“Didn’t I clearly tell you to rest thoroughly?”
Evan, the healer of Leontheim, wrapped the bandages around with a face full of frustration.
At first, he had suggested using a splint for comfort, but this man clearly needed a full cast.
Iris, watching with a worried expression, asked Evan,
“Is it broken?”
“Yes, it’s completely shattered. The ankle ligaments here are strained as well. Rest is essential—no exceptions.”
Evan growled at the man who was striking the floor with his rigid cast.
The silent man turned his head away, seemingly intimidated by Evan’s tone.
As the weary healer packed his medical tools and prepared to leave, Iris followed him out.
“Evan.”
“Yes, milady?”
“May I ask… how did he get injured?”
Evan adjusted his glasses as if recalling, then tilted his head uncertainly.
“He probably sparred with his lord. Yurian always ends up like this when he returns.”
“Sparred?”
“Well… I don’t really know why Yurian does it. He’s been this way since I first came to Leontheim.”
Mulling over Evan’s words, Iris reentered the room.
Yurian, fidgeting with the plaster around his arm, looked up at her.
“Are you Vice Commander Yurian?”
“Yes, milady.”
So he already knew who she was. Of course—before Iris arrived here, Greg and others must have told him.
Carefully sitting opposite Yurian’s bed, Iris asked,
“I heard you sparred with the duke.”
Yurian didn’t reply, but his attitude confirmed Evan’s words.
Yet why did he push himself until his body was broken like this?
Cedric was not the type to treat his sparring partner violently. Iris knew this from the time their blades met.
And…
Why did he look so dark, so hollow?
But Iris had seen this expression before.
It was the same look in the eyes of knights who revered Cedric.
With eyes heavy with melancholy, Yurian murmured,
“I am unworthy of my lord.”
Yurian could not tell his true feelings to his lady.
Why his wrist was broken, why his ankle was damaged—
In the end, it was all his fault.
“Drop your sword.”
He had always asked for sparring, and his lord’s reply had always been cold.
But Yurian never let go of his blade.
He wanted acknowledgment.
This time, for sure.
He wanted to protect.
Tears streamed again from his hollow blue eyes.
Before Iris could speak, Yurian swung his leg onto the windowsill again.
“I should die.”
“W-wait!”
Iris hurriedly stood and pulled him back.
Before, he had at least glanced back. This time, Yurian stared straight into the void—like a man who had given up everything.
“I’ve heard that you are a kind person, milady. But I have no right to live.”
“Then what exactly can be solved by death?”
Yurian wanted to say it was atonement.
But this man—
The woman’s hand gripping his waist trembled violently.
Though she spoke with resolve, her hands shook uncontrollably.
Iris struggled to calm her trembling hands but couldn’t, so she forced herself to speak.
“I know I have no right to foolishly stop someone else’s chosen death.”
Being born is not a matter of choice.
“But I cannot stand by and watch people die right before my eyes. What if we could live just one more day each?”
Despite the agony, Iris never gave up. She chose to change everything.
To believe in the legend of the Sacred Sword.
Without Cedric, there was no chance she could ever find happiness — that was Iris’s final decision.
If she changed, then so would Yulian.
“Perhaps something could change.”
Iris’s words hung in the air as Yulian remained silent for a long moment.
Then he asked back,
“Do you truly believe it will?”
Even now, when he closes his eyes, the memory surfaces.
“Master—!”
The boy he swore to protect was dragged deep into the forest by a demon beast.
Paralyzed by fear, Yulian could only watch helplessly.
He was unworthy of the title of knight.
He had limped through the forest with a broken leg too late, but found nothing.
The master he failed to save—
Thud!
Decapitated the demon that led him away and returned to the duke’s fortress.
Cedric’s body was soaked in blood, his eyes darkened.
No knight dared approach him. All had failed to protect Cedric.
“I abandoned my duty as a knight.”
“I fled, leaving my master behind.”
“I couldn’t protect the one I was sworn to guard, nor save anyone.”
