Feeling the sensation in her body fade, Laura quietly stared up at the ceiling.
-Giggle!
-Here! Over here!
A scene from her childhood, of running and playing with Tenerife in a grassy field, surfaced like a dream.
How was it that even at the moment of her death, she was still seeing this scene.
Even when Cerne Eindark pulled out her memories, even when she fell under Merida Hugh Ikel's Sleep, even now, on the verge of death, she recalled this scene.
‘…Ha.’
She had no choice but to admit it now.
This was ‘lingering regret’.
Amidst her rage and stubbornness, this feeling alone had not faded, remaining in vivid color until the end.
She had been adopted from the start as the princess's double.
A lingering regret—what kind of life might she have lived if she hadn't coveted what she couldn't have, and had been content with what she did?
‘How absurd.’
Seized by desire, she had nurtured her hatred and become a monster.
Why had she been so obsessed with something like being a princess?
It had been a meaningless, twisted life.
“……”
Simon and Merida watched Laura from a short distance away.
As the price for hardening her body with forbidden magic, it was finally crumbling to pieces and disappearing.
Simon felt little sympathy.
She was a villain who had killed far too many people for that.