Chapter 98

Night had deepened. Snow was still falling, and the drifts piled near the entrance were being pushed into the cave itself. By now, a search would surely have begun, but with the snow coming down so heavily, Odelliana did not expect rescue to come quickly.

“Chew,” Jocelyn said curtly.

“It is an herb that brings down fever,” Jocelyn continued. “If you do not want your brain to melt, take it quietly.”

Her body burned as if filled with embers, yet the chills had not eased. Her breathing had grown rough, and her eyelids threatened to fall shut at any moment. Even so, the herb he handed her was Tain, something knights carried for emergencies, used as both an antipyretic and a painkiller.

Odelliana glared at him, but she did not refuse it. She clenched her teeth and chewed stubbornly, grinding through the bitterness before forcing it down. Watching her endure it, Jocelyn let out a short, incredulous laugh.

“Life must have been worse than death,” Jocelyn said, “and yet you still cling to it that desperately.”

Odelliana did not respond.

“I am not mocking you,” Jocelyn added. “I was genuinely curious, so relax your expression.”

“Is it wrong,” Odelliana asked hoarsely, “to want to live, no matter what?”

“You are speaking rather casually,” Jocelyn remarked.

Odelliana fell silent again.

“Well then,” Jocelyn went on lightly, “perhaps it is mutual discourtesy. A disgrace to the royal family daring to speak casually to a duke’s daughter.”

He laughed aloud, then tore into a strip of jerky roasted to a golden brown. Satisfied with how well it was cooked, he spoke again.

“Everyone wants to live,” Jocelyn said. “But when living becomes more horrifying than dying, that is when people start wishing for death.”

“In your eyes,” Odelliana asked quietly, “does my life look more horrifying than death?”

“I do not know about now,” Jocelyn replied, “but at our first meeting, it certainly did.”

Odelliana said nothing.

“I never imagined you would be hiding in a place like this,” Jocelyn continued, “struggling so desperately just to survive. To be honest, I was quite surprised.”

Odelliana no longer wanted to speak with him. In truth, she no longer had the strength to. She assumed that if she stayed silent, he would eventually stop. She was mistaken. Whether she listened or not, he continued as he pleased.

“You are rather well regarded here,” Jocelyn said.

Odelliana did not answer.

“You look better than you did before,” he went on. “When I found you unconscious, you had changed so much that I nearly did not recognize you.”

Her head throbbed. Between her condition and the sound of his voice, it felt as though her skull might split. At the same time, perhaps because the medicine was taking effect, drowsiness washed over her. She half closed her eyes, wishing he would simply be quiet.

“I will apologize for what happened back then,” Jocelyn said suddenly.

The unexpected words made Odelliana flinch. She opened her eyes.

“I was unintentionally rude,” Jocelyn said. “I retract what I said about you being crippled.”

His attitude was unmistakably different. There was not a trace of the hostility he had once shown, nor the resentment toward the woman who had wounded his pride. The man who had sneered at her like she was an insect and the man before her now felt like two entirely different people.

“I misjudged you,” Jocelyn continued. “After seeing you here, I have no choice but to admit that.”

A sharp sense of unease crept over Odelliana, born from long familiarity with the man named Jocelyn.

He was not someone who smiled easily or extended kindness without reason. He was not kind enough to save a dying stranger out of goodwill. His favor was granted only to those he deemed useful. That meant his current kindness, and the trouble he was going through now, were anything but ordinary.

“So let us settle what happened then as a debt paid today,” Jocelyn said.

Even so, his tone remained arrogant and overbearing, the manner of someone accustomed to commanding others. The arrogance she had once taken for granted now felt contemptible.

Odelliana had no strength left to respond, nor to voice the feelings boiling inside her. She wanted to tell him that no matter how many times he apologized, she would never accept it, not even in death. But her heavy eyelids sank fully. With the pain dulled and exhaustion crashing over her, she lost consciousness without resistance.

Jocelyn stared at her sleeping form for a long moment. Then, with a faint scoff, he pulled her closer, wrapping her in his fur cloak and holding her against his chest. The night was too harsh to endure with nothing but a campfire. The small woman in his arms, despite her cold demeanor, was warm enough to make it through the night.

