The Forgotten Field

Transparent tears soaked the woman’s face.

He looked down at her pitiful appearance with emotionless eyes before lowering himself onto one knee in front of her.

“As you said, Your Majesty, I cannot understand your suffering in the slightest. But I do remember the helpless despair of a child with nowhere to turn.”

Light slowly returned to the eyes that had been as empty as a black abyss.

He took a handkerchief from inside his coat. Then, just as she had once wiped his face, he gently dried the tears from her wet cheeks.

“For the sake of His Highness the Crown Prince and Her Highness the Imperial Princess, please find the strength to carry on.”

The Empress’s face became stained with guilt and shame.

The woman, whose frail shoulders trembled faintly, lowered her head weakly.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said something like that to you......”

He gently patted the Empress’s shoulders as she sobbed like a young girl.

A short while later, after she lost consciousness from exhaustion, he carefully lifted her into his arms and laid her on the bed. Quietly leaving the room, he found Gareth leaning against the wall in the corridor.

“Come with me.”

The boy, whose bloodshot eyes burned ominously, grabbed him without warning and pulled him along.

He silently followed behind the Crown Prince.

“Look over there.”

After dragging him up to the watchtower connected to the main palace, Gareth leaned against the railing and pointed outside.

He stepped up beside the boy.

In the garden of the detached palace used by the Emperor for rest, a man and woman were enjoying a secret tryst.

He recognized the Emperor’s dark hair and sharply defined face without difficulty. The man, his curly hair hanging loose over broad shoulders built of bone and muscle, lounged lazily in his chair while idly caressing a woman’s waist.

He carefully examined the slender woman leaning against the Emperor. Other than her long, light-colored hair and a figure so perfectly proportioned that it felt unnatural, he noticed nothing remarkable about her.

Just what was it about this woman that had driven the Emperor of the Empire to break the oath he had sworn before God and cast away his honor?

As he looked at her in silent curiosity, the woman suddenly lifted her eyes, as though she had sensed his gaze.

In an instant, every hair on his body stood on end. His skin turned cold, as though something unimaginably dangerous stood before him.

The woman stared directly at him before narrowing her eyes into a mocking smile. Then she seized the Emperor by the hair and pulled him roughly toward her. She handled the most exalted person in the Empire as though he were nothing more than an insignificant possession.

Within those arrogant hands, the ruler who had seemed forged from steel collapsed like a castle of sand. Their bodies, overflowing with vitality, clung greedily to one another beneath the brilliant sunlight.

“Filthy beasts.”

Gareth muttered like a growling animal.

“He brought that woman to the detached palace a week ago and started this disgusting affair. That bitch even dared to set her filthy feet in the gardens of the Empress’s Palace and humiliate my mother.”

The boy’s bloodshot eyes, fixed upon the tangled couple, were filled with fury.

Gripping the railing tightly with both hands, he spat the words through clenched teeth.

“That’s why Mother drank poison. Because of that filthy whore......”

Gareth’s body trembled violently before he suddenly kicked over a cabinet in a fit of rage. Then he began trampling everything that spilled onto the floor.

The violent outburst only ended after every object in the room had been smashed to pieces.

“I will become Emperor no matter what. And when I do, I’ll force that woman to kneel before me and pour the very poison my mother drank straight down her throat.”

Standing amid the wreckage, breathing heavily, the boy turned tear-soaked eyes toward him.

“When that day comes, your role is to drag that prostitute before me and force her onto her knees. I’ll become Emperor of the Empire, and you’ll become the ruler of the East and my closest confidant. Together we’ll repay the humiliation Mother suffered.”

He turned his gaze back beneath the railing.

Over the image of the two lovers embracing each other in broad daylight, the figure of the steadily wasting Bernadette overlapped.

She was the one who had rescued him from a place no different from a prison and raised him like her own child for seven years.

Why was it that he could not feel the same overwhelming fury as Gareth?

All he felt was pity for the Empress and a faint disgust toward their conduct.

Gareth suddenly seized the hem of his clothes.

