RAMHM Chapter 145

A Cowardly Word

The ceremony ended abruptly because of Bliea, who had embraced me hard enough to stop my breath and then collapsed.

The Grand Prelate fussed over the unconscious Bliea as though she were his own daughter, arranging a room in the Grand Temple. The Grand Temple was considerably closer to the plaza than the imperial palace, so we made for it at once.

"She's alive. She appears to have overexerted herself—she'll need some time to rest."

Grand Prelate Telrn, at those words, turned to gaze at the Bliea lying there with a face full of something verging on awe.

"Ugh, gross. Your Eminence. Keep looking at her with that gooey face and anyone who was about to wake up will gouge their own eyes out and faint right back over again."

"She's alive, she's ali—"

"Let's step out for now. You've seen she's alive, yes?"

Epero, glancing at Rhodness, who stood in the doorway as though guarding it, shepherded the Grand Prelate and the physician out of the guest room.

I didn't let my attention follow him. I kept looking down at Bliea.

She looked a little worse than she had lying in the glass coffin, peaceful and still. There was something closer to actual pain in her face now.

Rotsy was wiping the cold sweat from Bliea's forehead with a damp cloth.

"This insane creature, for me…"

She had been murmuring the same thing since earlier.

"Young Bliea once asked me why I wandered the way I did."

I said nothing.

"When she was small, I only smiled in place of an answer. I'm human too, you know. Even I get tired, even I have moments I can't bear."

Rotsy's blurring eyes let a tear fall.

"A long-hidden truth. Just that one thing—I wanted to uncover it, set it right. That's what I told her I was searching for. Like a fool—telling a child a few scraps, thinking she'd never piece it together."

She pressed both hands to her face and murmured into them.

"When this child woke and met my eyes, and seized that record from me and proclaimed it before the people as though it were the will of the gods—I understood."

'She had wanted to fulfill my wish.'

Rotsy wept quietly after that.

I didn't know if I should comfort her or just stay quiet. While I stood there hesitating, just watching—a gaze, sharp enough to cut, found me.

"…Come. Let's talk."

From the dais on. His eyes had been on me the whole time, burning like something that could not hold still.

The force of that gaze.

His rough lips found mine in an instant.

I had no thought of pushing him away, but he drove me back against the wall the moment we crossed into the empty room, as though he expected me to try.

There was no bed in this room. But it felt exactly like I was on one—rolling around with him.

Rhodness had my hands pinned to the wall on either side of my head, his breath ragged against my mouth as he pressed in.

The heat of it recalled everything we'd shared that morning—ardent enough to set a body alight.

He wouldn't allow even the act of my hands reaching for his neck. He kept them pinned against the wall, gripped in his, and chased the breath from my lungs. The heat that forced its way past my lips warmed my whole body.

It was only when my legs had ached from standing too long that the kiss finally broke.

I had seen Rhodness's sunken eyes many times, but this was different. I could not read whether he was furious or undone—it was both at once, and neither would identify itself.

He lifted his mouth but held me against the wall a long moment, pressing his forehead to mine.

The room was warm.

Only ragged breathing passed between us—and yet we had exchanged so much that we ended up pulling each other close.

His still-wet mouth bit lightly at my nape and released a long exhale. Heat scattered across the hollow of my collarbone, his breath clinging there like fog, and I shuddered, low and shallow.

"What am I going to do with you."

"…Rhoan."

At his name he pressed his lips deeper. A sharp, electric sensation ran from my nape all the way to the tips of my toes.

"I'm going mad because you won't listen to me…"

He made a sound that was almost a laugh, almost a sob, his body swaying. I held my breath in his arms, afraid to miss a word.

"And I'm going mad all over again because I find you so unbearably dear."

Rhodness, who had finally set a mark deep in my nape, raised his head slowly.

A face like flushed marble filled my vision.

His red eyes—brilliant, rippling, fierce.

His trembling lips parted and shimmered, as though they wanted back into my mouth this very moment.

"Where exactly do you think this is, coming here—hm?"

A sound like a half-groan, half-plea. I quietly lifted my hand and set it against his cheek.

Rhodness looked at me with something like reproach—and then, willing, pressed his cheek into my small palm, and kissed it deep.

"I love you, Rhoan."

A moment.

His ragged breath stopped. The sharp angle of his jaw, all tendon and bone, stood out.

Frozen with his lips still on my palm, Rhodness slowly lifted his face toward me.

"I love you."

My love is foolish. Selfish.

I'd thought—unless I gave him something to be glad of, something actually useful—saying it a hundred times would mean nothing.

Perhaps I had simply come to resemble his life during those years I loved Novian—a life spent trying to be useful, just to be kept.

Both Novian and Rhodness would have been glad to hear those words regardless of whatever I did. I knew that.

"I love you, Rhoan."

I was a coward. I could only say it once I was sure—sure I'd been useful enough to him that he couldn't refuse it.

And yet.

With that cowardly word.

An expression appeared on Rhodness that no number of fevered nights, no entanglement of bodies, had managed to pull from him.

His two hands caught my face, and his red eyes—rippling, rippling, on and on—finally gave way, and broke, and stared at my lips as though they meant to burn them.

"I love you."

Like a man born into this world for the sole purpose of waiting on those words.

