Seated in a chair, Aurelia closed her eyes. Travis put his hand on her
forehead. "You seriously can't just undo the seal like that, you little
runaway. What am I gonna do with you?"
"You're the one who wouldn't come home," she said, sulking.
"I'm strong enough to take care of myself," he retorted, infusing his
hand with magic.
Aurelia grimaced as she realized her powers had been shut away once
more. Then her face clouded over. She turned her ashy blue eyes on Travis
and asked, "Is it really true that you almost killed Queen Tinasha?"
"Did he tell you that?" Travis responded, his tone dismissive as he
waved an annoyed hand. "Don't mind that. It's my business, so just forget
it."
"I will not. Tell me the truth," she insisted, her gaze just as
straightforward as it had been on the day they met. True to her proud spirit,
she always carried herself perfectly upright and with the utmost grace.
Travis had known Aurelia for long enough to recognize when she
wouldn't give up. He scratched at his scalp. "Well, all right, it's true."
"I… see," she replied.
Travis frowned, having expected the girl to lose her temper. "That's all?
Don't hold back."
"I have plenty to say. I've always wondered why you saved me and how
long you plan on staying with me. But none of that is worth fretting over,"
Aurelia responded, standing up to glare at Travis. "I know exactly what you
are and how cold you can be. But if you're planning to keep sharing my
life, you are no longer allowed to do anything bad like that anymore! You
will learn how humans behave! If you do, I will bear half of your ridiculous
sins!" she cried, her gray eyes glittering with purpose. She fixed him with
that same gaze that could see into the past.
Astounded, Travis could only manage, "Do you… do you really mean
that?"
"I wouldn't have said all that if I didn't! Don't you realize how long
we've been together?"
He could have never imagined that she'd come out with that; she had
left him speechless. Did she have any idea just how different their life spans
were? There was no way she could know him, nor could she possibly be
able to carry half of his sins.
The words seemed the foolish ramblings of a child.
And yet, Travis could feel himself wanting to cling to them. He needed
Aurelia's strength. He needed her heart, even if he had to kill her for it. That
was what he had thought once.
She wasn't the true fool here, though—he was. Travis didn't understand
a thing about mortals. His touch wounded them. His interest corrupted
them. Knowing that, he still elected to get involved with them for his own
amusement.
Aurelia couldn't possibly comprehend what aligning herself with
someone like him meant.
Travis cleared his face of surprise and asked, "Are you insane? You're
going to end up ruined."
Gone was his usual teasing complacency, replaced with a loneliness as
boundless and eternal as the night.
Aurelia's eyes narrowed a fraction as she recognized how hollow he had
gone. Still, her own gaze didn't waver one bit. Every word cut Travis to the
core as she stated, "Neither of us can know whether I'll end up ruined or
happy. If you want me with you, I'll follow you all the way to hell."
Although the declaration was dramatic, she very clearly meant it.
Travis had never met anyone like her before. She was the only one.
The demon king stared at her so hard he could burn a hole right through
the girl. She arched an eyebrow. "What? If you've got something to say,
then spit it out."
"It's just… hmm. I'll concede this once that you've grown a little,"
Travis remarked.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Aurelia complained, but the demon
only grinned in reply.
Even Travis couldn't say how long they'd be together. One day, they
might come to reject the idea.
Yet were that day to come, and they parted ways, her words just now
had still saved his soul. Travis made up his mind to tell Aurelia that
someday—when he looked back on this moment with deep longing. When
that time finally came, he would honor this day.
The rain gradually tapered off after dark. The white glow of the moon and
stars peeked out from rifts in the clouds.
After dragging her battered self back to Tuldarr, Tinasha rushed through
her paperwork and returned to her chambers. By the time she finished her
bath and dried her hair, the sky had gone completely black.
Slumping over her table, Tinasha heaved a deep sigh. "Ohhh, I'm so
tired…"
The nausea caused by the afternoon's events had largely receded, but she
still couldn't use magic. Unlike when she fell in the Lake of Silence, she
hadn't vomited up the water after imbibing it. She probably wouldn't be
able to cast any spells for at least another two hours—when the clock
chimed midnight.
As she mentally reviewed the awful day she'd suffered, Tinasha flushed
bright red and buried her face in her hands. "I—I can't believe how
embarrassing that was! Ugh!"
On top of sustaining the aftershock pouring immense power into her,
she'd synchronized with Phaedra's emotions and lost control of herself.
Tinasha had said so many ridiculous things she would never have said
out loud. Even she didn't know which parts were her feelings and which
were Phaedra's.
"Love me."
It was such a childish jumbled-up ball of emotion, and she'd hurled it
straight at him. It was so humiliating that she wanted to crawl into a hole
and never come out.
However, Oscar had only shaken his head and accepted all of it.
"I'll need to give him a proper apology later…," Tinasha said. She held
back another defeated exhale just as someone knocked on the door to her
chambers. "Yes?"
"You have a guest, Lady Tinasha!" a spirit called brightly. Tinasha
walked over to the door and opened it, not suspecting anything at all. Then
she froze.
