B-ronken-R-ing 159...

Cárcel glanced at him stiffly, as though someone was holding a knife to his throat.

Emiliano ran a weary hand down his face again. He had barely regained his composure and looked in danger of falling apart at any moment. "In those days, I spent every day painting the same image of a poor woman cradling a child. I do not know what it was that I found in her eyes as she looked down at the infant. I swear that it wasn't longing. At some point, the child's face in my paintings had changed into one remaining only in my memory..."

"Luca," Cárcel whispered. "That was the name of your child."

Emiliano regarded him blankly before releasing a short, helpless laugh. "Hearing his name spoken aloud after all these years... it makes him feel real, as though he did exist..."

"He did," Cárcel affirmed. "Unless we both have lost our minds."

"I cannot fathom the depth of grief Her Ladyship must have endured..."

Cárcel's breath caught in his throat, hazy memories now clarifying in his mind. Inés must have remembered each of her lives with startling clarity, even now.

"I told you that I did not find out until after I died that she was already suffering punishment, that I had left her alone," Emiliano continued, eyes dark with remorse. "And yet, I believed that my absence would lead to our child being taken away, and she would return to her life of opulence. That the pain would be temporary, and she would eventually find peace. That she would lead a fulfilling life..."

Cárcel could not find words, his expression taut.

"My lord, have you ever seen a painting come to life?" The bloodshot eyes that had been staring at the floor suddenly looked up to meet Cárcel's. "You must not have, since you are no lunatic. Just as I saw Luca in the face of the child, the brown-haired woman with a tattered white shawl around her head had transformed into Her Ladyship, with her long black hair cascading down her shoulders. I thought to myself that I had finally gone mad, still stuck in my past. Her Ladyship was weeping as she stared down at Luca. No matter how many times I asked why she seemed so heartbroken, I could not get an answer from her. She never once appeared in my dreams, yet she emerged on my canvas. Then, I saw her hands tighten around Luca's neck."

"Emiliano," Cárcel interjected, trying to stop him, but to no avail.

"He was but a few months old, maybe three. He had already caused her much pain with his difficult birth. Yet, she adored him, called him the fruit of her suffering, and showered him with kisses. Whenever she held him, they seemed to be in a world of their own. She said that she had never seen anything so endearing and precious in her whole life."

"Enough."

"She...strangled the boy she loved so much with her own hands because... she intended to die along with him."

Cárcel let out the breath he had been holding.

He recalled her words from another lifetime: "I don't think my child takes after me at all."

But the boy had been almost the exact double of Inés. He had gazed up at Cárcel with olivine eyes, the same shade as hers, and smiled. Cárcel could hardly imagine such a tiny being growing up and running around someday.

She had looked down at the child in her arms with a loving gaze and said, "He's smiling at you... He does like beautiful and handsome people. What a little simpleton." A warm smile had spread across her face. "I named him after Luciano. His nickname was Luca."

The small child had been her first, the fruit of her decision to abandon her future title as the crown princess in favor of a destitute life. The child was born amidst what had seemed to him an incomprehensible folly at the time.

Only when Cárcel saw Inés's smile did he begin to sincerely hope for Emiliano's survival. He longed for her to keep smiling like that, alongside the man and the child who brought her such joy. He didn't want her to live with the memory of her husband's death, the tragic end of her own child at her hands, and putting an end to her own life.

Emiliano's trembling voice drew his attention back. "The woman looked down at the dead child for a long while, and I watched her just as long. It was like I was trapped in an eternal nightmare. I floated around in an unfamiliar room, already dead and without a body, like a ghost unable to do anything but watch them. I wanted to ask her why she did that with her own hands, and how she could do such a thing, but I was entirely helpless..."

Cárcel watched his anguished face in silence.

"I finally woke up from that cursed dream when she stabbed herself in the neck and died." Tears streamed from Emiliano's eyes as he gazed at Cárcel in a daze. "Everything around me disappeared, as if I had died and the world had ended. Suddenly, I found myself staring at the unfinished painting of the woman in the white shawl strangling her child, my paintbrush still in my hand, hovering over the canvas. But I couldn't remember ever painting that piece... It felt as though either God had moved my hand, or the devil himself had played a trick on me. As soon as morning came, I rushed out into the streets to find the woman: the one sitting in the street every day, comforting her starving child while waiting for someone, the woman who murmured blessings in a hoarse voice whenever a passerby threw a coin her way. Soon, I heard the news that she had taken her ailing child's life and her own that very dawn. The look in her eyes was that of a mother resigned to a terrible fate... who knew she would soon have to kill her own child."

"And you consider witnessing such agony and learning of the fate of Inés and your child a mercy from God?"

"Yes, it must be His mercy." Emiliano smiled through his tears. "If it hadn't been for that dawn, I never would have known about Her Ladyship's suffering. About how deeply I had wounded her, and that my foolish judgment had only freed myself. Unaware of their tragic end, I would have continued to live my life in ignorant peace. I never would have even imagined that she might be living yet another life without the mercy of oblivion, forever haunted by my death, and the death of our child..."

Emiliano began to wipe his face with his palms, as if finally aware of his tears.

