Her eyes fell on the red object he was dragging behind him.
“Ah…it can’t be. It can’t be.”
A bloody corpse lay atop the sled they used for hunting. There was a great hole in the lifeless body’s breast. She couldn’t believe it. She didn’t want to believe it—the corpse was Richard.
“Hng. Waaahhh…”
Unable to bear it, Brunhild sank to her knees. Her legs wouldn’t hold her up at all, and she grew faint. All sound grew distant.
Her head had gone entirely blank. Two of her maids came over and helped her back to her quarters, supporting Brunhild from each side.
After returning to her room, it took Brunhild some time to regain her composure.
A few hours later, when the sky turned dark, she finally regained the ability to think. The truth of Richard’s death had overwhelmed her. Now she was assailed by regret.
The last conversation she’d had with Richard had been a quarrel. Now that she thought about it, that had been their first fight. She and Richard had always been as close as siblings, so why did it have to end that way, of all things?
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Richard…”
If she’d known that would be their last exchange, she never would have fought with him.
Brunhild wept. All she could do was weep.
Once her tears had dried, she left her chambers.
She had to know.
She had to know why Richard had died.
Brunhild headed to her brother’s quarters. The hole in Richard’s body had come from one of her brother’s arrows of light.
Her brother was emotionally unstable. He might have lost his temper over something and killed Richard. If that was the case, then this time, she would absolutely not forgive Sigurd.
She headed to Sigurd’s room. She knocked, but there was no answer.
“I’m coming in,” she said to notify him, opening the door with uncharacteristic confidence.
Sigurd was sitting on his ottoman, hanging his head. The bandage around his hand was painful to look at. He didn’t even react when Brunhild came in.
She had come to ask him about Richard. She was timid by nature, but she had steeled herself, thinking she had to be unflinching just this once.
But now she was shrinking away. She hesitated to speak to her brother.
That was because Sigurd looked like he was just as hurt as she was, if not more.
Brunhild realized her guess had most likely been incorrect. Sigurd had not killed Richard over a passing feeling. If that were the case, he wouldn’t have been this depressed.
She did hate her brother. But he made for such an unbearable sight right now that even she could not help but worry about him.
“Are you all right, Brother…?”
He gave no response.
Next, she asked him with concern, “Brother, just what happened with you two? Did someone attack you?”
He still gave no answer.
“It’s not good to bear it all by yourself. That won’t fix anything. And Richard wouldn’t have wanted that, either. He must have gotten killed while protecting you…right?”
If Sigurd had not killed Richard, the only alternative she could imagine was some criminal attacking the two of them.
Sigurd did not answer Brunhild’s question.
“Please tell me what happened. Richard is dear to me, too.”
That made Sigurd finally look at Brunhild. His eyes were dark.
“I see. You feel the same.”
His gaze was doleful. His stare should have made her freeze. She’d been too scared to look him in the eye, but now it was fine. All his usual intensity was gone.
After looking at her for a long moment, Sigurd opened his mouth. “…We went to hunt deer.”
“Deer…”
That made Brunhild think back to what Sigurd had said before. He had been trying to hunt a deer for her. He’d wanted Brunhild to praise him.
“Oh…thank you.”
There was no response. Sigurd continued to speak. “On the way back, I went off by myself to drink from a spring. I was attacked there.”
Brunhild learned forward and asked, “By whom…?!”
“Richard.”
Brunhild froze. She didn’t understand what her brother was saying.
She thought she’d misheard him. She must have. Richard was her brother’s confidant and the closest thing Sigurd had to a childhood friend. There was no way he would do something like that.
Besides, Brunhild couldn’t even imagine why Richard would do such a thing.
“He tried to kill me with the Healing Blade. Somehow, he’d swapped the genuine one with a fake right under my nose.”
Sigurd held the blade out toward Brunhild. Upon close inspection, it was a cleverly made fake.
“Where’s the real one?”
“It sank into a poison bog in the forest. After his initial attack failed, I wasn’t able to follow him right away… I finally caught up to him at that bog. Richard grew desperate and swung at me with the blade. I instantly responded with the Thunder…and killed him. That was when the sword fell from his hand into the bog…”
The sword would be impossible to retrieve if it was at the bottom of the bog. The poison in that swampland was powerful and would quickly kill whatever fell into it.
As if it pained him to say, Sigurd said, “I’m drowning in regret. When I lost all memories of who I was in Etherium, Richard was the one who showed me the way back. He taught me how to behave like a king, how to be refined… My light in the darkness is…” Voice trembling, he wrung out, “So this is the pain of losing family.”
Those words struck a chord deep in Brunhild’s heart. They made her recall her own loss—when this very man had killed a member of her family.
But it wasn’t anger or hatred toward him that welled up in her heart.
“Brother.”
She sat at her brother’s side. And then, despite her intense uncertainty, she did it.
She gently embraced her brother’s head and kindly ran her fingers through his hair.
It was the very thing her brother had done to comfort her when she would cry as a small child.
He looked up at her and said, “What are you doing…?”