Chapter 113
‘G-Gah! Ack!’
The knight, clutching his throat in agony, drew his last breath in an instant.
Kalian swiftly moved to check his condition, but the knight’s eyes had already rolled back.
Foam bubbled from the corners of his mouth.
Kalian examined the knight’s breathing and shook his head.
It was a resolute shake, severing hope clean.
Yet even for him, who had witnessed and pronounced death across countless battlefields, this was a bewildering end.
The brief hesitation in closing the knight’s eyes was proof enough.
The sudden turn of events left them all speechless.
The silence that had fled with the knight’s arrival returned with his death.
Amid it all, Angela was the first to regain her composure.
She grasped immediately what—or rather, who—was behind this.
The person the knight had mentioned in the flames just before dying was Grace, without a doubt.
In the end, she had returned to Phaelon.
A homecoming unwelcome to anyone.
Angela bit the tender flesh inside her mouth, then released it, and bolted forward at a terrifying speed.
Kalian followed hot on her heels.
“Vigo, I’m counting on you.”
He entrusted the handling of the body—eyes now closed—to Vigo.
The deceased was a knight of the Matterson house, and its lord stood right beside them.
But perhaps because the knight’s final words had been drowned by his shout, Earl Matterson seemed utterly unable to shake off the shock.
His fists, clenched below his waist, trembled as if seized by spasms.
In the end, as if he could bear it no longer, the earl swept a hand over his gaunt face and strode away from the spot.
Left behind were Vigo, who had received Kalian’s request disguised as an order, and Ian, who couldn’t bring himself to chase after the woman while a knight lay dead before him.
The two avoided each other’s eyes, shadowed with anxious unrest, and focused instead on tidying the knight’s final, futile form.
* * *
Phaelon’s entire army strained desperately to halt the encroaching fire.
Some hauled sandbags and water skins in endless relays, while others hurled them ceaselessly into the flames leaping skyward without restraint.
Yet the blaze showed no sign of abating.
Bows, useless for quenching fire, lay scattered haphazardly on the ground.
Angela snatched one up in a swift grab and pushed through the ranks to the front line.
No one tried to stop her.
With the flames bearing down so close, they had no spare moment to watch their surroundings.
Thanks to that, Angela could focus undeterred on finding Grace.
It wasn’t long before a flicker of movement amid the wavering flames caught her eye.
Angela aimed her bow in that direction.
She calculated the arrow’s landing in a flash and released the taut string with bold resolve.
The swift projectile grazed Grace’s cheek before embedding in the earth.
“Tch.”
Angela clicked her tongue.
She’d meant to pierce straight through the crown of her head—a disappointing miss.
Of course, Angela knew better than anyone that even a headshot wouldn’t fell Grace.
It was just to draw her gaze away.
To keep those eyes from falling on the ones who would die without resistance.
That intent struck true.
Grace stared directly at Angela now.
Her gaze, obsessive as if nothing else existed, fixed solely on her.
Angela’s hand trembled finely on the bow.
Excluding dreams, it had been six years since their last meeting.
An emotion defying simple words welled up from the depths of her chest, revealing itself.
It was fear in the guise of anger, hatred masked as terror.
And she—the origin and endpoint of that tangled knot—began walking straight toward Angela, meeting her eyes.
Angela took slow steps toward her in turn.
Just as two steps became three.
“Angela!”
Kalian spun her around and pulled her into his arms.
“It’s dangerous—going alone like this.”
Even his clipped sentences came out fractured.
He acted as if to shield her entirely, his hands roaming her back and the nape of her neck in desperate strokes.
Yet the eyes he turned on Grace’s approach were cold, devoid of any feeling.
He might have looked on an inanimate object with more warmth.
That only frightened Angela more.
She feared Grace’s curse would descend on Kalian, who bared his enmity without hiding.
Absolutely not.
Angela shoved him away with frantic force.
She shook off his grasping hands and lashed out with words she didn’t mean.
“Why did you follow me?”
“You left your helmet behind.”
Kalian’s reply was calm.
She knew well what that empty-handed gesture toward the absent helmet implied.
Which made it all the worse.
Angela had no intention of using him as a shield.
“Stay back.”
“Angela…”
“What can you even do against that woman? Why put yourself in this?”
Angela glanced to confirm Grace’s position, then slapped away Kalian’s reaching hand once more.
And then, out of nowhere, she let out a hollow, sardonic laugh.
“Hah…”
How remarkable she was.
Angela had come all this way to eliminate her, yet here she and Kalian were, trembling in anxiety before she’d even closed the distance.
The knight’s death had left its mark.
It was a death that etched bone-deep how insignificant humans were before Grace.
Angela had learned it long ago, in experiences she’d endured, but Grace knew all too well—in absurdly intimate detail—how to twist someone into the depths of torment, no matter the circumstance.
Angela refused to let Kalian become the target of the tragedies she wrought.
Angela nocked another arrow, aiming once more at Grace.
She planned to loose several to pin her in place, then convince Kalian to fall back.
But before she could act, an arrow whistled from somewhere and struck Grace’s shoulder.
More followed in rapid succession, hitting her arm and legs.
Naturally, Grace’s advance halted on the spot.
“Ahahaha!”
A laugh like a thunderclap rang out then.
* * *
Upon spotting her daughter, who so eerily mirrored her own features, Grace felt a pull as fierce and natural as the laws of the world itself, drawing her inexorably toward Angela.
