May Every Wound Be Fatal - vanish into fiction

At some point, Reyna fell into a light sleep without realizing it. Then, she happened to open her eyes just once. It was difficult to explain, but she had an intuition that he was beside her.

“…….”

Surprisingly, the King was looking down at her, leaning his head and arms against the edge of the bed just as he had the previous night. When their eyes met, his eyes widened, and his blue gaze, mingled with the orange light, wavered intensely.

“…Haha.”

At that, Reyna let out a faint laugh despite herself. She could not distinguish whether she was happy because he had come, or glad because she saw his face again, or perhaps both.

With a faint smile, Reyna stealthily grabbed his sleeve. He flinched and trembled, but he did not pull away or avoid her hand.

Reyna felt a sense of relief for the countless times and closed her eyes comfortably.

“As I thought, I am not afraid when Your Majesty is beside me….”

“…….”

“Please come find me tomorrow as well.”

Suddenly, she remembered that she had made the same request of him the night before.

He did not give her an answer today either. Nevertheless, Reyna felt a strange certainty that he would come to find her again tomorrow.

“…….”

Having woken up out of nowhere and let out a laugh, Reyna began to breathe evenly again. Judging by the faint smile remaining on the corners of her lips, it seemed her laughter had not been a figment of his imagination.

Elizer could not take his eyes off that smile, which he had thought he would never see again. He even forgot the fear that she might recognize him.

Something hot surged from deep within his chest, and his heart began to beat wildly. The rims of his eyes stung. Lately, his emotions had become impossible to control.

Elizer wept silently, endlessly taking in the face of the soundly sleeping Reyna.

She still looked very sickly. However, her cheeks had certainly filled out more than before, and a faint color was returning to her complexion. Though she trembled with fear while surrounded by unfamiliar things, she no longer tried to die upon seeing her husband.

Reyna did not remember the fact that she had attempted to take her own life. She only had memories from before she met him. It was as if she had decided to forget the memories that caused her pain in order to survive.

“No one can guarantee when her memory will return. What is certain is that…. it will be more advantageous for her physical recovery to be without those memories.”

Just as the scholar Thales had said not to worry too much, her memory loss might have been due to her survival instinct.

Elizer did not dare to approach such a Reyna easily. He was terrified that her memories might return because of him, and that she would wish for death once again.

However, Elizer simply could not endure without seeing with his own eyes that Reyna was alive. Only then could he breathe.

The reason he could not let her leave the high citadel and instead hid her within reach, and why he began to sneak into her room like a thief under the cover of darkness, was purely for that reason.

He swore he had no other intentions. It was enough just to be able to see her like this. In other words, he would never have revealed himself to her if Reyna had not suddenly suffered a seizure.

Last night, when she suddenly began to writhe in pain, Elizer thought her memories had returned. He had been out of his mind with the terror that Reyna would run to the window and throw herself out again. By the time he came to his senses, he found himself desperately embracing her, begging her not to leave him here alone.

“Please come find me tomorrow as well.”

And Elizer could not push Reyna away.

Far from pushing her away, he wanted to feel just a little more of her hand clutching his sleeve, her heartbeat thumping in a steady rhythm, and her stable breathing that seemed free of any dreams. Even for a brief moment, he wanted to stay by her side just a little longer.

‘…Perhaps for just a short while, it would be alright.’

Elizer closed his eyes without realizing it. And for the first time in a very long while, he fell into a deep sleep.