The Villainess Lives Twice - Chapter 333

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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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3. Summer Mountain (3)

Yushis swayed drowsily in the carriage and fell asleep with his head on Artizea’s lap. She had been worried he might get motion sickness, but fortunately he didn’t.

Artizea stroked Yushis’s hair. His hair was unusually fine. When she petted it like this, it felt like a young puppy with white fur.

From up ahead, she could hear Leticia shouting excitedly.

“So high! Father, the mountaintop is so close!”

Artizea smiled.

Leticia had insisted on riding a horse and went ahead with Sedric. By next year, they would have no choice but to actually give her a horse.

She had once wondered if she hadn’t been interested in horses or dogs as a child because there was no possibility of having them. She thought perhaps children naturally loved to run around and should have shown curiosity about animals.

But seeing how Yushis preferred to sit quietly in the playroom touching clay or drawing pictures, and learned to make words with letter blocks faster than running, it seemed such things were innate.

And somehow that also softened Artizea’s heart strangely.

Just then, the carriage that had been traveling uphill the entire time reached level ground. It seemed they had arrived.

Artizea gently shook Yushis while stroking his forehead.

“Yusi, wake up.”

“Mmm…”

Yushis turned his head with sleepy complaints. Artizea stroked his cheek again.

Mel said.

“I’ll carry him down, Your Majesty the Empress.”

“He has to wake up anyway.”

The carriage stopped.

Freil knocked twice from outside and opened the carriage door.

“On your way, oh.”

Reddie came running like a shot, squeezed past his thigh and jumped into the carriage.

“Ah.”

Freil groaned. Reddie had placed his paws right on Artizea’s lap, muddy from running on the mountain path.

“It’s fine.”

Artizea said. Her clothes weren’t soiled thanks to the lap blanket she had covering her.

“Pant pant!”

Reddie panted while looking at Artizea, then licked the sleeping Yushis’s face.

“Ugh, mmm, mama… waaah.”

Yushis whined and twisted his body with his eyes closed, but couldn’t overcome Reddie.

“Reddie, stop it. Waaah.”

Neither Artizea nor Mel bothered to stop him.

When Yushis finally woke up and sat down on the carriage floor, Reddie backed away as if his mission was complete and rested his chin on Artizea’s lap.

Mel comforted the tearful, newly awakened Yushis and wiped his face.

“Reddie! Reddie!”

Leticia’s voice calling came from over there. Reddie licked Artizea’s hand once and then bounded out of the carriage again.

Freil shook his head.

“Isn’t he getting to the age where he should mature?”

“Reddie has matured.”

It was Leticia who was worrying about when she would mature.

Artizea took Freil’s hand and got out of the carriage.

“Was the journey uncomfortable?”

“It wasn’t too bumpy. You repaved the entire road.”

Maintaining roads was natural, but they had made it so not just horses and carts, but carriages could travel without shaking.

For supply purposes, there was no need to go this far.

Freil cleared his throat and said.

“We have the resources now. Taking care of symbols is also important work, isn’t it?”

“Still, there’s no need for the governor to personally serve as an attendant. This is a family outing, not an official schedule.”

“Don’t be like that. I’m also someone who has served Lord Sedric for a long time.”

Freil said this and smiled broadly.

“And isn’t the important part that the governor personally attended even though it’s not an official schedule?”

“Hmm…”

Artizea didn’t bother to deny it.

Anyway, since it wasn’t an official schedule, it could show that Sedric had no intention of overturning the imperial lineage. But since the governor personally came as an attendant, sufficient care was also shown.

Freil pointed toward the chapel leading to the family tomb and explained.

“We completely changed the security system too. The method of destroying to protect the tomb is not only dangerous but too old-fashioned thinking.”

“Did you dismantle all the facilities?”

“We couldn’t go that far. It would have meant rebuilding the tomb. Instead, we removed all the mechanical devices that could cause collapse and damaged part of the buried sections.”

It would be good if war with Karam didn’t break out again, but even if it did, there was no longer any need to fear desecrating ancestors’ graves.

It wasn’t that kind of era anymore.

‘Someday the fortress will disappear too and only the tomb will remain like a monument.’

Artizea had such thoughts.

Evron had become imperial territory under direct control. The title of Duke of Evron would be inherited by the Emperor’s eldest son in the future, but only in honor and form, becoming another title for the Crown Prince.

With this, no great nobles with governing rights remained in the Cratese Empire.

So there would be no more people to be buried in this family tomb.

Not many remember grandfathers and grandmothers whose faces they don’t know. After Sedric dies, Leticia and Yushis would have no occasion to visit.

Officially, these two children should honor Emperor Gregor as their grandfather as descendants of the Cratese imperial family, so they wouldn’t visit for ceremonial reasons either.

There had been many who recommended that Sedric posthumously honor Princess Floella as Empress and transfer his parents’ remains to the imperial tomb.

Since missing one’s parents is human nature, quite a few presumed that Sedric secretly wanted to posthumously honor his mother even if he didn’t say it himself, trying to curry favor.

Meanwhile, arguments even arose to posthumously depose Emperor Gregor. Few would think it actually possible to go that far.

However, there were many who wanted to crush legitimacy to invalidate the laws and political decisions he made. This was so even though Sedric had clearly established that he received abdication as Emperor Gregor’s adopted son.

Artizea had also told him.

“Posthumously honoring Mother would encourage controversy over the former Emperor’s legitimacy, so it’s difficult for now, but I think transferring the remains wouldn’t be bad. You won’t have opportunities to go north in the future.”

“As I mentioned before, it’s fine. I’ve already committed every unfilial act possible, so if they were the type to be upset that I don’t visit, they wouldn’t be happy even if I brought them here.”

