would consider the son of a deposed Grand Duchess who plotted treason as a prince?”

“Father…”

“His Highness the Grand Duke has lost his son and is blind with rage right now. That one’s life hangs by a thread only because he’s still technically a Prince. But you could lose your head as a mere outlet for anger.”

“……”

“Do you truly intend to send all our family members and servants to their graves along with your life for such trivial friendship?”

Finally, Luka too, frightened, gave up standing up for him, and Nikolai was driven out of the chapel alone.

The soldiers took him to the top floor of an abandoned tower behind the Grand Duke’s palace.

At that time, Nikolai was only ten years old.

***

Katya woke up to the sound of groaning.

She instinctively reached to the side, but the bed was empty.

“Grand Duke? Where did you go?”

She quietly called for her husband as she got out of bed.

When she looked around, she immediately found him.

Nikolai lay curled up on the sofa under the moonlit window.

The groans came from his lips.

“Grand Duke…?”

He suffered in pain, even sweating.

Without time to be surprised, Katya immediately knelt by his head and took his hand.

He called out for something desperately.

“Brother…”

Nikolai’s brother could only mean the dead Prince Ruslan.

Though everyone hushed up how he died, it was essentially an open secret.

While the official cause of death was head trauma from an accident, the bruises all over his body made it clear enough that the former Grand Duke had beaten him until just before his death.

People gossiped that Ruslan died in Nikolai’s place because Nikolai provoked his father’s anger and used his brother as a shield while running away.

Though it was a rumor spread by Oksana and her faction, the boyars who held animosity toward Nikolai, the former Grand Duchess’s son, believed it without question.

In truth, they wanted to believe it because they hoped Nikolai would be completely pushed out of the succession.

Until meeting Nikolai, Katya had no interest in politics whatsoever.

So she neither believed nor disbelieved such rumors.

She had been too busy living her own life to care who became ruler.

But her thoughts changed after learning about lives suffering in unseen places.

Nikolai had risked his life traveling south to see and understand the pain of such people firsthand, and to change this country from its roots.

Yet such a person hadn’t looked after his own wounds until they festered like this.

“Wounds will scar if they fester.”

“A single scratch on you hurts me more than the dozens of scars on my body.”

“I’d rather get dozens more scars on my body than see you hurt again.”

“I’m already a person with many scars. A few more won’t be noticeable, but you were raised preciously with only love from your parents.”

Nikolai’s wounds weren’t just physical.

How many scars marked his heart?

Katya didn’t know exactly what had happened until Tatiana was deposed, nor that Nikolai had been imprisoned in the tower.

But seeing him suffer even in his dreams made her heart feel like it was being torn apart.

It was a very unfamiliar feeling, one she hadn’t felt since her mother died.

Katya quietly but firmly held his hand.

Even in his dream, Nikolai held her hand tightly as though he never wanted to let go again.

As she wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of her hand, he finally woke up gasping for breath.

He sat up and lost his words for a moment, startled to see Katya right beside him.

“Are you alright, Grand Duke?”

Thinking he had shown his wife something unsightly, Nikolai rubbed his face with one hand.

Would she be shocked to see me like this?

In front of Katya, he had acted like a bright person without any darkness to match her.

What if she became afraid after seeing the shadow of misfortune behind the mask?

If she ran away from him…

At that thought, the world that had briefly become paradise through her felt like it was becoming hell again.

“I’m sorry. Did I wake you? I have terrible sleeping habits…”

Nikolai said with a fabricated playful smile before she could notice.

Katya caught his hand as he subtly tried to avoid her gaze and met his eyes.

“Did you have a nightmare?”

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

His tone suggested this was familiar to him.

It seemed this wasn’t something he had experienced just once or twice.

Seeing him like this, Katya recalled her own childhood.

After her mother died, on nights when she had nightmares, she would go to her father’s bedroom and cry that she missed her mom.

Her sister would wake up at her crying and follow, crying together.

At such times, their father would keep all the lights on that floor and make a tent in the room, holding hands with the two sisters as they slept inside it.

When Laika tried to squeeze her huge body in and nearly collapsed the tent, the children would stop crying and burst into giggles.

When they fell back asleep in that cramped space, they would sleep soundly as if the nightmare fairy had run away.

“Shall we sleep together?”

“…What?”

“They say even nightmare demons can’t squeeze in when more than two people sleep close together. Hold my hand and sleep, Grand Duke.”

What you need right now is family by your side.

So just for today, I’ll be your real wife.

Katya couldn’t bring herself to say those words aloud and just smiled with reddened eyes.

“What are you…”

“We’re already holding hands, so let’s go to bed together.”

Under the blue moonlight, tears gathered in Katya’s eyes sparkled.

Had she cried for me?

‘Why?’

Before he could think of the reason, his eyes grew hot.

Nikolai thought:

You are more dangerous than any nightmare demon.