“You’ll do it, won’t you, Brother?”

Varkas lowered his gaze again and met Gareth’s unstable eyes.

He could not share the boy’s emotions, but he clearly understood one thing.

He owed the Empress a debt that could never be repaid.

He reached out and gently smoothed Gareth’s disheveled curls.

At that moment, the young boy’s figure suddenly crumbled away like sand. The scenery surrounding him also faded like smoke.

The next instant, he found himself standing in one corner of a dim corridor shrouded in darkness.

Somewhere, he heard quiet sobbing.

Turning toward the sound, he saw several maids wiping away their tears with handkerchiefs.

One of them respectfully bowed to him.

“You’ve arrived.”

The maid’s voice was hoarse.

“Please go inside. Her Majesty has been waiting for you all this time.”

He immediately entered the Empress’s bedchamber.

Inside the brightly candlelit room stood Marquis Oristein, his relatives, and a high-ranking priest. Their dark eyes all turned toward him at once before shifting back to the bed in the center of the room.

He slowly walked over.

“Varkas!”

A small girl who had been lying across the bed threw herself toward him.

Just as the Empress had taught him long ago, he caught the young Imperial Princess with one arm and gently patted her back.

The girl wrapped her slender arms around his neck as hot tears streamed down her face.

“Varkas... Mother......”

As she failed to continue, he stroked the girl’s head before looking down at the bed.

In only a few months, the Empress had grown so gaunt that she was almost unrecognizable. She looked utterly devoid of vitality, to the point that it was hard to believe she was only thirty-one years old.

“Come here.”

She reached out her emaciated hand.

He set Aila down and knelt on one knee before the bed. The girl immediately ran to her twin brother and threw her arms around him. Gareth embraced his sister tightly with both arms while desperately holding back his tears.

He watched them for a moment before turning back to the Empress.

She gently caressed his cheek with a hand as cold as ice.

“You’ve grown even taller these past few months. By the time you’re fully grown, you’ll be as tall as your father.”

“......”

“Isn’t it strange? Even though your appearance is nothing like that of the Khan people, whenever I looked at you, I was reminded of the eastern grasslands where I rode horses as a child. Perhaps that’s why I kept you by my side.”

A faint smile rested upon her lips before her expression suddenly became blank.

Looking at him quietly with eyes so dark they were almost black, she slowly lowered her hand.

“I didn’t call you here simply to ramble like this. There’s one thing I want to ask of you, which is why I urgently summoned you.”

“......Please give your command.”

The woman could not bring herself to speak immediately.

After struggling with herself for a long while, she looked toward her children standing beside the bed. Only then, as though finally reaching a decision, did she speak in a firm voice.

“I want you to protect my children.”

He frowned.

He could not understand why she would make such a request.

The Empress was a member of House Siorcan, and the twins also carried the blood of that house. He already had a duty to protect them both.

He gently took her hand and replied calmly.

“Even without asking, I intend to do everything in my power to protect both of them. That is also the will of the grand ducal house......”

“I am asking you for an oath, Varkas Laedgo Siorcan.”

She gripped his hand with all the strength she had left.

“Can you swear, in the name of God, that you will protect Gareth and Aila until the day your life comes to an end?”

He quietly looked down at the Empress.

What she was asking for went far beyond the obligations he was expected to bear as the future Grand Duke.

It was an oath that bound his entire life.

Knowing the weight of such a vow, he found himself reluctant to answer lightly.

Yet he also found his own hesitation somewhat strange.

Had his life not simply continued because he still drew breath?

For the past seven years, he had felt neither joy nor even sorrow or anger. He had merely continued eating and sleeping mechanically, day after day. What value did such a life possess that made him hesitate to give his answer?

He turned toward Aila and Gareth.

The twins were staring at him with frightened eyes. Protecting them did not seem particularly difficult. Besides, it was something he ought to do regardless.

Having made up his mind, he calmly spoke to the woman who had once pulled him out of the abyss, only to bind him once more.

“I swear, in the name of God, that I will protect both of them until the moment my life comes to an end.”