May Every Wound Be Fatal - Chapter 45.1
“…….”
Elizer moved his bloodshot eyes and looked to his side. Reyna, who should have been lying beside him, was nowhere to be seen.
Elizer slowly raised his trembling right hand. He saw bandages wrapped tightly around the back of his palm.
“…Ah.”
Soon, a broken groan escaped from between Elizer’s teeth.
“Your Majesty!”
Sir Lyman, sensing an ominous premonition, urgently called out to him, but Elizer was faster, springing from the bed like a wild beast.
Realizing what he intended to do, Sir Lyman grabbed him desperately.
“Calm yourself, Your Majesty! The Queen is—”
“Reyna. Reyna is…!”
However, Elizer had already lost his mind.
Elizer let out a scream like a madman, shaking off Sir Lyman and knocking down the attendants who stood in his way. Sir Lyman wondered if the King intended to throw himself into the sea after the Queen. Sir Lyman called out to him earnestly while holding onto the struggling Elizer.
“Your Majesty!”
But his voice did not seem to reach Elizer at all. Elizer moved forward stubbornly, heedless of the people hanging onto him to hold him back.
Growing frantic, Sir Lyman squeezed his eyes shut and shouted.
“The Queen is alive!”
At those words, Elizer froze in place.
An eerie silence followed, punctuated only by his ragged breathing.
Sir Lyman observed Elizer’s state and carefully loosened the arms that had been holding him.
Elizer could not make a sound for a while. It was only much later that he finally managed to move his parched lips.
“…Where is Reyna?”
***
Reyna’s survival was nothing short of a miracle.
A ship that had been unable to sail into the deep sea due to a problem with its mast had been stationed right next to the balcony.
The crew of the ship happened to witness Reyna falling from the balcony and immediately hauled her onto the vessel after she fell into the water.
Because Elizer had caught her once before she fell, Reyna had fallen in a straight posture, fortunately avoiding injuries to her head or back. Although her right shinbone had fractured and pierced through the skin, she was extremely lucky.
Nevertheless, it was clear that such an injury was fatal to Reyna’s pitifully frail body.
The scholars were called out abruptly in the middle of the night.
“You say she fell from the balcony and into the sea? How on earth did such a thing…”
Having heard of the horrific accident that occurred during the festival, they were amazed that Reyna was alive, but they let out low groans upon seeing her catastrophically mangled right leg.
“Oh, heavens. Dear God, how could such a thing happen on a holy feast day…”
The attendants carefully laid Reyna, who was as motionless as a corpse, onto the bed.
The dress, heavy with seawater, had already been removed when she was hauled onto the ship. Reyna’s maidservants wept as they stripped away the undergarments clinging to her skin, quickly covering her skeletal body with dry cloth.
Reyna lacked even a hint of color, making her look like a cadaver.
Thales, an elderly scholar, saw his complexion darken as he examined her wounds once more.
“…The wounds soaked in water are already contaminated; she will need the protection of the gods.”
At those words, Allin finally collapsed and burst into tears, and a young housemaid assisted her out of the room.
The surgery began.
“It may be a blessing that she has lost consciousness…”
“We must finish this as quickly as possible.”
Thales carefully washed the wounded area with a herbal solution mixed with boiled water and strong alcohol. With clean hands, he began to fit the broken bone fragments back into their original positions as best as he could.
Meanwhile, another scholar diluted poppy juice with water and trickled it between the Queen’s lips. However, that was not enough to completely erase the pain of her skin being torn to shreds.
Due to the shocking agony, Reyna suddenly regained consciousness.
“…Ah, ahhh!”
Her scream pierced through the thick stone walls and echoed throughout the castle.
“Oh no, you must not move!”
“You there, quickly, hold the Queen down!”
At Thales’s command, attendants rushed over to hold down her limbs as she writhed in pain.
Reyna snapped her eyes open at the extreme, surging sensations, only to repeatedly faint again, unable to endure the searing pain.
“Poppy! Use more poppy!”
“If we use any more, she may never wake up again!”
The operating room gradually became a chaos of screams and shouts, and it looked as though her fragile body would not be able to survive the surgery.
It was then that the King, having regained his senses, burst into the room.
“…Reyna.”
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