***

Herta fought with her more and more frequently and reconciled with difficulty.
“You have to trust me! My words, not others’!”
She always shouted like that.
People always created strange rumors, talked, and took no responsibility. Because under his control, she couldn’t build any power base.
The Empress, who monopolized the Emperor’s affection, yet commanded no power of her own.
He knew she would become increasingly isolated.
But he disliked her mingling with others.
Building power, promising authority, taking sides… Did she really need to do that? He would do anything she wanted.
She didn’t need to do such troublesome things; she just needed to stay by his side.
“I feel like a living ghost, Herta. No one listens to me anymore.”
At her sarcasm, he punished those who served her, but she mocked his actions.
“You’re the one who told them not to listen to me. They were just being loyal to you.”
That was a misunderstanding. He had merely instructed them to protect her well, to prevent dangerous people from approaching her.
It was just that not a single ‘non-dangerous person’ who could pass the conditions he set had appeared so far.
“If I keep living like this, I’ll go mad. I can’t live like this anymore.”
One dawn, she crawled out of bed from his embrace.
Biting his fingers hard enough to draw blood as he tried to hold her, she cried out in disgust.
“I can’t live with you anymore! Don’t touch my body! I-I’m leaving here!”
She was trembling and anxious.
So he called for physicians. He thought she was sick and talking nonsense.
Seeing the physicians rushing in, all expression disappeared from her face.
“You’re the one who’s crazy, Herta. Not me.”
And she left the imperial palace.
He tried to stop her but—
“Step aside if you don’t want to see me die before your eyes.”
—she said. It was truly terrible.
She had betrayed him. After saying she loved him, she went to another man.
She said she was returning to her original home, but that was a deception.
Hadn’t she lost all her family in childhood?
The Basilinte family wasn’t her family. The man she called brother was merely a love rival who had once been married to her.
It took all his patience just not to kill that man at her pleading.
He went to that damned rival’s house and confessed both his love and resentment to her, but she drove him away with lies.
“Haven’t you come to your senses yet? The person who guided you here is my brother’s lover! Please come to your senses!”
By then, his distrust and anxiety had reached their peak.
“I still love you. So let’s try a little harder together. Okay?”
But he knew that she was pregnant.
She hadn’t told him. She hadn’t mentioned to him that she was with child.
If it were his child, she surely would have said something.
Finally, he confronted her. Whose child was it?
“Our child, Herta. You…”
She said something more, but he couldn’t hear it clearly.
He wanted to go back to the past. To that moment by the rain-streaked window when she returned his proposal with a confession of love.
“Even if you betrayed me, I’ll forgive you. So tell me. Who is it? I’ll take care of it. We’ll be fine. Really…”
He increasingly recalled his master’s words. Did no one really love him?
“Why can’t you trust me?”
With an expression he had never seen before, she spat out the question she always repeated.
He suddenly sensed that if he avoided answering this question again, he might lose her completely.
His words trembled, though he had never stuttered even as a child. And with difficulty, haltingly, he talked about his childhood.
As far as he could remember, he had always been a genius, and no one had loved him. People around him either admired or envied him. Or both.
Even as an infant, he hadn’t received care.
He didn’t die even without eating, and was clean even without being washed. There wasn’t even any sign of neglect.
Until he could walk on his own, he survived alone in a dark room with no one else.
Even after escaping that place, Herta thought he was still trapped in that dark room.
He didn’t know the difference between that place and the outside world. Not until he met her.
She was the only exception who showed him that his master’s words were wrong.
“Your talent and your master have ruined you.”
She whispered at the end of his disjointed confession.
He felt fear in that moment.
The reason he hadn’t told this story until now was because he didn’t want to appear weak to her.
When one shows weakness, people always stab at that part.
Knowing this, why did he speak? Did he want to confirm once more that she was an exception? But…
“Herta. You don’t love me.”
…See. It ended up like this after all.
“You just need me. Someone to tell you they love you unconditionally. You’ve been taking from me the affection your parents or master should have given you.”
No. I don’t need parents or a master. I only need you. You can be my parents and master, lover, friend, family, my everything.
“I was young then, too, and didn’t know. I’m sorry, Herta. I should have been family to you. Not a lover.”
And she left.
“In some sense, I do love you. But it’s better if we’re not together. For your sak,e too.”
Leaving only the terrible advice to try making friends, lovers, or family, she departed.
He was abandoned. She would not return.
Unlike previous separations, this time she truly abandoned him. She left, completely turning her back on him.
“Tell her.”
For the first time, Herta infused his magical power into ‘words’ directed at her.
He knew this could become a curse, but he couldn’t help it.
She had to return to him of her own accord. She had to love him again.
“You will not be able to love anyone. You will feel no emotion for any event, any person, and you will find no joy in anything.”
If not him, no one should receive her love.
“Your surroundings will become barren, desolate, and nothing will be able to live there. No one will love you, and no one will remain by your side…”
Herta cursed her.
“Return to me.”

***

[Return to me.]
This was Herta’s longing that became the source of the curse.
Leticia regained consciousness the moment those words were uttered from Herta’s lips.
Detached completely from ‘Herta’.
Yet she was still in the past from over 300 years ago. Not on the rainy rocky mountain.
However, she was no longer seeing his memories while being assimilated with ‘Herta’ as before.
‘It feels like I’ve become the curse itself, without physical form…’
It was an extremely strange sensation.
To use a metaphor, it felt like becoming a shadow that had detached from Herta.
She—that is, ‘Herta’s curse’—clung to the feet of the man whom Herta called a love rival but who seemed to be simply ‘her’ brother.
And using that man as a means of transport, arrived at ‘her’.
There, Leticia could see her dying.