The queen's chamber was shut tight.
It was a space filled with splendid carpets and the warmth of a glowing hearth, yet the silence that had settled over the three of them was heavier and colder than any winter wind.
Even Arthur, the merciless conqueror who had swept across Britain's blood-soaked battlefields and cut down the heads of countless enemies, felt an unfamiliar sweat dampen his hands at this moment.
It was Arthur who first broke the silence. He opened his mouth carefully.
"How have you been... Elaine?"
"As Garlot's queen, I have spent ordinary yet busy days. His Majesty Nentres cherishes me dearly, and the children are growing up safely as well."
Elaine lifted the teapot resting on the table and poured warm tea into three cups as she gave an exceedingly formal, composed reply.
Only the faint clatter of teacups filled the room.
She picked up the cup poured for herself, moistened her lips with a sip, then looked steadily at the siblings with her captivating eyes.
"But what you truly wish to ask is not how I have been, is it?"
At that gentle voice striking the heart of the matter, Arthur and Artoria's shoulders twitched slightly. After exchanging glances, it was Artoria who spoke this time, heavily.
"...Do you not resent us?"
It was a question like a sinner's confession.
Their birth had not been a blessing.
The late King Uther Pendragon, driven by a mad obsession to produce an heir, to create the incarnation of the red dragon, had driven Gorlois to his death and forcibly raped his wife, Duchess Igraine.
Arthur and Artoria were the products of that horrific rape and conspiracy. From Elaine's point of view, they would have been the very scar left by the destruction of her once-happy family.
Elaine set down her teacup and let out a light sigh.
"I will not lie. At first, it was dreadful, and I resented it deeply. My peaceful daily life was shattered, and my mother was dragged away by a beast of a tyrant... I hated the world, and I hated the ominous lives that must have taken root in my mother's womb."
At that honest confession, Artoria lowered her head.
"But."
A faint warmth entered Elaine's voice.
"As time passed and my thoughts slowly cooled, I came to realize it. That entire tragedy belonged wholly to the arrogance and sin of Uther Pendragon, who took another man's wife as a tool simply because she was an excellent vessel. You two as well could not possibly have wished to be born into this world through such a terrible means."
One cannot lay sin upon a life born without choice. Through long years of pain that seemed to carve into her bones, Elaine had drawn out that truth and forgiven the two siblings.
"To be honest... I have lived all this time with a heavy stone resting in one corner of my heart."
Arthur confessed with a bitter twist to his face.
"When I think of that mad atrocity committed by a father whose face I never even knew, and of the terrible suffering my mother, whose face I was likewise never able to see, must have endured alone... I felt ashamed. If I could have met her, I would have wanted to apologize, even if only in my father's stead."
Beside him, Artoria too continued in a trembling voice, her eyes reddening.
"I feel the same. It was only after I held Mordred in my arms and became the mother of a child, only after I felt that overwhelming happiness, that I finally understood. The radiant joy of life that I feel... to Mother, it must have felt like pain digging into her flesh day after day, and nothing but dreadful despair. Our very existence in her womb must have been a great torment to her."
Artoria's eyes shimmered with tears as she imagined the hellish time their mother must have endured.
At the sight of the siblings crushed beneath guilt, Elaine quietly shook her head.
"Both of you are underestimating what a mother is."
"What...?"
"A mother is someone far greater and stronger than your shallow imaginings or your guilt."
Elaine rose from her seat and walked to the ornate wooden chest of drawers set in one corner of the room.
What she carefully unlocked and took out was a single old, yellowed sheet of parchment, bearing the full traces of time.
"After Mother was taken away by Uther, I never saw her face again. Uther thoroughly cut off all outside contact. And after Mother died, the only keepsake secretly delivered to me was this one letter."
Elaine carefully spread the old parchment out on the table before the siblings.
It was Igraine's final letter, and the last truth she had written down as though coughing up blood.
Arthur and Artoria, not even daring to breathe, began tracing the remnants left by their mother with their eyes as they read.
[To my beloved daughter Elaine.
After losing my beloved husband, I was dragged alone into the cold tower of a strange land, and a life in which I was regarded not as a person, but merely as a tool to bear the dragon's heir, was truly like hell.
In a room where no light entered, Uther told me, with such calm arrogance, that he would soon die.
A queen in name only, a vessel carrying the seed of a dying tyrant. My life was already no different from being over.
But, Elaine.
The only reason this mother could endure without biting off her own tongue amid that humiliation and terrible pain was because of the sound of the two little hearts stirring inside my womb.
Though they were lives conceived by force, against my will, they were still my children, bound to me by blood.
The world may call these children monsters born from Uther's ambition and Britain's tragedy, but to me they were only my poor little babies, wriggling in my womb.
I will curse and resent Uther forever for killing my husband and violating me, but I have never once resented these children.
Uther took them from my arms the moment they were born.
I was robbed of my children without ever being able to hold them properly even once, and I will likely never see these poor little bundles of blood again for the rest of my life.
So, Elaine, my beloved daughter.
If someday in the distant future you come to meet these children, then please, in this mother's place, care warmly for those two younger siblings as their elder sister.
This wretched mother shamelessly asks that my poor daughter deliver to them the love I was unable to give.
Though the time I carried them was short, and the moment I faced them was but an instant, I love those two children more deeply than my own life.
I am truly sorry for not being able to remain by your side, for casting you into a lonely fate.
My Elaine, and my two little baby birds.
I truly, truly love you.]
By the time they reached the final sentence of the letter, thick drops of water fell onto the old parchment. Drip. Drip-drip.
From the eyes of Arthur, who had commanded the battlefield, hot tears spilled out beyond restraint.
Beside him, Artoria too covered her face with both hands, her shoulders shaking soundlessly as tears poured from her.
The vast and sacred love of a mother, something they had never once felt in all their lives, came rushing over them like a waterfall, soothing their scars.
Elaine, who had silently watched her two half-siblings cry like children, slowly approached and drew both their heads into her embrace.
"Do you understand now? Mother never once hated you. So there is no need for you to remain bound by guilt over your birth any longer."
With gentle hands, she patted Arthur's back, soaked with tears, and softly stroked Artoria's blond hair.
"You have both suffered greatly, carrying such heavy fates without parents all this time. My dear siblings."
The curse and original sin of Uther, which had bound them for more than a decade, was at last being quietly redeemed within the great love of a mother and the warmth of the sister she left behind.
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