Winter Bud - Chapter 17

“Nanna.”

“You can’t fall asleep! Please, please….”

“I’m cold.”

Nanna pulled her close and held her tight. Stateira, whose body was beginning to stiffen and pale, buried her small face against Nanna’s chest. She kept repeating that she was cold. Nanna looked down at the pool of blood spreading beneath her and cried madly.

She stripped off her cloak and covered her with it. Then she lifted her onto her back. Stateira, limp and lifeless, was as heavy as a water-soaked bundle of cotton. As she tried to retrace her steps back, tears blurred her vision in despair.

She should’ve stopped Stateira from leaving the palace. She should’ve comforted the woman who was growing thinner by the day from her quarrels with her husband. She shouldn’t have stood by with empty hands….

“Miss. You can’t fall asleep. You mustn’t fall asleep.”

Biting her lips hard, she whispered desperately. But no answer came back from Stateira.

***

“The Empress has awakened.”

Orestes didn’t mistake the meaning of those words. His adjutant never called that woman Empress. He himself didn’t call her Empress either. At times he called her Consort, but most often she was just ‘the Crown Prince’s biological mother.’

So how could there be confusion when someone said the Empress had awakened? He thought back to what Jakob had once told him.

“It’s not right to imprison Her Majesty in sleep.”

Jakob was an alchemist. In both the Old Empire and his own, he was the most authoritative figure in alchemy. He was a man who had gained his title through sheer talent and skill, despite his low birth. It wasn’t that Orestes didn’t trust his words. At the very least, the Jakob he knew wasn’t a man who spoke carelessly. He had said that leaving Thea in that ‘sleep’ was nothing more than imprisoning her soul.

It wasn’t prolonging life. Nor was there any possibility of recovery. It meant they had to hold a funeral. To acknowledge that Thea was dead. To accept that she had departed this world….

Why should that be? Why did Stateira have to be burned? Stateira hadn’t died. She was still alive, sleeping so peacefully. Then why hold a funeral? Why turn her into ashes and erase her completely? Better to leave her imprisoned in that ‘sleep.’ Even if she became like a plant, breathing but unable to move, it didn’t matter.

For him, as long as she was there, it was enough. That was Stateira. He forced one heavy step after another and went to the Empress’s quarters.

“Where’s the Empress Consort?”

He spoke at the door engraved with golden and silver swans. The attendant blinked in surprise, then quickly opened the door. Orestes slowly stepped into the orchid-scented bedchamber. Stateira still seemed to be asleep.

Her eyes, shut so gently, were as calm and pale as a wax doll’s. Had his subordinates deceived him? He stared at the unmoving woman, then watched as her eyes slowly opened.

Green. Bright, clear green without a shadow of darkness. Gentle. It felt like her hands had given a light push, sending him tumbling from a cliff’s edge. He moved his dry lips slowly. But Thea spoke first.

“Karl.”

“You remember me?”

How could she ever forget? Was that what he had wanted to say? Or perhaps he had meant to ask it? But Thea only parted her lips and said nothing. Her faintly flushed cheeks trembled. Then her gaze shifted. Orestes turned his head to where she was looking.

“Nanna.”

That woman was standing there. Her face blurred like a mist. He stared blankly at the woman, who seemed to be trembling. Her fear-filled eyes welled with tears before she dropped to her knees.

“…Your Majesty the Empress.”

It was a sigh-like exclamation. He turned from the kneeling woman to look back. Thea was struggling to rise, and a maid rushed to her side to support her.

He recalled her last moments. The two women drenched in blood, wandering the forest path. It had been a cold, rainy autumn. The woman had said the ground had been so muddy she kept slipping as they ran. Her voice had trembled with fear as she wept. And he….

“Why are you kneeling?”

“Y-Your Majesty, I….”

“Come here.”

Thea beckoned to her with a bright face. But the woman couldn’t move. She shook her head like a child, glanced at him, then shut her eyes again. Tears streamed endlessly from her tightly closed eyes. He looked away from the cowering woman as if she were guilty.

“It’s better to send her out.”

“Why?”

“You need to rest.”

“But I missed Nanna.”

“She’s a woman you can see anytime.”

At his rather firm voice, Thea gazed at him quietly. It wasn’t the look of someone searching for change. So perhaps Thea had forgotten the passage of time. No, she probably wasn’t even aware of it. If so, she wouldn’t know that her maid now sat in her place, nor would she know that he had fathered children with that woman.

“Go out now.”

At the short order, the woman staggered to her feet. Even then, she couldn’t raise her head, only trembling violently. He didn’t watch as she left the chamber like a ghost, stumbling. Still, her presence dug sharply into his mind.

***

Thea was like a doll. She had always been a small, delicate woman, like a doll. But the moment their eyes met, it was truly unbelievable…. It felt like slipping down a cliff. Falling endlessly like that.

‘Maybe that would be better.’

Nanna staggered and struggled to breathe. Maybe that would be better…. To suffer the punishment of falling endlessly. In the scriptures, purgatory had always been described just like that. So….

“Your Majesty.”

It was Countess Oestar. She stood tensely at the door of Nanna’s chambers, her tense face asking how it had gone. Nanna didn’t know what to say. Truly, she didn’t know what to say. Should she laugh? Should she cry? In the palace where everyone loved gossip… she couldn’t even guess what the right attitude was.

Nanna was Empress. After Thea’s fall, she became Duke Everhardt’s adopted daughter. Even as an adopted daughter, it had been as the second daughter. So Nanna had truly become Thea’s sister. She had often been told she was like a sister, and now she was one. Sometimes that thought made her laugh….

“So it’s true. Her Majesty….”

Countess Oestar’s face was sharply set. Compared to herself, who was weeping, she seemed far more dignified and aware of the gravity of the situation. Nanna couldn’t bear to look at her and fixed her wavering gaze outside the window. The swaying green leaves in the wind looked like heaven’s image. Maybe that was why it felt so unreal.

When Nanna stayed silent, Countess Oestar called to her, ‘Your Majesty.’ Nanna didn’t reply.

Thea had awakened. She was the one who hadn’t slipped or fallen from her place. So the one who had to fall was Nanna. She was the one who had to return to her original place. Perhaps now she finally could.

Nanna didn’t feel sorrow or burden. She didn’t want to curse this as an unbearable reality. If not for her children, she would have rejoiced instead. But….

“I don’t know what to tell Slan.”

And Stella too. Alexis was still young, so it was fine. He was just a baby who still nursed, so it didn’t matter. Even if Nanna was cast out of the palace, what would Alexis know? Perhaps being deposed together with her would be better for that pitiful child. After all, his bloodline was always in question.

“…I have no idea what you’re thinking.”

The petite woman spoke with a stiff expression. Her earlier flustered self was gone. Then again, Countess Oestar couldn’t be entirely pleased about Thea’s awakening. When everyone avoided her, saying a rolling stone had dislodged a resting one, she had foolishly volunteered to be Nanna’s lady-in-waiting. She wasn’t a bad woman, even if she was frivolous. Nanna moved her lips slightly.