Chapter 343: Bottom Lines
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      With her arm hooked around Nolan, she braced herself on him as they walk. “Please bear with me for now. Ugh, I’d rather suffer this now than be permanently bleeding when we do it.”

“Regeneration is a bitch,” Nolan said. “Besides, I’m sure that you had taken the worst wounds. I thought you wouldn’t mind this.”

“Oh, I see, for years I didn’t know you have a thing for popping women cherries.”

“Hell no,” he said to her. “I have no fetish regarding that.”

“I agree with you, and I don’t like bleeding from my crotch every time we do it as well. That’s why I have to scar it down to make sure that it won’t happen. I have strong regenerative abilities, Nolan. I can grow an arm if I need to, and you think that I can’t grow my hymen back?”

Nolan shut his mouth to look at the horizon. The harbor wind ruffling his hair. He wouldn’t dare to continue that argument. There was no way of winning it.

“Glad that you agree with me,” she said to him.

“I just don’t want to bother with it. It’s your body after all.”

“Hmm, can you shift your face back to your older look?”

Nolan stopped right at the edge of the harbor. “What?”

“You heard me. The light above, you aged like fine wine, husband! I talked about this over and over how those harlots in the salt passing trying to marry you off! They wanted strong men, and you were a survivor of a long-lasting war! You fought battles and survived and many admired that broken shield on your back and the cloak. That graying hair of yours, and the way you stood firm despite the troubles. Some of your fellow soldiers know your background where you work in an inn. If anything they admire how you started from a worker in an inn to a guardsman of throes, and a soldier of the Talon King, and veteran of many battles. Or that you melted the frosty heart of the war maiden. They think of you insane.”

“Why?”

“For falling in love with a cursed woman,” she said looking down. “Nolan, do you think that because of being with me that you suffered? You do know that the cursed part wasn’t just about the burn wounds that I had. My parents weren’t killed just because they were nobles. We were cursed and those burns were a sign of our bloodline.”

“No, it’s a part of life. What need is there weep about the parts of life that had passed? I’ve already marched through hell for multiple times, and I carry the curse of my comrades screaming at me perpetually and you’d think that this bothers me?”

“I don’t think it bothers, I just want to know if you had ever regretted it. I heard that you had a girl named Alcina that was always with you. She just vanished suddenly, and you didn’t know better.”

Nolan titled his head and had this blank look on his eyes. He stopped near the lamp post and pulled her close. “I don’t want to regret. Because if I regret then it would mean that I don’t want those to happen. They died like heroes and I won’t forget. I may break, cry, and sometimes wail at the world for doing this to me. I will regret but fully giving in and regretting the actions that I had chosen? No, never, I would rather not. I have lived my life as the best as I could not knowing any purpose other than to find purpose with the actions that I have chosen. If I regret falling in love with you during those years then I am denying the ‘me’ who had made those choices. We are volatile, Cia, and I rather not believe that the life that I had live had no meaning to them.”

Ashia looked up to him. “When I was walking in the abyss back then. I had many thoughts and regrets. That through my years I had been fighting to save the world that I forgot that I wasn’t saving my soul. I mean, what kind of savior prioritizes the world before her children? Does someone who does that have a right to save the world? No, she does not have that why’ I choose to die by the hand of that monster. Still, I didn’t want to let you go, and you were my light as I choose to travel back to the light where you should be. But I only found your grave and I couldn’t take it. I was too late. When I stab that blade into my stomach I wished that I could have a second chance. I was given it and if I live then you must have lived again. It was only your fragment but that gave hope to me that one day I can see you again. Tell me, Nolan. I will ask you this. Can you ever forgive me for what I have done? For letting our unborn child die to save a world, not caring about the life that was in my womb?”

Nolan stood firmly. He stared straight into her eyes with both hands on her shoulders. “Ciara, I love you, and you were my light in my darkest days. You were the lamp that shone the darkest valley and shielded me in the mightiest storms, and I believe in your cause during those times. I would follow you into hell and even do it again and again if you want to. But even I have things I could not forgive. I begged you on that day before the battle. I kneeled in front of you in hopes that you would reconsider and have mercy. I understand that you wanted to save the world. That the life of a single child is less than the world you were trying to save. I can see that you have regrets about this and that if you could slap yourself back in time then you would do it. But…I cannot forgive you for that day. I cannot just forget and forgive the day you refuse the birth of that innocent life.”

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