Chapter 32 - CHAPTER 30. I WILL NEVER LET YOU DIE

Why did this man let himself get hit with an arrow instead of me? It was a question that arose when the urgent situation had passed. People say that when your back is warm and your stomach filled, you will start to have useless thoughts. She was thinking this because she was feeling the situation had improved a bit. She thought that she was being a bit pathetic, but the thought came to her as she was really curious. Why did he get hit by an arrow on her behalf?

Lucio didn’t love her. Patrizia also didn’t love him. This was a truth that both Patrizia and Lucio knew. There was no denying this fact. But then why? If not for love, what was the reason for partaking in such self-sacrifice?

Was he perhaps feeling really sorry towards her? Did he feel sorry for not loving her? Or was he feeling guilty towards her about Rosemond’s actions during the last meeting with the wives of the envoys? There were so many hypotheses, and none of them were for certain.

Patrizia soon decided to quit thinking like this.

Anyways, no matter how much she reasoned with herself like this, she wouldn’t have an answer. So in one word, it was useless. It was also meaningless. If this place was comfortable and safe like the Imperial Palace then maybe, but in this situation, such a meaningless act was nothing but shaving off her life.

She stood up to do something more meaningful. Perhaps it was because she drank some of the sculler juice before, but her symptoms had gotten better. Her dizziness had improved a lot, and the nausea she had experienced had eased up more than before. Patrizia slowly walked out of the cave to find something to eat.

Anyways, to transfer him to the Imperial Palace, she had to support her stamina as his guardian. Patrizia took the empty quiver, wishing that she would find something to eat.

At that point, Rosemond was sipping tea elegantly in her quarters in the Vain Palace. It was her favorite rosemary tea. Afterwards, instead of continuing to drink the tea, she slowly turned and looked out the window. The sky was cloudy, and it was probably going to rain soon.

If it rained, the evidence would be easier to erase. With a satisfied look, she asked Glara for another cup of tea. At her command, Glara brought her an additional teapot and asked Rosemond with a smile, “You look pleased, my Lady.”

“I can only look pleased, Glara. You don’t look like it though.”

“That can’t be my Lady. If my Lady is happy, I am happy as well.”

Her master had a happy expression after a long time. Like her words, she could only feel very good right now. Not long ago, her master had secretly commissioned a murder with the city’s most powerful group of assassins.

She would provide as much money as they wanted, so they would get rid of the Empress during the hunting competition. They were very talented assassins, so her master’s plan probably worked. Always, the amount paid brought the respective results, and her master was overflowing with money.

Even Rafaella, as an escort knight, would not be able to deal with all thirty or so assassins unless she was death itself. And Rafaella was not that skilled yet. Glara told Rosemond in a relaxed voice.

“Now the Imperial Palace will be up in chaos. His Majesty will replace my Lady as the new Empress.”

“Of course he will, Glara. If I become the Empress, you also become the Chief Maid of the Empress Palace. How about it, aren’t you happy?”

“I’m very happy, my Lady. Didn’t I tell you this? My joy is my Lady’s joy, and my Lady’s joy is my joy.”

“How quaint. You sure speak with pretty words.”

In a rare moment, her tone was softer than usual, as if she was in a great mood. Glara, who always thought about how good it would be if she was always like today, spoke in a serious tone later.

“The Empress will die unless something specific happens, and the weather will soon rain. It will be easy to destroy evidence.”

“I think the same as you. In fact, even if it doesn’t rain, it will be difficult to catch them. As always, you get your money’s worth.”

Rosemond laughed with giggles, shook the teacup with an amused expression. If she knew it was going to be this easy, she would have put in a request for murder sooner. Rosemond felt so great that everything was running smoothly.

In the future, her path ahead will have to be like this. It was to be a soft and beautiful flower-filled path, not a rough path full of thorns. Even if all the flowers were soaked in blood and gruesome in color. Even if the scent blowing in the wind was not the fragrant scent of flowers, but a scent full of blood.

Contrary to Patrizia’s expectations, Lucio’s recovery did not happen very quickly. Patrizia, barely opened the fruits she had found in the surrounding grass, had since not moved an inch and observed the condition of Lucio while paying attention to the surroundings. At first, he seemed to get a little better, and his fever gradually began to rise, but the temperature was too high to dismiss it as a healing process.

Patrizia was not a professional and was bound to be flustered because the book’s content hadn’t said anything about this. She knew she should feed the sculler to him from her knowledge, that it certainly worked, and did so with her mouth.

But if he was not waking up like this… Could it be too late?

Patrizia, who had a bad notion, quickly shook her head.

It was too early to think about such unfortunate thoughts. He was not dead yet, he was still alive, and there might be more methods. Patrizia was worried about how to cool down his fever, and so she collected the straws that covered him. She judged that the heat preservation from the straws in his heated state would not be suitable.

