May Every Wound Be Fatal - Chapter 1.2
However, the old woman only shook her head firmly once more.
‘Then are the rumors true? The rumors that Prince Kassian proposed to the princess of the southern island?’
Reyna could not hide her disappointment as she recalled the rumor that had spread even as far as Kaldrak.
“Then I cannot become queen?”
“You will become queen.”
“…I cannot marry the prince, yet I will be queen?”
“You will marry the king you choose, and you will become queen.”
“…No way.”
With her face crumpling, Reyna asked urgently,
“My husband will not be… that old, um, King Bailion, right? He will not be, correct?”
The old woman leaned back and laughed again.
“How dare you…”
Irritated by her impatience, Reyna let her displeasure show, and the old woman abruptly stopped laughing.
“You have nothing to worry about. He is nowhere near old. Your husband will be young enough to look almost green.”
Reyna felt immense relief, though she did not show it. Her worries melted away, and in a shy voice she asked,
“Then… will my husband love me?”
For a fifteen-year-old girl immersed in knightly romances about destined love, nothing mattered more.
The old woman, who had been quiet for a moment, suddenly burst into loud laughter.
“Love? Ha ha!”
The phlegmy sound and the spray of spit were extremely unpleasant. She was not close enough to be touched, but Reyna still leaned her upper body farther back, grimacing. Only then did the old woman speak again.
“Your husband will love you. That will be the problem.”
Reyna, who had brightened, paused and asked with confusion,
“How can it be a problem if a husband loves his wife?”
After all, love in the romantic tales she adored was the power that overcame all hardships and the final reward at the end of every trial.
If a wife received her husband’s love, she should never be unhappy.
“…Anyway, you mean my husband will love me?”
“More surely than anything, noble rose.”
Reyna was, in truth, a very fortunate girl.
She had never lacked anything she wanted, and without much effort, everything had always gone her way.
Filled with simple confidence, Reyna brushed off the old woman’s difficult words.
There was not much time left anyway. Outside, her childhood friend and the newest knight of House Dazbel, Ventari, was waiting. Newly knighted, he had insisted countless times that accompanying her here was dangerous and that he would be the first one executed if they were discovered.
“My lady? Karla! I said come out already!”
Hearing his impatient shouting, Reyna hurriedly moved on to her final question.
“Then how many children will I have with my king?”
The old woman, who had answered everything without hesitation until now, suddenly shut her mouth.
Reyna tensed at once. Producing an heir was the queen’s duty.
The old woman seemed to think for a moment, then muttered vaguely,
“Well. That alone is faint like a fog.”
“How can there be no children if my husband loves me?”
Reyna snapped back with irritation, mixed with disappointment and anxiety.
In that moment, a glint of malice flashed across the old woman’s clouded eyes. Reyna flinched and instinctively reached out, grabbing the hem of Karla’s clothes.
“Even so, one thing is certain. You and he will be unhappy because you love each other.”
The old woman shouted in her raspy voice, sounding terribly pleased.
“In the end, you will beg him to kill you.”
Words that sounded like a curse.
Reyna’s eyes widened. Her heart began pounding violently like an animal facing its natural predator. A cold sweat soaked her entire body in an instant.
But the old woman did not stop.
“But you will not be able to die. Daughter of a murderer.”
It was unmistakably the accent of a Dochioin.
Gasp. Reyna sucked in a desperate breath and snapped her eyes open.
She did not immediately realize she had woken from a dream. That was how vivid it had been.
“Your Majesty? Call the physician. Quickly!”
Following Karla’s frantic voice, Reyna’s stiff eyes wandered slowly.
“Your Majesty.”
Karla’s face, dripping with tears, filled her vision.
Reyna blinked blankly. Hearing herself addressed as Your Majesty and seeing how matured Karla looked felt strangely unfamiliar to her.
‘It was a dream?’
Reyna slowly returned from the dream to reality.
‘Why that moment…’
Of course, that had been the first time in her life she had truly felt her life was in danger. But she could not understand why something that happened more than seven years ago, when she had still been a naïve girl, appeared so suddenly in her dreams.
Sensing Reyna’s confusion, Karla gripped her hand tightly and asked,
“Your Majesty, do you remember how you lost consciousness?”
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