Free Web NovelHe strode forward.
Before the maids could stop him, he pulled away the cloth covering the basket she was holding. Clean silk cloths soaked with red blood were piled inside.
“You dare conceal a matter concerning His Majesty’s body?”
“His Majesty ordered us not to inform anyone.”
“There is nothing in this royal palace Lord Giselle does not know. I will inform him myself, so tell me what has been happening.”
It was, to some extent, arbitrary. The knight borrowed Giselle’s name and warned her sternly.
Even after that, the maid did not open her mouth for a long while. She must have been torn between loyalty to the king and concern for him. But now that this had already been discovered, it was only a matter of time before Giselle found out. In the end, the maid spoke.
“Recently, His Majesty seems to have been suffering from nightmares.”
“You don’t sound certain.”
“...That is what we suspect.”
The maid’s body trembled as she gripped the basket tightly.
When Ragniel’s terrified face rose in her mind, the maid felt her back grow damp. His expression had been so horrifying that anyone who saw it would feel the same. Tensing her shaking body, she quickly continued.
“He complains of severe anxiety. He cannot sleep at night, and even while awake, he seems anxious. Whenever he looks at a mirror, he almost always breaks it... He cannot eat properly either.”
But she could not say everything she knew.
“Did this begin before the departure for war?”
“Yes. It has been quite some time.”
“I understand. I will report this to Lord Giselle. From now on, you had better be more careful about what you say.”
The knight added the last part as a warning not to talk carelessly in the corridor. The maid nodded with a dark expression. After parting her lips as if to say something, she wrapped the cloth tightly around the basket again and left.
“Announce me. I am Heralts, vice commander of the Second Knight Order.”
“Your Majesty, Sir Heralts, vice commander of the Second Knight Order, has come to see you.”
Thud.
Your Majesty, you mustn’t... Your Majesty!
There was the sound of something striking, followed by a commotion. The maid glanced around nervously, then lowered her head.
Heralds waited patiently.
Before long, the door opened.
“...”
Heralts swallowed a groan. The king’s bedchamber was a wreck.
The boy king’s room, decorated like a temple with pillars bearing statues of the goddess and saints, felt bleak and eerie. Heralts carefully studied the faces of the maids greeting him. Fear and worry were mixed in their expressions. They kept carrying round baskets out of the room. When Heralts stopped one and inspected it, he found broken fragments of objects and cloths used to wipe away blood.
One of the maids quietly lifted her head and looked at Heralts. When their eyes met, Heralts jerked his chin, telling her to leave. The maid bowed her head and exited the room.
Her expression was speaking.
Help him. Do something for that poor king.
Standing in front of the door, Heralts slowly stepped forward. He had been moving carefully, but the sight of Ragniel made him almost break into a run.
“Your Majesty!”
Thud, thud, thud.
The heavy sound of Heralts’s footsteps rang through the room. Even so, Ragniel did not look back at him. Lying on his side beside the enormous bed, Ragniel was clutching a broken shard of mirror in both hands. The hands of the maids kneeling beside him and pleading with him were red as well. It seemed they had been wounded while trying to stop him, then had given up.
“Your Majesty, please let go of the mirror shard.”
“Your Majesty, please allow us to treat your wounds...”
Bloodstains were stuck to the floor. The marks they had not yet managed to clean were brutally visible.
“Your Majesty.”
At the deep male voice, the maids who had been bowing over him in supplication flinched and raised their upper bodies.
“Your Majesty, I am Heralts Mateo, vice commander of the Second Knight Order.”
Still lying down, Ragniel only rolled his eyes.
Looking at that waxen face, Heralts waited patiently.
“Ah, Vice Commander. What brings you here?”
His voice, which had begun by sinking weakly, gradually regained strength toward the end. Heralts dared to look directly into Ragniel’s transparent eyes and opened his mouth.
“Lord Giselle has taken Dell Belkerman’s sword. I came to report that to you.”
“Ah. Giselle did?” freeweɓnovel.cѳm
Ragniel’s face showed no particular emotion.
“That sword is extremely dangerous.”
Heralts added.
“I see.”
“...”
That was the end of Ragniel’s reaction.
“Your Majesty...”