-RUMBLE BOOM BOOM

At that moment, a thunderstorm rang out from behind, followed by the sound of pouring rain. After Patrizia got up from a startled state, she walked out of the cave where it rained and released the rope that tied Sally to bring her inside the cave. Sally shook her body a little as if a little rain had gotten on her, and a small amount of water splashed on Patrizia.

Patrizia roughly brushed the water off with her hands, and then tied Sally back. Meanwhile, the rain continued to fall, and she lifted her head and looked at the numerous streams pouring from the sky. Raining could be a good thing or a bad thing for her. Once it rained, it would be impossible to search for them.

If the people were the assassins, it would be a pleasant thing to celebrate over, but it would be an utter failure like no other if it were the royal nobles. Moreover, if it rained, the water level would rise, so it was also disadvantageous to try to cross a river.

She reached out of the cave subconsciously and got a raindrop that fell in her palm. The rain was very cold, and Patrizia thought it wasn’t a bad idea to cool him with rain for a moment.

But soon she changed his mind. Sending him into the rain, in the name of cooling him down in this weather, was impossible work. She seemed to have seen somewhere in a book she had read before that a sudden drop in body temperature could lead to poor results.

It was written in the back of the book, saying that if someone had gotten a fever when there was no medicine, another healthy person had to cool oneself and hug the other.

Patrizia blushed when the thought suddenly came to mind, but as before, this wasn’t the right situation to be thinking this way. In the moment of death or survival, there was no fool in this situation that would be considering that.

Patrizia walked into the rain without hesitation, as if she had already decided. Sally made a ruckus with neighing sounds from behind her, as if asking what was going on, but it did not matter.

If she didn’t make a decision right now, that horse, that guy, and she would all die.

Patrizia stood there, facing the cold stream of rain. The cold rain poured down her face, hair, chest, and stomach.

The cold sensation and the lowering of her body temperature caused her to continue to groan and tremble in suffering, but she withstood and endured with her mind.

Anyways, because she ate the sculler earlier, she won’t die easily. Patrizia muttered this bitingly and pledged.

She will never let him die. Damn it.

Who would die? They would all return to the Imperial Palace in good health. He, she, and the horse would remain unharmed. Patrizia struggled with closing her chattering teeth and accepted the rain all over her body.

When she was hit with the rain for about 20 minutes, Patrizia was almost out of her mind. She stumbled into the cave as if she thought it would be a catastrophe if she was hit with any more rain.

Sally neighed continuously as if worried about her and moved up a fuss. Patrizia smiled lifelessly at her to show she was fine, and then went up to the spot on the rock where Lucio was while swaying. It seemed that her dizzy mind was going to go into space sometime soon.

“Haaa…”

She made a noise of exhaustion and hugged him as much as possible. Because his whole body was like a fireball, she felt a great warmth momentarily when she hugged him.

Patrizia closed her eyes with a tired expression and empowered her hands that held him. She muttered constantly, hugging his hot body.

“I will never let you die. Never.”

At this moment, at least his life was the same as her life. The only one who could send her to the Imperial Palace with an innocent position. Patrizia fell asleep after three or four more repeated trips in the rain and consequent hugs.

A bitter taste that he had never felt before, and a cold sensation that was being transmitted into his body. Lucio began to awaken, little by little, by the strange feeling of the coexistence of both cold and warmth. For someone who was already overtaken by poison like Lucio, it would be about two or three hours before the sculler’s effectiveness took place.

Lucio seemed to be having a nightmare, or simply struggling with pain, because his complexion didn’t look good, and he was releasing cold sweat on his forehead. Given that his body had already fallen back to a normal body temperature, weighing in on the former was more credible.

His nightmares had always been the same. He had overwhelming reasons to have nightmares, but none of it was comparable to that day.

All the other things were things that could be sustained by the power of his mentality, but that day had been different. It wasn’t just his mentality, but it was something no human could stand, even if the grandfather of mentality came.

Thus, his nightmares were always the same, and he could never be free from the repeated pain, and he probably was going to be like forever. It was an infinite punishment for him. It was like how Prometheus’ punishment was never-ending. And Lucio always wanted to escape from the punishment that had been put on him, but on the other hand, he thought he deserved it. He thought he should pay the price for it.

But reasons and emotions were always different, and ideality and reality were always in contrast. He reasoned that it was always right to have his nightmares, but his feelings complained about his deathly suffering from the punishment. He ideally wanted to remember the day’s events through the nightmares until he died, but in reality, he was a terrified little child who trembled with the nightmares and sought refuge.

His nightmares had no rules. They found him when he was happy, and they found him when he was unhappy. When he was neither happy nor unhappy, they found him. The nightmares were part of his daily life. It could never be removed, and should never be removed.