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Evelyn Maduse followed a knight into a shabby hut.

“You’re here?” A middle-aged man said from atop the knight’s back.

He was her father. Perhaps he had come to save her and her child. Her heart raced in anticipation and anxiety.

“F-father! How have y—”

“Take off your robe,” he interrupted her faltering speech.

Her hands trembled as she let the robe fall from her shoulders. He scrutinized her from head to foot. His daughter whom he hadn’t seen for such a long time. Yet, he looked upon her as though she was an object to be examined for damages.

“Leave the child here. Get remarried,” he ordered. “Your child’s blood is still worth something since it’s part of Ajauntice’s bloodline.”

“What?! Remarry?”

“I heard that after what has come to transpire with your brother on the battlefield, your husband is going to divorce you when he finally returns. Everyone is pushing their daughters to him, acknowledging him as a war hero.”

That’s… no fault of me and my child. You are the one who betrayed him! The words gathered in her throat, but she restrained herself from uttering them. Instead, she fell onto the floor on her knees and begged her father for a shred of mercy.

“Father, please… let me and my child leave. We will go somewhere far away. You won’t even hear from us. It will be like we never existed at all.”

A sword was raised under Evelyn’s chin. Ayatollah Maduse sat there arrogantly while his daughter shed pleading tears.

“You worthless thing! You can’t even captivate a man’s heart!”

“It has been barely a month since we got married…”

Before she could finish her sentence, the sword struck her. She curled up on the floor in pain, breathing raggedly. Through the haze of agony, she tried to recall a man’s face. It was a blur.

One month. It had only been one month. They had spent just one hour together on their wedding day- the day they met for the first time. She had learnt about her pregnancy exactly a month after he set out to the field. Evelyn had gotten married at only twenty and given birth to a precious baby boy at twenty-one.

She had sent so many letters to her husband while he was away on the battlefield. Because of her patriarchal father, she had never learnt to read and write. Still, she had wanted her husband to know about her and his baby, so she had learnt to do it after all.

[The baby inside me moved for the first time.]

[It must be a baby boy. Do you have any names in mind?]

He had never replied. Not once.

She didn’t write letters anymore. She had stopped expecting any letters back, too. Evelyn sifted through books late at night to find an appropriate name for her baby boy. She wished only the best for him. She hoped he would grow up healthy and live freely like his name suggested. Livell Ajauntice.

The freest of them all. Unburdened.

Livell, my Liv. She repeated her son’s name to herself. She straightened her body feeling as though she might hurt him if she curled up.

“Do you know how much I had to compensate? You are so brazen for an illegitimate child. Speak of this no more and leave for your in-laws’ home to the East. A b*tch with a child doesn’t deserve to be called his fifth wife.”

Evelyn snorted despite herself. She wondered where the huge compensation had come from that he had offered her husband in exchange for her brother’s betrayal. It seemed he had sold his daughter, soon to be divorced, to a perverted old man.

“I will survive this,” Evelyn vowed to herself. I will survive this with my baby. She bit her lower lip so hard that she could taste blood.

The clacking of his dress shoes faded away as he left. Evelyn stood up from the floor and straightened her crumpled dress.

It was time to return to hell.

The Ajauntice estate finally broke out of its long silence. This was solely because the Black Forest Knights had returned after a grand victory on their expedition.

The front gate was crowded with residents of the estate who flocked to greet the new Archduke. The guards raised their shield as the castle gate swung open. The residents yelled out the name of the young hero in harmony with the swords clanging on the shields.

“Our hero who smashed Tatar!”

“All hail Archduke Ajauntice.”

“All hail Black Forest Knights!”

Evelyn, who stood inside the castle, closed her eyes at the racket. She thought she could see all of it even without looking. The ground strewn with flowers that rained down from the sky. The celebration. People smiling. Almost akin to the day she had arrived to be wed from the North.

The sounds of the horses’ gallops got closer. The clanking of the knights’ armors sounded nearer. The Black Forest Knights who were a little further away on the flat road in front of the castle finally arrived at the main castle door.

People rushed out in droves from the castle to greet the new Archduke. Evelyn was among them. She stood at the front holding her baby and staring at her husband.

It was their first reunion in the entirety of two years.

The man, clad in black armor, strolled to a stop in front of her. Evelyn stared at him with no sense of reality. At last, she tried to utter the words she had practiced hundreds of times, praying for her voice to not shake.

“I am ever so happy you’ve returned unharmed.”

He stared at her without uttering a word, nor acknowledging her. Evelyn bowed her head as she felt daunted by his intense gaze. Ilya’s eyes lowered at her movement and rested on the boy she held in her arms: black-haired and asleep.

It was his child, born while he was away on the battlefield. He didn’t say a word to her or the child.

His silence felt brutal. Evelyn tightened her arms around her child as though to protect him from the hostile gaze of his father as well as the crowd. She trembled in fear of someone snatching the baby away from her.

Ilya turned to the chamberlain as though he had lost all interest in them. “Where is my older brother?”

There was one more thing to resolve. The funeral of the late Archduke Ajauntice before him.

“The body is enshrined at the chapel, Your Highness.”

The chamberlain used the honorifics while addressing Ilya already. He hadn’t gotten the title yet. At least, not officially. The former Archduke had been unmarried and without an heir. There was only his younger brother Ilya to inherit his title.

Besides, now that he was a hero, if he wasn’t given a title, he would surely take it one way or another.

“We must have the funeral one day earlier.”

“Your Highness… I think you should visit the chapel at once,” said the chamberlain awkwardly. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with a white handkerchief. The corners of Evelyn’s mouth twitched as she watched him react that way.

