Swan Grave - Chapter 50

Of course, the possibility that she might not be his Ianna had never existed from the start. Not because their outward appearances were similar. It was her very existence engraved on his soul that shook him. Just as his lower body, unmoved even when faced with a naked prostitute throwing herself at him, would always react to the portrait of the modestly dressed Ianna. The only being in this world who could arouse him was Ianna.

“After all… isn’t binding you with guilt more rewarding than digging up forgotten memories to corner you?”

Anna’s hands, barely clutching the diary, trembled violently. Easily reclaiming the diary from her, he flipped through it with a careless flick of his hand. The fluttering pages slashed her apart.

“What was written in here? Did it spell out every petty detail of how you deceived me?”

In her memories, his eyes had been soft as rose petals, but now they swelled like molten lava, ready to devour her.

In his youth, though called a demon because of his birth, he had been a gentle husband. There may have been whispers behind his back about his origins, but never were there ominous rumors of lakes turning red with blood or corpses being carried out, as there were now.

Much had changed while she was gone.

The sense of betrayal toward Ianna had warped into an abnormal obsession, and in the end, Rothbart himself was left torn apart and ruined. It was Ianna who had turned Rothbart into a true demon.

And yet she envied herself. Looking at Rothbart, she had only mocked that he was a slave bound to the Marchioness, certain that he would never give her a piece of his heart.

Her memories bloomed slowly like flowers, but her sins surged up all at once. The impact struck her like the full force of a waterfall crashing down.

“You don’t know how many times I stroked what you left behind and breathed in the remnants of your scent. In time, I became afraid. Afraid that all these things would wear down, fray, and disappear before you ever came back…”

He let out a muffled, twisted laugh. His voice, retracing the past, was hollow.

“When you said you wanted to be pregnant, you can’t imagine how glad I was. I thought you had decided to settle in this world! That was why you wanted a child… ha! Isn’t it ridiculous? Bearing a child was nothing but a stepping stone for you to leave this place.”

His storming fury shook Anna like a raging tide. His unhealed wounds gaped raw and red. Horrified and desolate, Anna squeezed her eyes shut. This was all her retribution. The consequence of her sins that she had no choice but to bear…

But even that was not allowed. Rothbart seized Anna’s arm roughly, shaking her as he roared.

“Open your eyes, Ianna. Don’t you dare look away from me! You must see all of this clearly. Because this is the result of what you did!”

The massive man erupted like a volcano. Anna, helpless before the disaster, could do nothing but watch the devastation unfold. She had no words of defense. Even the words she had prepared shriveled and vanished.

With what face, with what words could she possibly speak…

“Do you see this? I cut into my flesh and shed blood hundreds, thousands of times for you. To the point that one more drop of blood might kill me. All to drag you back in front of me again!”

Rothbart thrust his mutilated left arm before Anna’s eyes. The ghastly wounds, hidden until then by his clothes, now burned vividly in her sight. Anna gasped without realizing it. The pain of blades slicing through flesh forced itself into her imagination…

“After you disappeared, I scoured the entire social world every single day, searching for traces of anyone who knew swan summoning. Do you know why? Because that damned father of mine killed the black magician who had summoned you and burned the method of swan summoning. And then he killed himself, erasing the method completely. Ha, what an impressive man he was!”

On the day of the Red Moon, only one born from the death of a mother in a pool of red blood could become a vessel of a demon. Rothbart’s mother, the former Marquess Lohengrin, took an inducing drug to make her son a complete demon, and when that was not enough, gave birth and killed herself.

Duke Albert claimed it was all superstition, but the former Marchioness Lohengrin was stubborn, as if bewitched by something.

Ironically, the son she bore through such extremes, Rothbart, was the first true demon to be born in a thousand years since the progenitor.

Albert, who loved his wife, devoted his entire life to the prosperity of House Lohengrin, her wish. He raised Rothbart to be an excellent successor and summoned a swan to bear him an heir.

But he hated the demon who had swallowed the life of his beloved. He had lost all joy in life because of that demon, and yet Rothbart dared to whisper love to a swan woman. It was unbearable.

So he sent Anna back.

Rothbart knew well his father’s malice. In front of him, he had slit his own throat and cursed him to suffer forever as he had.

“Your mother abandoned me and left. Even knowing I would suffer so, she left me behind! And your wife will be the same, Rothbart! In your arms, she whispered of her love, but behind your back, she was always struggling to escape you. Not once did she fail to. All of it was a pretense to leave you! She has returned to her original world she longed for, and soon she will forget you completely…”

Showing teeth stained red with surging blood, he laughed shrilly. The life of his father, who couldn’t bring himself to end it because of his wife’s dying command, ended like that.

“Only then did I realize my mistake. I should have brainwashed my father as well… I arrogantly thought that even without such measures, everything would go as I wished. That was my mistake.”

Though he had shown clear hatred, in front of Rothbart, his father hadn’t dared lift a finger. Rothbart’s nobility had always been above his father’s. That was the relationship of father and son from the moment he was born, and so the arrogant Rothbart had never felt the need to brainwash him.

That was the problem.

He hadn’t realized his father’s hatred was so insidious and tenacious. He shouldn’t have underestimated him as a mere human, but laid the trap perfectly, brainwashed him, and held his goal tight until the end. Rothbart realized this only after he had lost Ianna.

Duke Albert didn’t forget to add that Anna’s departure was all because she had borne Svanhild. It must have been his wish that Rothbart’s loss of his wife would lead him to hate Svanhild as well. For Albert himself had done so.

But because he knew his father’s intentions clearly, Rothbart left Svanhild alone. Perhaps it was because he had no hatred to pour onto him. That was entirely Ianna’s share, the woman who had abandoned him.

Obsessed with bringing Ianna back, Rothbart neglected Svanhild. That was his way of being a father. There was nothing good to be gained from deep exchange with a demon, and the same applied to his child.

It was thanks to raising Svanhild that Ianna had finally fallen back into his arms. Rothbart couldn’t help but feel gratitude to that child.

“Do you know? All that blood I shed was meaningless. The summoning circle showed no reaction despite the many rituals. My blood was no different from that of other humans.”

His hollow laughter echoed emptily through the room. Anna, unable to say a word, only clenched and unclenched her fists repeatedly. Roth whispered to Anna as if revealing a great secret.

“So I had no choice but to use new blood. The blood that went into the summoning circle that called you was Svanhild’s.”

The deep scar on Svanhild’s palm came to mind. Only now did she understand the reason, but that didn’t make it any less despairing.