You Said You Wanted Us to Break Up - Chapter 85

When I ignored the numb sensation on the tip of my tongue and left the room, Apple was waiting for me. She looked at me with a worried expression.

“Are you alright?”

There was no reason for me not to be alright. I nodded to Apple.

“Yes.”

She still looked concerned about me but didn’t ask further.

When we left the manor through the route Apple had scouted during the day, a carriage was waiting for us.

As she helped me into it, Apple urged me.

“Please be careful; the night is dark.”

As Apple said, the surroundings were very dark. I had never been out this late at night in my life.

As is typical when attempting something inexperienced, my heart was beating fast. It wasn’t an unpleasant tremor. Rather, it felt more like saying I had waited for this moment my entire life.

Perhaps that was truly the case. As the carriage began to gallop down the pitch-black road, the thought occurred to me spontaneously. Hadn’t every moment I had to endure—the cold nights of the North and the suffocating days of the South—been a journey for this very moment?

If that was truly the case, I was now confident that I would no longer be bound by the past.

As if reading my mind, Apple, who was sitting across from me, said.

“Let’s be sure to live happily once we get to Emerta.”

“Yes.”

If it were just this child and me, happiness wouldn’t feel like such a delusion.

The carriage raced on without stopping. Listening to the sound of the dark-colored evergreens swaying in the wind, I realized that the sound of horses’ hooves could feel this lively. Before, when I was dragged around from place to place by others’ will, it felt like the beat of a funeral march, but now, no dance music seemed as spirited as this sound.

The carriage finally came to a stop, having reached the port. Apple got out first and offered me her hand. I took her hand and descended from the carriage.

The cold night wind brushed my cheeks. The air carried a scent that felt both briny and refreshing. It was the smell of the sea.

Despite the late hour, there were quite a few people moving around the docks. Bluish moonlight fell upon the heads of those moving cargo and adjusting various things. The same light was likely falling upon us.

Apple took my hand and stepped forward without hesitation. Following her, I freely observed the night scenery beneath the unobstructed moon.

“This is my first time at a port in the North.”

In the South, I had, in any case, seen the sea every time I stayed at a resort.

Though my father had never allowed me to board a ship.

Apple chuckled softly at my comment.

“They say this port doesn’t freeze, no matter how cold the weather gets.”

There was such a place in Raslet?

I had read about ice-free ports, but I thought such a thing would be located further south than Raslet.

“I thought the North was a land where everything freezes.”

“There are always exceptions everywhere.”

Apple was right. There are exceptions everywhere. Hadn’t a day like this arrived in my life, which I thought would be stuck in the same rut until I was buried beneath a tombstone?

The value and rarity of this moment rushed over me, and my heart began to pound again for no reason. I pulled Apple’s hand slightly.

“Let’s hurry. I want to get on the ship soon.”

Apple laughed once more. She has been laughing very frequently lately. It was a sight I had never seen in Raslet or Rowen.

If we lived in Emerta, Apple would laugh much more than she does now.

The moment I thought that, a man’s voice called out from behind us.

“Miss Letta? Madam?”

Apple’s steps, which had been leading the way, stopped abruptly.

I knew who the owner of that voice was. My spine instinctively chilled.

Slowly turning around, I saw a familiar man staring at us with an expression of disbelief. The doctor with brown hair and green eyes—Luke.

The doctor, who usually smiled uncomfortably often, was not smiling at this moment. He contorted his face and strode quickly toward us.

“What are you doing here?”

* * *

When Merwen Ethel threw herself over the tower, Luke descended below the tower. His role, having accompanied his superior outside the castle, was to check the vital signs of the convicts and pronounce them dead.

Merwen’s corpse was incredibly pristine. There were no fractures commonly found in a body that had fallen to its death, and there was no bleeding.

Nevertheless, since the woman’s heart had completely stopped, Luke could only come to one conclusion.

“She is dead.”

His superior, who had been looking down at him and the woman lying on the ground with an unreadable expression, said only one sentence.

“Handle it according to protocol.”

Protocol referred to the Northern funeral procedure, which meant burying the corpse for a short time before completely cremating it.

Because the woman’s body was so immaculate, Luke ran several tests afterward. However, since no blood flowed when he pricked her fingertip and no pupil reaction existed, he couldn’t overturn his conclusion.

Merwen Ethel was completely dead.

Afterward, Luke followed his superior back to the castle. Then he followed him again to the Raslet family’s villa. It was the villa with the lake where the rare sight of blooming flowers could be witnessed in the North.

When they arrived at the villa, his superior dismissed the attendants. Everyone, except for the minimum required servants, was ordered not to approach the master’s family. The family’s knights were also included in this.

Luke couldn’t ask his superior the reason. Lately, he had been feeling a distance from the man. It was an uncommon occurrence.

Still, since the Madam was accompanying him, he wouldn’t engage in anything dangerous.

