Chapter 41 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 41: Visitor from the Royal Capital 07
Stasia had only been crying unconsciously, but hearing Kelsey’s words, she cried even harder.
Kelsey sighed, drew her closer, cradled her head in her arms, and gently stroked her hair as she sang a lullaby in a low voice.
It should be said, the new Crown Prince Kelsey, once a prince without real power, was renowned for her musical talent.
She held Stasia's face, carefully wiping her tears, yet the more she wiped, the more they flowed.
Stasia's eyes swelled like peaches. She sobbed while trembling: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Kelsey..."
Finally, Kelsey put the handkerchief aside, sighed, and embraced Stasia.
“Anna.” Kelsey gazed blankly at the vine-covered ceiling of the corridor. Her voice was so soft it was almost a whisper. “I’m so tired. I’ve never been this tired before.”
"Let's just leave it at this, Anna."
Yes—this was how Stasia heard that song. Hardly a beautiful memory.
Later, she very much didn't want to recall this period. This scene became increasingly hazy in her heart, omitting the countless bitter winds and rains behind it, leaving only that light, memory-embellished monologue. As if, just the day before, the two of them had still been carefree, bickering over something trivial.
Not "let's make up," but "let's just leave it at this."
Kelsey said, let's just leave it at this. I don't know whether I should resent you, but I have no energy to resent anymore.
How had she answered then?
Stasia clutched her sleeve, crying too hard to speak, only knowing to nod blindly.
"I killed your mother. Do you resent me?"
Stasia's head couldn't nod anymore. She held Kelsey's arm, didn't answer, only trembled ceaselessly.
Kelsey's eyes also reddened: "Your mother and sister used the escort knights you brought to hold back the Crown Prince's guard on the west side of the palace, preventing them from arriving in time to protect my royal sister. I had to kill them both."
"When my eldest sister died, only four attendants were by her side, and two of them deserted. My second sister brought an entire team of soldiers, surrounded eldest sister's Holly Palace, and personally killed eldest sister."
"Anna, the real murderer, was my second sister. I couldn't bring myself to kill her, yet I killed your mother. Do you resent me?"
Stasia gradually stopped trembling.
After a long while, her hoarse voice finally replied, yet not to this question: "My mother and I had a very cold relationship."
"She and I didn't get along. I'm not as smart as my sister, don't understand schemes like my sister does, let alone ruling a territory. I only know how to do experiments, mix in the slums, rummage through corpses in mass graves to dissect. She said I was a monster."
"But," Stasia paused and took a deep breath, forcing steadiness into her voice: "I miss her very much."
"Yes." Kelsey said bewilderedly: "I also... miss my sister very much. I miss my eldest sister, and also a little, a little miss my former second sister."
Her former eldest sister was very strict with her, would supervise her completing assignments teachers gave, oversee her practicing riding and archery, teaching her bit by bit like a mother.
Her former second sister was the person who understood her best, supported her singing and playing instruments, researching sheet music, seriously listening to her music, and would tirelessly search for the scores she yearned for.
But all of this had shattered in this blood-stained summer. The world began showing her its ferocious face.
Kelsey's hands that played instruments now gripped the scepter, only to discover the path under the scepter was simply difficult at every step.
She suddenly began to feel grateful for eldest sister's former strictness.
If eldest sister hadn't pressed her to read and practice swordsmanship, she wouldn't have cooperated with her mother so quickly to quell the palace upheaval, let alone to handle these complicated governmental affairs now.
And wearing this crown prince's crown, she faced far more than just these.
She saw commoners who labored all year yet starved to death, child merchants who froze to death on streets in winter nights wearing single clothes, and elves beneath the palace wailing all night having lost their eyes.
In the same city, expensive grapes that couldn't be eaten and rotted were carried out by the barrel from nobles' residences and dumped into fly-filled stinking ditches.
Do we live amidst such wailing?
And, and...
She looked up.
Behind the clouds stood a spire, unchanged for decades, as if it was born with Eaton.
It was the magic tower of Eaton, located in the southwest of the royal capital, accessible only to great nobles.
Nobles with magical talent could enter there, they were cultivated from childhood, ultimately becoming a kingdom's anchor and the political elites.
But according to the ordinary human Kelsey, who only began entering the magic tower after becoming crown prince, after she saw the situation inside, it truly made her vision go black.
Those so-called mages enjoyed extraordinarily high status and treatment, idling lazily all day, doing nothing productive. They often came to the commoner world to oppress commoners. Seeing expensive gemstones or fertile land, they'd snatch them back. Even killing a person or two was no more difficult than crushing an ant.
Even worse, mages colluded with the noble families, who cultivated private armies, continuously growing stronger, making Kelsey unable to sleep night after night.
The country's last line of defense, these extraordinary powers beyond human law—was this what they were like?
