CH 72

Ezekiel looked at the acrid smoke and rubbed out the shortened cigar with his hand. He smoked too many cigars, but he couldn’t stay in his right mind.

He couldn’t figure out where to start and what to do. No, he couldn’t handle the situation he created.

Charles, Herace, and Erzen. The faces of the three people kept hovering before his eyes. He committed an unforgivable sin. It was not possible to turn back time or make amends. Ezekiel was most afraid of it.

“Herace…”

Ezekiel kept spouting his wife’s name out of fear that was tightening him every moment. It was an insult to his wife to even dare to call her name, but he couldn’t stand the current situation without that name.

“Herace…”

He didn’t even cry now. If he thought of his dead brother and Erzen, he could hold his head and cry until his life is over, but his hateful tear glands have dried up.

Instead, invisible tears of blood kept wetting his feet. Yeah, just like his sin.

“Herace…”

He thought he deserved to die, but Ezekiel couldn’t die. No, no matter how painful it was, he didn’t mean to die.

Herace is the only one he is left with. He couldn’t let go of his wife, maybe forever, but…… Nevertheless, he didn’t even think about leaving his wife behind.

“Herace… Where do I start to tell you…….”

Therefore, Ezekiel was in a big crisis. Where should he start to apologize and confess his sins in order to atone for his mistake and stay by Herace’s side and live by protecting her?

“……should I beg for your forgiveness?”

In fact, he wanted to cover up everything. He wanted to cover up all the things he had done for ruining Charles and her happiness, for suspecting her adultery with stupidity, and for causing the death of his brother and son.

He wanted to cover his wife’s eyes even if it would make him struggle alone. He knew he shouldn’t, but he didn’t, couldn’t dare to confess his guilt. Herace was still someone who couldn’t forgive him. And if she knows all this happened because of him, she would…….

“I can’t.”

Ezekiel shook his head strongly.

If he confessed the truth, he wished his wife would rather blame him and say she would kill him with a sword and cut his limbs, and said she would put a sword in his heart, he would give it up and be at her mercy.

But Herace, whom he knew well, was not the one to do so. His wife would not kill him or cut off his limbs. She’ll just quietly look at him, and somehow erase him from her memory.

“……I can’t stand that, Herace.”

Ezekiel remembered the Marquis of Devone. Herace showed little sadness at the death of her father, the Marquis of Devone. To her, the Marquis of Devone seemed like a non-existent person.

Herace was fundamentally a warm and benevolent person, but she can completely erase the unforgivable person from her head. By any means.

“So I can’t tell you.”

Ezekiel could have died at her hands, but he could not be forgotten by her. Just imagining her forgetting him left a burning sensation not only in his body but also in his soul.

Ezekiel, who had his lips pursed, trembled and reached for the cigar box. However, the severely shaken finger could not even easily catch something. Ezekiel had to wring his hand four times before he was able to grasp the cigar.

It was when Ezekiel was about to light a fire with empty eyes. He heard someone running in a hurry and knocking on the door.

Knock, knock.

The door opened before the permission could fall. Behind the acrid smoke of Ezekiel, the old butler showed a pale face. He flinched for a moment at the sight of Ezekiel, who looked haggard, but revealed the purpose of entering his master’s room without proper courtesy.

“Madam. …. Madam collapsed.”

Even before the old butler’s words were over, the cigar, which had just begun to burn, was thrown to the floor. Ezekiel ran even though his eyes were dizzy. His cigar burned and blackened some of the soft rugs.

***

Herace with the bandage on her head remained motionless. Like the child on ice.

As Herace’s pale face came into view, Ezekiel’s face turned white as opposed to his burning heart. He knelt on the floor, not daring to sit on the bed or chair, and took his wife’s hand.

“Herace…”

Even Herace’s arm trembled slightly at the shaking of his hand. Ezekiel rubbed his cheek against his wife’s hand, pleading, with his head down as if he were a sinner.

“Why did you…. I’m the one who’s supposed to be like this, but why are you…….”

He didn’t even dare to apologize. Now even his wife was dying because of his stupid self. Ezekiel shed tears in that posture next to his terribly thin wife.

Three days and a few hours have passed like that. Herace finally opened her eyes at the height of dawn after night. The empty blue eyes rolled aside, and identified the man, who was as stiff as a stone statue, and called him.

