Chapter 38. Another Salvation

“—!”

At the same time, the consciousness that had sunk into deep sleep returned. The familiar ceiling greeted him as his eyes flew open. Allen, unaccustomed to the darkness, kept his pitch-black vision still and just breathed heavily.

His deeply furrowed face that would pain even onlookers, the cold sweat soaking his forehead and nape, and the blanket full of traces of his struggle to escape – everywhere was filled with evidence of how much he had struggled in the nightmare. His chest repeatedly swelled and deflated.

However, as it wouldn’t calm down easily, he spent a long time regulating his breathing before finally raising his body to lean against the bed’s headboard. Just then, he noticed a bright beam of light seeping through the gap in the curtains covering the window.

“……”

Allen stared at that light for a long time, captivated. At a glance, he seemed to have calmed down on the surface. But his tangled mind kept ruminating on Ailexia’s last words from the nightmare.

Before he knew it, it took him back to that night, in front of Ailexia’s bedroom.

The secondary palace he had arrived at, almost dragged by the Emperor’s knight. The stairs he had reluctantly climbed. The shouts echoing from the bedroom. And the moment his feet, which hadn’t moved due to shame and humiliation amid that commotion, started moving on their own.

[“Allen Bledin…, kills Ailexia…, know…”]

The words reached him sporadically as he approached the bedroom.

At that moment, without even hearing the rest, he turned and fled from that spot. He still didn’t know exactly why he had done so.

He only remembered his heart pounding wildly, like someone whose carefully hidden secret had been discovered.

‘I kill Ailexia with my own hands.’

He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. He thought about it with his eyes closed.

‘Do I want to kill that woman? Can I kill her?’

Surprisingly, the answer didn’t come immediately. Despite countless thoughts of wanting to kill her every time Ailexia insulted him and dragged him down to rock bottom, when he seriously considered it, he couldn’t easily say yes.

He truly couldn’t understand himself.

‘Why on earth.’

Because of Ailexia, he was miserably broken. His life, his very self, everything.

The comfortable luxury given to him as compensation was the price for being toyed with, nothing more than payment for prostitution. It wasn’t a comfort that sustained him.

Yet he remained here. He scurried to Ailexia’s call, licked her feet as ordered and gave her pleasure, and when she didn’t call, he became anxious and uneasy. He even went to the secondary palace on his own and felt angry seeing another man leaving her side.

“…Am I still hoping for something from you?”

Like a fool.

Ha, a self-deprecating laugh burst through his lips. Fool, yes. There probably isn’t a word that describes him better. Is there a more fitting word for someone who can’t let go of the hand dragging him down to hell?

Even knowing that. Knowing it better than anyone else…

“…Do you think I can kill you?”

Again, he wondered about Ailexia’s intentions. Like a dog whining to dispel this anxiety by trying to understand its master’s will.

Perhaps she already knows him better than he knows himself. That no matter how much she insults, tramples, and breaks him, he’s an idiot who will always come back.

‘It’s not wrong.’

He covered his eyes with his arm. That’s right. He was that kind of person. He could never let go of the first hand extended to him.

But… After a long while, Allen muttered weakly.

“Ailexia… I wish another salvation would appear for me.”

So that I could let go of this rotten rope. So that I could abandon you.

“Then…, I think I could kill you then.”

So that I could cut you off with my own hands.

* * *

“Then I’ll start by searching all the inns in the capital. If she’s not there, I’ll gradually expand the radius starting from places close to the capital. Ah, I should also check near illegal auction houses, right?”

Iella watched Nix busily marking various places on the maps of the empire and the capital region spread out before him.

Several days had already passed since she had put aside her doubts about him and started accepting his help. It was from the day she received a reply to the letter she had sent to her father through Nix.

‘I could have trusted him right away, but…’

There was no doubt that the first letter he had handed her was from her father, so she could have. But Iella wanted to be cautious.

She thought that an information broker from the underworld who knew about her childhood would surely know the conversations she had with her father, and she didn’t want to taste failure again by believing too hastily. So she sent a letter to test him and to get confirmation from her father again.

‘There’s no harm in being cautious.’

Her gaze turned to the vase on the table. It was filled with blue mini delphinium flowers.

It was the ‘flower containing fairy’s blessing’ that she had requested from her father in the letter.

Generally, the flower known to contain fairy’s blessing in the empire was marigold. This was due to a famous fairy tale book called <The Fairy’s Gift> that Iella also enjoyed reading as a child.

