novelbin Chapter 159 : Chapter 159
Chapter 159 : Chapter 159
Chapter 159. That Wasn’t Love, It Was Control
“The family home?” Logaris raised a brow, seemingly failing to keep up with her leap in logic.
“The place where you grew up,” Sylvia said as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Since you turned Whiteport upside down under the banner of avenging the West family, you should at least take me to see this so-called ‘old home’ of yours.”
Logaris froze for a moment. After a brief silence, he pushed up his sunglasses and curved his lips into a helpless smile.
“All right, then. Let’s go take a look.”
He squeezed his horse’s sides and took the lead onto a fork in the road. “But fair warning, it’s a godforsaken backwater. Don’t complain when the tea there tastes awful.”
“Then I really want to see what kind of miserable backwater could produce a menace like you.” Sylvia gave a light snort, urged her horse forward, and followed after him.
The two swift horses kicked up a trail of dust as they galloped toward that forgotten piece of the past.
...
The snow was falling rather heavily.
Road conditions in these remote mountain gullies of the Northern Territory were bad enough to make a person question life. Mud mixed with broken ice, and the horses’ hooves slipped with every step. Even trained warhorses looked unwilling to go one step farther than necessary.
Sylvia pulled on the reins and looked at the desolate village before her, a place so bleak it barely seemed to have a living soul in it.
“This is it?”
Logaris stuffed the map casually into his pocket and swung himself down from the saddle.
“Yes, this is it. It does look like the sort of corner the world would forget, but this is where I was born.”
Sylvia swept her gaze around. Here and there, she could see a few dilapidated wooden huts with thin trails of smoke drifting out of their chimneys.
Several ragged children were chasing one another in the snow. The moment they saw two strangers riding in on horseback, they turned and ran in fright.
“I thought the West family was at least a baronial house. I assumed there would be a proper manor at the very least.” Sylvia led her horse behind Logaris. “But this?”
“The West family’s fief is on the other side. This place isn’t part of it.” Logaris did not look back. “After my mother eloped, this was where she lived.”
The two of them trudged through the mud, step by step, until Logaris finally stopped at the edge of a ruin choked with weeds.
There stood a half-collapsed wooden hut. Half the roof had caved in, and the door hung crookedly as though it might fall off at any moment.
When they reached the hut, Logaris did not go in right away.
He felt around the doorframe that had only half of it left, then dug a rusted iron key out of a crack thick with dust.
“Huh. It’s actually still here.”
He weighed the key in his hand, then casually tossed it into the dead grass beside him. “Not that it matters. This house’s only anti-theft measure was that there was never anything worth stealing inside.”
He kicked the half-hanging door open.
A wave of mildew and long-rotted decay came rushing out.
There was no flood of heartfelt nostalgia here, no familiar warmth of cherished memories.
Looking at the empty room, Logaris’s eyes held only a near-cold indifference, as though he were inspecting some abandoned site.
“There used to be a bed here. Elvira thought it was too hard and insisted on spreading three layers of goose-down cushions over it, even though that was the last of our living expenses.”
He pointed to the corner. “There was a stove there, but it never once had smoke coming out of it. That noble Miss West thought soot and smoke would dirty her dresses, so either we ate cold food three meals a day, or I went to borrow the fire from the old woman next door.”
Sylvia stood in the doorway without speaking.
She could hear the mockery in Logaris’s voice. There was not the slightest trace of longing for the past.
“Weren’t we supposed to go see your mother?” Sylvia interrupted his “guided tour of the house.”
“She’s behind it.”
Logaris turned and walked around the half-collapsed wall toward the wasteland behind the hut.
The weeds there had grown taller than a person. Their withered yellow blades swayed wildly in the wind and snow, irritating just to look at.
Logaris did not bend down to pull them away. He merely lifted a finger.
Several pale-cyan wind blades sliced silently through the air.
Whole swathes of weeds fell neatly away, revealing a small mound of earth beneath them.
There was no gravestone, not even a wooden marker. It was just a crude little dirt mound, so shabby that if Logaris had not pointed it out, Sylvia would have thought it was nothing more than a random pile of earth someone had dumped there.
“This is Elvira West.”
Logaris stood before the mound with both hands in his pockets. He neither bowed nor shed tears. He did not even take off the sunglasses he used as part of his disguise.
“The legendary woman who gave up her noble status for ‘great love,’ and who pursued freedom no matter how many people turned against her.”
Sylvia looked at that shabby mound, and for some reason, a faint ripple stirred in her heart as well.
“You want to ask why there isn’t even a gravestone, don’t you?”
Logaris seemed to read her thoughts and shrugged. “Because I was only eleven at the time, and I didn’t have much money on me. Between buying a coffin and buying a gravestone, I chose the coffin. Corpses rotting in the open can cause disease. It isn’t sanitary.”
Sylvia parted her lips, wanting to say something comforting, perhaps some hollow line like at least she loved you.
But as she looked at Logaris’s utterly calm profile, those words suddenly felt thin and meaningless.
“Do you want to know more?”
Logaris suddenly spoke, his voice drifting in the wind and snow.
“Outsiders all say she was a brave woman who pursued true love. But in reality? She was just a spoiled fool.”
He took a cigarette out of his pocket. It took him several tries to light it. He did not smoke it, only held it between his fingers and watched it burn.
“That so-called ‘true love,’ that unnamed outsider, left before I was even born.”
“She had no face left to return to the West family, so she could only hide in this godforsaken place.”
“She never learned how to live as an ordinary person. Even when we were so poor we could not afford black bread, she still wore that silk dress that had gone out of fashion long ago and sat by the drafty window pretending she was still in a manor house having afternoon tea.”
Logaris flicked away the ash, a sharp-edged smile in his voice.
“Do you know what my life was like before I turned four? I had to learn how to wash those damned lace hems of hers, and I had to be so careful not to tear them. If I did, she would scream hysterically, saying I had ruined the last shred of her dignity.”
“When I was five, I already had to help people in town keep accounts, run errands, and even dig through trash heaps for usable parts, patch them up, and sell them, all so I could buy her those scented candles that served absolutely no practical purpose.”
“She never showed me any affection, and I never expected to receive any.”
Logaris lifted his head and looked at the gray, overcast sky. “Whenever she looked at me, there was always resentment in her eyes. Because I was the child left behind by that faithless man, the proof of her miserable life, the burden that had chained her to this swamp.”
For a moment, Sylvia said nothing.
“She always said she had survived for my sake, that she had endured all that suffering out of love for me.”
Logaris tossed the cigarette butt into the snow just as it was about to burn his fingers. It hissed and went out at once.
“But that wasn’t love. It was control.”