The Crown and The Rose
Chapter 71: Mourn

Chapter 71: Mourn

The Crown

"Would you like to elaborate or I will have to find it out myself?" Erick asks sarcastically. He is in such a bad mood that I tossed him over the window and made him limp like he is right now.

"Can you let it go first?" I say, resigned, "We are working here and I can’t have you throw tantrums like a spoiled kid."

"Excuse me? Spoiled kid? Me?" Erick looks at me like he just heard some kind of bad joke, "Aren’t you supposed to be the one who threw me out of the window and sprained my ankle? Lush, it hurts." I am not sure which one he is talking about right now. The physical one or the unseeable one.

"Please, Erick," I blow out a breath, my temple pulsing as I rub the place between my brows, "Stop throwing tantrums, we need to get over this and go back." There is something about this place that is making all my instincts flare in alarm and my heart does the jumping thing.

Erick huffs, still fussing with anger but thankfully, he sees what I am trying to make him see, "Fine, but you are making it up to me when we get back." I don’t know what ’makeup’ he wants from me but at this moment I can do everything to make him shut his mouth.

"Yes, yes, as you say." Sighing I turn and look at the corpse as I open my mouth to explain what I have concluded but I catch a moment out of the corner of my eyes and my stomach flips as my heart jumps once more.

A dark lurking presence.

It has done a great job to hide its presence but it has no idea that I have been raised to detect them as the strongest wielder of the light in the earth. My head snaps in the direction, my eyes sharp and narrowed.

"You saw something?" I ask, my question is directed to Zhen Xin and he knows it.

"Yes, Your Highnesses." He replies, his tone on the edge and rigid with seriousness, "I did. It is a dark magic user."

I have my first prey. I hope it tells me what’s going on here. My instincts in high alert, I step toward the corner from where the shadow disappeared. Zhen Xin jumps down from my shoulder and enters the alleyway between two brothel buildings. I want to follow him but my brain racks over the best course of action and I spin around.

"What are you guys doing?" Erick raises an eyebrow as he stumbles after me.

I face him, "I saw someone in there. Zhen Xin will go after him. But we need to go back inside and ask a few more questions before we leave."

Erick looks uncertain as I brush past him and approach the brothel with purposeful strides. "Why are you in such a rush?" He is limping as he jogs to catch up with me, occasionally wheezing with pain and discomfort.

"It’s almost the time of sunrise," I remark. The western side of the sky is lighting up slowly yet steadily. And the brothel will close up for the day. And so I won’t get another chance to question them after that. And I am not sure that they will be willing enough to let me question them about this once before Mira’s corpse is collected and they have returned to their normal lives and will be trying to forget the events of this night—if not erase them. "So we need to make it quick."

***

And for all of it, everything is going WRONG. Zhen Xin came back empty handed and the girls in the brothel were rapidly shutting their mouths off about all the things that happened just a few hours ago. This is so fucking annoying that I can’t even wipe the irritation embedded in my face away.

My love life is simply nonexistent. My working life... sometimes makes me wonder what the hell in the world I am even doing because it makes literally no sense. And then again, my family? There are some times when I completely forget about them. I am losing myself. Not that I mind.

The brothel doesn’t know anything about Mira’s past relationships and her present ones are out of the question. What the hell are they doing if they can’t even keep a tab on what their fellow prostitute is doing?

It is almost as if they see Mira only as a competition and nothing else. They have no bond that binds them with her. And I have rarely seen anyone mourn her death back in the brothel. As pissing as it seems it is also heartbreaking because I can almost imagine how it was for Mira when she lived among them. It might be painful and suffocating.

I know this because I was almost in the same position as her when I was in the royal palace of the Blade Empire. The parliament members eyed me with doubt about whether I could handle the power that I would be given. Nobles watched me as a potential competition and a foe. Aside from Edward and Rosalia, I had no one in that suffocating hell—named paradise.

I wonder what it would be like for Mira to stay like that in a way worse place. Was she resentful of what her life turned out to be? Did she ever mourn? Did she ever fall in love? Did she ever cry? Did she ever have a friend?

Everything that is going on in my head starts to gnaw at me and I am still fussing with annoyance as we—Erick, Zhen Xin and I—enter the palace of Red Empire. It is already past the time of dawn break. The sun is rising gracefully but it does a little to subside the irritation in my bones.

"Any luck finding out anything?" Rose approaches as I slump onto a chair in the garden beside the tunnel as Erick closes the passageway.

"Nope," I answer grumpily.

"Someone is upset." A familiar cold voice rings through the area, slashing through the air and attacking my heart and it rattles against my chest. My breath hitches as my eyes snap in the direction.

Vermilion.