At the End of Ruin, There You Are (56 Chapters Left to Complete) - Chapter 86

It was an unspeakable taboo, yet also a precious feeling she had quietly cherished. For Caella, her feelings for Pheon were exactly that. She had always felt guilty. She even thought it natural that Beatrice looked down on her.

Liking someone who already belongs to another—what a wicked girl. Truly wicked. Though she scolded herself, her longing was so desperate it made her steal moments in the night. Beatrice mocked her for it.

“People who can’t even find the courage to speak up and only dare to love from afar are cowards,” she’d said. “If you know you’ll just get rejected anyway, why not just give up? Being unable to do even that makes you utterly foolish and stubborn. Oh, I see—you’re foolish, so you don’t even know your place?”

“He’s my husband.”

Every time she heard those words, something inside her would flare up. Resentment toward both Beatrice and Pheon suddenly surged. Legally, he was her husband. Even her surname had changed to reflect that.

She and Pheon were Ferraros, while Beatrice remained a Lavalle. Yet Beatrice and Pheon had always been one flesh. Even if, during their marriage, he occasionally showed kindness or rarely initiated conversation with her, she knew deep down that, in the end, what wasn’t meant to be simply wasn’t.

At first, her feelings had clearly been love. But out of overwhelming guilt—and hidden tightly behind the pride of a Princess of Ostein—that love became stained with humiliation and betrayal.

Perhaps, by the end, the sense of betrayal had grown even stronger than her love. What was certain was that, after teetering between life and death so many times, Caella had lost even the strength to hate Pheon.

Thus, the feelings she’d abandoned no longer needed to be concealed anymore. Not when Pheon, Beatrice, and indeed the entire House of Lusenford already knew about them and mocked her for it.

After all, wasn’t she universally seen as a despicable imperial spy who, despite her lowly station, desperately tried to play the role of duchess, only to be pitifully overshadowed by the belle of high society?

“You read this book just because I read it?”

Caella nodded silently, letting the ink on her letter dry completely.

“When?”

Pheon asked, smiling unconsciously. Would she like that? Of course she would. If Pheon had taken interest in something solely because Caella cared about it, she would’ve been overjoyed. She probably had been.

The affection engraved into her bones still left clear traces; she remembered vividly exactly what emotions she’d felt back then.

Read full content of this chapter on r e d c a t t y . c o m