Chapter 46
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As I started to speak quickly, I had a slight pain in my lungs. I thought it would be more comfortable to raise my upper body.
As I struggled to sit up, Kwanach quickly propped up with a distracted look on his face. A firm arm pulled up, supporting my back. I was now leaning completely against Kwanach’s chest.
Leaning against him without any distance between us was a really childish concern, even in this tense situation.
‘I must look horrible….’
I was sure my hair was a ss and since I couldn’t take a bath for a while so my appearance must be shabby. I know I said I didn’t care much about dressing up but I still didn’t want my husband to see looking this ugly. I felt embarrassed.
But I was still too weak to sit up properly on my own. I had no choice but to leave myself in the hands of Kwanach.
“You know who did it. What do you an by that?”
In a low voice, Kwanach ran his big hand through my tangled hair. He didn’t seem to care about my appearance at all.
He ran his hand through my hair, passing it behind my ear, and faced forehead to forehead to check my fever.
“You don’t have a fever anymore… ….”
Kwanach gave a small sigh and kissed briefly on my forehead and the tip of my nose. I was flooded with tenderness.
The murderous spirit and madness I saw from him earlier seed to be a mirage.
“No, Kwanach. I’m not ranting because of the fever. I saw it on the day of the outdoor banquet. No, more accurately, I saw the mory of a tree.”
I talked a lot, and then sothing like the sound of tal started to mix in my throat.
“Just because I blocked out the toxicity in the process doesn’t an that my body is healthy. It will take quite so ti to fully recover.”
It was hard for my body to do this when the shadow of the threat it posed to the empire and the continent was so thick.
Kwanach’s dark brows furrowed at my words. I slowly told him about the scene I had magically witnessed on the day of the banquet at Guilier.
The true identity of Roman, the master of the Guilier. And the unknown experints that Roman was conducting.
Kwanach’s face scrunched up as he listened quietly to my story.
“It seems certain that the Guilier has deliberately spread sclerosis. And it’s not just to monopolize the drug and increase the profits.”
“To use the people who died of sclerosis for their experints…..?”
Kwanach murmured lowly.
“It looks like it. Last ti I heard that there was a strange rumor circulating among the commoners. Rumor has it that sclerosis is a disease transmitted through humans.”
“I heard it too.”
“That’s why sclerosis patients are sotis discarded without treatnt. They don’t have many funerals after they die.”
“If they’re abandoned bodies like that..… The temple will take care of it. If they follow the original procedure, they’ll cremate it after the prayer.”
“But so far, the Guilier had taken the bodies.”
“I wonder if the temple is involved.”
Kwanach’s voice was calm, but there was a little bit of cold anger building up on it. It was a calm anger that felt even more intense.
Yet the hand that held was so gentle, so strangely incongruous.
I was out for only fifteen days. I thought it was not a long ti, but during that ti, Kwanach seed to have changed a little.
Then, suddenly, sothing caught my vision.
Bloodstain was seen on the cuff of Kwanach’s sleeve. I couldn’t help but reach out and touch his sleeve, and Kwanach flinched and rolled up the sleeve.
“Are you hurt?”
“It’s not my blood.”
“…….”
“Let’s get back to the temple story.”
“Ah, the temple…I don’t think the believers would have known Roman’s true identity and actively cooperated with him. They are basically beings who serve the Goddess Fahar.”
“And what Roman does is an insult to Goddess Fahar.”
“Yes. And the less power the Goddess has, the less power the priests have. So may know of Roman’s evil deeds, but not all of them will go along with it.”
“I think so too. It probably would have been too much trouble to dispose of all the increasing number of corpses in the temple. So they took them to the Guilier, holding funerals there instead.”
“No …… I don’t know what they’re doing with those.”
“It must be awful. They may be doing sothing to keep the Pernen Royals in power.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t even know the blood vessels of that crazy family remained. I shouldn’t have missed it. Because of my negligence, you are now…….”
Kwanach’s face flushed with vivid pain.