***

“Failed?” Hermann said, clicking his tongue as he finished fastening his helmet.

“Useless,” he went on coldly. “Not a single thing done properly.”

They had found Odelliana and then lost her. Even after leveraging his authority as a military commander and as family to the lord of the castle to pressure and bribe the guards, the men had proven incompetent.

“Is this why backwater knights are worth less than street thugs?” Hermann sneered. “They cannot even complete a task this simple. A pack of idiots.”

“All the guards involved in this matter have been dealt with, without exception,” a subordinate reported. “What should we do about the woman?”

“Leave her,” Hermann replied after a pause. “Taking one woman can be done later, at our leisure.”

The more important objective had already been completed long ago. Odelliana could be dealt with anytime. For now, earning merit mattered more.

“Those wagons carrying bodies,” Hermann asked, “are they the dead?”

“Yes,” the subordinate answered.

Watching the long procession of coffins passing through the gates of Eisenwald, Hermann smiled in satisfaction.

“Kill every survivor who crawled out like rats,” Hermann ordered. “No matter what, this must be recorded as damage from a barbarian raid.”

“We will see it through to the end,” the subordinate said. “You may rest assured.”

The Eisenwald forces had been annihilated. Not by barbarians, but by their own allies. Sacrificing a hundred soldiers to kill one man was not wasteful in Hermann’s eyes. It was preferable to letting that beggar knight of Blair distinguish himself.

“Move out,” Hermann commanded.

This was his stage alone, a stage no one else would be allowed to steal.

***

The sharp stench of medicine assaulted her nose. Odelliana opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was Malena slumped in a chair, dozing fitfully. Then came the reddish glow of the fireplace and the thin smoke rising from a scented candle burning by the bedside.

It felt familiar. Realization dawned that she was in her own room. The bed was soft, the blankets warm, her body heavy with languor. For a moment, she thought it must all have been a dream. But when her body refused to move as she wished, when Malena woke with tears welling in her eyes, and when she saw the bandages binding Malena’s shoulder, she understood that the nightmare had been real.

“Are you all right?” Odelliana asked quietly.

“That is my line,” Malena replied bitterly.

“You look all right,” Odelliana said. “That is a relief.”

Clutching Odelliana’s hand, Malena’s large frame shook.

“You were unconscious for a full week,” Malena said.

“When I fell,” Odelliana replied calmly, “I thought I was dead for sure. But the snow absorbed the impact, so I avoided instant death. I was lucky.”

“Lucky?” Malena exclaimed. “Your fever would not break, and frostbite was spreading through your hands and feet. You nearly died. It was serious enough that it is a miracle you are alive.”

“But I did survive,” Odelliana said softly.

“I cannot understand it,” Malena cried. “Why do such life threatening incidents keep happening to you, when most people would never face even one?”

“I suppose I was born under an unlucky star,” Odelliana replied. “My life has been full of twists from the very beginning.”

“What happened to the poorhouse?” she asked after a moment.

Malena hesitated, then sighed.

“There were thirty deaths,” Malena said. “The guards were all found dead as well, and there were clear signs of murder.”

Sir Liam and Sir Martin were investigating, Malena explained, but it was highly likely the guards had been acting on someone’s orders.

“The survivors say the attackers claimed they were there to find you and take you away,” Malena continued. “Their target was not the people of the poorhouse. It was you.”

“Since you rarely left the poorhouse,” Malena added, “they decided to kill everyone there and search the building to capture you.”

“To do something so horrific just to catch me,” Odelliana murmured.

“It is not your fault,” Malena said firmly.

Odelliana turned onto her side.

“It was only because the prince’s party happened to be passing nearby,” Malena added. “If not for His Highness, you would have died for certain.”

Odelliana closed her eyes. She did not want to dwell on the fact that Jocelyn had saved her life. Gratitude toward a man who had once abandoned her to ruin was not something she could accept.

In this life, he knew nothing of the horrors she had endured before. But that did not erase the hatred carved into her bones. One act of kindness could not wash it away. If anything, being saved by him only deepened her revulsion.

This was not what she wanted.

If fate insisted on binding them together again, then that bond could only be an ill one.