Aya Ran Away - Chapter 26

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 26
A large palm covered half her face.
Her eyes fluttered shut at the pleasant coolness of it.
“……You have a fever.”
The warmth radiating from his fingertips was higher than she’d expected.
Nahal’s brow furrowed.
He rose from his seat, rounded the table, and stood beside Aya.
As he studied her carefully, Nahal tilted his head.
“Did you take all the medicine I sent?”
So it was Nahal who’d sent her the medicine?
Now that she’d registered the fever, her mind felt strangely hazy.
“You’ve suffered hardship because of me.”
At Nahal’s words, tinged with guilt, Aya shook her head slowly.
Gazing down at her face, Nahal examined it like someone searching for something, his eyes tracing the contours of her features.
Her bright eyes held no deception.
In the gaze she turned up to him, there was no resentment whatsoever.
“Do you resent me?”
Nahal asked it like that.
He’d meant to ask something else originally, and a shadow of regret flickered across his face.
‘What does he mean, do I resent him?’
Aya couldn’t quite grasp what he was asking.
She opened her dazed eyes wider and recalled the things Nahal had done for her.
He’d pulled her from the water, brought her out of the Underground Prison, returned to keep his promise…….
There was nothing he’d done that she resented.
‘Is he talking about being locked in the Underground Prison?’
She understood that hadn’t happened because Nahal wanted it to.
After a brief silence, Aya nodded.
In that moment, dizziness swept over her.
Her body swayed like a wooden doll whose string had snapped.
‘I’m dizzy.’
Before Aya’s head could strike the table, Nahal caught her.
The woman in his arms felt so light that guilt washed across his face.
‘I shouldn’t have called her out so soon after she’d regained consciousness.’
Swallowing thick regret, Nahal wrapped his arm around Aya’s waist and lifted her.
Aya felt her body lift free.
Even in her befuddled state, she knew the person holding her was Nahal.
‘We could simply have called the Wet Nurse…….’
As she tried to pull away from his arms, his strong grip refused to release her.
Abandoning further resistance, she looked up at him with eyes that held a trace of reproach.
With one arm cradling the small woman, Nahal pressed the back of his other hand to her forehead and cheek, gauging her temperature.
He pushed open the door while holding the princess.
“Go and fetch the physician.”
A servant, startled by the unexpected sight, glanced back and forth between Nahal and the princess in his arms.
“Move quickly.”
At that command, the servant snapped to attention and rushed down the corridor.
Nahal strode across the Reception Room.
Cradled in his firm arms, Aya felt the reassuring comfort of being held in a cradle.
The tepid warmth of his body against her cheek was pleasant.
As Aya’s eyes grew hazy in the grip of fever, she drifted into sleep around the time Nahal opened the bedroom door.
“Your Highness!”
The Wet Nurse and attendants inside the bedroom rushed toward them.
The Wet Nurse placed a hand on Aya’s forehead to check the fever, then exhaled what sounded like a sigh of relief.
“Fortunately, the fever isn’t too high.”
At the Wet Nurse’s words, Nahal’s brow creased.
She’d collapsed because of the fever, yet the Wet Nurse said it was fortunate the fever wasn’t high?
“What do you mean by that?”
The Wet Nurse looked up at Nahal in alarm at his sharp tone.
“Ah, that is…….”
She started to explain, then paused.
Her expression suggested she found this situation displeasing for some reason.
No one knew Aya better than she did.
Yet his question—cast like a reproach, as if she barely understood the princess at all—pricked at her nerves.
“She’s always been prone to illness, so a fever of this degree is…….”
“The medicine I sent—it arrived on time, didn’t it?”
Nahal’s eyes narrowed as he cut short the Wet Nurse’s words.
The Wet Nurse’s face crumpled at once.
She seemed irritated, as if she felt suspected of something.
“Each person requires an appropriate dosage. Since the princess’s constitution has grown fragile, I couldn’t possibly have given her the full amount…….”
“Would I have sent it without considering that? Are you saying you’re better than the Royal Palace physicians?”
At the absurd excuse, Nahal let out a hollow laugh.
The medicine had been prescribed by the palace physicians themselves after examining Aya in person.
With nothing left to say in her defense, the Wet Nurse bit her lip.
“This is preposterous.”
Nahal swept his cold gaze across the faces of those present in the room.
Five court attendants, the Wet Nurse among them, stood with their heads bowed.
They had all served Aya for a long time, so Nahal had allowed them to keep their positions.
It was a courtesy born from his belief that it would be better for her to remain among familiar faces.
He was beginning to think otherwise.
Nahal was about to dismiss them all on the spot, but he held his tongue.
These were all the princess’s people.
If the princess herself did not choose to remove them, other attendants would simply take their places and the same trouble would arise.
It seemed better to let the princess mete out punishment when she woke, so she could establish her own authority.
“……All of you in this room are to step down from your current positions. Any further disciplinary measures will be decided by the princess herself once she awakens.”
With that command, Nahal sent the Wet Nurse and attendants away.
‘I’ll need to find other attendants to care for her.’
With that thought, he laid Aya down upon the bed.
But the moment her back touched the mattress, Aya shook her head and pulled his neck down into an embrace.
Nahal, startled, held her close as she burrowed into his arms.
It was a childhood habit—a moment of coquetry she sometimes indulged with the Wet Nurse—suddenly surfacing.
Nahal attempted to set her down again, but failed.
Her clinging arms held too much strength; he could not pry her away.
It was unsuitable for a man and woman who were not yet formally husband and wife to remain so close, but her thin frame was light enough that holding her posed no burden.
Nahal exhaled softly and began to walk slowly through the room, keeping her in his arms.
His gaze fell upon the small fist clenching the hem of his robe.
Watching that pallid, delicate fist, Nahal was reminded of his younger self—gripping dirt in his desperate hands.
Every memory from his childhood was tinged with bitterness.
His heart stirred.
Nahal gently loosened Aya’s tightly clenched hand, stroking it softly, then slowly ran his palm across her back.
Her breathing, still rapid from the fever, remained irregular, yet her expression had grown more peaceful than before.
Whose embrace did she think she was in, that she could fall asleep with such trust?
It felt as if he were cradling some small, young creature.
It was the same warmth he had felt when holding a lamb in his arms.
It was a strange sensation.
Nahal found Aya strangely familiar.
Surely they had never met before this.
Perhaps it was because she resembled his younger self in some way.
As he thought this, footsteps sounded beyond the door.
Nahal turned his head toward the entrance.
The door opened and an attendant and a physician entered the room.
“She collapsed suddenly. She seems to have a fever—take a look at her.”
Nahal held Aya and presented her to the physician for examination.
The physician looked up at Nahal in alarm.
“Your Highness……. Surely this must be uncomfortable for you. Would it not be better to set her down on the bed?”
“If I set her down…….”
Nahal trailed off and glanced down briefly at the woman in his arms.
So fragile. So very pitiful.
His eyes deepened for a moment.
“Just examine her as she is.”
Unable to object further, the physician offered an awkward smile and proceeded to assess Aya’s condition.
* * *
Aya blinked her eyes open.
It was neither the dark, damp Underground Prison nor the bedroom she’d once called her own.
A clean veil draped above the bed swam into her blurred vision.
For a moment, Aya wondered where she was.
‘Am I dead?’
During all her time in the Underground Prison, she’d believed she would die there.
The Evil Spirits she’d torn away from Chifol had said so too.
‘What was it they said?’
They’d poured out some terrible words, but she couldn’t recall what they were.
Aya, blinking slowly, raised her hand and pressed her cheek hard, twisting it roughly.
‘Ah.’
She was alive.

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