The frenzied snowfall had stopped. All of Nadirotsa was buried under white.
Hyderlin buckled her sword at her hip and stepped outside. Snow that had been trampled by countless feet turned soft and wet beneath her boots. Her destination was the site of the Kroitze Cathedral—reduced now to a field of ash and rubble.
She stood and looked at the ruins.
The spires that had been raised high to carry prayers to God had all collapsed and vanished. The stained-glass windows that had once blazed with color were shattered entirely, leaving only hollow frames of bone. More than half the walls had caved in so thoroughly that the interior was visible from outside.
The devotional statues that some craftsman had spent years carving now stood headless. Only a third of the pews remained. Over the whole desolate ruin, a clean layer of white snow had settled—as though God were laying a hand on a grieving congregation.
She tramped through the snow without ceremony and went inside, stepping over fallen debris and shattered stone until she reached the confessional. She dropped into one of the chairs, which had somehow survived intact.
It was a lie that Leone Collozzo’s remnants had committed this act of revenge arson. She had been the one to set fire to this place. What had she thought, watching the flames—red as her own hair—devour the cathedral?
She couldn’t remember.
She laced her fingers together and closed her eyes. She offered a silent prayer.
Even a sacred cathedral, it seems, burns and falls when fire is set to it. Everything made by human hands appears to be fated for ruin. And in that case, so must humans be. Fated, eventually, to be brought down and destroyed by other human hands.
Even the highest spire could not reach God. Whether a worshipper’s prayer could do any better seemed doubtful. But she prayed on.
And yet—I cannot be brought down. I will never be brought down. Before my enemies can pull me under, I will strike first. Destroy first. I will hold the highest place by whatever means necessary. While I live, I will enjoy every privilege and honor that this country has to offer, as its princess.
It was less a confession than a tantrum thrown at God and the world alike.
Her origins were what they were, but she had lived her whole life as a princess, as a knight, and in service to the King. She would go on living that way. To sustain that life, she was capable of crushing and shattering anything in her path.
She would not deviate from the course of that life.
For all of these sins, let the punishment come after death. And when this vile life has ended, let that filthy soul be torn and burned and destroyed for eternity.
She had been petitioning loudly and at some length when the sound of approaching footsteps made her look up.
A man was walking toward her. Sarg.
“Hello, Sir Sarg.”
Hyderlin greeted him with unremarkable calm. Sarg stopped just outside the confessional.
His long hair had been cut short enough to expose the back of his neck entirely. His lip was cracked. His forehead and cheek were covered in fresh wounds. Below the left sleeve, a glimpse of bandaging was visible.
Hyderlin said, in the same unremarkable tone:
“You’ve been through quite a lot, by the look of you. Quite ruined your fine face.”
She had dispatched the sorcerer in secret. He had ensured that the Holy Knights were subjected to relentless exposure to undead, grinding down their endurance, and had triggered a landslide to delay their return.
The fact that Sarg had made it back at all, alive and with all four limbs intact, was something to be grateful for.
It was not the sort of feeling one expected to have about a person one had subjected to hardship—but Hyderlin found, to her own slight surprise, that she was quite glad Sarg had returned.
She hid this contradictory gladness behind her usual easy manner.
“I wonder if you’re in any state to spar. Go ask the Saint to heal you—I imagine one prayer from her would set you right again.”
“Was it you?”
“Hm. Only a blind prophet could make sense of something said without context.”
“The cathedral burning to the ground.”
“……”
“The arson in the slums, carried out under the pretense of dealing with Collozzo’s remnants.”
“……”
“Mak’s marriage.”
“……”
“Was all of it you?”
Sarg’s voice was low and steady, but it held something—a dampness—that Hyderlin chose to look past. She kept her easy smile in place.
“Word travels quickly.”
Sarg closed his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped—almost to a whisper. It was a voice that had been ground to something very near ruin.
“Why…did you do it. Why would you do something so cruel.”
“There was an order. So I carried it out.”
“An order?”
“My King wants your Saint. So I gave her to him.”
“…For a reason as small as that. Those people.”
“……”
“Can’t you give me some kind of explanation? Even an excuse would do.”
Sarg looked desperate. Hyderlin spoke quietly.
“Sir Sarg. I didn’t want to go that far either.”
“…Sir Biche.”
“The King’s orders left me no choice. I am truly, genuinely sorry to you and to the Saint…”
She let the sentence trail off—and then continued, in a voice gone cold.