It was a story that began with a boy who accidentally discovers a fairy in danger, helps her, and receives a reward for his kindness, wishing for the fairy to become his friend in return. It was about a beautiful friendship between different races.

At the end of that book, the flower that the fairy gives to the boy who has come of age, along with a ring made from the source of her power, was the marigold.

So Iella also remembers liking marigolds for a while. But one day, during an outing with her parents, she saw blue mini delphiniums by chance and heard their flower language, which changed her mind.

The blue mini delphinium petals blooming in the sunlight were just like the fairy wings Iella had imagined, and its flower language–dignity and grace–reminded her of the fairy in the storybook.

Iella whispered what she felt into her parents’ ears like she was telling a secret. From that day on, for the three of them, the flower containing fairy’s blessing became the blue mini delphinium, not the marigold.

‘It’s a memory I’ve never told anyone else.’

Like children of that age, Iella wanted to keep her amazing discovery a secret, and her parents went along with it. Thanks to that, it had remained a secret among the three of them until now.

In other words, if Nix had fabricated her father’s letter, there should be marigolds in that vase.

“Miss?”

Iella, who had been looking at the flowers, turned her head towards Nix at the sound of his voice calling her. In the meantime, he seemed to have quickly observed Iella’s behavior, as his ash-gray eyes moved to the flowers and back.

“Looking at it again, it resembles you.”

“The flower?”

“Yes. Something small, delicate, fragile-looking… You were often sick as a child, weren’t you?”

“…Me?”

Iella made a puzzled expression as if she had heard something incomprehensible. As far as she remembered, she had never been seriously ill. She didn’t even have many minor illnesses, as she recalled.

“Are you confusing me with someone else? I don’t have such memories.”

“…Ah, right, you don’t. Haha! I must have been mistaken.”

Nix, who had mumbled something quietly, immediately corrected his words as a mistake. But despite his response, Iella felt something oddly unsettling.

“You seem to know a lot about my childhood?”

“Ah, actually, I stayed at the viscount’s house before I completely took over Aether.”

“You stayed at our mansion?”

“Until you turned seven years old. So it’s natural that you don’t know.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Iella, who had been surprised by the unexpected words, felt something strange about his ambiguous answer.

Of course, she could think that she didn’t remember well because she was young. But his nuance wasn’t like that. It was as if he assumed she had no memories until she was seven years old.

‘…But it does seem like that.’

As Iella unconsciously tried to recall her memories, she realized for the first time that she couldn’t remember anything before she was seven years old. When she thought about her oldest memories, they were all from when she was eight years old.

“Our active hours didn’t overlap much. At that time, although I was young too, I was already helping with Aether’s work, so I kept going back and forth between the guild and the viscount’s house. More importantly, there’s something I want to ask.”

It was a plausible explanation, so Iella accepted it without thinking too deeply. She also dismissed the lack of memories before seven years old, thinking it must be because it was from long ago.

“What is it?”

“If it’s alright, may I behave as I usually do?”

“…Pardon?”

Iella, who had expected a question related to tracking Ailexia’s whereabouts, couldn’t help but ask again. Then, feeling uncomfortable with Nix who was looking at her with sparkling eyes, she nodded reluctantly. As if he had been waiting for it, Nix quickly reflected Iella’s permission.

“Whew, I thought I was going to die from awkwardness! Trying not to cut off the ends of my sentences was no easy task, I tell you.”

“By behaving as you usually do…”

“Having encountered only rough guys throughout my life, talking formally just doesn’t stick to my tongue. Even the viscount stopped minding after a while, you know? But with you, Miss, I’ve been maintaining a certain level of politeness. But now I’ve reached my limit.”

Seeing him speak fluently without pausing, unlike before, it seemed he really had reached his limit. Iella was contemplating whether she should thank him for trying to maintain politeness in his own way when she decided against it. Just then, Vanessa’s sharp hand struck him. A crisp slapping sound rang out.

“Ow! Why did you hit me!”

“Because you’re pathetic, that’s why.”

Iella watched the intimate interaction between the two with curiosity. She wondered how Vanessa had become close to such a person, and it was a moment when she became more curious about their relationship.

Of course, in her previous life, Vanessa was a person with excellent social skills. Unlike herself, who had only a few close acquaintances except for Vanessa, she had a wide network of connections.

‘Her personality remains the same.’

Whenever she discovered Vanessa behaving no differently from how she knew her, Iella felt strangely at ease. She couldn’t tell exactly whether it was due to familiarity or because it felt like confirming that she wasn’t alone in this place.

The only thing certain was that with Vanessa by her side, she didn’t feel very anxious.