As Heralts opened his mouth to say something, a maid who had crawled over on her knees caught his sleeve. She shook her head and gestured with her eyes toward Ragniel’s hands. The mirror shard was still clenched tightly in his grip. Even though its broken, sharp edge was digging into his flesh, Ragniel did not loosen his hand. Whatever he was looking at in that small shard, his eyes would not leave the mirror. Watching those bloodshot eyes, Heralts carefully approached him. Fortunately, Ragniel did not react.
“Your Majesty.”
After drawing closer, Heralts spoke again.
“What are you staring at so intently?”
“...”
When had he fallen apart like this? Was the pressure of the war weighing on him after sending out the Heroes? As vice commander, Heralts was in charge of palace defense. He had been stationed in the palace for a long time, so he roughly knew its circumstances. That was also why his loyalty to Ragniel was ambiguous.
Heralts wanted the king to stand properly on his own.
“What am I staring at, you ask?”
Ragniel, whom he had not expected to answer, spoke belatedly. Heralts flinched in surprise. Ragniel was looking at Heralts through the mirror. When he tried to sit up, the maids quickly came over and supported him. Hair stuck to his pressed cheek. Bloodstains, impossible to hide, marked his face.
“Please call a physician and receive treatment.”
“I can deal with wounds like these myself.”
Ragniel said it firmly. At his nod, a maid swallowed back tears and hurriedly brought over a first-aid kit. It seemed to have been used quite often; many of the items inside were missing.
“Your Majesty, I will treat you.”
The maid began treating him before Ragniel could answer. At her words, the other maids moved in perfect order. The maid who brought hot water and cloth wiped the dirt and blood stuck to his hands, while the others cleaned the bloodstains from the rug where Ragniel had been lying. They searched for tiny shards of mirror and picked them up, and a new mirror was brought into the room.
They could not stop the king from seeking a mirror. Even if he broke mirrors dozens of times and harmed himself with them, they had no choice but to bring in another of the same kind. The outer corner of the fireplace. The bloodstains soaked into it still had not been erased. Beneath the king’s thick hair, there were still wounds that had not healed.
The attendants carried in the mirror with dark faces. The knight’s expression turned terrifying as he looked at them.
But the knight had no choice but to turn his head back. Ragniel had given him an answer to his question.
“I was looking at myself. You said you were Sir Heralts, did you not?”
“...Yes, Your Majesty.”
For some reason, Heralts felt something strange in that calm, warm voice. He swallowed his breath and answered steadily. When Ragniel beckoned to him, Heralts approached on his knees. Ragniel abruptly dismissed the maids. The wounds, once the blood had been wiped away, were sharp and deep.
“Your Majesty, you should receive treatment first...”
“Come closer.”
Ragniel cut off Heralts’s words and grabbed his arm. Heralts had no choice but to obey the king.
“Look at this. What do you see?”
Ragniel held out the mirror shard he had set on the floor. The mirror, broken into a sharp inverted triangle, still served its function.
It reflected Heralts’s rigid form in full. His darkly tanned skin, the beard that had grown out before he knew it, the wrinkle between his brows, even his faintly narrowed eyes.
“I see myself.”
“How does it feel?”
“Pardon?”
He had no idea what the king was talking about. As Heralts tried to tear his gaze away from the mirror, Ragniel caught his face. Since he could not shake off the king’s hand, Heralts had no choice but to keep looking at himself in the mirror.
Heralts in the mirror showed his feelings exactly as they were.
Bewilderment.
When he had overheard the conversation in the corridor, he had not been able to imagine Ragniel’s condition. He had simply assumed Ragniel had been crying out in distress and breaking a few objects.
But reality was entirely different. Ragniel was not screaming, nor was he destroying anything. He was simply lying quietly in that ruined room, {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} staring into a mirror.
With a peaceful face.
But the moment the mirror turned aside.
At that instant, Heralts felt cold sweat run down his back.
The mirror in his hand shifted the wrong way and caught the light of the fireplace. At that moment, Ragniel let go of Heralts. Heralts hurriedly gripped the shard of mirror. The sharp fragment slid gently into his tender skin. At the chilling sensation, the hand holding the mirror shook for an instant.
And the mirror reflected Ragniel.
The young boy king.
The king more beautiful and frail than anyone else.
The moment that king, wearing a peaceful and beautiful smile, was caught in the mirror—
Heralts felt as though he had seen something grotesque.
Cheeks gaunt as a skull.
Bulging eyes and hollowed sockets.
A body like dry branches, and hair like straw.
But those were not what frightened Heralts.
It was the two eyes in that withered body, shining with longing like suns.
