Chapter 57: The Girl with Rose-Pink Eyes
The carriage ride back from the auction was suffocatingly quiet. The rhythmic clatter of the mana-bred stallions’ hooves on the cobblestone streets of the capital was the only sound, a stark, lonely counterpoint to the chaotic symphony of my own thoughts.
Layla sat across from me, her legs crossed, her arms folded, a perfect, regal statue of icy composure. Her gaze, however, flickered occasionally toward the small, silent figure nestled beside me.
Yumi.
Her tiny hands clutched the hem of my new, expensive overcoat like it was a lifeline, her knuckles white. She hadn’t said a single word since we left the cavernous, corrupt underground chamber. Not a sound. Not a cry. Just a profound, unnerving silence. Her soft, snow-white curls bounced gently with the carriage’s motion, and her big, rose-pink eyes would peek up at me now and then, wide with an emotion I couldn’t quite decipher—not fear, but a deep, cautious uncertainty.
I didn’t know what to say to her. Hell, I didn’t even know what to say to myself.
I had come to that place with a mission—a single, clear objective that could have rewritten my path forward, that could have given me the raw, undeniable power I so desperately needed to keep up with the monsters and prodigies that surrounded me. But instead, I had left with a child.
A child who looked at me like I was the first kind hand she’d ever been offered in her short, tragic life.
And I couldn’t bring myself to regret it.
Layla broke the silence first, her voice a sharp, cutting sliver of ice. "So... do you plan to feed her? Bathe her? Tuck her into bed with lullabies?"
I gave her a tired, weary look. "If you’re done being sarcastic, maybe you could help me figure out what I’m supposed to do now."
"You’re the one who spent three thousand two hundred gold coins on her," she retorted, her voice laced with a familiar, aristocratic disdain. "That’s, what? Enough to buy a small estate or sponsor an entire battalion of mercenaries?"
"I’m aware."