Sedric smiled awkwardly and said this, then made a gentle expression.

“I think it’s right not to do things that might cause future disputes. We can’t truly say everything is over yet.”

At the time, Artizea had just nodded.

Still, there was one thing he had done.

Sedric had hung a portrait in his personal drawing room in the main palace. That gentle painting of the couple together with the ducal palace in the capital as background was newly painted by copying Princess Floella’s and the former Duke of Evron’s faces from different portraits.

This was because there had never been a single portrait of them painted together before.

This became a sign that he had not forgotten his parents, but would not bring them into public spaces.

As Sedric had worried before coming here, even in summer the mountain wind was cold and blew fiercely. She properly fastened her coat fluttering in the wind.

“Achoo!”

Yushis, who quickly caught cold when chilly winds blew, sneezed. Mel fastened Yushis’s clothes tighter, put a hat on him, then set him down.

Having gone who knows how far, Leticia came running breathlessly from over there, shouting.

“Mama! Mama! I want to climb that tower!”

“If Father gives permission.”

“Father says to get permission from Mama! So I can go, right?”

“After the grave visit, with Father.”

“Mama won’t go?”

“Mama doesn’t want to.”

She was curious about how the scenery beyond Told Gate had changed, but didn’t have the courage to walk up that height.

Sedric came following Leticia, carrying a large flower basket. White fresh flowers overflowed from the basket, and Reddie was spinning around with fallen flowers in his mouth.

“Wow.”

Artizea let out a short exclamation. Yushis rubbed his eyes and shouted.

“Orchids!”

“Wow, our Yusi is so smart. How did you know?”

“I saw them in a picture book.”

Yushis said, suddenly becoming shy.

“Right?”

Artizea tilted her head and asked. She was puzzled, wondering if Sedric had always been knowledgeable about flower names and such.

“Not exactly that, but it’s probably the same type of flower. Here, even in summer, it can only be grown in greenhouses, so it’s quite a precious flower.”

Sedric smiled and handed Artizea a single flower.

“This one does resemble a butterfly too.”

Yushis shouted, “I want two!” Then Leticia, as if competing, yelled “I want lots!” and gathered an armful of flowers from the basket.

“Don’t drop them on the floor.”

Sedric said. Leticia nodded and carefully held the flowers.

Sedric tucked the flower basket under one arm and extended his other hand to Artizea.

Artizea checked that the two children were following well as she entered the chapel connected to the family mausoleum with Sedric.

Even after the renovations and cleaning, the quiet atmosphere that seemed settled with dust remained unchanged.

This time, Sedric didn’t go to the outermost room where his parents were enshrined. Starting from the innermost room of the ancestors, he placed a single flower in front of each altar and lit candles.

The children offered prayers with their hands clasped together as they had learned beforehand.

They paid their respects to all the tombs from the innermost ones, finally reaching the tomb of the Former Duke of Evron and his wife in the outermost section.

There, the two silk flowers that Sedric and Artizea had left years ago remained, yellowed with age. Sedric truly hadn’t been able to come here even once during all that time.

Artizea knelt on one knee in front of it and respectfully removed the silk flowers, placing down a single flower they had brought.

Between the two tombstones stood a small stone monument carved from stone.

《May you rest peacefully without worry in loving earth.

―Sedric》

Artizea touched the monument with renewed feelings.

“Are grandmother and grandfather here?”

Leticia, who understood the concept of death and had experience visiting the Imperial mausoleum, asked. Sedric answered in a choked voice.

“Yes. Father’s mother and father.”

“Why are they enshrined so far away? Making it hard for Father to visit?”

“When they passed away, we didn’t know Father would end up going so far away.”

“It must be hard not being able to visit often. I wouldn’t like being separated from Mother and Father so far away.”

“Me too.”

Leticia spoke maturely. Yushis repeated her words.

Sedric smiled slightly and patted both children’s heads.

“When you become adults, even if you’re close by, you’re too busy to visit often… Grandmother and Grandfather will understand.”

“Right. Father is too busy.”

Leticia said sulkily.

Artizea called the two children. Thanks to placing one flower at each tomb, Leticia’s hands, which had been holding an armful of flowers, were now empty.

“Come now, you should pay your respects.”

She received the flowers Leticia and Yushis handed her, placed them on the altar, and clasped her hands together.

“Grandmother, Grandfather, Leticia has come. Even though Father pretends not to know because he’s always busy, please don’t scold him too much. Yusi and I will visit often. Please help Mother, Father, Yusi, and me get along well together. For birthday presents, I’d like a foal.”

“Yusi would like sun-colored paint.”

“Leticia.”

Artizea spoke in a stern voice. Leticia, who had learned proper etiquette, quickly corrected herself.

“May you be warm and comfortable in the Divine’s embrace.”

Leticia made the sign of the cross. Yushis fumblingly followed, making the sign of the cross.

Sedric poured everything remaining in the flower basket onto the altar, creating a pile of flowers. Then he silently made only the sign of the cross.

Artizea was seeing Sedric make the sign of the cross for the first time, except when attending temple ceremonies or receiving blessings for the baby. Come to think of it, he had never prayed either.

His eyes were tinged red.

Artizea noticed this but didn’t mention it. Instead, she firmly held the hands of Leticia, who was starting to fidget, and Yushis, who was yawning.

“Shall we go?”

“Yes.”

This time too, Sedric didn’t say anything particular.

Though not everything was truly over, there were still some things that had ended. Artizea knew that he could now pray to the Divine.

Finally.

“Up we go.”

Sedric scooped up Yushis with one arm. Then, holding Leticia’s other hand, he headed out of the tomb with Artizea.

【End of Side Story】

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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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