“Ezekiel.”

“Herace?”

Ezekiel had his head bowed like a death row waiting for his turn. But he raised his head immediately at the call of Herace. Without even being able to speak, he clasped Herace’s hand tightly and raised himself to call the doctor. But Herace shook her head slightly. Then she opened her mouth with her dry lips.

“…what about her?”

Ezekiel understood who Herace was talking about at once and hardened his face. Charlotte, she meant the woman who vomited black blood and died.

When he thought of Charlotte, his teeth clenched. At the same time, hatred for himself, who couldn’t really kill the woman, or bring her justice in the first place, was raging all over.

“The woman you brought, the woman who killed Erzen. What did you do with her?”

When Ezekiel did not answer right away, Herace urged. Ezekiel came to his senses at his wife’s urging, and looked cold. His wife already knew that the woman died. It was hard to tell her the truth. So what she’s asking is…….

“I threw her away.”

It was a cold voice with no sympathy. Herace blinked and slightly turned her head toward Ezekiel. Then he continued as if he were chewing every word.

“I sank her in the Carbes. She won’t be able to find rest anywhere because she couldn’t even close her eyes.”

Carbes is a generic term for rotten swamps, and was the most shunned place in Anais. Due to the nature of the place where the body of the beast and the stagnant water rot together, it was natural that it was not welcomed by anyone. In particular, the Anais almost morbidly stayed away from Carbes. And in it, a myth that passed down from ancient times was the most feared.

“Your decapitated body will sink into the Carbes with your eyes open. May you never be forgiven by God.”

“Please… have mercy. Not that…”

“Two men, six women and four children died in your hands. How can you hope for mercy on the subject!”

There has long been a widespread saying in Anais that if a person is sunk in the Carbes alive with a decapitated body, they will not be saved even if they die. For this reason, usually, rebels such as condemned prisoners like Marquis Pegato were executed and then dumped there with their eyelids attached to themselves.

It is a kind of punishment that has earned even the last mercy, not to be rescued even after death. Those who are soft-hearted dare not even say the word Carbes.

“……Then she must be in a terrible situation now. What a pity.”

Unlike the words, there was no sympathy in Herace’s voice. Her gaze was directed into the air behind Ezekiel before slowly moving back at him. For a very short time, resentment and hatred were the only thing shimmering on the blue orbs.

“But why are you here? If she sank into the Carbes, so should you.”

Ezekiel heard Herace’s words and pursed his lips.

Herace was right. Charlotte, if she had been abandoned in Carbes, he should have been there too. Erzen’s death…… No, everything that has happened so far was his fault. His inferiority complex has distorted everything.

“When Erzen was in danger the other day, you only expelled her. She did a crime but…… You let her live. It must have been because she was the woman you loved.”

Ezekiel clenched his fist at Herace’s misunderstanding. His wife was under the illusion that he saved Charlotte’s life because he loved her. Ezekiel, who could not resist, opened his mouth to explain.

“Herace, you may not believe it, but…… I never cared or loved her for a second. The reason I expelled her…….”

“Whatever the reason, it was you who brought her here in the first place. Therefore, you killed Erzen.”

Herace cut off his words in the middle. What’s the point of hearing the explanation? Erzen is already…….

Herace pulled her hand out from Ezekiel’s grasp. Unlike the hands that the man did not hold, the warmth of the warm hands was heterogeneous.

“It’s the same for me, too. Erzen… my son…… Because I couldn’t protect him.”

Herace burst into disheartened laughter. Tears streamed down her eyes before she knew it.

Is it because the blood was finally flowing in her head? Her mind was clearer than ever. At the same time as it had recognized that her son had died, her existence felt disgusting and unbearable. Herace took her hands near her neck.

“If she is punished for rotting on the Carbes without rest, so should I. I must sink in rotten water, too.”

The urge to strangle herself was infested. If she lay down under the swamp with her breathing hole closed and her eyes open, will she be able to escape this pain of gnawing her heart alive? The force of the overlapping the neck was applied.

“Herace!”

Ezekiel reached out and ripped off Herace’s hand. Herace struggled and resisted, but could not overcome the power of the man.

When Ezekiel finally managed to hold both of her hands, Herace relaxed at some point. The amber pupils looking down at her were shaking relentlessly.