May Every Wound Be Fatal - Chapter 2.1
Reyna frowned as though trying to search through her memories.
“I….”
“Yes, Your Highness met the king.”
“The king…. Yes, I did. I met my king….”
Only then did Reyna’s memories return in reverse.
She had collapsed while having an audience with the king. Her thin, withered body had not endured a week of fasting.
She did not clearly remember what expression the king, her husband, had worn when she last saw him.
Was it a frown?
Or was it the same blank face he always had.
Instead of asking whether he had come to see her during that time, Reyna asked something else.
“Karla, how long was I unconscious?”
She had long since abandoned such hopes.
Karla could not hide her devastation and lowered her gaze.
“Two days, Your Highness.”
Reyna’s lips parted in bewilderment.
Two days. She had not simply fainted for a moment. It was a long time in which everything might have already ended before she could attempt anything more.
Reyna felt a dreadful premonition and gasped.
“So, what happened?”
Karla’s face finally crumbled beyond repair.
“…That woman entered the detached palace.”
Dreadful premonitions never missed. Reyna held her breath and slowly closed her eyes. She steadied her breathing with effort and asked.
“With the child?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“……”
Karla bowed her head deeply, and Reyna kept her mouth shut.
Five years ago, Reyna had married the king at the age of eighteen and became queen. And she had not borne a child since.
Because of this, troubling rumors had spread through the capital, Elmaril.
They said the king longed for Priscilla, the wife of his late older brother, and that he would depose Queen Reyna and take his sister-in-law as his consort. That he would make his nephew the heir.
Those horrible rumors had circulated even inside the palace until they finally reached Reyna’s ears.
Would the king not know of these rumors?
No, he could not possibly be unaware.
And yet the king had finally given the detached palace to his sister-in-law and nephew.
What would people say next? Reyna could not accept the king’s decision and began a hunger strike.
After a week passed, she had been granted an audience with the king. But her weakened body had been the issue. The opportunity she had barely obtained slipped away.
Reyna, who had been silent as though asleep, suddenly opened her eyes.
“…You said two days have passed.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Once everything was decided, her heaving chest strangely calmed at once. She was no longer angry. Rather, her complicated mind felt as though it had become lighter to the point of cracking. She was finally able to let go of the foolish little hopes she had been clinging to.
Reyna tried to rise. Karla quickly supported her, blinking.
“Your Highness?”
“I shall have an audience with the king.”
“Your Highness, you must not strain yourself. The court physician said….”
“I cannot go on like this.”
Her voice was so dried up it was barely audible, yet it was unmistakably a scream. Her maid was struck speechless.
A short silence followed.
At last Reyna lifted her dazed gaze and whispered to Karla, whose face had frozen in misery.
“I want to look the way I always do.”
“…Yes, Your Highness.”
Karla understood what her mistress meant. Her face contorted as though she might burst into tears, but she composed herself and hurried to call the other maids.
As Reyna stared indifferently at her reflection in the mirror, she suddenly recalled the time when the king first rejected her.
A husband who did not come to see his wife after the consummation.
She had been a proud young lady born with everything in her hands, so that humiliation had been difficult to accept.
At first she had rushed to his office, where he was said to be working, and raged at the knights guarding him, asking how they could dare block the queen’s path. She thought she had even slapped someone while shouting that they were lying and that His Majesty would never reject her.
And when she finally managed to share a bed with him, the misery she felt.
It had always been that way afterwards.
She had once tried to force her way past those barring the door only to be pushed back and fall disgracefully. That day she had been so shocked she returned to her room in a ruinous state and cried all night like a fool.
Was that already two years ago? That must have been the last time she had gone to his bedchamber.
“Your Highness, it is finished.”
While she reminisced about the past years, her adornment was completed.
Even though many people worked hard to dress her in only the finest and most precious things, they could not entirely conceal her sickly appearance. In the mirror was a woman worn down and frayed over the course of five years.
Karla discreetly moved her hand and added a bit of color to Reyna’s thin cheek.
“You are as perfect as always, Your Highness.”
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