HTMSAE - Chapter 8 < The Limping Woman >






However, as the horse began to pick up speed, the people standing around them let out short screams and retreated.
Ines immediately noticed the person on the horse and started running frantically. As she pushed people aside and went forward, her eyes met directly with Lena riding a horse. A strange light flashed in her eyes for a moment, but she soon began to charge toward the same goal as Ines.

'I have to save her.'

Even if her body was torn apart and she would never walk again, Ines had to save this child.

Saving his younger sister was the only way to repay the savior who had reached out to her. Ines even thought that she had gone back 12 years to do this.

However, it was not easy to squeeze through the gaps filled with people.

At first, Susan, who was surprised by Ines's actions and could do nothing, came to her senses and followed her. Then Susan, who was shorter than Ines, dug into the crowd first and started shouting as she made her way.

“Get out of the way, get out of the way!”

With Susan’s help, Ines pushed everyone aside and saw the face of a girl smiling brightly at his brother. And then there was Lena’s face running after her like a mad bull.

As the maid guarding the child screamed and stepped aside, Ines threw herself at the child instead.

The moment she thought her small shoulder was caught in her hand, a tremendous pain hit Ines’ body. However, without hesitation, she wrapped her entire body around the child’s head. The horse Lena was riding lifted its feet high into the air and immediately trampled her body. And once again, the rampaging horse crushed her ankles.

Ines was so terrified by the familiar pain that she couldn’t even breathe, but she didn’t let go of the hand that was holding the child.

The guard standing nearby must have stabbed the angry horse because it couldn’t even bend its legs and fell to the ground. Lena also fell off the horse and was soon tied up by the guard.

Ines took a deep breath and immediately began to assess the situation. She first checked the safety of the girl in her arms.

“Are you okay, Your Highness?”

When Ines asked the child firmly, the child, who had been curled up like a fetus, holding onto her collar tightly, lifted her head. Her body was trembling, but the child nodded vaguely as she met Ines’s green eyes.

“I’m okay now. Don’t worry.”

After confirming that the child was safe, Ines looked around. Although it was noisy like a battlefield, she felt that the surroundings were safe, so she got up from her seat while holding the child in her arms. The girl was a little big for a 20-year-old woman to stand up while holding, but Ines lifted the child.

Ines’s mind, accustomed to hard labor, made lifting the child’s body in an extreme situation seem like nothing. As her body rose, the child instinctively put her arms around Ines’ neck more tightly and hung on.

“Easy, it’s okay. Don’t worry. It’s really okay now. Now, you should go to His Highness.”

She nodded to the soothing words of Ines, but the Princess still couldn’t raise her face. As she stood up completely, the red hair band that had been neatly tied around the child’s head fell to the floor.

Ines bent down and picked up the band. She held it tightly in her hand as if losing it would mean losing the child, and turned her head toward Carson.

Carson was dealing with enemies who had appeared from somewhere. A carriage full of goods was hit by an arrow, and the men’s strong force pushed it down completely to the ground. The dust on the ground rose up like traces of flames.

Ines, who was looking at them, felt excruciating pain in her ankle and slowly began to move her body toward him.

A fleeting thought crossed her mind that she had lost her ankle just like in her previous life, but it didn’t matter.

Just that ankle.

Ines’ heart was already too torn apart to covet something that had never been hers to begin with.

After walking about three steps, she felt blood flowing from her head that had hit the ground. And then a hollow laugh escaped her. Was she going to die again? 

But since she had saved Carson’s bloodline, perhaps this time it would be a worthwhile death.

Feeling the blood draining from her body, she began to recite the Bible verse that was as vital as her life.

“He who wants too much... will eventually go away empty-handed. He who wants too much... will eventually go away empty-handed.”

Mixing the Bible verse with deep sighs, Ines approached him step by step.

As everything else faded away, only his image was etched into her eyes as if carved with a knife.

His strong arm swinging the sword, his gaze that kept wavering as he worried about his sister’s safety, his relieved eyes upon confirming that his sister was alive, the sight of him raising his foot toward his last enemy while exhaling heavily.

