Cecilia was a saintess.
Oathran had no doubt about it from the very start.
Not to mention how she could bond with him without a heart, or the sheer will it took to survive without one… but now… this—the cane, the divine light, the way she knew about a birthday not even his closest confidants knew…
So why?
How could anyone call her fake?
"You… knew…" Cecilia turned, her smile gentle but ultimately self-mocking. "I am a fake saintess. I'm sorry, Your Majesty."
Oathran's eyes widened. "What do you mean, 'fake'? What about your heart? Your bond with me? What about this?" he demanded, gesturing sharply with the cane.
Cecilia looked up at him, her gaze steady. "It's not my power. Last night, something happened that I don't understand…"
"A power was granted to me by an unknown being. I don't know, maybe more than one. They said I am the ninth…? It's complicated, but I don't think this is the power of a Saintess. It might be from a malicious being, for all I know," she explained honestly.
"What I witnessed was divine. Do you think a Dragon Lord cannot differentiate between the holy and the corrupt?" Oathran now sounded genuinely offended.
"Your Majesty, the real Saintess has taken charge. She can accurately see the future. She can predict the weather and the gender of ten different unborn children," Cecilia said, a slow, amused smile touching her lips. Why did it feel like she was the one consoling the Dragon Lord?
But it made a kind of sense. Oathran must have thought he'd bonded himself to an amazing woman.
She wasn't.
"I'm sorry, my Lord. I know… the thing you're most upset about is perhaps the prophecy from seventeen years ag—"
"It wasn't a prophecy," Oathran sharply cut her off. His left hand shot to the nape of her neck, pulling her close. "It was an oath."
"Your oath," his eyes bore into hers as he whispered, leaning in until they were mere inches apart. "To me."
He wanted to die by her hands. He must.
"It wasn't about seeing the future. It was about dying at the hands of the one person I respected. The one person who promised to take the burden from me. You."
The man was furious.
"And if I say you are a saintess," he released her and turned away, his voice final as he strode toward the woods once more, "then you are."
Her eyes followed the man as he walked unhurriedly to the tree line, the new cane floating into his left hand. With a flick of his telekinesis, he lifted scattered branches from the forest floor.
Cecilia grasped her chest.
Her heart was gone, but in its place was an unbearable, swelling fullness.
So Oathran had never misunderstood her words that day. He had never taken her solution for granted. He had come all this way to die by her hand.
She knew what he'd witnessed with the cane could be misinterpreted as divine. Heck, it might be divine. But that wasn't the point.
The point was, to him, she was real.
Saintess or not.
Everything she had done until today, divine or not, was real.
What she had spent her life doing… in his eyes, mattered.
"Lord Oathran," she called out, skipping lightly to approach him. "Are you angry?"
[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei's Love Points have increased by 10!]
[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei's Love Points have increased by 10!]
[Congratulations! Oathran Alicei's Love Points have increased by 10!]
The notifications kept ringing in her head, so she whispered a command to turn them off. The moment the system went mute, she concentrated to look deeper into—[+3], [+3], [+3], [+3]—aw, come on, turn that off too!
Ahem. Deeper into Oathran's eyes.
"If what you said was true, then I only became a 'true' saintess last night. Congratulations on bonding with a true saintess, after all," she lifted her chin with pride, her arms akimbo.
Oathran's cold, darkened eyes slowly thawed. The misty grey of his irises seemed to catch the sunlight differently.
"What kind of a fake saintess dares to take my life for me?" the man patiently asked, once again bowing his head to look closer to her. "Silly girl."
Cecilia smiled tenderly and let him see her blush. This man deserved to see the effect he had.
"And what of your accomplishments until then? Do you not count them as the work of a saintess?" Oathran scoffed coldly. "Did I bond myself to a charity?"
"You did!" Cecilia huffed with pride.
"And what of your prediction about the broken dam of Rugad?" he asked.
Cecilia scoffed, "That dam staying intact for that long was the miracle. Incompetent bastards…"
"Your instruction to build giant wave breakers with magic on the coast of Ires?"
"That coast was ransacked by a tsunami a hundred years ago and they still took no precaution?" She shook her head tiredly. "And it barely worked. We still need a proper evacuation procedure. They were just lucky last year."
