Nightmare

Katya’s voice sounded somewhat lonely, so Nikolai said deliberately playfully.

“Do you want me to write you a contract, so you’ll believe me?”

There was no answer from her.

He turned to his wife and listened.

Her heavy breathing echoed in the silence of the room.

This time, she was actually asleep.

It felt like she hadn’t slept at all.

Nikolai let out a small laugh and gently stroked her hair with one hand on the arm pillow.

“Tia, there was something you said earlier that was wrong.”

“…….”

“I didn’t fall for the strawberry scent, I just liked you from the start.”

None of the confessions he’d ever made to her had been untrue, but today’s made his stomach churn, even as he said it out loud.

The day I first met Katya seemed like yesterday.

Come to think of it, I’ve been through so much with her over time, both short and long.

Like a drop of paint on water in a cup, it spreads slowly. And when you look up, the color of the water has changed.

I fell in love with her so quickly.

If I had known from the beginning that I would love her this much, would I have been able to stop it?

No, I can’t.

If I could go back to that time, knowing everything, I would fall in love with you all over again.

Finishing his mental monologue, he quietly pushed himself out of bed.

In truth, cuddling up to her was just a silly prank. He really didn’t intend to do it.

No, it was wishful thinking.

When the arm pillow disappeared, Katya tossed and turned, wincing at the discomfort in her neck.

Nikolai, impulsively seeking a replacement for the thrown pillow, picked up the thin blanket that lay on the bedding.

He gently lifted her head, then rolled the blanket around her neck to replace the pillow.

Then he closed the sunlit window and drew the curtains.

Katya’s face, bleary-eyed and frowning in her sleep, stretched.

“Sweet dreams, Tia.”

After completing her duties as the guardian of her peaceful slumber, Nikolai finally reclined on the sofa by the window and went to sleep.

It was barely big enough for his height, so his legs stuck out more than halfway, but he was tired and quickly forgot about the discomfort.

As he drifted off to sleep, away from Katya, the nightmares came again.

Every night, Nikolai had the same dream.

As soon as he falls asleep, the dreams seem to have waited, always reminding him of the day thirteen years ago when they left him behind.

***

Thirteen years ago.

“How dare you try to stop me!”

His father shouted in anger as he approached Nikolai.

As a young man, he had ridden the battlefields and struck fear into the hearts of his enemies.

Whenever his father stood in front of him, the dark shadows cast by his massive frame engulfed young Nikolai.

An angry father struck fear into him more than anything else in the world.

Though he had never been touched by his father, Yuri Vasily’s mere presence struck fear into the hearts of not only Nikolai, but the courtiers and boyanins as well.

Ever since his trusted wife and her family were discovered to be plotting treason, Yuri Vasily was no longer the warm father Nikolai remembered.

A maniacal paranoid since his widow Tatiana was driven from the palace and confined to a Pavlovsk monastery, he seemed to find some respite when he took his first love, Oksana, as the new Grand Duchess.

But the madness that began with his obsession with the woman he loved and his sense of betrayal didn’t end with Tatiana’s death.

In fact, it became more severe after her death.

In the year of her abandonment, there was a flood in the region where the Pavlovsk Monastery was located, and Tatiana drowned in her room, unable to escape from the flooded monastery.

For Yuri, who had lived his life hating her, there was no one left to hate.

“It seems you truly wish to die. I will personally grant you your wish.”

Since that day, anyone who annoyed him, whether they were commoners or boyanin, would draw his sword and cut their tongues, their arms, and sometimes even their throats.

Decapitated heads rolled around on a rug in the center of the room. The whole place was a living hell, with people screaming and running around in a sea of blood.

Nikolai hadn’t seen it and only heard about it, but it was enough to make his father the most terrifying thing in the world.

Nikolai knew that when his father saw him, he thought of his mother, so he kept a low profile in the palace.

When he did manage to catch a glimpse of him, he would always look at him with eyes full of life.

The mere thought of his chilling gaze sent chills down her spine, and Nikolai rarely left her bedchamber.

Then it happened.

“How dare you!”

Nikolai stumbled backward as his father drew his sword, ready to stab him at any moment.

Just then, the door burst open outside.

“Father!”

It was Ruslan, Nikolai’s eldest brother by seven years.

The child of Yevgenia, the first Grand Duchess. He was Yuri’s favorite child.

And he loved his younger brother Nikolai dearly.

“Stop it!”

Ruslan, realizing that the sword had been drawn to kill his innocent brother, leaped at his father with a contemplative look on his face.

Today is the day I absolutely must get rid of that right in front of my eyes!”

“Father……!”

