I Became a Barbarian's Bride - Chapter 108
Kagan dragged a chair over and sat by the side of the woman who was either dead or sleeping as if she were dead.
He had always thought of death as something hot.
After all, the blood spilled when someone dies is blistering hot.
To him, death was heat.
But for her, death was this cold.
As the minutes passed, the chill creeping through the air became so intense that even the great Kagan Xieman found his shoulders trembling slightly without realizing it.
It wasn’t because he was truly cold.
It was the subtle chill created by death that seeped into his bones.
The Xieman clan was a warrior race.
Even after the unification of Xieman, many nations continued to antagonize them, trying to keep them in check.
And Xieman had never tolerated it.
They had fought countless wars.
But the death he had seen in those battles was starkly different from the death of this frail woman lying before him.
Hers was a calm, quiet death.
For someone who had witnessed the loud, messy deaths of the battlefield, this was something entirely unfamiliar.
In his mind, he considered the possibility that she might not wake up, but amusingly, his instincts were certain that she would.
“…Why?”
If she had known the price of her powers, why hadn’t she said anything?
Why had she used them so recklessly?
She used them as casually as if offering help to passing animals or injured servants. Why did she treat them so lightly?
As he circled around a single question, more incomprehensible thoughts pressed in, leaving him perplexed.
No matter what form death took, it could never be something light.
Had she experienced death so many times that it lost its meaning to her? Was that why she used her powers so casually, without hesitation or showing any dislike?
‘I can’t begin to understand what she’s thinking.’
The deeper his thoughts went, the more an unfamiliar, aching sensation spread through his chest.
He gripped his chest, closing and opening his eyes, swallowing hard.
The burning sensation in his eyes grew more intense for no apparent reason. He wasn’t even using his powers right now.
Unable to endure the stabbing pain and searing heat in his eyes, he finally closed them.
Kagan remained seated, motionless, for a long time.
Even as daylight broke and the morning sun filled the room, her body never warmed.
***
Kagan stayed beside Nisha until the morning light filtered in, never moving.
It was only natural that before anyone came looking for him, he had warned the servants to stay away, saying he would be resting with her in her room.
As time passed, her body grew colder and harder.
He finally understood why the room always felt so cold whenever he visited.
‘What could she have been thinking…’
He thought about it endlessly while she slept.
The more he pondered, the harder it became to believe that she wasn’t aware of this situation.
It all led to one conclusion: she knew everything.
But that raised even more questions.
Why would she go to such lengths for a foreign country that wasn’t even hers?
It made no sense at all.
‘Why didn’t she use her powers in Roshan?’
If she was secretly healing people, it wouldn’t have been strange for her to be more open about it.
And how was it that the emperor didn’t know she was going around doing this?
It was strange, had they hidden it that thoroughly, or had the people of Roshan kept quiet so well that not even a whisper of a rumor escaped?
If they had silenced everyone, why go to such extremes to keep it hidden?
‘I just don’t understand.’
There were, in fact, many things Kagan couldn’t understand.
He had just brushed them off as they came.
But now that things had come to this, he didn’t know what to do.
Faced with this situation, all he could do was ensure no one intruded while waiting for the uncertain future, hoping she would wake up again.
He had never thought of himself as powerless, but now, in this situation, he was overwhelmed by a deep sense of helplessness.
‘Helpless…’
When had he last felt that word?
At least since becoming aware of himself, it wasn’t an emotion he had ever experienced.
It had always been that way.
Kagan was always someone who stood above others.
He was stronger than most, had endured his father’s harsh training, and eventually succeeded in becoming stronger than anyone else in the nation.
But that seemed to be all it amounted to.
He snapped shut the book on abilities that he had taken from the library and tossed it aside.
Kagan let out a short breath.