“Is that what you wanted to hear? Sir. If you have been under the impression, all this time, that I was someone tormented by guilt over the blood on my hands—please correct that misapprehension as quickly as possible. I regret nothing that I have done. The King’s will is my will.”
She had done what needed to be done. Whatever guilt had existed had been dissolved by drink over the course of a night, and only faint residue remained. She did not go looking for that residue. She would not.
She did not want Sarg’s understanding either. What possible grounds did she have to want that from a man who resembled a star? What she wanted was his unadulterated anger. She wanted him to sever every last thread that connected him to her, and go on living with unsullied righteousness forever.
So Hyderlin offered no justification.
Countless emotions moved across Sarg’s face like weather. He clenched his fist.
“Please—put away this pretense of being worse than you are. You were never…this kind of person.”
“Righteous Sarg. You really don’t know me.”
The Captain of the Royal Guard showed her teeth.
“I have always been this kind of person.”
“……”
“Take note: any thought of annulling the marriage, or running off with the Saint—don’t entertain it for a moment. If you did, I would put everyone you love on the scaffold.”
She was a swordswoman capable of severing intangible things in a single stroke. The blade she had honed to a razor’s edge flew at precisely the right angle, and cut what little connection remained between them.
“Your father, Duke Gloriosa, would be first.”
“How can you—”
And then the anger Sarg had been holding down with every ounce of his patience broke the surface.
“Are you even human? You are lower than any beast—”
Hyderlin answered him in a tone that was almost instructive, and almost gentle.
“Sarg. Only humans commit sins. That’s why that comparison isn’t quite right.”
Sarg looked at her with the temperature of a hell made from ice. He abandoned the last remnant of the formal courtesy he had always maintained, and let his thorned contempt and hostility show without restraint.
The grey-eyed man spat the words like a blade:
“Revolting creature. Even the devil would shudder at your cruelty.”
That wasn’t the formal speech she was used to hearing from him. Hyderlin answered, a beat late.
“…Your manner of address has become very familiar.”
“I have no reverence to show to someone who knows neither a knight’s honor nor a human being’s shame.”
The lips that poured out these words—tangled with rage and grief and hurt—were extraordinarily composed. The grey eyes were clear and untarnished. There was only transparent fury in them. To meet that gaze and not feel the bitterness of it was impossible.
And at the same time, something in her settled. The thread connecting them would disappear forever, here. That was as it should be.
“In God’s name, I curse the path before you. When you die, you will surely fall into hell. You may enjoy honor in this wretched earth—but in hell, you will not.”
That was something she was willing to acknowledge without reservation. She deserved to fall and be torn apart for a number of years that multiplied with every soul she had burned.
The Holy Knight pronounced his curse with the temperature of a hell built from ice.
“I pray for the eternal destruction of your soul.”
The condemned, with her place in the abyss already reserved, answered in a tone that was almost cheerful.
“Let us hope God answers that prayer.”
9. Brows — Part 2
“You did—I know you did. So why. Why you, of all people. How can you possibly—”
The sinful woman covered her face with one hand. She groaned from the depths of a despair too deep to measure.
“How can you say that you love that woman…”
The rain was still falling.
It would be falling on Hyderlin’s modest grave too—driving down in curtains on the mounded earth. The woman who had once died reached up and rubbed roughly at her forehead and nose, where Sarg’s skin had touched hers.
Sarg was still running his fingers over the cheek she had struck. The rusted, faded, warped man fumbled slowly for words.
“But.”
“But what?”
Sarg had his head bowed and said nothing. His silence stretched as though it intended to last forever. That was equally unbearable.
Where has that bright, blade-sharp hatred gone? Why is the only thing left here this grinding, uncomfortable grief?
Hyderlin preferred hatred to sorrow. Hostility was more familiar to her than affection. The woman made entirely of sharp edges looked at the man who had dared to confess his love.
“You’re drunk. That’s why you’re talking nonsense.”
“……”
“You don’t love that woman, and you shouldn’t. You understand? You’re just a man who’s been staring at her grave so long that you’ve lost your grip on reality. It’s an obsession—a fixation on an unresolved matter. If you found a woman and spent some time with her, this would—”
“That isn’t what this is.”
“Of course that’s what it is. Do you think I don’t know how men’s minds work? It’s obvious.”
Hyderlin shoved her hair back roughly and let out a breath.
“What are you doing, holding onto a drunk person like this. Go wash up and sleep. You smell like liquor.”
Hyderlin pushed Sarg aside and walked out the door. She thought she heard Sarg call after her, but she didn’t give it even a fraction of her attention.