"If not because I was a saintess, they wouldn't even have listened to m—"
Cecilia rambled on and on, and when she finally looked up at Oathran, she saw his warm smile had returned.
To receive a warm smile this often from such a majestic being…
She grasped the skirt of her dress.
Unfair.
He was leading her on and on…
"Avalanche precautions… landslide-prone locations… the incentive to close up mines, only for the mine to collapse a week after," the man listed, a teasing glint in his eyes. "Yes. Our fake saintess is very, very lucky."
"I-I was just… deliberately exploiting my title to get things done!" She snapped, flustered.
"Of course," Oathran nodded sagely. He then softly nudged her with the handle of his new cane. "Why?" he asked, "Did you not notice that I've been following the news about you all these years, just from how much I've talked?"
But the man suddenly flinched, his eyes widening in horror. "AH! I exposed myself as a cree—"
"PFFFT—AHAHAHAH!"
Suddenly, everything felt light.
Everything felt right.
Cecilia had never known that a man she'd met just once had given her this level of respect and admiration.
Usually, even as the Saintess, her words didn't carry as much weight in reality or politics. If she didn't play her cards right, she might as well have tied herself to the stake and lit the fire. She was a woman, and a woman carried a different social expectation from men in power. Not to mention, she had been a teenager until just seven years ago.
But this man, whom she had only met once when she was a mere child… had given her more acknowledgment than all the people she had met before or since.
More than the people who came begging for help.
More than the old men who sang her praises while creepily symbolizing her as a beacon of purity. If she had never been crowned a saintess, living in that world would have been a horrifying fate.
Seeing how Cecilia's gaze followed the hand he used to carry the new cane, his expression soured slightly. To gift him a cane, of all things. Not that he was ungrateful, the gesture itself was touching, but did she truly see him as a man in need of a walking aid? A crutch for the crippled?
Well, yes, objectively speaking, one of his legs did have the bone exposed. And yes, he was currently limping. But for a dragon of his power and lineage, such wounds were a temporary inconvenience, an easy fix with enough mana and time. A cane was… so terribly mortal.
"Your Majesty, try to make a fire with your magic using this cane," Cecilia suggested, bumping her shoulder playfully against his arm, seemingly excited about something.
Oathran narrowed his eyes, the misty grey depths shifting from her face to the elegant wood in his hand. "Is this a magic item?"
She simply nodded, an impish smile playing on her lips.
Hesitant, and with a newfound sense of caution, Oathran gathered the firewood into a neat pile. He then raised the cane, tapping the tip of it lightly against the topmost log.
POOF!
A blast of fire, violent and instantaneous, erupted from the point of contact. Both Oathran and Cecilia flinched back from the sudden, roaring ignition. Recovering his composure, Oathran made a gentle swiping motion, coaxing the inferno down to a manageable, crackling campfire.
He then turned to her, his earlier offense completely forgotten, replaced by a look of curiosity.
"What more is this?" he asked as he examined the seemingly innocent, decorated cane. "The light earlier, huh?"
Cecilia nodded, a swell of pride warming her chest. "The light earlier," yes. She had every right to be proud of that masterpiece.
"Your Majesty, this is still your birthday celebration. Thus, as the chief organizer of this party, I command you to wash up while I cook the food," she declared, pointing imperiously toward the river with her chin. "There's a space behind that large rock if you want some privacy. Well, not from the fishes, though…"
Oathran's head whipped toward the rock she indicated, his eyes narrowing into slits. She had washed up while he was gone. Which meant the fishes in this river had been… privileged. Greedy. Indecent.
"I will explain what your birthday present can do as we eat. Now, go and wash up!" Cecilia insisted, giving him a light, insistent push toward the water.
"Sure. That will be delightful. Thank you, Saintess Cecilia," Oathran's voice was distant, his attention fully captured by the flowing water. "How about I catch us some fish too?"
"Huh?" Cecilia blinked, looking at the generous portions of elk meat. "But this is plenty. We won't be able to finish it all."
Oathran's eyes glinted with a cold light. "Do not worry. I will eat all the fish for you, my lady."
Cecilia could only stare at his retreating back, bewildered.
What are you on, dude…?