Chương 293: 62. Tower 1

I stood in the corridor and gave the little handbell a light shake. It wasn't long before the old servant hurried over, head bowed.

"Master." The address made my brow twitch, just slightly—that wasn't the honorific people usually used for me—but in the end I let it pass without comment.

"Tell the kitchens: eight for dinner tonight."

"Yes, Master." Once he'd backed away, I turned and headed further up. The main tower of Thornhold was taller than I remembered, and colder too. The stone steps coiled upward, circle after circle, as if their sole purpose was to string everyone who lived here up toward the sky—but never quite into the light. Just high enough to leave them hanging in the half-dark stone gut of the tower, left to quietly go moldy. The higher I climbed, the lower my mood sank.

Because I knew: if Fina had really been "settled" in a place like this, that wasn't care. That was storage. Stored high up. Stored somewhere inconvenient to reach. Stored where everyone could very reasonably forget she existed. Call it what it was—a soft house arrest. And that was exactly the sort of thing my two dear elder brothers would find perfectly reasonable. I don't know how long I climbed before I finally stopped in front of a tiny, secluded room at the very top. The door wasn't large.

It was old, its edges worn raw, like no one had come here regularly in years—and fewer still had wanted to. I knocked.

"Who is it?" The voice from inside was soft. Soft in the way that sounds like it might shatter if you pressed on it too hard. I cleared my throat.

"It's me." The words caught, of all times, right there in my throat. Pathetic. I'd just stood in the reception hall and gutted half my bloodline without a single hitch in my voice, and now I sounded like some shy neighbor boy asking to borrow a book. So I added, more clearly:"Fina. It's me. Cedric." The moment the words left my mouth, something inside the room clanged—like someone had jumped badly enough to knock something over.

The next second, a voice I hadn't heard in far too long whispered out, barely believing itself.

"... Brother?"

"Is that Brother Cedric?" The tremor in her tone pinched something under my ribs. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. A moment later, the door flew open. In front of me was a girl so beautiful she looked almost unreal. Her hair fell in milky-gold waves over her shoulders, soft like the last line of twilight being washed pale by moonlight.

Her eyes were a warm, translucent amber—bright, but dimmed by years of too little sun, as though a thin layer of quiet mist lay between her gaze and the world. Her skin was almost unnaturally white. Her whole body looked so slight that it felt as if one careless push from reality itself might snap her right out of it. But the thing about her that hurt to look at wasn't any of that. It was her legs—those legs that had never truly been able to hold her weight.

I glanced down at them, then up at this absurdly tall tower, and I knew the answer before she said a word.

"How do you… usually get downstairs?" Fina froze for a heartbeat. Then her gaze slid, just a little, to the side. She didn't need to say anything. That silence might as well have been a confession. In my head, I dragged Chris and Boris out of their cells and metaphorically beheaded them again. On the surface, I stayed reasonably calm. Another thought surfaced.

"I remember there was a spare wheelchair for you on the ground floor?" Fina blinked and nodded, a little dazed.

"There… is."

"Good." Just one word. Then, before she had time to process it, I bent and scooped her up.

"Ah—" She clearly hadn't seen that coming. Her hands flew up, grabbing for the leather of my chest piece, her whole body going rigid. That already-pale face flushed in an instant all the way to the tips of her ears. Even the delicate skin along her neck picked up a faint, unmistakable heat.

"B-brother…!"

"Don't be afraid." I shifted my grip to settle her more securely, keeping my tone as level as possible.

"As of today, you live on the ground floor." Her eyes widened, staring at me like the words themselves didn't make sense. Or maybe it wasn't that she didn't understand. Maybe she just couldn't bring herself to believe it yet. I didn't explain further. I just turned and started down. The stairwell was long and steep. My boots struck the stone in steady, cold beats as we descended.

The girl in my arms was nothing but warmth and weightless softness—something that should never have been left to gather dust in a tower like this. Her legs, twisted from birth, hung quietly over my arm. Frail. Useless. And all the more infuriating for it. Not at her. At the people who'd put her here. At first, Fina was stiff as a board, clearly not sure where to put her hands or whether she was actually allowed to lean on me.

But after a few turns of the stairs, she seemed to realize I wasn't going to drop her or start complaining about the burden. Her grip on my collar tightened, a little at a time. By the end, she'd curled almost fully into my chest. Her forehead rested against me, her breathing feather-light and completely off-rhythm.

The last of the evening light slanted in through the narrow tower windows, catching on the pale line of her cheek and the fall of her milky-gold hair, painting her embarrassment in soft blush all the way to her ears. On any other day, it might have been the sort of scene that made you want to laugh—unbearably, almost comically cute. I couldn't laugh. Because she was too light. Too light for someone supposedly well-kept in a marquis's household.

Light like something forgotten in a high place for far too long—some small animal finally, reluctantly carried down. I looked down at her, loosened my voice deliberately so she'd stop clawing my chest piece like she was trying to leave grooves in it.

"You haven't really been relying on people to carry you up and down every time, have you?" Fina shrank a fraction in my arms, mumbling:"... I don't go down very often."

"Knew it."

"Brother…"

"Hmm?"

"Holding me like this—isn't it heavy?" I almost laughed out loud. After everything, this was what she worried about?

"Not at all," I said dryly.

"Compared to the piles of rotten ledgers I dragged out of the reception hall today, you're practically weightless." Fina clearly didn't catch the second half of that. She just blinked up at me, quietly. Then, maybe because she was finally reassured, she stopped holding herself so rigid and let her face settle a little deeper against my chest. Like she was hiding. From embarrassment. And from all the years' worth of pressure she was only now, finally, allowing herself to exhale.

Holding her like that, step by step down the spiral, I was suddenly struck by a strange feeling. All day I'd been doing cold, hard, filthy work. Dragging people to cells. Reading ledgers. Prying up planks on a family name to see where the rot started. But in that moment, for the first time, it felt like— I was actually back. Not back as House Rosa's judge. Not back as the handyman for a collapsing border.

Back because there was someone who should never have been left in a high place, and I had finally come to carry her down to where people belonged.