CHAPTER 91……………………………..
“Are you telling me to abandon you and run?”
“Yes. They’re assassins. The kind who don’t care if they throw away their own lives, so long as they can kill their target.”
“……”
“You see how they’re stalling for time, right? They’re planning to collapse the mine and bury us all alive.”
Linaria had realized it too.
Right now, it was as though they were trapped on a bridge that could snap at any moment.
“No.”
“You said it yourself, my lady.”
“……”
“That you trust me.”
“Anna.”
“Please… let me repay that trust.”
Anna smiled brightly.
“You know, right? How strong I am. You noticed it, even from the first day we met.”
The day she had taken in Anna, who had collapsed covered in wounds.
Some injuries had come from beatings, but most were clean cuts from blades.
Her only possession was a dagger. Her hands bore calluses only in the places where one held a sword.
It was impossible not to notice such things.
And yet Linaria had kept her at her side, because—
“Please let me devote my entire life to serving only you, my lady!”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t take people in. Anyone who stays with me is doomed to suffer.”
“I don’t care. As long as I can remain by your side, I’ll be happy.”
She had thought Anna would run away within a few days.
But Anna had never once fled from Linaria’s side.
On the contrary, she had been willing to lay down her life to protect her.
“I’ll follow you. Always.”
Anna, still smiling, pushed Linaria back.
All Linaria could do was watch helplessly as Anna turned her back to her.
Even during her hellish days as Maximilian’s betrothed, Linaria had once felt the same foreboding as she now felt watching Anna.
“My lady. Just one night, and everything will be all right.”
“……Anna.”
“I just wanted you to sleep, for once, without a single worry.”
Linaria should have told her: It won’t be all right. Just stay by my side.
But that day, seeing Anna’s bright smile, she had let herself be reassured. She had lain down obediently and gone to sleep.
The result had been disastrous.
The next day, Anna had returned as a corpse.
“Are you the lady’s personal maid?”
“……Why did you kill her?”
Staring at Anna’s horribly mutilated body, Linaria couldn’t even scream.
Bzz, bzz—
There should never have been flies in the ever-spotless imperial palace.
And yet Linaria thought she heard their faint buzzing by her ear.
“She forgot her place and dared to stand in His Majesty the Emperor’s way, crying out that your treatment was unjust.”
“You killed her for that alone?”
Anna must have tried to plead directly to Maximilian.
But the man who had murdered his own father to become emperor was never going to heed the words of a mere maid.
“It was not ‘for that alone.’ She offended His Majesty’s will. And when her fuss was ignored, she dared approach His Majesty directly.”
“……”
“She killed three knights who tried to stop her, and then attempted to assassinate His Majesty. A traitor.”
Maximilian had apparently ordered that Linaria not be held responsible for the incident.
The attendant had continued speaking, but Linaria heard nothing.
“……All for something like that…….”
“My lady, mind your tongue.”
Maximilian was a double divine-beast contractor.
Someone like him could not be killed so easily.
And Anna knew that. Yet she still gave her life for me.
Linaria did not want to lose Anna again.
She tried to reach for Anna’s shoulder as she faced the assassins.
But Kaas was quicker.
He cut down an assassin and grabbed Linaria’s arm.
“Five left.”
It seemed Kaas agreed with Anna’s judgment.
He meant to leave Anna behind and escape the mine with Linaria.
“With that many? It’s child’s play. Just a warm-up.”
Anna stood confidently at the front.
“If assassins are lying in ambush outside, someone has to stay behind and buy time. That role belongs to me.”
“……”
“My lady. Please—live, and get out of here.”
Dragged away by Kaas, Linaria looked back.
Anna’s figure, facing the assassins, filled her sight.
Boom!
Then a massive boulder fell, and she could see no more.
“Anna!”
Even if Anna defeated the assassins, they would have no escape if the mine collapsed.
“Kaas, Anna—”
“Riri, think of yourself first.”
