Aya Ran Away - Chapter 22

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 22
“Nahal.”
They called his name.
He had lived under the same roof as them his entire childhood, yet this was the first time they had ever called him by name.
“Agan’s evil has slaughtered our sons!”
“My children are dead because of you!”
“The King killed your brothers and burned them so completely that not even their remains could be found!”
Nahal looked down at the wailing stepmothers with eyes devoid of emotion.
‘If it pained them so much, shouldn’t they have fled with their children from the start?’
But they hadn’t.
‘Perhaps the family asked them to leave quietly, and them alone—not the children.’
Whatever the case, the children were already dead. There was no bringing them back.
The bloodshot eyes of a mother who had lost her child gleamed with a terrible light.
Nahal’s gaze moved from one woman to the other in turn.
“We may have shared the same father, but those children were never my brothers.”
The words fell coldly from his lips, delivered without inflection.
“You made certain of that.”
At his words, both women’s bodies stiffened visibly.
Nahal glanced over the Supply Carts they had brought with them.
There was quite a substantial amount.
Since Kahran was dead, these could not be the wealth of House Poros—they appeared to be goods brought with help from their families of birth.
“I’ve heard the girl children were not killed but taken as slaves. If you wish to find those children, I can help you with that.”
He had to earn his keep somehow, so Nahal asked as though inquiring what they thought.
Yet it seemed they found that insufficient.
Both women shook their heads slowly.
“No matter how much you protest, you are the only son to carry the blood of House Poros.”
“For complete vengeance to be achieved, you must be the one to act.”
That wretched house, that wretched bloodline.
Nahal touched his forehead as though weary beyond measure.
“Child of God. We will aid you.”
Nahal crossed his arms.
‘Child of God?’
He had not realized that even these women had come to believe that baseless rumor.
How much they had scorned him all those years.
“We will help you become the King of this land.”
A cool voice rang out sharp and clear through the vast forest.
Nahal’s eyes widened.
Suddenly the air around them fell silent.
Rebellion.
He could almost hear someone whisper the word.
“Are you asking me to become a traitor?”
“This is no rebellion!”
One of the women cried out shrilly.
“We know that you have been chosen by God as the destined King.”
“If you are one chosen by God, then what you do is not rebellion.”
“Nine of the twelve great houses of the Capital have already given their assent.”
“The remaining three houses have signaled their accord through silence—there is no one who opposes.”
“Storm clouds have risen and covered the North. Because of them, the King’s armies have not yet descended from the North. You need only go to the Capital and strike off the King’s head.”
The women’s words tumbled out in rapid succession.
They spoke without hesitation, as though they had been waiting for this moment alone.
Nahal’s brow furrowed sharply.
“What did you just say?”
“If you so wish—”
“No, wait. That’s not what I meant.”
Without bothering to hide his indignation, Nahal dragged his hand across his face.
“I have no intention of striking the King, nor any intention of becoming King. Yet you two are already speaking as though I will lead this rebellion—is that what you’re saying?”
The lips of both women, who had been speaking without pause, closed simultaneously.
It was an affirmation.
The world before his eyes grew dark.
He had never, not once, wanted to become King.
He despised Ishmabel deeply, for she constantly sought his life, yet he harbored no thought of dragging her from the Throne.
Nahal’s dreams were as modest as those of a simple villager.
To him, the Throne was a burden too heavy to bear.
Sensing the turn the conversation had taken, Nahal’s attendants drew closer to the pair.
It was then that the supply carts brought by Kahran’s latter wives began to shift and stir.
One of Nahal’s men, noticing something amiss, brushed away the burlap covering—and warriors crouched beneath sprang to their feet.
What lay within those carts was not provisions.
They were soldiers, all of them.
Men who had tracked him down to this place to follow his banner.
His eyes widened in shock.
“What in the world were you thinking!”
Nahal’s voice rose sharp with outrage.
Yet even if Nahal harbored no ambition for the Throne, even if he despised it—none of it mattered now that things had come to this.
Loyalty unasked for, men who looked to him with hope.
The letters from the nobles of the Capital and from the Temple seemed to mean far more than simple belief in his innocence.
Nahal had to become king.
The water was already spilled.
His life kept flowing in directions he had never chosen.
* * *
When Aya heard of the terrible things that had befallen Nahal’s House, she was struck with horror.
But what devastated her most was the bitter truth that there was nothing she could do for him.
When word reached her that he had fled, Aya felt relief and despair in the same breath.
He would never return to the Capital now.
Perhaps he would cross over into Argarit, as the King had hoped.
Whatever came to pass, she could not see him again.
She wanted to chase after him.
But how?
Her status was a shackle, and her body itself was broken.
She had never felt such helplessness before, and now a heavy weight of despair pressed down upon her.
For some time she remained shut away in her chambers, tending to her loom or reading a few scattered books.
She had even ceased her work in Spirit Expulsion.
She would only gaze now and then beyond the window pane, and today was no different.
Beyond the Separate Palace, beyond the city walls, a plume of smoke rose long and dark into the sky.
‘What is that?’
Aya drew near to the window.
Narrowing her eyes, she tried to discern what lay beyond.
‘Is that fire?’
Then came the sound of a long horn call—a deep, sustained note that seemed to stretch endlessly.
In moments, she heard chaos erupting in waves across the palace.
She could see people gripped by panic, milling about in confusion.
Palace attendants, fleeing all the way to the gardens of the Separate Palace where Aya stayed, began to run in all directions.
“Rebellion! It’s rebellion!”
Someone was shouting those words.
Aya’s eyes flew wide open.
She leaned out past the window frame to survey the situation beyond.
She could see soldiers moving through the palace grounds without restraint.
The King’s army, which had departed for the North, had not yet returned.
Aya was deeply shocked, yet found she could bear it.
Perhaps she had somehow foreseen all along that things would unfold this way.
But that ‘King’—what of him?
Did he not see this coming?
“It is rebellion! Rebellion! Nahal of House Poros has come to seize the Throne!”
‘Thank goodness.’
Even in the face of the danger unfolding before her, Aya found relief in knowing he was alive.
‘That’s right. He could never end like this.’
Rather than fear, a strange exhilaration seized her.
Heh.
Aya could not suppress the laughter that burst from her, and let it ring out freely.
The palace had become a maelstrom in an instant.
Like a sweeping tempest, all that the royal house had held and cherished shattered and crumbled to dust.
The ‘King’ fled barefoot to survive.
The private armies of nobles and soldiers loyal to Nahal ransacked the entire palace.
Aya, living in quiet seclusion at the Separate Palace, could not escape that storm.
For a time they seemed to forget she existed at all, but three days after the upheaval began, they finally came looking for her.
The door to Aya’s chamber burst open.
The attendants of the Separate Palace dragged her out and delivered her to the soldiers.
“Your father died a coward’s death, fleeing like the spineless wretch he was.”
As Aya heard someone say this, she tilted her head.
The ‘King’ was dead?
That ‘King’?
The soldiers continued with their unbelievable tale.
“He jumped into the pond to escape a sword and drowned himself.”
“He slandered heroes and slaughtered loyal subjects, and yet his end proves so pathetic.”
‘So the ‘King’ killed some of the nobles and elders too, then.’
She’d been too shocked by reports that Nahal’s entire House had been exterminated to gather much gossip for a time, so this was the first she’d heard of it.
Now she understood why those stubborn, rigid nobles had taken Nahal’s side with such fervent zeal.
But the ‘King’ was dead?
A lie.
Aya did not believe what they were saying.
‘That’ could never have met so simple a death.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————