Chapter 13 · A Coin for Death

The corridor stretched so long that its end could not be seen.

In the darkness where even the sunset light filling the windows could not reach, Isadel pressed her shoulder against the cold wall as if crushing it and moved forward.

Staggering along, Isadel only came to a halt like a lost child once she reached the first floor of the tower.

Escape.

It was the word she had so desperately craved, yet now that she had crossed the threshold, there was nowhere to go.

“…Where am I supposed to go?”

Her cracked voice scattered powerlessly into the air.

Once, in this imperial palace, every place her eyes fell upon was, as a matter of course, her territory.

But not anymore.

Even the cool touch of the pillar beneath her fingertips felt unfamiliar.

A single breath of air drawn without permission pricked at her lungs as if thorns had risen in them.

On top of that, hostility seemed to radiate from all sides, as if to push out the unfamiliar intruder.

In this vast castle where she had been born and raised, she was now nothing but a stranger and an uninvited guest who had to hide even her own footsteps.

Just then, the regular sound of military boots from patrolling imperial guards reached her ears.

Isadel instinctively shrank and melted into the darkness.

She knew the geography of the labyrinthine imperial palace with her eyes closed, yet there was not even a handspan of space in which this body could stay.

“Hah…”

The absurdity of having to sneak around her own home like a rat drew an involuntary, hollow laugh.

It was while wandering through the imperial palace, avoiding people’s eyes, that Isadel came to a stop: the hall where the portraits of the emperors of ages past slept.

As she stepped into that place, where a heavy silence that swallowed even footsteps had settled, her gaze slowly climbed the walls.

Beyond the massive canvases, the long history of the Lacent family looked down upon her.

From the First Emperor Barentis to the Eighteenth Emperor Aderus—a solemn hall imbued with the glory of Rastain.

But at the traces of the disgusting usurper wedged among them, Isadel’s expression contorted.

A canvas still not free of the scent of oil paint, having been painted not long ago.

Unmoved eyes without a trace of agitation, elegant lips steeped in arrogance, and blue eyes so transparent they were chilling—cold as ice.

Even within the portrait, Erhan looked down at her with an air of arrogance, as if mocking Isadel’s downfall.

Isadel trembled with fury, her blood running backward.

“How dare the likes of you… stand beside my father and the emperors before him…”

Before the words were even finished, her hand moved first.

Isadel seized the golden candlestick decorating the wall as if snatching it up.

Before the cold of the heavy metal could even register, her seething hatred outpaced reason.

Scratch, screeeech!

The sharp tip of the candlestick cut diagonally across Erhan’s face.

The smooth canvas screamed as it was torn to shreds.

With eyes steeped in madness, Isadel violently slashed at Erhan’s eyes, the tip of his nose, and those arrogant lips.

But even that did not quell her anger.

Isadel grabbed the corner of the massive frame and hurled it to the floor with all her strength.

Clatter!

The metal frame shattered with a loud burst.

Glass fragments sprayed in all directions, grazing Isadel’s cheek and scattering at her feet, but she did not blink an eye.

“You should have known your place. For a lowly thing like you to defile the hall of Rastain.”

The words she spat as if trampling on Erhan’s face crushed against the floor returned as a hollow echo.

In the place the anger had swept through, only a dreadful hunger and a burning thirst remained.

As Isadel gasped for ragged breath, her gaze caught on a side table laid out along the corridor wall.

Upon it stood rows of the finest wines, chilled and ready for the banquet hall.

As if possessed, Isadel approached and picked up a bottle.

The princess’s etiquette of gracefully uncorking it was already beneath her notice.

She bit at the cork with her teeth and tore it off roughly.

A sweet yet pungent aroma lodged deep in her lungs.

She poured the wine straight from the bottle, without a glass.

The cold liquid seared down her esophagus and churned mercilessly through her empty stomach.

The twisting sensation was almost welcome.

Because the pain screaming from her stomach seemed to push away, for a moment, the dreadful reality churning through her mind.

Isadel drained the remaining wine in one breath, then hurled the empty bottle at Erhan’s torn portrait.

Clatter!

