Chapter 169
## Chapter 169
He could have left her and walked away, but he had already stepped so far into the mud that his clothes were soiled. He did not want his effort to be in vain. He walked through the drizzle toward a huge, leafy tree.
Meanwhile, the girl pursed her small lips and babbled something. Since her affectation of superiority while soaked by the rain was amusing, he directed a slight reproach at her, which caused her face, pale to a painful extreme, to gain some color.
He examined her features beneath the hood, which fell deeply. Could she be Ayla’s age? Her height was similar to hers, but her body looked a little smaller. Beneath the wet fabric, he felt bones as thin as those of a bird. Contrary to her presumption of being the daughter of someone great, it was easy to guess that she was in a situation where she did not receive proper care.
“…It is none of my business.”
He wondered at himself for experiencing that annoyance, and bent his body to put her on the ground. At that moment, a sound like a faint whistle was heard.
He stopped his movement and looked down at her hands, clasped over her chest.
“What are you holding?”
The girl, who was looking at him with empty and hesitant eyes, opened her hands cautiously. From between them emerged what looked like a mass of grayish-brown fur stained with mud.
He frowned.
“A bird?”
When he muttered it doubtfully, the blush on the girl’s cheeks intensified.
“It fell into the mud, that’s why it looks like this. Actually, it’s…” The girl, who was protesting with a flushed face, cut herself off and closed her mouth with a gloomy expression.
He could not understand why a dying bird made her sad, or why she clung to it and covered it despite the rain. However, that wretched bird that the girl did not dare to abandon reminded him of something he himself had lost a very long time ago.
He sank into a strange nostalgia, so he adjusted his posture to carry her with a single arm and pulled her small hand inside his own hood. Her skin in contact with his neck was so cold that it made him doubt whether blood was flowing through her veins or not.
“Your fingers are cold as snow. How long have you been standing there?”
As he looked at her with a displeased expression, his eyes directly met her huge pupils, which were gazing at him intently. What was she looking at like that? While he made an questioning gesture, the girl murmured in a low voice, as if she had found a treasure of great value:
“You know…? There is a silver crown inside your eyes.”
He looked at her, his face devoid of words. This girl was the one who possessed truly strange eyes. They bore a tone so dark that the boundary between the pupil and the iris was blurry; however, for some reason, they did not look black. On the contrary, they seemed to shine with a frightening transparency.
He suddenly remembered having seen that clear light somewhere before. It was the light that spilled over his head in very remote times, when he ran through the infinite plains.
The instant he realized this, his vision became completely clear, as if the veil covering his retina had been removed. It was an extremely sudden change, to the point that he could not understand exactly what had happened to him. And while he stared without blinking at the clear light that burst in all of a sudden, the festival of colors that sprouted from her eyes began to expand into the surroundings.
The next moment, he knew that the girl’s hair possessed a golden tone as bright as the fields in late autumn. When he prepared to unconsciously reach out his hand toward it, she turned her head suddenly. He had to clench his fist so as not to grab that small face and turn it back toward himself once more.
The girl murmured with a shy expression:
“I… must go now.”
Her tone suggested a deep reluctance to leave.
‘If you don’t want to go, don’t go.’
He was on the verge of uttering it without realizing, but he remained silent. He had barely met this girl a moment ago; there was no reason to hold her back if she wished to leave. He bent down slowly and placed her on the ground.
The girl, once standing on the dirt, extended her hand to him:
“Could you take it with you?”
He fixed his gaze on the small bird placed in the palm of her hand, then extended his own cautiously. When his hand enveloped the small starling soaked by the rain, he perceived the rapid beating of its small heart.
He brought the small animal, whose temperature was beginning to drop, close to his cheek, and then pulled his hood forward. The girl, who was watching him intently, asked him in a voice that carried a strange longing:
“That bird… will it live?”
“…Yes.”
Varkas, noticing the lack of certainty in his voice, added firmly:
“It will live without fail.”
Across the girl’s face, which looked distressed, a pale smile spread. It was an extremely radiant smile and, for some reason, it looked sad.
She turned and began to run immediately. With her footsteps moving away, the multiple colors expanded their reach like dyes spreading out. While he contemplated that scene with a blank stare, the echo of Bernadette’s voice resonated in his head:
‘The day will come when you discover something that makes you want to stay alive.’
“That is impossible.”
It had been an encounter that lasted no more than a few moments. His life could not be transformed by the simple ephemeral contact with a girl whose name he did not know. He let out a sarcastic laugh, then turned and began to walk.
The bird that the girl had handed him emitted a faint chirp. He opened the collar of his clothes and tucked the bird next to the warm part of his neck, then quickened his pace. The path he had walked hundreds of times looked like a completely different place.
For a moment, he experienced a strange vertigo. He looked up, toward the threads of light filtering through the gray clouds, and then closed his eyes.
The sound of heavy footsteps filtered into his clouded consciousness. Varkas, who remained sitting in the chair catching up on lost sleep, raised his eyelids slowly. He heard a commotion behind the tent where the rain was pouring and, shortly after, a young man with black hair wearing golden armor burst through the curtains.
“Is it true that you have pushed for peace negotiations?” the crown prince shouted in an angry voice while throwing his helmet forged in orichalcum to the ground.
Varkas took the cup placed on the provisional table and answered in an indifferent tone:
“I only formulated a proposal. The one who actually pushed for the negotiations was His Majesty the Emperor.”
“It’s exactly the same thing!” The crown prince lunged toward him, his green eyes flashing with fury, and roared, “Negotiations with the rebels… Have you lost your mind? Those who raise arms against the imperial family must all be hanged!”
“Do you think executing all the nobles of the North is something viable from a realistic perspective?” Varkas let out a heavy sigh after moistening his mouth with the wine. “Suppose we execute all the nobles of Balto just as you wish, Your Highness. How do you intend to govern those vast lands in the North?”
“I will grant them to my subordinates as war booty! Or I will distribute them among the conservative nobles! There are too many nobles whose mouths water to obtain an additional inch of land…”
“Are you not aware that the people of Balto will never accept lords of another lineage?” As he answered while pressing his forehead in annoyance, the crown prince’s face, which was boiling with anger, froze.
Varkas drew upon the rest of his patience and added to clarify:
“The North is also land belonging to the Empire. If we do not stop the war now, the damage will fall upon the Roim imperial family. And what is more important, an excessive reaction could arouse the discontent of the rest of the rulers.”
“Including you, isn’t that right?” the crown prince scoffed, his eyes flashing.
Varkas did not answer. He gazed in silence and with eyes inhabited by fatigue at his younger relative, whose mind rarely matured, then stood up slowly. When he prepared to leave the tent, Garis blocked his path.
“You project yourself as if you were working for the benefit of the Roim imperial family, but in reality you just want to put an end to the war and that’s it. Do you think I am ignorant of the reason why you rejected the position of General Commander and remained only near the eastern border?” His agitated breath reached the edge of his chin in an annoying manner. Garis brought his face close to his and pronounced through gritted teeth, “You did it so you could frequent Kalmore every time the opportunity presented itself.”
“…”
“You think you are the only one who knows me well. But I know you too; I have observed you for nearly twenty years.” The crown prince’s green eyes were tinted with a green tone that was almost dark. Although their characters were never alike, Garis, looking that way, always reminded him of the late empress. The crown prince continued speaking as if spitting out the words, “Did you think I wouldn’t notice that your whole heart is elsewhere? Even these negotiations, you didn’t push for them except for your own personal benefit!”
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