Chapter 236: Side Story 28

“Will cutting off limbs make me feel better?”

At that moment, a fierce murderous intent explosively surged in Sabina’s eyes.

But soon, she closed her eyes.

“It’s no use. Doing so won’t bring back the dead.”

Once again, her red pupils were revealed between her densely packed eyelashes.

It was a light completely different from usual.

Her gaze, blurred with moisture, seemed like a fragile candle that could be extinguished with a mere breath.

Tristan stiffened in surprise.

He reached out his hand thoughtlessly but couldn’t touch her.

Afraid that she would crumble at the slightest touch.

“Even if I cut off the Count’s arms and legs, does that mean Allen didn’t actually betray me?”

After hearing the whole truth from Tristan, Sabina felt as if her heart was being torn apart whenever that thought crossed her mind.

It felt like she was clutching at her mutilated heart, aimlessly floating alone in the vast sea.

“…It might not be a betrayal.”

“Yes, he might have truly cared for me.”

But what good does that do?

‘It doesn’t matter if he approached me as a means of revenge.’

If his initial intention was that but he ended up treating her sincerely, it was fine.

She could forgive him.

However, Allen ultimately chose revenge for his family over Sabina, meeting a horrific end.

How far he intended to involve her was unknown…

What use was it now?

“Now I can’t even tell if my anger is directed at Valois, Allen, or Valentine.”

Sabina first felt a strong murderous intent towards Count Valois.

He was clearly a villain in anyone’s eyes, and she had suffered much at his hands.

Without hesitation, she planned her retribution against him.

And she acted on it.

‘So, what’s next?’

Sabina had planned to seek out Allen after safely escaping from Valentine’s Grand Duchy.

She had never considered any other possibilities.

Either she would never escape Valentine, or she would be with Allen.

Even if Allen was no longer in this world due to an unforeseen accident, she would carry on his will…

But now, knowing all the truth, she couldn’t even do that.

“Die gracefully if you’re going to die.”

The traitor, Allen Castaigne.

My pillar, my support.

My will, my thoughts, my dreams.

My faith.

“My… hypocrite.”

She absent-mindedly fumbled with the black coat draped over her shoulders.

Then she pulled out a cigarette.

Along with an artifact imbued with fire magic.

“What are you trying to do…”

Sabina placed the cigarette in Tristan’s mouth.

And she lit the end.

He inhaled the smoke out of habit, then exhaled.

The smoke hazily blurring his vision made the languid look of her eyes appear and disappear, becoming clear again and again.

“You don’t have to consider me, just smoke if you want to.”

“…….”

“And… I honestly don’t know what to do now.”

We should leave this place first.

Sabina muttered in a hollow voice.

Tristan silently stared at her face, now tinged with a faint red hue, for a while.

Eventually, he reached over Sabina’s shoulder and extinguished the cigarette against the wall.

The distance between them closed significantly.

“What?”

Was it because she was startled?

Sabina’s eyes, previously clouded, suddenly regained their sharpness.

“Was your soul, said to be unbreakable even by Valentine, just this?”

“That is…….”

Sabina recalled the words she had said when she first met Tristan.

“Give up? No, I’ll do whatever it takes to make you give up on me.”

Everyone wanted Sabina to die.

They tried to make her give up her dreams, her life, her future.

They attempted to erase her potential itself.

They promised her a glamorous and peaceful life until the moment of her death if she accepted her demise.

Those words touched a spark deep within Sabina.

And like pouring oil on it, her body and mouth moved on their own.

‘Did I think of Allen then?’

It seems not.

In front of her, nothing could be seen except for the flames burning fiercely red.

It wasn’t someone else’s will, thought, or dream, but hers.

‘It wasn’t just then.’

Even when she poured out all the words she wanted to say to Gary and swung her fist.

Even when she taught a lesson to the knight who dared to act arrogantly towards her.

Even when she thrust a sword into the heart of the Grand Duke of Valentine.

It was all her will.

“If you don’t know what to do, act as if you’re going to engulf everything just like then.”

“What?”

Sabina froze with her eyes wide open.

“That’s you.”

Tristan moved even closer to her side.

He came close enough for their breaths to touch and cupped her cheek, lifting it.

And he looked into her red pupils persistently.

As if searching for some trace.

“If you don’t know where to direct your anger, burn everything that annoys you.”