Standing before Mila, who was grinning mischievously, was her fiancé.
"Aaaaahhh! Why?! This is Tuldarr!" she exclaimed.
"Wow, that's quite a reaction. I can't believe you had the nerve to sneak
out and scurry home while I was busy with work. I'm here to give you a
lecture," he said.
"Ow, ow, ow!" she griped as he swept into the room, dragging her by the
cheek. Mila waggled her fingers and shut the door behind them.
Oscar's heartless treatment left the queen with tears in her eyes. "I—I
don't like this surprise visit."
"Did you really think you would get away with not telling me
everything? I want the whole story."
"Urgh," Tinasha grumbled. She hadn't intended to keep it from him
indefinitely, but she had hoped to at least delay his anger for a while.
The look on Oscar's face told her that he had reached his limit, though.
Rubbing at her sore cheek, Tinasha first apologized and then launched
into an explanation of the events leading up to the day's battles. She wanted
to conceal a few details, but every time she tried to gloss over things,
Oscar's intuition led him to press her further. Ultimately, she told him just
about all of it.
Pinched to within an inch of her life and breathing raggedly, Tinasha lay
slumped over her table. In the seat across from her sat Oscar, wearing an
utterly appalled expression. "Were you thinking clearly at all? You were
under no obligation to risk your life for him."
"He spared my life when he could've ended it," Tinasha pointed out.
"And then he offered to never meddle in Farsas or Tuldarr. It seemed like a
very good arrangement."
"If you want to make sure he doesn't trouble us, I'll just go kill him
myself," Oscar said.
"Wai… wait…"
Oscar and Travis had worked together to stop Tinasha, and she'd hoped
that meant they were only on slightly better terms, but apparently, that was
not the case.
Feeling at her wit's end, Tinasha stood up. "Um, do you want something
to drink? I have some liqueurs."
"Are those here for you to drink?" Oscar asked.
"No, they're for decoration. The colors are very pretty," she replied,
pointing to a row of bottles in a cabinet containing amber, golden, and ruby
liquids.
All looked unopened, and Oscar eyed them from over Tinasha's
shoulder. "All right, I'll have some of the amber one, second from the left."
"Okay. Do you need anything for it, or will you drink it straight?" she
asked.
"Just over ice," he answered. Ordinarily, Tinasha would use magic to
create some, but she couldn't do that at the moment. Instead, she poked her
head into the antechamber where Mila stood guard and got the ice from her.
As she struggled valiantly to open the bottle, Oscar plucked it from her and
uncorked it himself.
After a sigh, Tinasha remarked, "I—I suppose I really can't do anything
without my magic, can I…?"
"Now you know what it's like. I don't mind at all. In fact, feel free to
drink that lake water every day," Oscar said.
"I—I don't know about that…"
While pouring a glass for himself, Oscar admonished Tinasha. "I don't
know why you always decide to take on other people's messes in the first
place. You need to learn how to say no."
"In Travis's case, I owed him a debt. He's the one who told me to put
myself in a magic sleep," she explained, and Oscar's eyes grew wide.
Tinasha gave a tight smile. "It actually hadn't occurred to me at all to try
to find you again… We belonged to different eras, and I had no proof that
what you'd told me was true. But Travis told me it was better to give chase
than to sit and rot. Bizarrely, he sounded like he didn't doubt the story at all.
Now that I think about it, I wonder if he knew about Eleterria…"
For a moment, Tinasha's gaze turned very distant. It was a look she had
often adopted when the two first met, one redolent of loneliness and
homesickness.
But when she looked back up at Oscar, none of that was present in her
expression. "But now I don't owe him anything anymore. I'm sorry for
worrying you."
With eyes narrowed, Oscar responded, "I see."
Luck and coincidence were highly involved in how most people met one
another. Yet it seemed like the two of them meeting was a miracle above all
the rest, born out of some perilous destiny they shared. How would things
have turned out if Tinasha hadn't met Oscar when she was young?
As his thoughts led him in that direction, Oscar frowned. "Why did I go
back to save you?"
"What?"
"I'm just wondering what I jumped four hundred years into the past to
do. Or was it just a fluke?"
Tinasha shifted uncomfortably to be asked that now, after so long.
Reluctantly, she answered, "Because in this time period, I was originally
your wife."
"You were my… what?"
"Urgh… I didn't want to tell you because I knew you'd react like this,"
she admitted.
Oscar was floored. While he still hadn't taken everything in, he reached
across the table and caught up a lock of his sullen fiancée's hair. "What
exactly do you mean by that? Why was I married to you?"
"I don't know! I guess your taste in women is just that bad!" she cried.
"That's not what I mean. I'm talking about the whole… born in different
eras thing."
Born over four centuries apart, they were only together now because
Tinasha had gone into a magic sleep to see Oscar. How had they been
married in the previous timeline?
Tinasha crossed her arms and frowned. "I asked you the same thing a
long time ago, but you wouldn't tell me. I don't think it was a lie, though,
because you knew an awful lot about me."
"Something about this doesn't add up… Did he tell you to jump four
hundred years ahead?"