And the aura of Carson von Raymond, who followed him without fail and only shined on him.

The white light seemed to be the path to heaven, so Ines’s lips naturally curled into a smile.

“In the end... I will return empty-handed.”

Feeling dizzy, Ines shook her head to catch her gaze, then picked up the child again and walked and walked. She felt the same sensation as the day she was hit by a carriage and died, clearly with her whole body.

‘Oh, I haven’t gotten your portrait yet..."

Feeling the fear of death, Ines instinctively had to go towards him.

It was a blindness like a spell she had cast to survive in this cruel world. The shouts of people as they looked at her and the child kept disappearing into the hazy fog.

In the white darkness where no sound could be heard, only the man running towards her was clearly visible.

***

Carson could not run to the child even though he saw the crazy horse running towards his younger sister. It was because the enemies who had appeared out of nowhere surrounded him and his surroundings.

He felt despair, anger, and helplessness at the same time as he watched the horse rushing toward his sister with clear murderous intent. At that moment, as he dodged the arrows flying in front of him and cut down the enemies around him one by one, Carson saw a blonde-haired woman throwing herself at his sister.

And the woman even held his sister in her arms. Carson kept checking behind him while killing the enemies. And he saw a thin and frail-looking woman holding his sister and raising her body.

After confirming that his sister Louisianne was hanging on the woman’s neck and nodding, he kicked the last remaining enemy down with his foot and immediately stabbed him in the stomach with his sword. However, Carson, who had quickly turned around to go to his sister, froze in place.

The sound of his heart beating loudly, for some unknown reason, rang in his ears.

The woman holding Louis was definitely a woman he had never seen before.

But strangely, she seemed familiar. And he began to feel a sense of suffocation for no reason.

His sister was safe.

He could tell just by the way she clung to her body. So the suffocation that tormented him was not the fear of losing his sister.

He put strength into his feet once more to go to Louis. But the moment he saw her slowly walking toward him, his throat was caught and he had no choice but to stand there again.

Limp, limp, limp.

The gait of the woman walking with her legs limping was somehow perfect in itself. In all the countless beautiful works of art he had seen throughout the world, he had never dared to feel perfect.

But at this moment, the sight of the woman with her face covered in blood and unable to walk properly seemed to hold him back, making him unable to move.

At that moment, the delicate woman staggered once. At that sight, Carson started to run. He was struck by a strange feeling that the distance of only thirty steps felt like a lifetime.

She eventually collapsed on the ground but did not lose consciousness.

No. He couldn’t be sure that she hadn’t lost consciousness. It was because her gaze toward him was completely unfocused.

Carson, who had come closer, slowly reached out his hand. He then looked at the guards blocking the street and said,

“Take my hand. If you walk about ten steps, you’ll be in a safe place.”

In an instant, the woman’s eyes lit up and her determination grew stronger.

Then, without hesitation, she intertwined her hand with his. Despite her frail and injured body, she quickly picked up the child and held her in her arms. Carson felt as if time had stopped for a moment at that simple movement. When he came to his senses, he reached out to receive Louis from her, but neither his sister nor she wanted it. The child, who had glanced at her brother, burst into tears immediately but did not release the hand around the unfamiliar woman’s neck.

At that moment, the woman clasped her bloody hand with the hand he had grabbed. With a slap, blood gushed out from somewhere in her body and flowed straight down her face.

As the slender hand that he was gripping tightly kept slipping away from his thick fingers without being able to fully penetrate them, Carson instinctively tightened his grip on the woman’s fingers.

The woman flinched and pulled back her fingers as if in pain, but he pushed in without any gap and held her tightly.

The woman’s spread fingers eventually failed to touch the back of his hand and turned white in the air. Carson strengthened his grip and helped the woman move.

She let out a deep sigh and smiled faintly, moving her feet in time with Carson’s pace. And then she began to mutter something softly.

"...Give me everything you have. But... Those who ask for too much will eventually return empty-handed.”

Her words, which sounded like a prayer or a spell, were completely lost in the tumultuous noise.

And after walking exactly ten steps, she collapsed on the spot and lost consciousness.


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