Chapter 69

“Mother!”

Eckart replied slowly. He felt that his mother’s bright smile was strange to him.

“Let’s hurry up now. The Emperor is waiting.”

Blair persuaded him kindly and pulled his arm.

When he turned his eyes a little, he saw Emperor Cassius standing at the entrance of the garden. As always, he was majestic, fluttering a golden cloak embroidered with Brenda and laurel branches. When their eyes met, he raised his hand as if he was beckoning him to come up. There was a coy smile on the emperor’s face.

After hesitating a bit, Eckart took a step. His heavy steps started to move as Blair led him. Though he didn’t know why, he felt he had to. He thought he should not be stubborn.

“Your Majesty!”

At that moment, he felt somebody grabbing his arms suddenly.

“Please don’t go!”

He didn’t know where she suddenly appeared, but the woman was crying and hanging on him.

The woman looked like a noblewoman of a similar age. She looked terrible. Her dark chocolate-colored hair was messed up and her emerald eyes were trembling with pain.

“Please, Your Majesty. Don’t go! You shouldn’t go. Please, don’t go!”

Her desperate hands pulled his arm opposite of Blair. While Emperor Cassius was standing there, she dared to call Eckart the emperor rudely.

Eckart frowned. Although he was the only child of Cassius and Blair, and he was crowned prince a long time ago, she could not call him the emperor because the incumbent emperor Cassius was still alive. As it was certain for him to succeed the throne, calling him the emperor would be regarded as very dangerous treason.

“Karl, you’ll be late. Hurry up!”

Nevertheless, Blair hurried again with a calm expression as if the woman was invisible. She intimately folded his arms and pulled his shoulders. But as Blair tightened her grip on his arms, Eckart’s arm held by that woman slipped out.

“You promised to protect me!”

The woman who missed his hand sat down and yelled.

Although the woman was very desperate, she strangely did not follow. Instead, she cried like a child. Her shoulders were shaking miserably.

While being led away by Blair, he kept looking back.

He thought he had to listen to her mother, but he really hated leaving the woman alone there.

If Blair’s words were as strict as the god, that woman’s words were infinitely weak and emotional. Of course, it was right for him to abandon the latter. Isn’t the emperor god’s agent who forgets his personal greed and chooses the cause?

Aside from such a significant meaning, those who guided him were both his father and emperor Cassius and mother Queen Blair. The only two family members closest to him in this world who were bound by blood.

But he found it more and more troublesome to turn away from that woman. Her bitter cries resonated into his ears strongly.

Who could she be? He did not know why she was crying, nor did he know what he had promised to her. Nevertheless, he was heartbroken as if his heart was split in half.

Every time he walked one step, he seemed to have thousands of thorns stuck on his toes.

While he hesitated, his distance from the woman gradually increased.

Eckart took turns looking at his mother’s back and the woman crying from behind.

Bark, bark!

Discarding its favorite silk ball, Alt was running toward him, barking fiercely, as if the assassin’s blade was right behind its back.

“Wait a minute, Mom!”

In the end, Eckart pulled away his arm from Blair.

“Karl!”

Leaving her urgent calling behind, he hurried to the other side. His body was instinctively shouting to him, “Run!” A slender shadow ran through the wind and towards the woman and Alt.

Bang!

From the point where the fleeing shadow stopped, the land he had already stepped on began to be sucked into the black bottomless pit.

* * *

Cough! His breathing finally came back with a loud breath.

Eckart woke up with terrible pain. To put it accurately, his breath came back first, and his consciousness followed slowly. Regardless of his will, water and breath in his lungs flowed back. His painful nausea began, as if he felt like he would vomit all his intestines.

“…Are you okay?”

A few words were heard faintly and then cut off again. Marianne’s warm hands slanted his head to the side. With the same force, she pushed his back and helped him lie on his side. At the same time, he felt enormous pain all over his body. He hunched his shoulders and frowned.”What should I do…”

Now he could clearly understand her words.

He scraped the floor instead of his splitting chest. Moist water and hard pebbles, not dry soil, slipped between his fingers. With just that much information, he inferred his location and situation.

As the water didn’t rise above his wrists, perhaps he would be in one of the shallowest tributaries. During that brief moment, he was pushed as far as here from the falls.

If he was lucky, he might not be far from the temple they were heading for.

And…

His blue eyes sparkled on the belt around his wrist. There was something more important than that. He tightened his arms to raise his body and lifted his head slightly.

“Oops!”

In less than a second, he had to plunge his head on the riverbed.

He could tolerate the cough and dizziness that still didn’t stop. But the pain in the forearms and back was so severe that he would rather pass out. He clenched his teeth so hard that he almost bit his tongue.

“Your Majesty! Don’t get up! You’re bleeding here…”

After all, he lay down on the side and coughed everything up. He felt Marianne’s hands trembling when she patted his shoulders. His continuous coughing lasted for a while and then decreased little by little. Only after he could get his breath back did he stretch his body again. When he took pains to lie down normally, he felt a terrible pain, and the strong sunlight pierced his eyes.

A shadow soon fell over his face.

“… Marianne!”

Backlighting required a few more seconds for him to recognize her face, but he already found out the opponent’s identity before his vision was restored.

“Yes, Your Majesty! It is me, Marianne. It’s me…”

Marianne cried severely. Her desolate and lovely voice unwittingly gave him a rude awakening.

He realized who was desperately hanging onto him in his dream a moment ago. He realized why she cried and pleaded with him. He realized why he didn’t want to leave her alone there without knowing who she was.

“I was really…I was at a loss what to do if you didn’t wake up…Of course, you will surely wake up, but what should I do? Because of me, you ended up like this. Boohoo…”

She cried while talking to him. Biting her lip, she wiped his wet face hurriedly.

When she wiped his face with her wet hands, it was stained with blood as if red ink spilled on it.

Eckart frowned at that moment. He lifted his left arm, which was less painful. He caught her slender wrist in the air. When he examined her white and thin fingers, they were stained with blood. When he turned the inside of her hands, there was lots of blood on her palms.

“Were you hurt? How come you are so bloody…”

His embarrassed voice slowly faded away. With his blue eyes, he quickly began to scan her from head to toe. There were a few thin or slightly coarse scars on her skin not covered by her clothes, but nothing was bleeding enough to wet her hand.

“This is not my blood.”

Marianne pulled out her hand. She lifted one of Eckart’s shoulders with one of her bloodied hands and swept his back very carefully.

Eckart bit the inner side of his mouth unconsciously. He almost screamed.

“It’s your blood, Your Majesty!”

Like she said, there was a pool of blood on his hands. At first he thought he felt pain because his shoulder was broken, but it looked like his back had also been severely torn apart. Since his whole body hurt so much, he couldn’t figure out exactly where and how he was injured.

“…I got it. How fortunate…”

He kept muttering with a low voice. His left hand slightly covered his forehead and eyelids. He let out a sigh of relief.

Marianne, who was sniffling while trying to stop his bleeding, listened to all his muttering.

Her wet eyes grew big, and suddenly she got upset and shouted, “Did you say ‘How fortunate!? Why are you so fortunate about? Because your back was torn on my behalf?”

Eckart opened his eyes again when faced with her fiery outbursts of anger.

‘…It looks like my forehead was ripped, too.’

Even though he saw the new bloodstains on his palm that he put on his forehead for a moment, he didn’t care that much. He didn’t want to dwell on it because he was exhausted.

“It’s all because of me. You were hurt so much because of me.”

“No.”