"Is the baby asleep?" Es asked, her voice casual as she attempted to divert the conversation.
Helga looked at her with a knowing stare. "Es!" she repeated, her tone firm.
Es pressed on, ignoring the warning. "What are you doing here? Aron must have missed you; you two have been apart for so long."
"Es!" Helga interrupted again, but Es continued, clearly trying to avoid the real conversation. "You’ve been away for such a long ti. Why don’t you go to sleep?"
Helga wasn’t having it. "Es!," she said again, more forcefully this ti, trying to bring her back to the topic at hand.
Es, realizing she couldn’t dodge it any longer, sighed deeply. The lightness in her voice disappeared, replaced with sothing heavier, tinged with pain.
"They know about Cain."
The ntion of the na made Helga freeze. "What?" she whispered, shock creeping into her voice.
Es looked away, the seriousness of the situation finally breaking through. "They knew about Cain," she repeated, her voice quieter now, as if each word was weighted with its own burden.
Helga’s expression shifted drastically upon hearing Es’s words. "I’m not asking what you said," Helga began, her voice strained with a mixture of confusion and concern. "I can hear you clearly. What I want to know is, what do you an by ’they knew Cain’?"
Es locked eyes with her, the weight of the truth evident in her gaze before she sighed heavily. "They knew about Cain—his death. And they knew about my connection to him."
Helga’s heart skipped a beat. She was stunned. Although many people knew of Cain, no one except a few close individuals understood the depth of Es’s love for him. She rembered how joyful Es used to be back then, how she introduced them to each other with a light in her eyes that Helga hadn’t seen in years. But Cain... he was a secret. Only a select few knew about him, and even then, they knew him under a false identity, a na that had nothing to do with his real life. Es and Helga had made sure to keep everything about him buried. So how could these people possibly know?
Helga collected herself, taking a deep breath to regain her composure. She couldn’t afford to lose her cool now. She looked back at Es, her expression hardening with resolve. "So what?" she asked, her voice steadier. "Even if they knew about Cain, so what? I don’t see how that’s enough of a reason for you to marry them, to live here. And to try to rebuild Aron’s group from scratch, after everything."
Es’s face remained unreadable, but there was a flicker of sothing in her eyes—sothing Helga had never been able to fully understand.
Helga pressed on, her voice firr. "You can’t tell that’s all there is to it, Es."
Es leaned back in her chair, eyes closed as if the weight of her mories was too much to bear. "I knew fooling you was never an option," she began, her voice softer now. "Do you rember the day the Valhalla family attacked ?"
Helga’s posture stiffened. Her eyes flickered with a familiar intensity as she t Es’s gaze. "Of course, I rember," Helga responded in a serious tone. "How could I forget that day? I thought I’d lose you."
Es gave her a small, almost wistful smile, a hint of warmth beneath her otherwise guarded deanor. "That day," she continued, "when I sent you away, hoping you’d escape from the office... soone ca. A mysterious figure."
Helga repeated the word quietly, "Mysterious?"
"Yes," Es nodded. "It was a man. Black hair, tall. That’s all I rember about him. But the strange part... he had a beast with him. A divine beast." She opened her eyes, watching Helga’s reaction carefully.
Helga’s face tightened, her shock evident. Divine beasts were rare, and even rarer in the hands of r. The idea that soone involved in such dark dealings could possess one... it didn’t add up. "A divine beast?" Helga echoed, her voice barely above a whisper.
Es nodded again. "Yes. Even through The Aron brothers have their divine beasts, but that r... he wasn’t like them. There was sothing darker about him. And yet, the beast—" she hesitated, searching for the right words. "It obeyed him completely. It was like he commanded it with no effort."
Helga couldn’t hide her surprise. The connection between a divine beast and its master was sacred. It wasn’t sothing easily inherited, especially not through bloodshed or manipulation. And to think there was soone out there, soone tied to Cain’s death and Es’s past, with the power to control one... it was almost unthinkable.
"Es, are you saying this man, this... stranger, has sothing to do with Cain’s death?"
Es’s lips pressed into a thin line, her expression more pained than before. "I’m not sure," she admitted. "But I do know he’s connected. Sohow, he’s part of all this. And the Aron brothers... they know more than they’re telling ."
Helga leaned forward, her voice laced with determination. "But Es, if you want to find out who that mysterious r was, why not start by investigating the beast? A divine beast leaves traces—marks that only a few can control. If you find out more about the beast, you might uncover who they are."
In this world, only a few ancient families had the power to command divine beasts. It wasn’t hard to tell who they were; their nas were known, passed down through stories and legends. People admired and feared them in equal asure. Their power wasn’t just in controlling these creatures but in the deep, old knowledge they carried—the kind that had been passed down for generations.
Es looked at Helga, her gaze steady and earnest. "Don’t think I didn’t try, Helga. You must rember when I sought to find your family. Thanks to your divine grace, it wasn’t difficult, and we found them."
At those words, Helga’s head dropped, the weight of the painful mory pressing down on her shoulders. She could feel the familiar ache of loss creeping back in. From her childhood to the age of nineteen, she had lived as an orphan, feeling the cold emptiness of loneliness wrap around her like a shroud. When Es had finally tracked down her family, it had felt like a flicker of hope in the darkness.
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