“Is it because you hate Landry? Did you think beating Rosa would make the man who abandoned you fall over in the underworld? Raeven should have been enough. Why Rosa too…”
“Be quiet.”
More than forty years had already passed. It would be a lie to say the anger from those days still remained, and an even greater lie to say love did. What lasted longer than either was responsibility. Landry had wanted to leave the castle since he was young, and though it had not happened in the way he expected, in the end he had done so. By contrast, the late Jaeim had proposed to Rosia knowing she was carrying his elder brother’s child, and had accepted Raeven as his own youngest son. He had even regarded Raeven as his heir. Rosia’s parents, who had lost their only son, worthless scoundrel though he was, the Daeior lord and his wife, disgraced because their son had killed a man and fled, and Rosia, whose lover had become her brother’s killer, had all been saved by Jaeim’s generosity.
Rosia had wanted to remain faithful to that Jaeim all her life. Even after his death, she meant to protect everything he had left behind. By any means necessary. Sometimes she smiled bitterly, imagining how she would surprise Jaeim with how she had changed when they met in the underworld. Even so, she would see it through to the end. His castle must remain safe forever.
“You’ll regret it later if you go on like this.”
“I know. But when I see her face, I get so angry I can’t help myself.”
Denny knew that was the most honest answer Rosia could give, so he did not press her further. Rosia loved and hated Raeven as much as she had loved and hated Landry. When Raeven, who had wanted his busy mother’s attention, strayed further and further, that love and hatred had made her bully him still more and finally cast him out, instead of understanding and protecting him. Both had left home, yet she could forgive Den and not Raeven.
Whether he had the ability or not, she would make Jaeim’s blood a lord. She would not give the castle to Landry’s descendants. Rosia knew that Kyprosa was poring over her father’s books and studying magic. Though she could not guess what the girl wanted, she left her alone. In the end, Kyprosa was someone like Landry. A castle was something for a descendant like Jaeim to protect.
“When I see how that child wants to leave the castle, I sometimes wonder whether it was me, after all, who made things happen the way they did.”
“You must be disappointed that Rosa has more ability than Jaeim.”
“Ability is only ability. Landry was the same, wasn’t he? Everyone said he should become lord rather than Jaeim. But who protected the castle in the end? The Jaeim we have now will grow too. All he needs is time. You must win him that time. Who else will, if not me?”
Kyprosa would never know that Rosia too had almost left once. On the night Landry accidentally killed Rosia’s brother and fled, he had risked coming to find her and asked her to go with him. Rosia had shaken her head. Even though Raeven was already in her womb. To Rosia then, Fir Castle had been the whole world. She could not imagine living anywhere else.
Even after Landry left and she became Jaeim’s wife, Rosia had reconsidered that night’s choice hundreds of times. But every time, her answer was the same. That was why she could forgive neither Landry nor Raeven. She hated Kyprosa all the more because the girl showed that she had inherited the same blood, the blood of those who left. No one knew better than Rosia how difficult it was to hold the place of the one who remained. Failing or overflowing, Rosia was the guardian who shouldered that burden.
“By the way, Denny. Let me ask you something.”
“What?”
“The bird has gone. Doesn’t that mean you can go now too?”
As expected, Rosia knew everything. Why the great Denistrios had shut himself away in Fir Castle and endured decades of being called a jester and a useless mouth. Why a bird that summoned avalanches had stayed cooped up in a cage instead of biting through the bars. Iron bars could never confine such a being. Only a promise could do that.
Landry, who had made the pact, was dead, but that power had passed to Raeven, then to Kyprosa. That was why Kyprosa had been able to set it free. Denny had been the guardian and mediator of that pact. A bird that protected the castle. The gift Landry had been so determined to leave to the castle. Yet perhaps the one who had truly protected the castle all that time was Denny, rather than the bird.
“That’s true. The damned bird flew straight off at a single word from Rosa telling it to go. Not a thought for the fellow caught in the middle, suffering for it. Anyway, it’s over now, and I’m relieved.”
“So will you leave?”
“Would you like me to? There are plenty of places to go. And I can still live another hundred years.”
“A hundred? Not a thousand?”
Denny looked at Rosia with a curious expression.
“Now that I look at you, you seem to know far too much.”
“What will you do if I do? Summon an avalanche?”
After a pause, Denny giggled, shaking the dandruff that had fallen onto his white hair. Rosia waited.
“Well. It’s grown warmer now, for one thing. And isn’t there something you’d rather have me do?”
“There is.”
“You’re very good at pushing your own work onto someone else. Wicked old woman.”
“I’m such a wicked old woman that I simply can’t do it with my own hands. Would you do it for me?”
Denny nodded and rose.
“You were right, Rosia. Thirty years is long enough.”
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