Before long, Freya faintly opened her eyes.
“Lady……?”
Her voice was weak, but she was clearly alive.
Odely firmly held the hand of the awakened head lady-in-waiting and spoke.
“It’s okay. I’m here.”
Freya’s eyes trembled slightly.
Unable to continue speaking, she simply looked at Odely, who was looking down at her.
The first emotion to fill her mind as soon as she regained consciousness was relief.
The hand touching hers was cold, but there was an inexplicable warmth within it.
“Wh-what happened? I was definitely…….”
“That…….”
Odely briefly avoided her gaze and trailed off.
She wanted to brush it off as casually as possible.
“You can think of it as something similar to a priest using divine power to heal someone. It’s a rather unfamiliar ability, so you probably wouldn’t understand even if I explained it.”
She met Freya’s eyes again and spoke quietly.
“Anyway, you won’t have to suffer from it anymore.”
But Freya’s reaction was unusual.
“……!”
Suddenly, her dim eyes filled with strength, and she abruptly sat upright.
It was an incredible burst of energy from someone who had been hovering between life and death just moments ago.
Freya even brought a soft blanket from somewhere and wrapped it around Odely’s shoulders.
“Lady, you look terribly pale!”
Huh?
‘Am I really being worried about by a patient who just woke up?’
Odely blinked in confusion.
It was a situation that made her earlier happiness over having done well—she had not vomited blood or lost consciousness—feel completely meaningless.
“Your pulse is weak, your lips are blue, and you’re sweating like this…….”
Freya seemed to decide that she needed to call a physician, because she hurriedly stood up and tried to go somewhere.
Odely instinctively grabbed the hem of her skirt tightly.
“Don’t…… call the physician.”
Her tone was calm, but there was a strange urgency in her fingertips.
If she looked bad enough for Freya to make such a fuss, and Ludville found out…….
Odely had a feeling something rather unpleasant would happen.
“Do you hear yourself?!”
Freya shouted, her face twisted with distress.
Fear and guilt were mixed together in her eyes.
She seemed to believe that Odely had ended up like this because she had treated her.
“If you’re the head lady-in-waiting, you can keep this a secret, right?”
At Odely’s unexpected words, Freya’s face stiffened.
Her lips trembled, and after staring blankly into the air, she lowered her gaze to Odely’s face.
Soon, Freya slowly shook her head.
“That is impossible.”
It was a firm refusal.
As if no matter how much the request came from the person who had saved her life, she simply could not agree.
“If you became like this because you treated someone like me…….”
“That’s not it.”
Odely quickly added before Freya could blame herself any further.
“This is just an inherent problem. It has always been like this.”
“What? What do you mean, it has always been like this……? Are you saying you have an incurable illness?”
Odely said nothing.
A brief silence followed.
Freya sat there blankly for a while, as if she had been struck on the head with a hammer.
Her face filled with shock, questions, and confusion. Only after a long while did Freya ask quietly.
“……You’ve been hiding it.”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you telling me?”
Odely lowered her gaze for a moment and thought before slowly answering.
“Because the head lady-in-waiting is like me.”
“…….”
A life of never speaking of pain, never showing it, and swallowing it alone.
Both Odely and Freya had lived that way as if it were part of their daily lives.
“If it’s you, you’ll probably be able to help me quite skillfully.”
It meant that if Odely’s condition suddenly became worse, she would need someone nearby who could hide the state of her health.
“…….”
Freya’s eyes trembled at those words.
She immediately understood what Odely meant.
‘I need at least one person to help me.’
For now, she was fine because her illness was not yet severe enough to show on the outside.
But as time passed, the signs of her limited lifespan would gradually become noticeable.
Hiding her condition alone for five years was almost impossible.
But Leona…… well…….
‘Even if I asked her, I’m not sure she would agree. And honestly, I feel like she’d find out very quickly.’
Freya was someone who had managed to hide her own illness from everyone all this time.
Odely thought she was the right person for the job.
Freya lowered her head without a word, and the corners of her eyes grew slightly moist.
But in the end, she did not cry.
“……Understood. I will never tell anyone.”
Freya slowly placed her hand over Odely’s.
There was a small tremble, but her resolve was heavy and firm.
“I will make sure that no one ever sees you in a state where you are unable to keep yourself composed, Lady.”
The head lady-in-waiting added that.
She knew exactly what Odely wanted when she revealed her secret.
Odely smiled faintly at those words.
A look of deep relief spread across her tired face.
Without saying anything, they held each other’s hands and remained still for a long while.
It was a comfort that would remain deeper and longer than the treatment itself.
From that day on, Freya devoted herself to Odely.
****
Imperial Year 1476, Grand Council Chamber.
Under the high, rounded ceiling, the hall where high-ranking nobles and clergy sat in rows was wrapped in silence.
One by one, their gazes turned toward the platform.
Breaking through the silence, Garwin Cardel slowly walked toward the front of the platform.
He wore a black ribbon on the collar of his formal robes, and in his left hand, he held a scroll densely filled with the names of those who had died in the plague.
His expression was covered in carefully measured sorrow.
To anyone watching, he looked like a man who had come to make a sincere confession.
“First, I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest condolences to all those who lost their lives in Bellader.”
Garwin slowly unfolded the scroll.
The sheet of paper, covered in rows of names, quietly unrolled down from the platform.
The atmosphere in the hall naturally turned solemn as they mourned the dead.
He stopped in the center of the platform, lowered his head, and spoke.
“He was someone who had been demoted after causing a scandal at the Grand Cathedral in the past, and I hoped that I could lead him back onto the right path. But the result was…… devastating.”
He raised his head and slowly looked around the audience.
His gaze was humble and filled with deep regret.
“At the time, I was conducting research on diagnosing diseases and encouraging recovery through methods other than ancient magic. So I instructed him to observe those in Bellader who had been exposed to fraud or curses. The North is an area where monsters often appear, and Bellader is a port city visited by people from many different places, so I judged it to be suitable for observation.”
He lowered his head and was unable to continue speaking for a while.
It was silence disguised as grief.
“But he…… misunderstood my intentions.”
“How did he misunderstand them?”
Someone in the audience asked.
Garwin lowered his gaze for a moment as if closing his eyes, then looked across the entire council chamber and spoke.
Beneath his shadowed eyes was a sense of guilt he seemed to be forcing himself to swallow.
He looked like a man painfully admitting that his own judgment had been careless.
“It seems that, because he held misguided beliefs, he tried to recreate the process of a miracle occurring by spreading disease in a port city where many people gathered. He believed that a miracle could only occur through suffering, and he used Bellader as a testing ground to bring about what he believed was divine revelation.”
He continued, his throat trembling.
“In the end, he completely misunderstood my intentions.”
His eyes remained filled with grief and sorrow as he continued his explanation.
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