Thinking so, Luke went down to the nearby village on the evening his superior dismissed the attendants. It was the village where Nathan and Merida lived.

Luke visited Merida’s house to deliver Nathan’s medicine for the week and was treated to dinner by her. He then brought up the fact that had been bothering him recently.

“Merida, could a body that fell to its death have no fractures?” When he asked her, the woman immediately scoffed.

“Fell from a high tower, and the body remained pristine?”

“No way, that’s impossible.”

“I saw it with my own eyes.”

“Well, was a protection spell cast on it or something?”

It’s not child’s play. Merida added lightly and laughed. Luke followed her lead and laughed out of habit, but he couldn’t completely abandon his doubts.

“It looked as if she hadn’t stopped breathing.”

“Fell from a tower? No way.”

Merida shook her head. She said with a tone of certainty.

“And even if the body did remain pristine, if it was handled according to the Northern funeral protocol, wouldn’t it be buried deep underground by now?”

“That’s true.”

Even a living person would suffocate if buried in the ground.

Therefore, Merwen Ethel’s death could not be doubted in any way.

Yet, unable to discard a certain premonition, Luke brought up something truly like ‘child’s play.’

“You know, Merida. Even though we are far removed from things like magic and curses now, they still exist in the world, don’t they?”

They were, after all, residents of the North, where Glasyr grew, and the Imperial Palace was under a massive protection spell that guaranteed the glory and continuation of the Imperial Family.

Although things like magic were almost forgotten in people’s minds, ‘exceptions’ that defied the laws of nature certainly existed.

Merida also readily agreed with his words.

“That’s right.”

However, before Luke could vocalize any suspicions, Merida spotted her son poking his head out from the landing.

“Nathan! Didn’t I tell you not to eavesdrop when adults are talking?”

Merida rose from her seat with a stern expression. Luke watched for a moment as the woman lifted her son and scolded him, but not too harshly.

After getting an answer from her son that he wouldn’t do the same thing again, Merida turned back to him.

“I’m sorry, I should end our conversation now. I need to put Netty to bed.”

Still, perhaps feeling awkward about just sending him away, Merida said as she walked him out.

“If you want to know anything about magic, ask the people in ‘that village.’ If you ask, they might answer something.”

‘That village’ referred to the place where the Kaulm people who had defected in the previous generation gathered to live.

Although the village itself was within the military base, its residents did not frequently interact with the outside world, but they weren’t completely isolated either.

They traded back and forth with the South, and even Apple Letta herself had been close with them for a while when she was exiled from the castle.

While Luke was momentarily lost in thought, Merida added.

“I heard they are launching a ship tonight. You might run into them if you go to the port.”

Hearing that, Luke decided to handle a few more errands and then head to the dockside.

He didn’t expect to find a familiar back view there, though.

Noticing that the light steps of one of the two women wearing robes looked familiar, Luke called out the name he knew.

But to think it really was Apple Letta.

Luke asked the woman, who was standing in front of her mistress as if guarding her.

“Where are you going at this hour?”

And he discovered one more fact he hadn’t yet noticed. Apple Letta was holding a travel bag in her hand.

Luke’s brow furrowed as he realized what that meant.

“Surely, eloping…”

But before he could finish his sentence, a very familiar voice sounded from behind him.

“Luke Ailac!”

It was the sound of his superior calling him when he was angry. Luke also instinctively turned around.

“Your Excellency?”

The man, wearing only an outer garment over his indoor clothes, dismounted his horse and was striding toward them.

Luke walked toward him and asked.

“Excellency, what is the matter?”

As he got closer to his superior, Luke realized that the man’s complexion was paler than usual. It was a look that couldn’t be explained merely by the moonlight.

There was only one cause for a healthy man’s blood pressure to drop so drastically. Luke urgently asked.

“Did you ingest poison?”

But the possibility was low. His superior was extremely cautious. There were people whose very nature was more demanding than others, and his superior was one of them.

He was not someone who wouldn’t know what he put in his own mouth.

If it was poison, this was not the time to be walking around. However, just as Luke was about to retort, his superior gritted his teeth. He growled lowly.

“Be quiet.”

It was a voice that conveyed the intent to pull out his tongue if he didn’t shut up immediately.

Even amidst this, his gaze was not directed toward Luke. Luke shifted his attention to where his superior was looking.

A woman, whose face was as pale as his superior’s, was trembling while looking at them.

“You, you knew everything?”

Her pale green eyes, brimming with tears, were shaking uncontrollably.

His superior looked at the woman with an indescribable expression, and with a voice that was completely hoarse, he barely choked out one word: “Iella.” Self-reproach and despair flashed in the man’s dark blue eyes.

It was not the expression a man merely chasing after his runaway wife would make. At that moment, Luke realized.

Something was fundamentally wrong.