"This is the other end to one of her lives that you do not remember, my lord. It is all can tell you in my ignorance." His face, barely managing a fragile smile, betrayed a fear of harboring any blasphemous thoughts against God, as if his resentment might somehow bring harm to Inés. "That peridot pendant was the first token of affection Her Ladyship granted me. It was a memento from her grandmother, bequeathed to her in her youth, and it once had a chain. I had sold the chain early on, but I couldn't bring myself to sell the pendant until we had our child, and necessity demanded it. I still remember the day I wept like a fool before that jeweler in El Tabeo. It was something I never deserved to own."

"So how did that necklace return to your possession?"

"The real necklace must still be in Her Ladyship's possession. The one in El Tabeo is an imitation that I created. I remember everything about it, from its shape to its scratches accumulated over the years. Her Ladyship never knew about the pawnshop in El Tabeo, and I did not expect her to ever visit the city, but..."

"She found it eventually."

This was the reason Cárcel felt that Emiliano and Inés were bound by an unbreakable thread of fate. They seemed like lovers who remembered each other across lifetimes. The man had spoken of his past in such a ridiculous way, and yet the woman had somehow found this trace of him.

"I meant to dismiss everything as a mere delusion if she never found it," Emiliano replied. "That the horrific mercy I experienced that dawn was all a figment of my imagination. That Her Ladyship never killed the boy and did not take her life once again. That she couldn't possibly have returned to life with her memories of our time together intact. I hoped that she would never find it. I prayed that she would never know, because she did not remember me."

Cárcel quietly watched Emiliano, who was telling him the opposite of what he had believed. The man he had sincerely believed to be her lover in this life as well was saying that he had found her but never wanted to meet her.

"But if it was all true, I needed to tell her that none of it was her fault."

Cárcel could see Emiliano's true feelings under his saintly mask: his hatred for this world, weighed down by punishment, his agony over the world and himself, neither of which he could ever forgive. Guilt hung over him like an ever-growing beast.

"Because I was the one who killed that child," Emiliano confessed in a subdued voice. "I loved my son, but I wanted him to die alongside me, lest he put Her Ladyship in danger. I killed him when I betrayed the grace you had shown us and returned to that place, only to be captured. When I handed Her Ladyship over to those men against her will..."

"Go back to Sevilla once your wounds are healed and flee with Inés and your child. But not yet. The Valeztena's soldiers have come to Calztela," Cárcel had told him that day.

"Her Ladyship..."

"She is in a hidden sanctuary in Sevilla."

"May I ask you for one more favor?" Emiliano had asked.

"Was saving your life not enough?"

"I apologize... but you are the only person I could possibly ask."

"Go ahead."

"In the old town of El Tabeo lives a jeweler by the name of Angelica. A very large, peridot pendant has been left there, and etched in it is a double cross and the initials of its former owner. V.O. Velinda Olivares."

"The late Duchess Valeztena. I know of her."

"Would you retrieve that pendant and someday, far in the future, deliver it to Her Ladyship? It belongs to her. I sold the chain long ago, and because I was so poor and wretched, I had to sell the pendant as well, for much less than it was worth, to afford medicine."

"How am I supposed to deliver it to your wife in the future? I won't know where you two will be living by that time."

"By that time, we will most likely no longer be together..."

"You intend to leave her after all this? Preposterous."

"Her Ladyship will soon return to the place she was meant to be."

"What of you?"

"I will take our child and move somewhere far away. Perhaps to Peral, or another distant place. Somewhere far enough, where I will never be able to harm her again. I have faith that one day, she will be able to forget and live in peace. Please deliver the pendant to her then, and tell her that I am well. That I promised I would be. If I could turn back time, I would wish for Her Ladyship to love someone as noble and brave as you. That she would be with someone who suits her, in a position befitting her, living a life she deserves," Emiliano had said.

"It was all the result of my decision, and thus my burden to bear. I wanted to tell Her Ladyship to forget about what happened and find peace. But I am comforted to know that she is with you now." Emiliano's eyes shimmered with tears as he gazed at Cárcel, a soft smile playing on his lips. "Could you convey my message to her one day? It may grieve her to learn that I remember her and our dear Luca's death, and that you are aware of it as well, so it does not have to be anytime soon. But one day, when the time is right, and she confesses all of her pain to you... could you tell her that her Luca was such a pure and gentle soul that he was simply spared from the sufferings of life earlier than others, and that I have never resented her for even a second?"

Cárcel found himself unable to respond, simply staring at Emiliano.

Then, Emiliano drew a gold chain from his pocket and held it out to him, along with a short letter to the jeweler. "I am still but a humble painter, so it took me several more years to afford this modest string of gold. I am glad to finally return the necklace I wrongfully received from such a noble lady at the age of eighteen."

Cárcel quietly accepted the necklace chain.

"I cannot presume to know Her Ladyship's feelings for you, my lord, but I can tell that you will always allow her to be herself. If you love her enough to die for her, then please, choose to live by her side instead." Emiliano bowed his head. "I implore you not to make the same mistake I made long ago."

Cárcel slipped the necklace and letter into his bag without a word. He then took out a rolled-up piece of cloth from inside the bag and handed it to Emiliano. It was the painting of Sevilla that once hung in his residence.

With that, Cárcel left the room, leaving Emiliano and the painting behind.