CHAPTER~13
That night, the emperor
Bang, boom!
Fireworks bursting outside the window cast a chaotic glow over the Emperor’s white hair.
N’s eyes, fixed on the Emperor’s unmoving back—solid as a mountain ridge—were scattered with blinding white light.
Within the warping glare, memories rose like vertigo and flashed endlessly before his eyes.
Airi’s skeletal hand clutching a dagger, hair fluttering down to the floor in clumps, the smiling face of a young princess swimming through brightly blooming coral reefs, and…
— All humans who live on land are monsters.
The voice of the King of Triton, who would snarl threats whenever he found the chance.
The moment N recalled the king’s face, twisted with contempt and disgust at even the mention of humans, he realized it all at once.
— Especially those of imperial blood.
That was the truth.
If a man who could cradle his blood-soaked wife without letting out so much as a scream or groan was not a monster, then what was?
By the time the fireworks faded and only pale moonlight seeped into the corridor, N was still staring at the Emperor’s back, frozen like a specimen.
His hand slowly reached out into the light.
A gust of wind poured in through the crack of the door, sweeping over the two of them, scattering the Emperor’s white hair as a single sheet of paper fluttered up into the air.
In an instant, Airi’s body melted like sea foam from the Emperor’s arms.
Thud.
As N turned his back to the closed door and reached out to properly catch the princess in his arms, a scream burst out right beside him.
Turning his head, he saw a woman whose face he vaguely recognized, pale as a blank sheet, covering her mouth with both hands.
Was that the face of the princess’s one remaining maid?
He struggled to recall the unfamiliar features, but there was no time for conversation.
Before the commotion could grow, N began walking down the opposite corridor.
As his footsteps receded, the man’s back grew distant between the wall lamps, vanishing like a candle being snuffed out.
By the time the maid collapsed onto the floor, only the sound of cold wind lingered in the corridor.
Whoooosh—
The surging waves of midwinter were so bitterly cold that merely hearing them made one’s ears ache.
Standing on the shore of the pitch-black night sea, N looked down at the princess’s bloodstained face.
The moment he found an opening, he came to the sea.
This was the coast of Valencia, where the princess had briefly settled when she first came to the surface.
It was Histania’s largest port city, deliberately chosen so that she could meet her destined partner at any time.
Even now, the sound of her laughter—so delighted as she toddled along the beach like a child just learning to walk during low tide—remained fully dissolved within the sound of the waves.
N laid the princess down on dry sand and knelt before her.
“Princess.”
There was no answer.
There could not be one.
Even knowing that vaguely, N called to her again and again.
“…Princess.”
Still no reply, only his call shattering like waves upon the shore.
As his hand traced the blood-soaked lines of Airi’s face, it stopped at her jaw, blackened in shadow.
Though he inherited the blood of a sorcerer said to revive even the dead, every spell demanded a price.
Glancing around, N picked up a shard of a broken barrel lying near the rocks.
He sliced his arm with the sharp fragment and let his blood drip onto the princess’s throat.
“Av kol yakhol, mashakh et kulam. Teval et ham’vulbalim shebenu, baker et hakhulim, khyeh lema’an hakhulashim, khyeh lema’an ha’avudim.”
As he murmured the incantation, the black blood soaking into her throat was slowly absorbed into the bullet wound in her jaw.
As if washed clean, the bloodstains vanished, leaving Airi’s face flawless once more, yet still drained of color.
N kept his hand pressed to the princess’s slender neck for a long time.
No matter how long he waited, he could not feel even the faintest movement beneath the stiff, wooden flesh.
It was wrong.
Her pulse had stopped long ago.
A chill ran down his spine like a freezing wave.
N parted his lips to call her again, then realized the futility and closed his mouth.
The sea wind scattered the princess’s short hair in disarray.
Though strands clung to her cheeks and hid her face, N could not bring himself to brush them aside.
It was such a trivial act—merely moving his hand from her neck to her face—yet for some reason he could not do it.
Ever since the princess married, he had been careful not to touch her face, not even to let his fingertips graze her skin.
He could only imagine her waking from sleep, frowning slightly as she tucked her messy hair behind her ear with her own hand and blinked her round eyes open.
That image never came to pass.
Cradling his master’s body, cold as stone, N remained seated like a statue for a long while.
What should I do now?
There had never been a grand reason for faithfully carrying out such troublesome and wretched tasks without question.
Serving the princess had been nothing more than habit.
This body, with eight legs each capable of thought, required three hearts to pump blood through it, and weary of thoughts that constantly chased their own tails, N often lived by stopping himself from thinking at all.
Born with a predetermined purpose, he had no reason to harbor such belated doubts.
Just as no living creature wonders why it breathes, he had been the princess’s limbs his entire life.
He had never considered any other way of living.
A breath shattered white and settled coldly over his blood-caked arm.
Looking down at his master’s colorless cheeks, N thought for the first time about the reason for breathing.
The sea was full of dim-witted creatures who, ignorant of life and death, devoured everything in sight until they burst and died.
What difference was there between their lives and his?
‘When the banquet is over, you can return to the sea, N.’
As he sifted through countless memories like grains of sand, N suddenly lifted his face into the night air that scattered his hair.
The final conversation he had shared with the princess sliced across his cheek with vivid clarity.
‘Will you go with me too, Princess?’
His Adam’s apple trembled once beneath his half-open jaw.
No—there was a difference.
There was exactly one thing that set him apart from the countless lives drifting aimlessly underwater.
The reason he continued to breathe, even after coming onto this unfamiliar, barren land.
‘Yes, I will.’
Was she not here in his arms right now?
His three hearts throbbed chaotically within his body.
As his legs began to tingle from kneeling too long, N realized it helplessly.
There were countless differences between his life and those with fish heads.
‘Shall we go see the sea, Princess?’
The hand that had asked countless times yet was never held, the cheek and hair touched by her warmth, the human form he learned to mimic to follow her onto land, the two-legged gait he mastered, and…
The three hearts he devoted to her from the moment he was born.
Holding the limp princess, N rose and began walking toward the sea.
With every step, his feet sank deep into the piled sand.
When he reached the damp shoreline, a wave surged up and lashed at his ankles, splashing into the air.
Water droplets struck Airi’s toes and trickled down as white foam.
As N staggered back, lifting the princess higher in his arms, a chilling whisper suddenly crawled up his spine.
It was not a sound that formed any language, yet N understood it.
The blood flowing through his body recognized its meaning.
— Give the child to us.
— Hand her over, give her to us.
— Traitor, traitor, traitor!
Avoiding the crashing waves, N stepped back one pace at a time.
The harsh cries cut off the moment he moved even slightly away from the sea.
The water dripping from the princess’s toes shimmered like pale foam on the sand before disappearing.
A siren who loves a human can never return to the sea.
Those who loved imperial bloodlines—cursed for generations after countless purges—were even more so.
The instant they touched the sea, they would be torn apart alive by vengeful spirits and turned into sea foam.
That was the curse laid by the souls of sirens slaughtered by humans over centuries, upon those who betrayed their kin and came ashore.
— If you do not receive the prince’s love, you will become sea foam.
Those words he once spoke to the princess who wished to go onto land were, in truth, a warning that she could never return.
Only by receiving the prince’s love and settling on land could a siren, unable to touch the sea, survive.
Knowing this, Airi still went to the surface—and met this end.
However, there was not absolutely no way to turn things back.
N’s red eyes, filled with black waves, gleamed ominously.