“…Burn it?”

“If I dare to shake you, then you should burn, engulf Valentine, and even the devil’s malice.”

Sabina in Valentine was always like that.

In the Valois mansion, it was unclear how she hid that ferocity, burning uncontrollably.

She acted as if she would engulf everything that dared to touch her.

Just like Tristan’s analogy, she was fire.

‘Probably, it was because I was pushed to the limit.’

But Sabina knew that was her true nature.

She felt more liberated when threatened with her life than when she was living repressed.

As if escaping from a suffocating cage.

“…You’re unnecessarily tall.”

It hurts my neck.

Sabina, craning her neck, frowned and harshly brushed away his hand.

“Now you’re more like yourself.”

Tristan, finally finding what he wanted, lit up his eyes and lifted the corners of his red lips. A near-ecstatic emotion blossomed around his eyes.

He willingly knelt on one knee in front of her.

Still filling his dark pupils entirely with her.

“Sabina.”

Tristan had never coveted anything other than his own death.

The first to fill his monochrome world with intense color was undoubtedly Sabina.

He wanted to embrace her and dye everything red.

Even if it meant burning me and setting the world on fire.

“Be my will.”

Tristan blurted out without thinking.

As he had warned before.

But at the same time, he knew.

The raw words he was spouting now were more sincere than at any other time in his life.

“Be my thought, my dream, my faith… and burn me over and over. Leave not even ashes.”

“…”

“I will gladly offer every single hair for you to burn comfortably.”

He took Sabina’s hand.

And pressed his hot lips onto the back of her hand without taking his eyes off her.

“I will gladly accept even your hypocrisy.”

She, who used to flinch excessively at the warmth of a stranger, now looked down at him calmly.

‘You told me to engulf you.’

Instead, it was as if he was staring at Sabina, ready to engulf her.

Despite kneeling and acting blindly devoted, the places his fervent gaze touched felt as if they were being scorched.

Sabina’s unheld hand twitched.

And then she slowly raised it.

“Grand Prince!”

That was when.

An interrogator, just coming up from the basement, called Tristan out of breath.

Sabina was startled and shook off his hand, and Tristan’s momentum became menacing, interrupted at a crucial moment.

“What is it?”

“It seems you need to see this.”

“If it’s trivial, I’ll make your life just as trivial, understand that.”

“Ba, Count Valois has confessed something quite important, it seems.”

The interrogator trembled but still bravely conveyed his message.

‘An important matter?’

Sabina turned to look at Tristan.

Tristan, who had not taken his gaze off her eyes, immediately met her eyes.

“Let’s make the Count pay for interrupting us.”

It was you who got interrupted, not us.

Sabina intended to retort, but somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to say anything.

‘I was definitely about to pat his head just now…’

Recently, the beast that pretends to be tame and submissive was smiling with a cunning look in its eyes.

Sabina avoided his gaze and quickly headed downstairs.+

***

Count Valois had thought ‘surely not’ in his heart.

Surely that bastard child, that weak and obedient rat, couldn’t ruin his perfect life.

He didn’t feel the reality of it until an interrogator, covered in blood, entered the prison and began to take out torture tools.

“Screaming might lessen the pain a bit.”

“…!”

“Should we start off lightly at first?”

The interrogator hummed a tune as if asking for an opinion and picked up something that looked like pliers from the array of tools laid out.

The Count turned pale as if all the blood had drained from his body instantly.

Cold sweat ran down his entire body.

‘Is this… really happening?’

Was he drugged, suffering from a terrible hallucination? Was Sabina, who amounted to nothing, not just bluffing?

‘No, this can’t be. It’s absurd. For Valentine to actively participate in a mere personal revenge of a bastard child and for His Majesty to abandon Valois…’

However, vivid pain quickly threw him back into reality faster than anyone.

“Aaaagh!”

The Count writhed in pain as if he was a fish being salted alive.

The interrogator mechanically moved his hands without any hesitation.

“Ugh, cough, ack…!”

It was real.

He convulsed as if vomiting blood, gasping for breath.

Really, really? This hell? Then, he would surely end up on the execution block, looking like a rag.

“They weren’t rebels!”

The Count, driven into a corner, cried out desperately.

“What do you mean, they weren’t rebels?”

“Allen Castaigne didn’t gather rebels! They were just ordinary orphans!”

***