TPOP 109

Chapter 109

***

The girl tilted her head.

“Everything?”

“Yes. Outside this forest, there will be no spirits to guide you, no wind to embrace you, no water, and no warm earth to rest your body upon. The land is barren, and humans may be cruel. No one might help you; they might stand by and watch your misfortune, or even contribute to it.”

The smile slowly faded from the girl’s face. Looking at his daughter, who was staring at him with frightened eyes, the man spoke to her as tenderly as usual, yet firmly.

“That’s what the world outside the forest is like. So from now on, you must steel your resolve.”

“Aren’t you coming with me? ”

“No.”

“Why?”

The child was too young to understand what the man meant, and she knew nothing of the world. The corners of the girl’s eyes drooped downward.

“You promised that when I turned ten… I could live with mother and father…”

The man’s expression twisted in anguish.

She was a child raised on dew by the spirits in the secret forest. She had just turned nine. In one more year, she was destined to master the spirits’ power and step into the human world. This was a pact the Queen of Dortes had made with the spirits of the spring ten years ago. 

The kingdom needed an heir, and the spring desired an untainted newborn. The Spring offered its power to childless couples, but on the condition that the child be raised in the Spring for ten years.

Thus, from the moment of conception through her birth and up to the present, the child had been protected in the embrace of the spirits.

The girl lifted her head and looked around. As if she could hear the spirits’ cries, she shivered.

“Does that mean all the spirits will disappear too?”

“No. They’re just hiding inside you for a while. They’ll always be with you, and someday they’ll speak to you again.”

The man patted the child on the shoulder.

“So until then, you have to protect them.”

“I….”

“You must never tell anyone about the power within you. You must keep it as your own secret. The moment others learn of your friends’ existence, they’ll try to use you. Don’t let that happen, Diana.”

“But…”

“Spirits must not be exploited for political gain. Use your power only to protect yourself. Don’t use it for anyone else. Do you understand?”

“I’m scared, Daddy.”

The girl began to sob. It was full of words she didn’t understand, like “politics” and “exploitation.”

Her father had never pushed her so forcefully before. He was the father who, whenever he came to see her at the spring once a month, had always shown her only a gentle smile and spoken to her in a playful voice.

“When you turn ten, let’s go out together beyond the spring. The world where your mother and father live is just as joyful and lively as the spring. I’ll definitely come to take you.” Those words had filled the girl’s heart with boundless hope, but in the end, his promise was never kept.

The girl hesitated and asked,

“Where is Mother?”

The large hand that had been stroking her back stopped abruptly.

Sshhh—. The sound of rain filled the silence for a while.

“In a place where I can love her forever.”

The man’s voice, which took a long time to answer, was damp with tears.

A place where he could love her forever. How beautiful must such a place be?

But the man’s face, turned toward her, looked terribly sad. Instead of continuing to fuss, the girl quietly gazed at him.

The man’s eyes were a very gentle chestnut brown. The child had loved the fine wrinkles that formed when he crinkled the corners of his eyes and the way his mouth curved into a hearty smile. Though those features were gone now, the endless love in his gaze toward her remained unchanged.

“So there’s no need to be afraid. Mom will always live within you, and so will I.”

“…….”

“The spirits will always be by your side, watching over you and helping you. So no matter what trials come your way, don’t be afraid—protect yourself.”

Even in her young heart, she had an intuition that she must engrave these words deep within her.

“Above all else, you must not lose yourself, Diana. A person can never live if they lose themselves.”

Cold rainwater soaked the man’s black hair. The girl, not knowing why, wiped the blood and tears smeared across her father’s cheeks. The man smiled as if he were crying. He pulled his daughter tightly into his arms, lifted her up, and ran back into the rain.

Royal knights in plain clothes were waiting outside the forest. There weren’t many of them. More than half had already been discovered, or had sacrificed themselves to clear a path for their escape.

The man lifted the child into the arms of a knight mounted on a horse. This was his right-hand man, with whom he had shared thick and thin for over twenty years. The group tasked with escorting the child to safety consisted of those with whom he shared a particularly deep bond. The knight urged him on.

“Your Highness, please mount your horse at once. We must hurry to escape the royal castle!”

But the man took a step back.

“I am not going.”

“What? But…!”

“I left Tina behind in the royal palace.”

The few remaining knights quietly bit their lips and bowed their heads. The man never referred to the woman who was both his wife and his sovereign by her personal name in front of others. Yet now, as if determined to call her name one last time, he did so without hesitation.

The man, who had spoken his wife’s name aloud for the first time, smiled quietly.

“Can a husband and wife ever be apart? No matter what happens, we must stay together.”

“…Your Highness.”

“Even if we weren’t born on the same day, we swore to die together.”

The queen was already dead.

She had opened an escape route so that her husband could leave and safely evacuate Dortes’s sole heir. She had blocked the swords and arrows of the Imperial Army head-on and collapsed, covered in wounds. Since the Grand Duke had closed her eyes himself, his words about returning to the Queen and being with her meant he had already made his decision.

“Do not look back; run forward. We cannot allow my child to become a slave of the Empire, can we?”

The sound of enemy hooves, which had briefly faded, was once again heading this way. The Grand Duke mounted an unmounted horse and turned its head. The knights bowed solemnly.

“We obey your command.”

“Go. And survive.”

The man’s gaze lingered on the girl for a long moment. As if trying to hide the pain twisting his lips, he turned his head away coldly and whipped his horse.

The girl craned her neck and watched the man’s retreating figure for a long, long time. Even her young heart instinctively knew that this moment would be their last.

The child bid her father farewell for a very long time.

***

Diana awoke in a small village near the border of the Kingdom of Ormance. She had regained consciousness three days earlier at the cleanest inn in the village.

After the Prince of Ormance had left, it was Zoe, the royal physician of Ormance, who found Diana weeping by the window.

Zoe immediately helped Diana to bed and drew the curtains.

“I was worried you might die like this, Diana. I’d even discussed with His Highness the Prince that if another week passed like this, we’d have to move you to the capital somehow. So you still need to be careful. We don’t know when your eyesight might worsen again!”

“I’m sorry, Doctor.”

Although she had opened her eyes three days ago, it wasn’t until this morning that she learned the full story.

Diana’s last memory had been cut off immediately after she fell from a cliff during a raging storm. The last thing she remembered was the spirits gently 

catching her falling body. To help her make sense of the confusion, the Prince of Ormance kindly explained.

“This is the border region of Ormance. We’ve been well outside Imperial territory for over twenty days now, so rest assured.”

“You woke up a few times along the way, but you don’t remember, do you?”

“No… not at all.”

“I figured as much. Your eyes were in serious condition.”

“How bad was it?”

“Well, would you believe me if I told you pus was streaming from both your eyes?”

It was a spine-chilling story. Diana found herself rubbing her eyes without realizing it.

“The pain was so severe that there was nothing we could do but keep prescribing painkillers and sleeping pills. Just in case, I looked up the antidote for the poison—the one Diana took—and found a few cases with similar symptoms. Do you remember what you might have taken before you fled?”

The only thing she’d taken before leaving the Karman Imperial Palace was the mysterious pill Emile had forced into her hand. Could that have been the antidote?

“Cases where someone experiences such severe side effects, like Diana did, are extremely rare. It seems you just had bad luck.”

“I’m fine. As long as I can see little by little.”

“That’s a good attitude. The most important thing for a patient is the will to recover.”

Zoe examined Diana’s pupils closely. To Diana’s eyes, it looked as if a large black shadow was moving back and forth from side to side.