Chapter 026
In that year, Sioden postponed the return schedule. It was the first time he had done so since leaving the castle.
He also stopped going out at night to drink. Instead, he spent that time sitting in front of the piano, trying to get accustomed to the keys.
Although he didn’t possess a soul delicate enough to love scales and rhythms, he was a quick learner, and soon Sioden had picked up the playing technique quite well.
One day, Evelyn came to listen to her son play. She was amazed to see him skillfully pressing the keys with both hands.
“He plays just like me. He must have inherited my musical ear.”
This was true because he had directly imitated her playing style, but instead of correcting his mother’s misconception, Sioden devoted more time to practice.
After that, Evelyn watched her son sitting in front of the piano a few more times.
For the first time, Sioden thought he didn’t want to go to the border. He wanted to maintain this state for as long as possible.
However, he could not postpone his return.
Eventually, before the spring of that year began, Sioden set off for the border again. This time, Evelyn did not come to see him off, but it was not as bitter as before.
Next year might be different. That day, he thought as he kicked his horse into motion, leaving the castle walls behind.
“Raslet Castle is your home.”
He felt he could somewhat agree with the thought he had inwardly scoffed at.
☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓 ☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓
In autumn, Merwen sent a letter.
[-The Duchess has not been well lately.]
It didn’t take long for him to return to the castle after receiving the letter.
Evelyn, whom he met after just over half a year, looked quite gaunt. As soon as he returned, he found several bottles of southern wine in his mother’s room.
Heavily intoxicated, Evelyn was asleep. Her clothes and bedding were disheveled, and her cheeks, still flushed with the remnants of alcohol, were sunken and damp.
As he covered his mother with a blanket over her shoulders, Sezna spoke to him.
“It might be better if you weren’t here.”
Sezna had been Evelyn’s maid since she was the Crown Prince’s fiancée. When Evelyn wanted to break a long-standing promise and leave for the North, she was her only supporting friend.
No one in Raslet Castle knew Evelyn better than Sezna.
Though it was advice from such a woman, Sioden did not listen.
As Sezna said, Evelyn did not welcome her son.
The drunken Evelyn was more candid than when sober. Within a few days, Sioden learned all the feelings she had hidden while he was growing up.
“Why did you have to take after your father? If you had taken after me, I could have taken you back!”
In a drunken stupor, Evelyn repeated the same accusation several times.
He knew his mother was not in her right mind. Yet, as time went on, he grew weary.
Sioden tried hard not to show his feelings on the surface.
It wasn’t easy. Until then, Sioden had never cared for someone who was ill.
Moreover, the illness that afflicted Evelyn was one that even doctors could not cure. It was a sickness rooted in her heart, not her body.
Still, he did his best. He moved his mother to the main building, persuaded Evelyn, who was reluctant, to meet with a doctor, and kept the servants silent.
One evening, Evelyn, having drunk heavily again, shivered.
“It’s too cold here.”
Sioden gauged when he might be able to retrieve the bottle his mother was clutching.
He wanted to reduce her alcohol intake, but if he took the alcohol away, Evelyn screamed that she would die. It was a desperate and sincere cry that even frightened the doctor.
Yet, he couldn’t just leave her be, so he watched over Evelyn and removed the alcohol whenever it seemed she would fall asleep.
Evelyn lowered her gaze and muttered, “I’m definitely going to freeze to death.”
Sioden snatched the fur from beside the fireplace. He tightly wrapped it around his mother’s shoulders and said firmly, “No, that won’t happen.”
It was more a statement directed at himself than at Evelyn.
At that moment, Sioden felt unsteady. Perhaps it was accurate to say he had an intuition: Evelyn’s illness would never heal, and he would never see her as he had during the New Year’s celebration.
He just didn’t voice it.
Evelyn lifted her head. When she glared at him with her glistening eyes, Sioden flinched.
Hatred dripped from her darkened gaze.
No one had ever shown him such immense hostility before.
Evelyn declared, looking at him as if she could kill her son with just her gaze, “If I die here, it’s all your fault.”
Because you were born, my feet are bound.
Before the resentful sentence could finish, Evelyn dropped her head again.
Like a drunken person, Sioden quickly lifted his mother and moved her to the bed. Evelyn didn’t wake even when he arranged her bedding.
As he looked down at her, he confessed belatedly, “I know.”
He had been aware for a long time that Evelyn’s misfortune stemmed from his existence.
If he could eliminate himself now to solve her problems, he would gladly do so.
However, it was already too late for Evelyn to be happy again. If he left, she would not last a month before dying.
Knowing this fact, Sioden could not grant his mother freedom.
