WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Malfoid

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◈ Fragments of Thorns and a Cradle ◈

Chapter 16

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Content Warning: bereavement; physical violence; sexual coercion or assault; suicidal thoughts or self-harm.

"I'm taking Lucian for a walk. Would you like to come too, young master?"

Agnes forced herself to answer. His proud gaze drifted around her chest. He was small, so his eyes could not rise above her neck, but strangely, goosebumps rose on her skin.

"No."

"Yes. Then I'll be going."

Agnes turned away. Endymion's gaze followed her.

She could not stop thinking of that child wrapped in expensive satin Lucian could never wear. She bit her lips so hard that she could taste blood on her tongue.

As she hurried down the stairs, she ran into Randolph.

"Where are you going?"

Asked the same question as by his son, Agnes felt sick.

For some time, simply seeing Randolph had made her retch. Whenever he whispered love, she wanted to cut her wrists. Whenever he acted tender toward Lucian in order to tighten the noose around her neck, she felt the same.

Yet whenever Randolph spoke about Lucrezia's son, he was subtly proud. It was obvious whom he valued more, whom he found more lovable.

He spoke of loving Agnes, but gave Lucrezia more when she was pregnant than he had given Agnes. That had been when he was happiest.

It was natural. So natural. But if he had not spoken of love, not even a small resentment would have risen.

If he had responded with indifference and no emotion. If he had felt nothing, as Agnes's father had felt for her mother. Then this visible difference and contempt would not have made grief swell inside her.

She wanted to ask what Lucian was to him. But the answer might reveal a difference too clear to bear. She feared it would make her want to die with her child, so she could not ask.

'Did I really love him?'

She could not remember their time together. Yet Randolph kept demanding love. The more he begged, the less Agnes could remember who she had been when she loved him.

"Agnes."

"I'm going for a walk."

Randolph's hand touched beneath Agnes's wet eyes.

"Did something happen?"

"Nothing happened."

"Who made you cry?"

"I only met the young master."

"What did he do?"

"I'm afraid of him."

"What?"

Randolph laughed. His face said it was absurd.

Agnes watched his face brighten the moment Endymion was mentioned. It was a father's face. It was not the face he wore when he saw Lucian. It was not the face he wore when Agnes spoke of Lucian.

Unless Agnes brought up Lucian first, Randolph never mentioned him. It was unbearable.

'I didn't know I would live like this...'

She had not known she would live this way.

Randolph took Agnes's lowered chin and lifted it. He looked terribly like the Endymion she had just met. Perhaps that was why Endymion no longer seemed cute to her at all.

"Agnes."

"I'm afraid of the young master."

Agnes murmured weakly. Randolph tried to kiss her. Agnes tried by habit to push him away, then closed her eyes because resisting felt tiresome.

One day, the two little boys of San Arzok fell ill with fever at the same time. A contagious illness that only affected children had spread through the territory. By chance, a young servant seemed to have brought it into San Arzok.

The marquess, who had been away in a border skirmish, ended the fighting quickly and returned to San Arzok. The moment he arrived, he sought Endymion. He did not visit Lucian. Agnes wept the whole time Lucian was sick.

The physician of San Arzok lacked expertise in the illness, so the marquess searched for a knowledgeable healer in the royal capital and summoned one to the castle.

"When will the marquess come?"

Agnes asked a maid as she watched over her child's bedside with wet eyes. Three days had passed since Randolph returned. Surely he could come see the child once.

He knew how much Lucian liked him. Once. Only once. Could he not visit to ask how the child was, whether he was improving?

Lucian had called for his father since he fell ill. From the moment Agnes heard Randolph had returned, she had waited for him to come. She had hoped he would come before she had to leave this bedchamber to fetch him herself.

Was even this too much desire? Was it a feeling that did not know its place? Agnes did not know.

Randolph had not even sent one of his close attendants. It was as though Lucian did not worry him in the slightest.

"Your son is not the only one ill. The young master is sick too. Don't try to pull the marquess's attention away. That's exactly the sort of thing whores do."

The maid answered coldly. She glanced at the ill Lucian and whispered as though looking at foul waste holding the source of disease.

"Your son became ill first, didn't he? Perhaps your son passed the illness to the young master. And yet you..."

Agnes's mind went black. Before she knew it, she had slapped the maid.

The maid stared at her in shock. Agnes lunged at her as though she would tear out her eyes, seizing her hair.

"Who are you? Who are you to insult my son? Who are you?"

It had been bearable when they called her a whore. But she could not endure them looking sideways at her ill son and cursing him. Agnes beat the maid like someone mad. She cursed and threw her fists without giving the woman time to breathe. Servants gathered when the corridor became noisy.

Agnes could see nothing. Servants caught both her arms to stop her, but she struggled and tried to lunge forward. It was a low, familiar voice that stopped her.

"Agnes."

The person she had regretted for so long. The love she regretted. Agnes collapsed like someone unaccustomed to despair.

Randolph looked down at Lucian with blue eyes hard as iron. He touched the child's forehead twice, stroked his cheek once, told the physician to take good care of him, and left again.

The physician he assigned was not the healer summoned from the royal capital, but the castle's own physician. He had mixed medicine and watched the child for days without improvement, leaving Agnes frantic.

Still... Still...

Lucian opened his eyes again two hours after Randolph left. The child, barely awake, asked for his father. Agnes soothed him, saying his father had just visited. Lucian blamed himself for sleeping through it, for failing to wake when his father came.

Agnes felt as though her heart were torn into shreds. She clung to a servant and begged to see Randolph just once more. The servant calmed her and said he would deliver the message. But until Lucian closed his eyes forever, Randolph did not come see him again.

Lucian died the following day. Agnes fell asleep holding his hand, then woke at a servant's uneasy movement and saw that her child was dead. Her dry scream and sobbing shook the bedchamber.

That morning, Endymion woke and swallowed water for the first time in days. He fully recovered four days later, and never took to a sickbed again.

Lucian was buried in San Arzok's family cemetery. Breaking the custom that only illegitimate children who inherited the family could be buried there, Randolph granted Lucian that honor for Agnes's sake.

As soon as Endymion rose and swallowed porridge, Randolph ran to Agnes. He had not taken a single step when he heard that Lucian had died.

But Agnes had lost her mind. She clung to the servant carrying Lucian away for his funeral. She could not hear the maids crying that she had to let the child go, or their attempts to calm her.

Agnes only wept. She did not know what she said, what state she was in, or how she had followed Lucian.

She did not even realize Randolph lifted her when she collapsed. All she knew was that her son had vanished before her eyes. After he was washed for burial, she could never see him again. Once he was placed in the glass coffin, she could not touch him.

In truth, she could not believe Lucian had died. It took a long time even to remember his last words. How could she remember how the funeral was held? Agnes fainted twice during those brief funeral rites.

When Lucian was lowered beneath the gravestone, she could barely stand. They said Randolph held her up, but after the funeral, Agnes could not even remember whether he had been there.

She asked a servant when Lucian's father would come visit the grave.

It was the story of a time when nothing remained of love or life, when everything had burned away.

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