Chapter 87

When they got out of the carriage, before the bell rang and the maids came to greet them, Helio suddenly grabbed Sabina’s cheek, as he had before…

The moment he thought that, Sabina was already apart. Helio realized Sabina had stopped time and stepped back a few paces. Sabina spoke quietly.

“If you read, you’ll regret it. Do you still want to read?”

Helio nodded. Sabina never told him any deep secrets. He wanted to know.

“I warned you.”

Helio would be the one reading, Sabina the one being read, but Helio actually looked more anxious. The boy approached Sabina with a pale face. He cupped her cheek and read everything. Her long black hair flowed over his hand.

After reading Sabina’s feelings, Helio felt powerless and devastated.

Sabina’s mind was filled with Ashton Bryant. Helio even learned the fact—he’d rather not know—that Ashton had had seizures. The boy smiled despairingly and withdrew his hand.

“Are you not curious about anything about me?”

“There is.”

Sabina spoke calmly and quietly, unlike when she was with Ashton.

“What is it?”

There was a brief silence. It took Sabina a moment to recall what she was ‘curious’ about. The fact that she hadn’t carried that question with her gave Helio another sense of deprivation. If it were a question about Ashton, she wouldn’t have forgotten.

“When did you start meeting Reyes Brinita?”

Julia and Vicky came out to carry Helio’s luggage. Sabina didn’t even wait for Helio’s answer, slowly climbing the stone steps and entering the front door. The boy’s heart lurched at his master’s indifferent back.

He bounded up three steps at a time to stand beside Sabina. She glanced at him and said,

“If you’re willing to answer, come up to my room.”

By ‘her room,’ Sabina meant the study, of course. She never allowed guests other than Ashton into her bedroom.

Sabina led Helio into the study and skillfully locked the door with magic. She looked calmly at Helio, but there was a trace of impatience in her eyes.

She wanted to hear his answer quickly and go to Ashton. She wanted to spend as much time as possible with that man in his remaining life. Jealousy boiled up.

Sabina asked,

“Tell me. How did you become friends with him?”

Helio wanted to be difficult. He wanted to keep her from leaving, insist on tea time, dinner, and reading together until dawn before he’d answer.

But that would only make the boy more miserable. Sabina would simply go to Ashton without waiting for an answer if Helio tried that.

So he opened his mouth, realizing that even the less miserable choice would still make him look foolish and small.

He gave the weakened seal its final blow. His grief condensed into a surprising strength as he hammered at the seal. It broke as easily as an egg.

Helio tried not to be excited, tried not to cry. He tried to speak calmly and dryly, just like Sabina.

However, it didn’t go well. The words Helio chose were intense, and his tone was agitated.

“‘That person’ you love cast magic on me, Master. He revealed to me what he would do using you, and then sealed my mouth so I couldn’t tell anyone.”

Sabina’s face twisted in disgust. It was disgust directed at Ashton. Helio wondered whether Sabina would have shown such an expression even if he hadn’t planted feelings of hatred.

Now, everything was doubt.

A sob began to rise from deep inside.

“I thought you were in danger, Master, and I was distressed. But you never knew how I felt. Only the Prince knew. The Prince, after meeting me, immediately… figured out what was going on.”

Aside from Helio becoming wary of Reyes after seeing his ugly side, that was how it started. Ashton had locked Helio’s throat with a spell, mocking him, and while Sabina was absorbed in her own matters, unable to look around, it was Reyes who reached out to the struggling boy.

Helio felt wronged. Even so, he loved Sabina most… and began to suspect Reyes for her sake.

“That’s how we started meeting. To keep that dangerous guy away from you, Master.”

“I’m sorry.”

Sabina hadn’t known what Helio was dealing with behind the scenes. Even if he wanted to speak, his mouth was sealed, so he couldn’t express anything. She should have paid more careful attention to him.

But Helio hated the apology Sabina gave him. Even that felt like a guardian apologizing for her neglect to her ward. He disliked apologies and reflections in that direction. The boy wanted to be seen as an adult. He wanted to stand beside her.

“Don’t apologize!”

Helio finally burst into tears. Sabina stared blankly at Helio, who was crying in front of her.

Guilt wrapped around her.