Ruslan shouted, grabbing his father’s arm from behind as he struggled in his madness.

“Nikolai, get out of here!”

“Stop! How dare you disobey my orders!”

Yuri warned frantically as Nikolai tried to pull away, crying.

Ruslan was seventeen, a year away from his coming-of-age ceremony, but he was still far from surpassing his father’s power.

His life would never be safe in his father’s eyes as he grew crazier by the day.

Moreover, the tip of the sword in his father’s hand was swinging precariously, as if it could pierce his face at any moment.

But he was stopping his father, risking his life to protect his brother.

“Nikolai, come on!”

Nikolai snapped out of his reverie at the sound of his brother’s voice and started running toward the door.

Grabbed by both arms by his eldest son, Yuri shook with rage, tackled him to the ground, and slapped him across the cheek with a palm the size of a pot lid.

Nikolai stopped running at the sound and turned around.

“Ruslan, now you’re making fun of me too? Now you don’t know your father because you have a big head!”

“Father, please come to your senses……!”

Ruslan cried, grabbing his father in his madness.

“You’re the one who doesn’t know!”

“……What?”

“How long will you treat that pitiful child like this? Aren’t you even sorry for the mother who passed away?”

“Why do you call that woman your mother!”

“Ever since Her Highness Yevgenia, the former Grand Duchess, gave birth to us and left us, she raised not only her own child, but she raised us siblings just like she did with Nikolai! No, she poured all her attention into us, even more carefully than Nikolai. If she’s not my mother, then who is?”

Tears streamed from Ruslan’s eyes.

Like a breached dam, the longing for his deceased adoptive mother overflowed uncontrollably, which he had restrained for so long.

She hadn’t been given a proper burial because she was a traitor, and mentioning her was taboo in the palace, so he couldn’t even cry out loud.

If he himself is like this, how would Nikolai feel?

“You were tricked by that woman! You and me too!”

“No! Father was wrong!”

“What?”

“Why didn’t you believe my mother? All she ever loved was my father……!”

Hearing those words, Yuri’s eyes suddenly came alive.

He immediately punched his son.

Nikolai couldn’t run anymore.

If he turned around, his father would kill him at any moment.

He ran behind his father and shouted.

“Dad, hit me! Let my brother go……!”

As Yuri reached for the child, the seed of all misery, Ruslan stood in his brother’s way.

The merciless assault was met with a fist that flew at him instead of Nikolai, sending him tumbling to the side, helpless.

It was only a matter of moments before Ruslan’s head hit the marble table as he fell to the floor.

The snow-white carpet beneath the table began to stain red.

The ominous glass slowly rolled to the side.

“Brother!”

Nikolai shouted, spotting Ruslan first.

With trembling steps, Yuri approached his son, who lay bleeding on the rug.

As he came to his senses, he scooped his beloved son into his arms, but he was already dead. A cold corpse.

Realizing what he had done, Yuri hugged his dead son and wept.

“Ruslan……!”

Nikolai wished it was all a dream.

But happiness was always as far away as a dream, and horrifyingly close.

Ever since his mother had died, his brother had always been the only one who stood by him when even the courtiers shunned him.

“Brother…….”

“Aaah!”

Grand Duchess Clavdia¹???, it means she is a woman who holds the title of Grand Duchess; but in this case, it refers to the noble lady herself rather than her position as a wife , who had entered the parlor at the commotion, screamed as she saw her brother dead.

Nikolai slowly made his way over to the woman, who was sobbing and calling out for Ruslan in a sea of blood.

Yuri swatted away the fern-like hand reaching for his dead brother.

“Get your hands off! You’re the reason Ruslan died……!”

“Father…….”

“It’s all your fault! You should have died! Get out of my sight, now!”

Shocked, Nikolai stumbled backward, but eventually turned and ran out of the parlor.

On his way out into the hallway, he bumped into someone and looked up to see Grand Duchess Oksana standing there.

She sat down on her knees and pulled the sobbing child into her arms.

“Oh my, how scary that must have been.”

“Hmph…….”

Oksana whispered softly in his sobbing ear.

“Nikolai, you shouldn’t have been born in the first place.”

Nikolai, now sober, struggled to pull away from her, but Oksana tightened her arms around him.

“Why didn’t you follow your mother and disappear. If you had done that, you wouldn’t be in this state now.”

“…….”

“Ruslan died so early, should I be grateful to you?”

When Nikolai managed to escape from Oksana’s arms, she was clearly smiling.

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  ???, it means she is a woman who holds the title of Grand Duchess; but in this case, it refers to the noble lady herself rather than her position as a wife