Had his master blamed him then—
Had he chastised him like when they first arrived at the duke’s fortress, calling him weak—Yulian would have begged for forgiveness.
But Cedric held no resentment.
No, those crimson eyes looking at Yulian bore no emotion at all.
That unjudging gaze was what hurt the most.
So it became impossible to forget.
The acceptance of being alone, the belief that no one could protect him.
He wanted to say the words: I’m sorry.
He wanted to kneel, bow his head, and atone for his sins.
But he was nothing to Cedric.
Any apology would be mere insignificant self-satisfaction.
So he resolved to change.
For him, true repentance meant transformation.
“It’s because I was weak.”
So he trained alone.
Though his strength grew enough to defeat beasts far greater than before, a stronger opponent always appeared.
No matter how much he struggled, the world’s walls were insurmountable—and his efforts went unrewarded.
Perhaps this was punishment for trying to apologize so easily.
He wished to be strong enough to protect Cedric.
Yet in the end, Yulian could not surpass Cedric.
“Give it up.”
With hollow eyes, his master looked down at him, as if passing final judgment.
This was the last chance he would grant himself. After this, he intended to give up entirely—on the life of a knight.
“A knight who has lost his pride.”
He could not wash away his sins with effort.
“A discarded relic.”
So there would be no change.
For the first time, Yulian smiled toward Iris.
Facing death, he found it possible to smile.
“So please, my lady… let me go.”
There was no subject in what he said to Iris.
Though the exact events were unclear, it was evident who he had failed to protect.
Iris did not release her trembling hands.
“Is failing to save someone truly a knight’s failure to fulfill his duty?”
At first, she thought those words were merely a question.
Yurian intended to answer, “Yes, that is so,” but seeing Iris’s face, he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
She was desperately holding back tears with all her might.
“I understand. I know how cruel it is to tell someone who wishes to die to keep living.”
Iris realized she had been deeply mistaken.
I was arrogant.
Just because her name had appeared in the chronicles, she had drowned in bliss and confined others’ suffering to the cage of effort.
She hadn’t known him for long.
Simply telling him to live might have felt like a violent imposition.
She was not him, and therefore could never fully grasp his heart.
How could I possibly know?
What had happened to Iris had been accompanied by fortune.
Some things were purely luck.
Was this really effort?
It was the same at the start of the reincarnation.
Wasn’t it just a last desperate choice? Like him, she had chosen death.
How had she disguised that as a choice?
She had not chosen—it was the only path.
Just as Yurian now believed this was his only option.
Yet she had dared to suggest he choose otherwise, unaware how painful that option might be for him.
So now, Iris decided to discard all contradictions.
She would accept the past she could never return to.
“I am a discarded relic too.”
As a member of the Valentine clan, as a wife, as the sovereign of Leontheim—
She had failed in her duties.
The life restored after reincarnation was her atonement.
She had to return the excessive love she had given to those she could not protect.
The tears she had held back finally flowed.
“The ones you couldn’t protect.”
She could not erase the image of the dying Cedric.
Even now, she often watched him sleep, fearing he might never open his eyes again.
“I failed to protect them too.”
More and more tears streamed from Iris’s eyes.
Yurian’s eyes widened.
In her face, he saw the reflection of his past self—
The desperate figure who had lost Cedric.
“So please, I cannot let you die. I want to save you.”
He truly wanted to save her.
He did not want to lose anyone else.
Though newly acquainted, wasn’t she now his?
Wasn’t she the person who had shared the past with Cedric, the one he had lost before his reincarnation?
“I’m sorry—for being selfish.”
He wished to change this moment.
“Will you not save me in return?”
Iris wanted to stop her tears, but she couldn’t, and simply smiled through them.
“You are a knight of Leontheim. I am the lord you are sworn to protect.”
Yurian flinched sharply.
Iris slowly withdrew her hands from his waist.
Standing straight, she looked down at him with steady resolve.
Chapter 81