His voice sounded merciless. She stared blankly at him, running forward without a glance back.
“She won’t be at peace unless you make it out alive.”
Linaria knew it was already too late to turn back.
But she could not erase from her mind Anna’s smiling face as she tried to soothe her fears.
“I don’t sense any more assassins lying in wait.”
A bright light shone ahead over Kaas’s shoulder.
A few more steps, and they would be at the exit.
“Kaas. You know…”
Linaria began to speak, as if making a decision.
But she could not finish her words.
The mine gave way, collapsing.
“Riri, run!”
Kaas shouted desperately.
But in the instant a huge boulder fell above them, Linaria shoved Kaas forward.
It happened in a heartbeat.
Because he had been running ahead, Kaas was helplessly pushed out of the mine’s entrance.
Warm sunlight beat down upon him.
But his fingers had grown cold.
The hand he had been clutching moments ago was gone.
“Riri.”
Kaas turned, heart thudding painfully slow.
Linaria lay pinned beneath the rock, her legs crushed.
She had taken his place beneath it.
“I’ll get you out. Right now.”
His mind went blank.
Her pale face and labored breaths seemed on the verge of extinguishing.
In shock, Kaas grasped his sword with trembling hands.
“I’m… already…”
“Don’t speak.”
“……”
“Riri. It hurts, right? So don’t say anything.”
Even without her finishing, he knew she had given up.
But Kaas refused to.
Should he try striking the rock with his sword?
But what if she got hurt?
She was already poisoned.
Now, with a boulder weighing more than a ton crushing her lower body, her legs were surely beyond saving.
Every moment counted, but Kaas wavered.
Until her faint, flickering voice snapped him back.
“Kaas…”
She whispered his name like a sigh, gesturing weakly.
Kaas knelt beside her, eyes level with hers.
He didn’t know why, when every second should be spent freeing her.
But he felt he had to.
“Take this…”
With a faint smile, Linaria pressed something into his hand.
Kaas looked down.
It was the ruby necklace she always wore—her most treasured possession, as dear to her as life itself.
“Take it… to my father. He will… help you. Cough.”
Blood spilled with each cough.
Kaas grew frantic.
“Don’t say that.”
“My… final command.”
She reached up.
The touch he had always longed for fell on his neck, but there was no joy.
Clink—
The slave collar he had worn as if it were part of him came undone so easily it felt hollow.
A gut instinct told him he should not listen to her anymore.
That he needed to cut her off and free her from the rock.
But his body would not move.
All Kaas wished, in that moment, was that Linaria would not give up.
But cruelly, her lips formed words.
“The crown prince…”
Crush Maximilian. Rise above him.
Her voice faded.
And her ruby-red eyes closed beneath pale lashes.
“Even if you hadn’t ordered me… it’s what I was always going to do.”
“……”
“From the start to the end, that was your only wish.”
Sometimes, he had felt jealous of that—
That her thoughts were filled only with Maximilian.
He had wished she would think only of him.
A petty, ugly jealousy.
“But I said I would become yours alone. I haven’t fulfilled that yet.”
Kaas’s voice echoed in the silence.
“Riri.”
“……”
“Riri.”
He called her name—more familiar now to him than his own—again and again, desperate.
“Linaria.”
But no matter how many times he called, she did not open her eyes.
Kaas gently touched her cheek.
No breath stirred there.
“I’ll get you out right now.”
“……”
“I’ll take you to the Tower Master. He can fix anything—you always said so. He’ll heal you completely, too.”
He carefully shattered the rock, shielding her from the shards.
When the rubble was gone, a horrific sight filled his vision.
But Kaas ignored it, cradling her bloodied body in his arms.
Her body was already cold.
Tears fell, rolling down her cheeks as though she were the one crying.
“Riri, Riri…”
Like in a fairy tale where a kiss awakens the princess, Kaas pressed his lips to hers again and again.
But a stopped heart does not beat again.
It was the day Linaria died.