A joy disguised as blankness rose in his beautiful eyes, broke apart, rose again.

And then.

His wet lips came back to mine.

With the tenderness of a creature tending a wound, his warmth licked at my lower lip—and then a low, angry sound of longing escaped him into my mouth, and he lost all restraint.

Our flushed noses pressed together, tip to tip, over and over, relentless.

His hands, hotter than that, drew the back of my head in and drank down my exhales, and licked, and bit, and swallowed.

Fierce as it was, our breath together was too sweet—we drank it like liquor, and we were drunk on it.

"Adrienne, Adrienne, you are really, really… cowardly."

Between the wet sound of kissing, with a warm exhale, he said it.

His cowardly and mine were different in kind. It didn't matter.

I looked at his reddened eyes and smiled, and answered.

"I know."

"If you say something like that to me, I can't do anything."

So said a man who looked quite prepared to unfasten every garment and sprawl across the floor with me then and there.

His damp lips found the corners of my mouth, both cheeks, my eyelids, and at last my brow.

"An apology wouldn't be enough. Gratitude wouldn't be enough. Nothing—not a single thing—is larger than those words."

He held me for a long moment after that. An embrace that tightened with every breath.

My body, melted loose, submerged into the heat of him—vast and warm—and just as I thought I was sinking into him entirely, he whispered like an exhale:

"I love you."

I was glad.

"I love you, Adrienne."

Was he this glad?

The thought was brief. A kiss full of joy resumed. And the longer that slow, fervent kiss continued—

Without my asking. Without his answering.

I could feel it.

Rhodness was, at this moment, profoundly—deeply—happy.

Because of me. No one else.

When the sun had nearly finished setting.

Rhodness and I returned to the room where Bliea was lying.

Rotsy was still keeping vigil at her side.

"Bliea!"

And Bliea, expression crumpled, blinked her unfocused eyes several times and opened them.

She stared up at the ornate painted ceiling for a moment, blinking. Then her gaze moved to Rotsy.

"Ugh, f— ! Ah, hell. Seriously, my heart almost stopped."

"You, you—!"

"I told you, Master. Don't look in at me while I'm sleeping with that face. Hff… I'm going to see it in my dreams for weeks."

"What kind of greeting is that for a teacher you haven't seen in years?!"

"Don't exaggerate. How long has it even been? I almost died—it's not like decades have passed. I dropped in a few times in between, didn't I? Or—wait. Was I actually out for decades while I was in that box?"

Bliea sat up abruptly and scanned the room in rapid sweeps.

She clocked me almost immediately, and went rigid.

"Am I dreaming?"

"Hello." I lifted one hand in an awkward wave.

Bliea's gaze moved past me to Rhodness standing behind me.

"That bastard—?"

Her eyes were making a circuit of the room, quick and urgent.

"Which bastard?" I answered, before she could reach the door. "There's more than one or two."

Bliea's urgency stopped.

Then she threw her head back and laughed.

"My imagined little sister was supposed to be more square. Stupider."

I hadn't noticed that I was clenching my fist. Not until Rhodness quietly closed his hand over it.

"All the bastards are dead."

Bliea's eyes went bright and gleaming. She scrunched her face in that calculating, sardonic way she'd shown from the dais.

"So it wasn't a dream after all. Earlier—and that voice from before."

"…A voice?"

"You said you'd wake me."

"!"

"Originally, I was supposed to die, you know."

Only then did she seem to check, again, that she was really alive. Bliea's gaze settled for a long moment on the hands she'd been swinging so wildly only hours ago.

"You said you had a lot of questions."

I watched her without answering.

"I spent my whole life burying it and nearly took it to my grave. I suppose I could say it now."

Her dry, pale lips opened.

"My story."

So. The first time Bliea learned of Adrienne's existence was entirely by accident.

"Look at her, strutting around dressed like that. Thinks she's some great noble or something."

"Ha. Probably trying to look like the Grand Duchess of Ronteaux or whatever."

"What'd you call me, you little f—s?!"

That day, too, Bliea had been on her way to Rotsy's cabin.

In a poor domain, Bliea's flamboyant dress and loud temperament were always a jagged stone, something that grated on everyone around her.

So trouble found her regularly, and this time she had braced for more of the same.

Until a new name reached her ears.

The Grand Duchess of Ronteaux.

"If I could just sweep them all out with my mana, I'd feel so much bet—f— Ow!"

"Watch that tongue of yours. You're supposed to be a grown maiden."

"Why hit me! You'd have hit a boy for the same thing, so lay off the maid nonsense."

"What are you sulking about now? What's wrong with you today?"

"The only one who plays with me is you, Master. This is my playground."

"Who calls their teacher 'Master' like that?!"

"Teacher, my ass!"

"You going to tell the whole village I have mana?"

'That temperament of hers…'

Rotsy clicked her tongue, and began building a fire for Bliea, who had come in from the cold with ears gone red.

"Who is the Grand Duchess of Ronteaux?"

"I can barely remember the Ellaconian king's name. How should I know."

'Who is she, that I'm supposedly copying her.'

Bliea sat scowling at the floor and let her gaze drift to a newspaper Rotsy had set aside for kindling.

"!"

"The fire's going, so let me get you a blanket… Bliea?"

That day—Bliea, of all days.

She couldn't tear her eyes from the front page of the paper.