I put my hand on the back of his hand.
“No, Roman is a genius of transformation magic. Of course you couldn’t find him.”
“Still. Especially when it cos to the mistake that injured you.”
“Kwanach.”
This ti I touched Kwanach’s cheek. His thick lips were quivering.
“I think you’re going to cry now.”
“…….”
“Kwanach, I’m not dead. I’m fine.”
“You almost died.”
Kwanach squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them again. His dark eyes were filled with pain.
At that mont, Kwanach’s voice that I heard just before I passed out from the poison flashed through my mind.
“I thought I could protect you this ti. Again…you….”
‘This ti’. It was as if he had known before.
However, even after going through all my mories before and after the regression, I had never known Kwanach. All I knew was that we had t briefly before the regression, at the wedding.
He couldn’t have been referring to that ti. Unless Kwanach regressed like I did……No, it could have happened to soone else like .
I stared at Kwanach. His eyelids had a small twitch.
“Kwanach.”
“….. Yes.”
“You said sothing to just before I collapsed. Do you rember?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I was just wondering, did we et before? It was before we got married. I think you said sothing with that aning…….”
Kwanach hesitated for a mont, then quickly answered in a firm voice.
“I’ve never said anything like that. Usphere, I think you misheard .”
“…… Is that so?”
Kwanach wrapped his large hands around my cheeks and neck at once and spoke in a low voice.
“Yes. You were running a fever at the ti. You must have heard wrong.”
“Yes. Yes, I did. You may be right. I’m sorry for saying such a strange thing.”
I could not be stubborn because I said I was not a party to the incident, but I was left with a faint but unsettling feeling.
Kwanach gently rubbed my cheek. In a guilty voice, he murmured.
“Don’t say sorry. It’s my fault.”
“How is it your fault? It’s Roman’s fault.”
“…….”
“It’s a toxicity that works on a similar principle to sclerosis, so Roman is probably the real culprit. I don’t know why he targeted , but….wait.”
I stopped talking when a hypothesis suddenly ca to mind.
I tried to think in an unrecovered state, and the fever began to rise again.
I was an Empress who had not yet held an official ceremony. An outlander who had no power.
Why did they want to kill ? Why did they dare to take the risk of killing at a banquet where even the emperor was present…..
I felt as if the pieces of a puzzle were coming together to form a complete picture.
I ca to this land through a political marriage, if I was poisoned like this….
The sa thing that happened in my previous life was repeated.
Two weddings. Two assassination attempts. And then cos the war.
If the marriage alliance was broken, and the North had an excuse to start another war. Shortly after our wedding, I was assassinated in the Emperor’s residence.
The ti and place had changed this ti, but the process was similar to my previous life.
Diaquit Catatel. My brother would have a strong justification to unite people.
A tragic princess who was married and assassinated in the empire. An older brother started a war in the na of his beloved sister.
It was a plausible picture.
Unlike in my previous life, Diaquit told he would take ti to prepare for the war more thoroughly. But….
It was here that I began to track down the secret of the Guilier and the sclerosis. If the truth about the sclerosis was revealed one by one, Guilier would collapse and Roman’s secret experints would co to nothing.
The Guilier would have to remove . I don’t know where the story leaked from, but I’m sure they’ve heard that we were investigating the cause of sclerosis.
Still, Roman would have chosen a more cautious approach. There was no need to try to poison at an open banquet attended by the emperor. In fact, it was a banquet hosted by the Guilier itself.
If his goal was to eliminate , a better thod was to aim for when I’m alone. Since he had the Imperial Chef under his control, he could have targeted the Imperial Palace for ample opportunity.
‘But he didn’t. This is obviously a political performance.’
It was to pin the bla for my death on Kwanach.
It was an attempt to break the marriage alliance and bring people together in the na of war in the North.
The outlines of the events beca clearer.
The fever rose even higher in my body and my heart began to beat faster. But my vision and reason were clearer than ever.
Diaquit Catatel and the master of Guilier, Roman, were working together.
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