As he closed the door to Evelyn’s bedroom, he found Merwen standing in the hallway.
She approached him. He asked the woman who had observed the entire scene in the castle while he was away, “Do you know when this started?”
“Well…,” Merwen rolled her eyes. After a brief hesitation, she spoke.
“One day, the lord came to visit.”
She lowered her voice as if sharing a secret.
“I think she started asking for alcohol that very night.”
At those words, his head became hot. In that moment, Sioden felt a surge of murderous intent toward a father he had never particularly respected.
If only a little more time had been given, he could have regained his senses and committed a proper murder.
However, before he could act, Evelyn was quicker to fulfill her own desires.
One night, she secretly left her bedroom. She climbed up the castle walls and walked barefoot on the snow-covered stone path.
That dawn, a knight on patrol discovered her.
When Sioden rushed in upon hearing the news, the doctor shook his head. It was a silent indication of hopelessness.
Sioden approached the bedside. His mother, emaciated like a corpse, was trembling as she stared into the void.
The doctor spoke to him.
“The fever is too severe. Her lungs are already filled with inflammation.”
Sioden sat in the chair beside the bed. He clenched his fists on his lap to hide his trembling hands.
That night, after watching Evelyn for a while, he came to a conclusion.
“I’m going to cut down the trees.”
Glasyr could heal the illness.
Technically, Glasyr couldn’t be felled without the head of the family’s permission, but Sioden didn’t care. He felt like cutting down not only the tree but also Lerox’s neck. His permission was irrelevant.
Evelyn’s white, cracked lips trembled.
“No.”
Don’t do this; let me die.
It was a feeble statement, weaker than a corpse just risen from the grave.
Sioden shook his head.
“Mother, you’re not in your right mind because you’re sick.”
He stood up from his seat.
“We can talk about the rest after you get better.”
A thin hand, as frail as a dry branch, reached out toward him.
Evelyn looked up at him. Her yellowed eyes, dulled by years of excessive drinking, glistened with moisture.
Like someone begging for mercy.
Sioden tightened his jaw.
“Mother.”
“I, I want to die.”
Please, please…
Evelyn begged her son with a voice that seeped through like a leak.
Even if she pleaded for her life, it couldn’t be that desperate.
Sioden ultimately sank back into his seat. He removed his mother’s hand, which had clutched at the hem of his clothing. He placed her fleshless, sagging hand on the bed and lowered his head. Resting his elbows on the bed, he covered his face.
Sioden pleaded in a trembling voice.
“Please don’t do this.”
It’s really too hard.
Words he had never uttered before finally slipped out.
It felt as if someone were scraping the flesh from inside him. Sioden hunched his shoulders forward. A wet mark appeared on the silk-covered bed.
Evelyn looked at her son, who was sobbing in pain, with rolling eyes.
In a voice that wheezed like the wind, she demanded, “Let me die.”
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
Sioden could not ignore his mother’s last request.
Evelyn’s condition, having refused all treatment, worsened as time passed. Sioden realized he was becoming like a shell of a person himself.
Even if Evelyn died, his life would not end, so he needed to pull himself together before it was too late, but he felt no thoughts at all.
The doctor, who had been watching them, approached.
“You need to prepare yourself.”
Sioden stood up from his seat. He went outside and instructed the knight guarding the dying lady’s bedroom.
“Send word to the lord.”
His eyes felt dry. Sioden blinked several times.
“I think she will pass today.”
The voice cracked and broke.
However, there was no failure to say what needed to be said.
“So tell him to come and see for himself with his own eyes.”
☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓 ☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓
That night, Evelyn held her son’s hand.
“My son.”
Should I be moved that you recognize me? Sioden looked down at his mother with bloodshot eyes, unsure of what emotions he should feel due to the dulled sensations he had experienced over the past few days.
Naturally, Evelyn was not reaching out to her son out of love.
With the pallor of a dying person facing her end, Evelyn said, “No matter what happens, protect the family.”
It was the first time Sioden had heard such words from Evelyn.
A pang shot through one side of his chest. Sioden recognized that the sensation he had felt so often had now become almost numb, yet it was a feeling of something hollowing out the emptiness inside him.
He allowed his dying mother to dig into him freely.
Evelyn tore away her last remnants.
“Become a better lord than your father.”
In the end, she emptied her son and planted a final wish that she could not shake off until her last breath.
“That my choice was not wrong…”
The hand that had weakly scratched his cheek fell away.
Sioden wiped his face. The doctor, waiting nearby, approached and checked Evelyn. Soon, the announcement of the woman’s passing echoed through the room.
That night, Sioden did not leave the side of the corpse until the darkness had completely settled and the sun began to rise.
Lerox never came.
