Ines smiled and continued reading the next part.

“A fairy who lost her wings, a fairy who lost her magic wand, a fairy who lost her memory, and a fairy who lost her time are living.”

Each fairy had lost something, including one who lost her heart. They couldn’t live in a world where fairies had lost nothing.

At that moment, Emma came to fetch Louis. The child shook hands with Ines and Hans and briefly left.

Without any special conversation, Ines and Hans, the priests, sat side by side on a bench. Over time, the two, who had become accustomed to each other, reached a point where their silence was not awkward. At that moment, the wind blew, tickling Ines’s cheek before departing.

Every moment of awakening senses inevitably brought Carson to mind.

Hans, who had grown much since leaving the temple, also had his hair scattered in the direction of the wind.

In the moment of thinking that the long hair suited him well, a sudden seizure occurred.

Hans was already well aware of Ines’s condition. He had witnessed her seizures and difficulty breathing resolve instantly when Carson’s hands touched her, as if lying when he said that.

As an intermediate priest in charge of the temple’s affairs, Hans also knew how Ines had come to Edmont. However, he didn’t ask anything. He could only speculate that there might be some story between the two.

Hans knelt in front of Ines.

As both a priest and a healer, he assisted Ines in breathing well. But it wasn’t going to be easy to improve.

“I’ll go and fetch the lord.”

Whether she heard his words or not couldn’t be confirmed. The situation was so tense that it wouldn’t be strange if her breath stopped. However, when Hans tried to move away from Ines in a hurry, her wrist was grabbed abruptly.

“No. You can’t… can’t.”

Despite the apparent mental confusion, Ines was desperate. Hans, with Ines’s wrist in his hand, could do nothing but wait for time to pass.

Her struggling breath seemed like that of a person drowning. Unable to endure, Ines finally fainted while still in Hans’s grip.

He carried her back to the room. The cause of the disease without medicine was undoubtedly the large wound from the previous day.

As darkness settled in the room, he lit a candle as best as he could. Despite being a priest, it was a room with only him and a woman.

However, he couldn’t leave her alone. Therefore, he decided to spend time and took out the scriptures that Ines had carefully placed. However, he quickly covered it and returned it to its original place.

It was because there were things inside that he shouldn’t see.

How much time had passed? Ines woke up, murmuring incomprehensible words.
Hans filled a cup with water and approached.

“Are you feeling more conscious now?”

Ines, not particularly surprised, nodded her head and stood up. Fainting was rare for her, but not unheard of.

“I caused trouble for you, Father.”

He approached without answering and gently touched Ines’s head. Then, in a quiet voice, he prayed for a moment. The soothing sound of the prayer subsided, and he returned to his seat.

After a brief silence, Hans spoke.

“Our mother was truly a beautiful person.”

“Why are you suddenly talking about this?”

“It was more uncomfortable to keep silent from the beginning. It’s an unavoidable situation, and now it’s just the two of us.”

Ines nodded while drinking the water he provided. She no longer had the energy to dwell on such matters.

“My mother sang very well. I don’t remember the lyrics well, but she used to sing at our bedside, my sister’s and mine.”

Ines listened quietly to his words, almost breathless.

“My father, so to speak, was a knight. There was much to fight, and he often left home. Still, we were happy. On the days he returned, the house was always filled with delicious food.”

“…”

“Then one day, when my father had left the house as usual, armed men suddenly stormed in. They dragged my mother away. The clothes of those armed men were engraved with an animal I had never seen before. The face was that of a lion, but the legs were those of a horse.”

In his calm narration of the dreadful story, there was still an unrefined sorrow lingering in his demeanor.

“My mother returned the next day. She had a sad face, but she was unharmed. That night, my mother repeatedly warned me not to tell my father about what happened that day.”

But he couldn’t keep that promise.

A few days later, when his father returned, fearing that the villains might take his mother away again, Hans eventually told his father the truth.

“My father left in that direction. And some time later, he returned covered in blood. The first thing he did when he entered the house was to lift me by the collar.”

Hans’s father stared into his eyes for a while and said, “You’re not my son.”

Soon after, Hans was thrown out of the house. While he cried endlessly outside the door, thick smoke began to rise from inside the house. He pleaded for someone to let him in, but the door remained firmly locked from the inside.

Villagers gathered, and he was unable to enter the house completely engulfed in flames.