"No. He told me that I'd never see him again because he'd changed
history. I was about to be coronated, so he requested that I become a good
queen," Tinasha replied, a forlorn smile on her lips. Her eyes, tinged with
deep affection and loss, were turned to another man from the distant past.
Her memories of that man—her sole comfort in those days—had propelled
her through time and brought her here.
In sharp contrast, however, Oscar scowled. "That makes no sense. If
you'd focused on being queen and hadn't abdicated, we would've never
gotten to meet. He should've considered consequences more thoroughly."
"Look who's talking!" Tinasha exclaimed, then she flopped over onto
the table.
Many coincidences had lined up so they could meet each other. Oscar
was glad that he hadn't made any missteps. He gazed at his fiancée
earnestly as he mulled all that over.
Noticing his stare, Tinasha gave him a smile. She stood up from her
chair and came over to him. He set down his glass and pulled her onto his
lap. "Well, you're going to be my wife anyway, so there's no real issue in
the end. Still, you should have told me that in the first place."
"No way. You would have thought I was a complete weirdo if I told you
I was your future bride when we first met. Honestly, I did think you were
crazy after you told me that when I was a kid."
"Oh, you did, did you?"
Had Tinasha tried to explain that to the present Oscar, it really would
have come off as suspicious. Unlike Oscar's earlier self, who probably
knew everything about his wife's younger days, the only connection this
Tinasha had to the previous Oscar was that he had saved her life. She didn't
have enough to go on to prove that the two were married. Had she woken
up and insisted they were a couple, it probably would have only succeeded
in delaying their getting together.
As Oscar carded his fingers through Tinasha's long inky hair, he buried
his face in it and inhaled the faint scent of her floral perfume. That scent of
hers, her slender frame, her eyes like the abyss—all of it drew him to her
and held him fast.
A little tipsy, he hugged her tightly. But then something occurred to him,
and he looked up. "Tinasha, do you know what an insider is?"
"An insider? You mean… someone on the inside?"
"Right… What could that be referring to?" Oscar mused.
After Tinasha had recovered her senses, Travis had asked Oscar how he
had gotten her under control. When he revealed that he'd given her magicsealing water from the lake, the demon king responded, "Ah yes, the
insiders' lake."
At the time, Oscar didn't think much of it, but once Travis was gone, he
remembered he'd heard that word somewhere once before. Insider.
But for the life of him, he couldn't recall where.
Tinasha must have had no idea, either, because her wide black eyes
blinked at him curiously. He patted her head and dropped the subject.
"Never mind. It's not a big deal."
"I'll ask Travis the next chance I get," she said.
"No, you won't. I don't want you seeing him again."
"Y-you really hate him, huh?" Tinasha sighed, but there was nothing to
be done. It would be much weirder if the two of them did get along.
Oscar caught a glimpse of her black eyes widening a little.
"Oh? Did the lake water just wear off?" he asked.
She opened a hand and cast a spell. After inspecting her own exquisite
handiwork, she nodded. "Everything seems to be fine."
"So you can use magic?"
"I can. It's all back," she confirmed.
"Okay, then. Whenever you have a free moment, could you redo the
spell on this?" Oscar requested, taking off the ring on his left hand and
handing it to Tinasha. With a dry laugh, she took it from him.
She certainly hadn't imagined that she would be the first person Oscar
used the ring on. Still, it had worked. The silver lining was the fact that the
ring had led to her getting pacified faster.
"I'll recast it now, since we don't know what might happen," Tinasha
said, and she began the incantation. After five long minutes, the ring was
enchanted again, and Tinasha placed it back on Oscar's finger.
"Thanks," he said.
"It's no problem. It was me who made you use it, after all," she replied
with a bitter smile. Oscar pressed a kiss to her forehead. Her eyes went halflidded like a cat's as he stroked her hair.
Then Oscar got to his feet, helping Tinasha stand as well. "All right, I'll
be heading back now. You must be exhausted, so get some good sleep
tonight."
"What? You're leaving?" she asked, gazing up at him with the innocent
eyes of a little girl. Oscar narrowed his eyes, confident she didn't even
realize what she was saying.
A smile formed on his face, and he kissed her. "I worry if I don't come
to check on you regularly. I only came to make sure you're okay."
He didn't say that he was troubled about her not being able to use magic
and wanted to see how she was faring, because it was the same as stating
that he was thinking of her. And Tinasha surely knew that already.
Tinasha's eyes went a little wide and she dimpled with happiness. "I
love you. I really don't hate you at all. That wasn't real."
"I know," Oscar replied.
And because of that, the two of them would walk hand in hand on their
own paths toward their shared future.
They didn't yet know about the dark intentions and magic that were slowly
corrupting nations.
The seed had been planted very surreptitiously.
It was only the most fragile of creatures. As it dozed peacefully,
unknown to all, it slowly grew roots. Those roots would eventually stretch
far underground, while a sprout would breach the surface.
Everything was progressing slowly and hazily, like something out of a
dream.
Once they saw that radiantly blooming flower, they would know for the
first time that it was truly too late.
Such would be the beginning of the final revolution.