“Is there a problem?”

“No, Your Highness, not a problem. But—”

Ilya strode towards the chapel before the chamberlain could finish his words. The chamberlain held back the people trying to trail him. A few knights followed Ilya inside.

The knights pushed open the large chapel door. They were confused at the scent of fresh flowers wafting outside. It smelled like spring.

The former Archduke was encased in a glass coffin at the altar. They walked towards the podium. Everyone gasped as Ilya pulled back the flag with the family’s crest that was draped over the coffin.

“The body hasn’t decomposed at all!”

“What in the hell is going on here!?”

The handsome, white-haired man lay inside the coffin looking as though he was only sleeping. His sculpted face looked holy. The knights, too familiar with gruesome deaths on the battlefield, stared in confusion at the dead body’s unnatural state.

Ilya laughed sarcastically. “The gods must love my precious brother to no end.” He gritted his jaws.

***

It rained relentlessly that night. Ilya couldn’t sleep. He slumped on the sofa alone drinking wine. “Even the sky must be sad that my brother is gone,” he mumbled as he watched the raindrops pattering against the window pane.

His brother had been blessed with a fine lineage and even finer appearance. You were nice enough to laugh at a beast like me while I chased and coveted your position, thought Ilya.

Ilya couldn’t decide whether he was happy or sad at the situation. He set the wine glass down on the table and stood up. He walked to the chapel where his brother’s body was. The falling rain wet his hair and dripped down his face. The knights were surprised at his behavior and followed him to the chapel.

When Ilya opened the chapel door, he was greeted by the same smell of flowers from early that day and an unfamiliar woman. She carefully touched the glass coffin.

Ilya suppressed his displeasure and slowly walked to the altar. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“I was just saying my final goodbye.”

A pair of light-green eyes looked up at him.

“I see you are more fond of my dead brother than your own husband who just returned from the battlefield.”

She could smell alcohol and rain on him as he inched closer. She suddenly felt tearful at the unfamiliar scent. She had something she urgently needed to tell him. If she missed this chance, she might not be able to tell him ever. She gathered her thoughts and stared straight at him.

“You are crying. Did you really have an affair with my brother while I was away facing death in Tatar?”

“No!” she said sharply.

Her sharp protest pierced through his anger. “You won! Nasir is dead and you are alive!” she exclaimed. “You will be the Archduke soon. Is that still not enough?” She lashed out at him while staring at him unwaveringly.

The wife in his memories from his short wedding had been a woman who had looked at him shyly. He was so bewildered at her words. He didn’t even realize until later that she had said his brother’s name without constraint.

Evelyn approached her husband. Ilya stood there breathless. “Ilya, I want to make a deal with you.”

“A deal…,” he snorted. “Is there anything of yours that would catch my attention at all?”

Evelyn raised her hands before the mockery disappeared from his face. She gestured and the air started to contort. The soft flowery scent of the chapel disappeared only to be replaced by a repulsive, decaying stench which pricked Ilya’s nostrils.

As a knight who had fought in the battlefield, there was no way he couldn’t recognize that stench. This was the smell of death.

Instinctively he turned to the coffin to check the body in it. It was a nauseating scene even for him considering the fact that he had spent so long on the battlefield and seen many gruesome things. He snapped out of his drunken stupor and looked at his wife. He really looked carefully at her from head to foot this time. He felt distressed and disturbed. She wasn’t much different than when he had last seen her. The way he remembered her.

“How’s that? Do you want it that way?” Evelyn smiled at him as she waved her hands and the space contorted again. The stench was replaced by the flowery spring scent from before. The body inside the glass coffin was as handsome as ever. A silver fox laying down asleep.

“Are… you a hallucination sorcerer?”

Evelyn nodded. There was no hallucination sorcerer among the Black Forest Knights. If she was this powerful, he would definitely need her help. But he couldn’t trust a damned Maduse. They were traitors who killed their own allies. His wife hadn’t committed any crime yet but still… she was a Maduse.

“That deal you were proposing? I must decline.”

Evelyn didn’t look surprised. It was as though she had expected as much from him. “Hm. Then how about…?”

“There is something else? My wife, you are indeed surprising me in endless ways tonight!”

“You can look forward to it.” Her childhood had been fraught with danger from her father. She had learnt to keep an eye on him. Nothing had changed after she had married Ilya. If she wanted him to change his mind, she needed something stronger than a magic trick.

“You will probably need… this,” she said as she bit on her thumb hard enough to draw blood. She did it with confidence but her heart was pounding in fear.

“Hey! What are you—”

Evelyn didn’t wait for him to finish talking. She wiped her bloody thump on his lips. As he fell silent in shock, the blood spread on his tongue. He frowned at the taste of blood in his mouth. His breathing became rough. It felt as though the air in the chapel was scorching. He felt unsteady on his feet. He glared at his wife, trying to regain his balance.

“What did you do to me?” he demanded.

“It will put you to sleep. So, do you want to make a deal now?”

Ilya had barely slept since his childhood days. His insomnia had never left him. It had, in fact, gotten worse after the incident on the battlefield. He was unaffected by the medicine and alcohol he had indulged in the hopes of trying to make himself fall asleep.

“I am not sure what kind of deal it is, but you got it… for now, at least.”

Ilya scowled and walked out pulling his wife behind him. He swung the door of the chapel open and strode through, surprising his knights. Unable to match his stride, Evelyn was dragged behind him in a hurry.

“Where are you going, Your Highness?”

“The bedroom. Don’t follow me.”

That shut the knights up. They stood there uncertainly.