“Yeah, let’s go ahead and tell everyone and have a big celebration!”

For a moment, Christa didn’t immediately understand what she was saying. No, she didn’t understand, she couldn’t believe it.

What was she talking about? A celebration? Wouldn’t everyone know if she did something like that?

“N, no!”

Christa’s voice sounded like a scream, so desperate that Margrethe gasped.

Even Christa didn’t know what she could do. But right now, she was afraid of what Margrethe was saying, and she couldn’t stand it. Her breath came in slow, choked gasps.

“You can’t do that…….”

Despite the scream, Margrethe still looked innocent and docile as she asked.

“Why?”

“Because…….”

It was the thing that pushed Christa into the pits of hell. They say the road to hell is always paved with good intentions. It was.

Margrethe was not to blame. It was all her own lies, her own sins. It was all Christa’s fault, her own. She closed her eyes slowly.

The sight of Margrethe’s bearish smile made her feel dizzy. She wondered what she could say to get out of this the right way.

Christa’s mind raced. She had to stop them from celebrating, that would be too horrible.

And so she managed to pull herself together. Her quick thinking was driven by the need to stop this now.

“I’d like to talk to the Duke about this, I mean, I want him to know first.”

Margrethe gasped, her expression softening.

“Well…….”

Christa rolled her eyes nervously from side to side, unsure of how this lie would be received, and added to it.

“Well, I suppose the servants…… might have noticed on some level……. B, but I thought I’d make sure to pass this along to him in person…….”

Not a bad idea, when I spit it out. Of course, it didn’t solve anything, it just put it on the back burner.

But these were people who respected her, so she had faith that if she asked for it badly enough, they’d take note of it.

“Okay, okay.”

There was a grace period. A breathing space had opened up in what had been a clogged, suffocating situation. Now all she could do was stick her nose in the situation and hang on.

“T, thank you for your understanding.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll want to tell first, I was so presumptuous.”

“That’s…… not true.”

“But after you tell the Duke, will you be sure to tell me? I’d really like to throw a grand celebration.”

Margrethe quietly added that she would be sorry if she wouldn’t be able to celebrate. She, too, would have liked to be celebrated when her child was born.

“Of course.”

Christa said weakly. And so the first step in the deception was taken. One lie after another builds on top of the false foundation.

These lies would soon crumble and fall. But it had to be done, or she would not be able to bear the weight of this sin.

Christa slowly closed her eyes. She was still in that lukewarm, warm heaven. She was being punished for doing something that wasn’t right for her.

She had been so happy, and now it was time to wake up from her dream and dip back into despair.

* * *

Margrethe was lost in thought as she rode in the carriage back to her estate.

‘I wonder why she worries so much.’

As she gazed out the window at the scenery, she thought back to Christa’s appearance earlier. As she thinks back on it, she feels a great deal of discomfort.

She had some idea of her inner darkness. Even if she didn’t talk about it, her heart was full of wounds, big and small. The way she was always looking out for others. The rigid way she spoke. The scared look on her face.

“But I thought she had improved a lot since she came to the north…….”

She brightened up. Her facial expressions became more expressive and she smiled a lot. Her relationship with Ragnar seemed to improve. They were a good pair.

Besides, they had finally produced an heir to the northern line. With the Duke’s delayed marriage, some predicted that the succession would fall to others at this rate, so her pregnancy was a welcome development.

“But why the hell…….”

She wonders if it’s because of her unusually low self-confidence, but if so, it’s something that time will fix.

Christa’s anxiety. She doesn’t know where it came from, but her agitation is understandable. Anyone who realizes they’re pregnant goes through that confusion.

“So she’s anxious.”

Margrethe slowly read the threads of connection. Margrethe’s thread has been connected to Christa since the last hunting festival. So Christa’s thread should have been clearer.

However, it proved to be a challenge to identify Christa’s thread.

What Margrethe sees is a trail of connections and disconnections. There was always a limit to what she could read.

If only she could see through it all. Her powers were like glimpsing the vastness of the universe through a tiny needle’s eye.

Her aunt could do that. But what she could see was very limited.

“If I could see that well in the first place, I’d be a real fortune teller.”

Margrethe shook her head and concentrated, barely able to follow the traces of Christa’s life through her blurry vision.

Her threads were unlike any Margrethe had ever seen; in fact, they were so twisted and tangled that they were hard to read. She had never seen anything like it before.

It wasn’t just Christa, either; Ragnar’s threads, in particular, were unrecognizably tangled and hard to read. Perhaps it was her unique influence.

If she were to interpret these threads, it would seem as if they had lived many lives. With no clear beginning or end, she looked again and again, but always came to the same conclusion.

“There’s no way someone like that …… exists.”

But Margrethe couldn’t believe it and could only laugh. A sense of foreboding came over her.

Life repeating itself so many times, such a mysterious thing was possible. It was the subject of legends.

“I’m sure my grandmother used to…….”

She recalled a story her aunt had told her. It was said that the first northern king lived twelve lives. He lived again and again, cutting and reattaching the threads of his destiny.

But that was just a legend.

“No matter how…….”

This world was full of mysteries yet to be unraveled. Even Margrethe herself had the ability to read what others could not, so there were always possibilities.

“But…….”

She didn’t want to think about it anymore. She didn’t want to doubt.

She didn’t want to doubt Christa and Ragnar. There was no way they could be in such a ridiculous situation.

“It can’t be happening…….”

And with that, she shook her head vigorously and turned her attention to the scenery outside the carriage window.