There lay her power.
Not far now.
Just a few more steps.
She chanted the words like a mantra as she advanced.
The irritation twisted by those arrows unraveled the instant she laid eyes on Angela.
To think her daughter had deliberately called her here, announcing her presence—how thoughtful the child was.
Yet the girl, who had been steadily stepping toward her mother, was suddenly snatched away by some insolent man.
Kalian Florence, Phaelon’s greenhorn hero, the wretch her daughter couldn’t live without.
His sharp gaze pierced past Angela to lodge squarely in Grace, stabbing through the center of her face with lethal precision—a strike even Angela couldn’t match.
“How audacious.”
The sheer nerve of him.
Grace sneered, unleashing a curse upon the ignorant fool who dared meet her eyes so boldly.
In moments, blood would pour from his eyes, nose, and mouth, and he’d crumple dead.
But no matter how long she waited, the curse refused to take hold.
The man who should have toppled in a spray of crimson stood firm and unscathed, eyeing Grace with the vigilance of one determined never to let Angela be taken.
Only then did Grace realize this was the one who had never once appeared in her dreams.
She’d tried luring him in several times, deeming him a fine bait to manipulate Angela with, but it had all been futile.
The locked chamber had rebuffed her with icy resolve, admitting no one but its invited guest.
She hadn’t anticipated he’d evade even her curses.
This changed everything.
How was she to shake off that beast of a man and claim Angela?
She’d need to find another way.
“Ugh!”
It was then, as she racked her mind.
An arrow streaked through the air like a bolt of lightning and slammed into her shoulder with brutal force.
It struck so hard she could feel the arrowhead punching clean through to the other side.
More came without pause, embedding in her arm and legs, the next one piercing her abdomen.
Pointless efforts, all of them.
To Grace, such trifles meant nothing.
To prove it, she gripped the arrow in her shoulder and yanked it free with deliberate force.
Then she turned toward the direction it had flown from.
The eyes that met hers belonged to.
“Ahahaha!”
Dominic.
His hair, rippling like the flames themselves, seized her attention in an instant.
Grace tossed the arrow from her hand onto the ground with a clatter, dealt with the others embedded in her body the same way, and fixed her gaze on Dominic with utter intent.
She’d all but forgotten Angela.
It was the moment Grace took a step toward him.
Another of his arrows whistled forth, skewering her leg.
A ploy to keep her pinned, no doubt.
Ever the heartless man who denied her his company.
“Useless, I tell you.”
Grace wrenched the arrow from her leg and crushed it in her palm.
The wound sealed in a heartbeat.
She flung the broken shaft aside, patted the now-smooth skin with her palm, and stared Dominic down unblinkingly.
Before long, Dominic glanced about in confusion, his body refusing to obey as he probed with his eyes alone.
Grace smiled faintly, weighing her options.
Should she kill him?
Or spare him and turn that splendid form into a statue for her chambers?
Either choice tempted her.
The decision rested with her, after all.
“Kh!”
Angela’s arrow shattered her pleasant reverie.
Grace pulled it from her flesh, her face pristine once more as she murmured.
“We’re all set on killing each other here—who should I send off first?”
Still, perhaps it was better for the child to witness her father’s end.
Dominic had already seen his daughter die once…
No, this time, the reverse might serve better.
Grace turned fully toward Dominic, her choice made.
“Gah!”
A longsword sliced through the air with vicious speed and plunged into the center of her chest.
Kalian Florence’s doing.
“How… annoy… ing…! That’s… why… these… things… are… point… less…!”
Grace rasped the words through gritted teeth as she slid the blade free from her torso, inch by agonizing inch.
Not as effortless as an arrow, but once extracted, that was the end of it.
The wound would vanish without a trace.
Trivial!
“Aaah!”
She’d nearly freed it entirely when something lunged at her, toppling her backward, and with precarious timing, drove the escaping sword back in deep.
Grace screamed, peering up through narrowed, contorted eyes.
Ha, a face like her own mirror gazed down—the reflection of herself.
Even the stray strands of golden hair framing that face mimicked hers so perfectly, and with them, the cruelty in her actions.
“Guh, ugh!”
Angela, teeth bared as she twisted the blade, commanded Grace.
“Release the spell.”
No subject needed; it was clearly about Dominic.
She’d been that way since childhood, and even grown, nothing had changed.
That frail temperament of hers.
“You… killed me… so you… want to… save… your father… too… heh…?”
At Grace’s mocking scoff, Angela wrenched the hilt a fraction more.
“Ugh,” came Grace’s pained groan, but Angela pressed on, resolute.
“Lucky for you.
At least… I never thought of you as my mother.”
Grace laughed through the strain, a ragged heh-heh, and with great effort, lifted a fingertip to tuck a fallen lock of Angela’s hair behind her ear.
“Don’t play games.”
Angela’s reprimand was sharp, but Grace persisted, her hand wandering.
She brushed Angela’s cheek softly, cradled her chin.
Angela jerked her head away fiercely and tightened her grip on the sword.
“Do as I say.
I won’t fall for it.”
“How… much it must have… hurt?”
Yet Grace dragged forth other words, despite the excruciating agony that should have consumed her.
“When Yvonne… struck you… that time… Did it hurt…? Hm…?”
Words that clawed at old wounds.
Angela’s eyes wavered for a fleeting instant.