“I didn’t know you were so anxious. Not knowing is my fault, too…”

Sabina approached to comfort him. Helio sobbed, his shoulders shaking. After some hesitation, Sabina patted his shoulder.

Ashton Bryant was not a dangerous person at all. If anything, he intervened in the third timeline to save her. He made Helio misunderstand, and Helio fell for it perfectly.

She didn’t know why Ashton did such things.

She wanted to reassure Helio, but even Sabina, dull as she was, knew defending Ashton here would backfire.

“You were wrong, Master. Why didn’t you tell me anything?”

Helio was still young. Sabina didn’t want to burden him with adult worries or share her troubles. She felt that was what adults should do. But for Helio, it wasn’t right.

“If you told me now…”

“Now?”

Helio cut her off. He smiled, his face twisted.

“Do you know? When you showed me your mind earlier, I saw you resisting my magic. You weren’t obeying the hatred I gave you.”

“……”

“I always did my best in my own way. I believed you hating him would hurt you the least. But you used that to… to love. To love him.”

Helio grabbed Sabina’s shoulders.

“Are you going to apologize for this, too? Are you going to apologize for loving him?”

Helio looked into Sabina’s face and laughed emptily. She wasn’t showing the variety of expressions she did when with Ashton.

“You resist, but you don’t ask me to break the magic. You seem to like it, even though it hurts me, regardless of my intentions…”

What should a guardian do when their ward unleashes such negative emotions? Sabina’s mind pushed Ashton aside, focusing only on Helio in front of her. But the boy couldn’t be satisfied.

He wanted Sabina to cling to him. At least, he wanted her to need him. He wanted her to ask him to break the magic.

But Sabina wanted to carry the pain he gave her.

Turning it into happiness.

It was a miserable thing. Helio didn’t know how to find peace anymore.

If the hatred Helio planted in Sabina was the driving force for her to realize love, then maybe taking it away would be best for himself.

Helio reached out to Sabina through his tears. But in the end, he couldn’t take the hatred back.

Ashton would soon die. And without that hatred, Sabina would be consumed by pure sorrow. The boy wanted to live for Sabina, after all. Until the end. Even if his clumsy actions hurt her for now.

“If you’re… happy, Master… then that’s enough for me.”

It wasn’t true. Even if Sabina was happy, Helio would still be torn apart by jealousy.

The moment he cast the hatred spell, Helio wanted her to suffer. He wanted her to be dominated by what he’d forced into her. But his wish for her happiness wasn’t a lie, either.

“Struggle in hatred. I… hope that when that man is dying, you’ll be tormented by your own face full of self-hatred, Master.”

Helio whispered, then vanished before Sabina’s eyes.

Sabina stared at the space where the boy had disappeared. Had he already mastered teleportation enough to use it? He was growing while she wasn’t paying attention.

Sabina burst out laughing. The titles people used to address her with reverence seemed ridiculous.

‘Lord of Time’, they called her. But time flowed helplessly in places she didn’t know.

Sabina stood alone in the study, recalling her mother’s letter.

Her mother left only a letter and disappeared. Instead of hoping Sabina would someday visit Berna and receive her letter, she wished her mother had come to her directly.

If her mother had been there, could she have given advice?

What did she believe in to send such a letter to a daughter she barely spent time with?

Sabina wondered if everything around her was falling apart.

She went up to her bedroom and took her mother’s letter from the drawer. A short, crooked letter in Letona language. It was filled with dry advice rather than longing or affection for her daughter.

『But someday, a strong desire to use magic will urge you. When that happens, use your magic. When you desperately need magic enough to overturn everything you have learned and absorbed, do so.

Then you will be free.』

“Will turning back time really put things back in place?”

The path not taken might be better than this, or it might be rougher.

Sabina wondered if she had always been such a coward. She was starting to dislike herself.

Because it wasn’t an artificially implanted feeling, Sabina quietly bowed to it.

She held her mother’s letter and closed her eyes.

What should she do? She couldn’t see an inch ahead, as if surrounded by thick fog. She just felt like she was sinking in this reality.

‘When a strong desire urges me…’

How strong does a desire have to be to be called ‘strong’? Was she ruining things by hesitating?

Where was she drifting now?

Did she even know herself?