The red wine spilling from the bottle stained his face like blood.

“Yes, now you look worth looking at. That’s what you are. A monster drenched in blood.”

After looking down at the wretchedly ruined portrait as if sneering, Isadel moved on with footsteps that had become strangely light.

* * *

The place her feet stopped unconsciously was an old fountain in a garden deep within the imperial palace.

A place where even the water jets had stopped and only stagnant water rotted—a place Isadel had often visited with her mother.

After her mother passed away, as her father took a new empress and her half-siblings were born one by one and she slowly lost her place, it had also been the only refuge where the young princess could lay her heart to rest.

Isadel perched precariously on the edge of the fountain.

“Mother…”

The tears she had held back so long, and the pride of a princess that had never once been broken, crumbled there for the first time.

‘What am I supposed to do now… I resent this body that can neither die nor live… I want to go to your side, Mother… Why is even that not permitted to me…’

As if trying to tear out the breath stubbornly clinging to her, Isadel clawed roughly at her chest.

A life left alone could not be a more dreadful punishment.

Just as the world beyond her blurred vision wavered utterly wretchedly, a memory she had forgotten suddenly surfaced.

“Isadel, if you throw a coin into the fountain and count to ten, the goddess Kaelis will grant your wish. If it is a truly earnest wish.”

Her mother’s tender voice circled her ears like a hallucination.

A tender secret about the myth of Kaelis, whispered only to her.

Isadel had always laughed it off as absurd superstition, but now it was different.

Because it was the only passage through which she could escape this hellish reality, and the last rope she had grasped at the edge of a cliff.

Isadel began frantically searching her pockets with trembling hands.

“…A coin, I need a coin.”

Her trembling fingers dug madly through her pockets.

But all that caught at her fingertips was the cool touch of torn and tattered fabric.

Of course.

What coin would an imprisoned criminal have?

Isadel stopped her hands in desolation and sank to the floor, looking up at the darkening sky.

“So I don’t even have the right to make such a wish…”

A bitter, hollow laugh escaped her at the absurdity of her situation.

Her family was all dead, and everything she had tried to protect had turned to ash and vanished without a trace.

Yet she, left alone, did not have a single coin, and could not even offer a worthless prayer to end this hell.

It was then.

“…!”

At the tip of her fingers as they blankly swept the ground, an alien, cool sensation touched her.

Isadel picked up what was buried in the dirt and slowly opened her palm.

It was a single old, faded coin someone had dropped long ago.

“…Found it.”

She had thought she had lost everything, but it seemed a faint trace of fortune remained.

Isadel clutched the coin until her palm ached, rose to her feet, and stood before the fountain.

Then, without hesitation, she threw the coin in.

Plop.

A small ripple spread across the still surface.

Isadel gripped the cold edge of the fountain and began to murmur numbers in a trembling voice.

One.

Two.

Three.

The coin slowly sank to the bottom of the fountain.

Before the ripple that had spread across the dark water could even subside, Isadel poured her earnest longing through her tightly closed eyelids.

‘Please, now, just let me die.’

Four.

Five.

Six.

Veins bulged on the back of her hand as she gripped the cold stone edge of the fountain.

‘Haven’t I been torn and trampled enough?’

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

As if clutching at the hem of a god’s robe, Isadel offered her final plea.

‘So please, now take my life and carry me there. I will not refuse even hell.’

Her lips, about to form the final number, trembled pitifully.

The desperate surrender of one who could not even choose death by her own will scattered across the water.

‘If you cannot kill me… then please, grant me even one reason to live. Whatever it may be, I will gladly accept it.’

As if forcing her stopped heart upward, Isadel exhaled her last breath.

Ten.

She lifted her faintly trembling eyelids and slowly opened her eyes.

As the ripples slowly subsided, a familiar shadow formed on the transparent surface.

She could not tell how long he had been standing there, or how much of her wretched confession he had heard.

But one thing was certain: Isadel’s prayer, sent upon a single coin, had not been answered.

“…Is this your answer to my prayer?”

In the momentary silence as the water’s ripples came to rest, Isadel’s and Erhan’s eyes met precisely.