May Every Wound Be Fatal - vanish into fiction

Elizer realized that the place was the king’s rear garden, accessible only to the royal family. Then, memories of something Cassian had once told him about his mother came to mind.

“Your mother liked the ‘king’s rear garden’ the most in the high citadel.”

Elizer, knowing almost nothing about his mother, felt a strange sensation as he listened.

Noticing this, Cassian added that it was something he was telling only to him.

“Come to think of it, I feel the same way. In a palace with nowhere to rest, that place is astonishingly quiet. When you are there, no gaze, no voice, can follow you.”

Elizer longed for silence. He was vaguely curious about a place his mother, whom he had never met, and the lord he followed like a father, both liked.

He stepped into the king’s rear garden as if entranced.

Though he knew that entering the garden as the king’s illegitimate child could be fatal, he felt it might be safe for just a brief moment.

The garden was completely empty.

Not a single lantern was lit, but the sky was so bright with stars it felt as though they poured down, making it easy to move forward. No more glances or whispers followed him.

Elizer finally lowered his tense shoulders and breathed freely.

He wandered aimlessly through the quiet. At one point, he leaned against a tree trunk and closed his eyes for a moment.

Faint sounds of instruments and laughter occasionally drifted on the cool breeze, gently brushing past him.

He might have dozed off for a while. How much time had passed, he could not tell.

Rustle.

He sensed cautious footsteps behind a tree trunk.

‘A patrolling guard, perhaps.’

Elizer slowly opened his eyes, calmly hiding in the black shadows, observing beyond the bushes.

A very suspicious black shape moved past.

It was difficult to be certain in the dim light, but surprisingly, it appeared to be a woman.

Not just anyone could enter the king’s rear garden. For a moment, he thought it might be the queen, but he knew she was likely enjoying the feast elsewhere.

‘…An assassin?’

He, too, had secretly entered the garden, but as a knight, he could not ignore a suspicious figure.

After a brief moment of consideration, he decided to just find out what the woman intended. By then, she had already disappeared from view.

“When did she….”

Momentarily flustered, Elizer followed the direction she had stealthily moved.

With each dense tree trunk he passed, the sounds of people and the orange glow from the feast’s windows gradually grew clearer.

‘Damn, where did she go?’

As Elizer pushed through the undergrowth and emerged between the trees, it felt as though the dense leaves that had blocked the moonlight had disappeared, brightening his view. There, standing in the middle, was the woman.

“……”

She turned to him with eyes wide like a startled rabbit.

Her eyes were so large that even in the faint twilight, he could see they were green.

She wore a white headscarf and a blue skirt, appearing to be a low-ranking court maid.

‘…Why would a maid wander this far?’

Had she lost her way? Or was she simply curious about the royal feast?

Did she not know that entering the king’s rear garden without permission could cost her her life?

Countless questions arose in his mind in a short moment.

He remained calm because the woman in front of him did not seem dangerous at all.

Why was that?

Partly because she was the most beautiful young lady he had ever seen, which momentarily made him as foolish as Martin, but mostly because she did not avoid his gaze, as if she had been waiting for him.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“Did you not just hear something from over there?”

If it had not been the voices of the guards in the distance, he might have continued to act clumsily.

Snapping back to focus, Elizer stepped toward the woman and whispered with his lips.

“Quiet.”

He placed a finger gently on his lips, and the woman, startled by his sudden approach, quietly nodded.

It was so endearing that he almost laughed, forgetting the situation.

He deliberately looked away from her, scanning the direction of the guards’ voices while lowering his body. The woman, noticing this, bent her knees slightly.

Then she began to fix her gaze on him.

‘…Why has she been staring like that?’

Elizer stubbornly kept his eyes forward, but in truth, all his attention was on the woman.

Eventually, without realizing it, he glanced at her.