The Crown I Will Take From You - Chapter 279
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Part 2, Chapter 126
“Empress, no one must know about this.”
“Of course. Your Majesty, have I ever been careless?”
“No…”
The moment Medeia groaned, the next mirror fragment sparkled.
“It’s a trap. There’s no way Princess would come to Valdina in these times. You absolutely must not go. The border is currently swarming with hordes of magical beasts.”
“I know. But just in case… if Dea is coming, she’ll be caught up among those magical beasts. I can’t just leave her like that.”
And so Peleus rode off on horseback.
Her brother wasn’t stupid. He was certain it was a trap.
Even so, he couldn’t abandon his familial bonds until the very end.
Ah. Medeia covered her mouth with both hands.
Tears were streaming from her eyes, wide with shock.
Then, the fragment changed again.
In the next fragment,
she saw her brother isolated among the horde of magical beasts pouring in from the border.
Half his body was torn away, and his once clear blue eyes had long since dimmed and faded.
Stiffened, gazing into empty space.
“Oh God, please protect that child…”
And then, thud, the parchment he was clutching fell from his dropped hand…
“Nooo!”
Medeia wailed as she approached Peleus.
However, her hands only passed through Peleus, unable to touch him or close his vacant eyes.
So this is how my brother died, because of me, unable to abandon his foolish familial bonds in the end.
It was different from what she had merely heard as news. The shock of seeing her brother’s final moments with her own eyes was tremendous.
“Ahhhhh!”
She screamed and bent at the waist. Her chest felt as if it were being torn apart.
Meanwhile, the scene of the border filled with magical beasts gradually receded like a hawk’s view.
As if this wasn’t the end. As if there was still more to show.
Her vision became blurry.
Countless stars streaked past in reverse. As if time was rewinding, everything flowed backward,
until at some point, it reached that first point where everything began.
“Is it true, Uncle? Did he really say that?”
“Jason, here. Here’s the Philosopher’s Stone. I brought it.”
“Yes. Let’s say you slew the Evil Dragon.”
And the past that Medeia never wanted to face again unfolded before her eyes.
“Peleus, help me. The Emperor is targeting us. So I can protect the children, even just a little…”
“Lian, go to the Imperial Palace. You alone must stay by your father’s side.”
“Virna, take Lea and run, quickly!”
Her weak and foolish past life was laid bare under the cold light.
Without even a fragment of forgetfulness allowed, it passed before Medeia’s eyes.
Though it was suffocatingly painful, she didn’t turn away.
Even with her vision blurred by tears, she kept her eyes wide open, and her nails silently dug into her flesh beneath her sleeves.
Then,
Medeia suddenly felt someone watching her.
Beyond the flowing curtain of memories, a man stood.
Jet-black hair. Golden eyes burning like the sun.
A man who would never be buried even among these countless starlight.
“Chezare…”
What escaped was it a sigh or relief?
Their two gazes overlapped over the fragments of her past life unfolding.
* * *
“Is it true, Uncle? Did he really say that?”
Chezare saw it too.
The moment when an innocent young girl withered like a gradually dying old tree.
“Princess of Valdina, please call me Jason.”
“I love you, Medeia.”
The moment when Jason’s shallow affection, tainted with greed, became the girl’s only lifeline.
From the day she stole her homeland’s national treasure and fled, to putting Jason on the throne, to every moment when even all the love and sacrifice she had offered him was trampled upon.
“…So that’s why.”
His nails dug into his quietly clenched fist beneath his black sleeves.
In this life, the gears that hadn’t meshed finally fell into place.
The reason she had tried so desperately to protect her homeland, the reason she wanted to kill Jared,
the reason she threw even herself away without hesitation for her goals – now he could finally understand.
It had been a desperate struggle not to repeat the mistakes of her previous life.
“Didn’t another oracle come forth? The revelation that you mother and daughter would bring this nation’s destruction!”
In the starlit memories Chezare witnessed, Jason and Rachel had ultimately tried to take even Medeia’s life.
“You don’t know, you can’t dare sever the deep bond between us two. She and I will never-“
“How dare you speak of… bonds?”
Chezare ground his teeth, recalling Jason wailing in the Hall of Judgment.
Medeia standing in prison now looked like a withered tree, even her tears dried up.
She was like a piece of wood, miserably broken without any hope.
‘Why… didn’t you look for me?’
Chezare couldn’t contain the flames surging in his chest.
He wanted to slaughter those who had made her like this.
He wanted to crush the throats of those who dared mock her, and make those who betrayed her pay several times over.
Where was I? Medeia, why didn’t you look for me?
I wouldn’t have left you like this. If it were me-
“Ah.”
In that moment, he realized. Sharp breath leaked between his dry lips.
“I…”
In his past life, he had never overcome the curse that Primordial Darkness had placed upon him.
Far from the Dawn Nakru, he couldn’t even discover its existence.
In this life, the antidote had come into his hands solely thanks to Medeia’s changed choices.
Chezare raised his head.
The moment he noticed the green eyes looking at him from beyond the fragments,
he walked without hesitation, stepping between star and star.
“Chezare-“
The moment his name was called sweetly by her surprised voice,
Chezare embraced her crushingly.
Like black star clusters enveloping Venus, darkness silently flowed down and swallowed the two of them.
* * *
Medeia opened her eyes.
A man’s form wavered before her blurry vision.
The man’s hair looked silver in the reflected lamplight.
“Peleus.”
Medeia embraced the man’s neck with all her strength. The tears she had been holding back leaked out.
“…Don’t go.”
As she gasped convulsively from the surging tears, warm hands patted her back understandingly.
A faint musk scent drifted to her nose from the embrace where she buried her face. This wasn’t her brother.
The moment she unconsciously realized this, she pulled away.
Looking up with wary eyes, she found Chezare there.
Only then did she realize that what happened in the vision was not a mistake.
“Did you see it? You also… saw it, didn’t you?”
Chezare looked at Medeia.
Her voice, which was always indifferent and calm, was trembling.
“…Yes.”
Those terror-stricken eyes, as if her shameful secret had been exposed, seemed to sharply scrape at his heart.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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