The vast royal capital—no, the vast kingdom—gave the feeling of a rusty gear, struggling to turn slowly in mud, laboring and sluggishly rotating. The connecting bearings from time to time transmitted wheezing sounds like a broken bellows.
She rested her chin on Stasia's shoulder and let out her strength: "Anna, I can barely go on anymore."
As expected, the reformist crown prince met with intense questioning.
Those nobles usually respectful and courteous revealed their crude and cruel side, not only fiercely attacking the new policies but even assaulting Kelsey herself.
Some rebuked her for not understanding governance, being a child who only knew how to sing, warning her not to treat state affairs as toys. Some used her protection of the Heberley family's remnants to speculate she participated in forcing the palace, trying to throw dirty water on her. Some even tried to lobby the king to release the confined Second Princess Claire as crown prince and depose her crown prince position.
Kelsey grew thinner and thinner, spoke less and less.
Her figure was still very upright, the sword at her waist still sharp, while the heavy crown prince's formal dress on her body gradually became empty and loose.
Sometimes she came to Stasia's garden with dark circles and bloodshot eyes, slept in the guest room for a day and night, woke in the dim twilight, draped in flickering warm light, drinking a bowl of strange-tasting meat soup Stasia cooked for her in spare time from experiments.
Sometimes Stasia asked with a smile: "Not afraid I poisoned the soup?"
Kelsey didn't care, caressing the thin ceramic bowl rim: "Whatever you like."
Three years passed like this.
Although reform was fraught with difficulties and suffered countless open attacks and assassinations, Kelsey still achieved some results.
On one hand, taxes were somewhat reduced, and far fewer people starved to death. On the other hand, commoners' right to life received the most basic protection. Nobles' acts of harming commoners at least showed some restraint—after she personally executed a count who seized land and killed people on the street by hanging.
Stasia didn't say it aloud, but in her heart also felt relieved for her.
She had thought things would keep getting better this way. Kelsey would eventually wear the highest crown, become a monarch loved by all people, revitalize this weakened country, leave her name in history, like founding monarch Selina.
Unfortunately, the god didn't stand on their side.
In the year 565, the two-nation coalition forces broke through the borders.
Kelsey told Stasia: "This country's luck is exhausted. No one knows better than I how weak our national defense is."
Stasia was silent for a long time before saying: "I want to return to defend my homeland."
Heberley City had more than just the mother and sister who abandoned her, there was also the girl selling flowers in spring, the lively simple tea shed at dusk, lush trees, and plains with abundant water and grass.
That was the original source of her life, and also the place she would forever yearn for no matter how far she walked.
Kelsey didn't try to keep her.
At this time, no one paid attention to a useless hostage anymore. Everyone was making plans for their own safety.
Stasia had nothing to pack. She only prepared a bag of dry rations. Kelsey prepared a horse for her.
It was already late autumn. Late autumn's dusk dew was very heavy. The evening breeze already carried a biting cold. Stasia wore only a single layer of clothing, her figure looked somewhat desolate.
Kelsey unfastened her own cloak and draped it over her.
Stasia held the hand tying the cloak for her, slightly stood on tiptoe, and kissed her lips.
This was the first and only kiss in Stasia's memory.
Kelsey's lips were a bit cool, slightly moist, but her body was warm. She trembled slightly, sensing Kelsey first freeze, then embrace her back, encircling herself entirely in her arms, lowering her head to deepen this kiss.
That cloak hadn't tied its straps properly and fell to the ground, but at this moment no one cared anymore.
They both knew clearly, this might be the last time they met.
Those past but not completely past secret longings that kept lingering in their hearts, at this moment stripped of all grievances and pretense, leaving only life's truest desire and... joy.
Stasia's lips were bitten numb by her, warm and hot, making her whole person want to melt in Kelsey's arms, becoming a formless pool of soft mud.
That instant, she desired eternity for the first time.
The cypress on the window swayed rustling.
Kelsey's thin profile cast deep and shallow shadows under the dim yellow gas lamp. Warm yellow light shone in her emerald eyes, swaying with deep, scattered bright light.
Not knowing whether it was from her heart or from stimulation, tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. Stasia caressed her face.
Their bare skin pressed together, as if fate could never separate them again.
When seeing her off outside the city, Kelsey stood in place supporting herself with her long sword, saying to her: "I also need to defend my homeland."
She nodded and rode away from this royal capital where she'd lived in seclusion for three years.
From afar, she left that royal capital forged of blood and flowers behind, along with that thin figure wearing a lace shirt and holding a long sword.
People in the world each have their own destination.
At that time, she had already prepared to accept a future of life and death separation. She hadn't expected that after ruthlessly destroying their fate, the gods still retained a last trace of mercy.
Comments
Post a Comment