Even if Your Regret Holds Me Back - Chapter 1

“Are you Helena Owen?”

Perhaps it was from that moment.

When God began to completely abandon her.

That’s what Helena thought, having gone from a witch wandering the streets to becoming a noble Grand Duchess.

“Strangely, I feel at ease whenever I’m by your side. The more I think of you, the more I miss you. I wish you felt… the same way about me.”

Eugene Hyde von Evergail.

The owner of the land on which all the villagers who cursed her stood,

From the moment she encountered the Grand Duke of Evergail, all her blessings and tragedies were born.

‘It’s all ancient history now.’

But it was a realization that no longer mattered.

Helena should have understood time sooner. Before that force which fades everything, both blessings and tragedies became increasingly distant, like a fog-swallowed swamp.

Memories blurred away and a majestic drumbeat resounded. As if heralding the end of the world, it echoed in her ears: boom, boom, boom.

“The execution of Helena Evergail will now commence.”

At last, once again. The executioner’s proclamation had fallen.

It was as concise and unadorned as her own downfall. Few words were needed to go from being a noble Grand Duchess to a disgraced death row convict facing false charges.

Helena crawled along like an empty can, kicked about by the executioner. Her swollen eyelids made it difficult to see clearly.

She could barely feel the throbbing pain in her wrists, raw from the coarse ropes. Her legs, broken and neglected for days, were now numb.

An extreme chill gripped and twisted her to the bone. Helena tried to mull over the past but soon gave up the thought.

As she bowed her head low, a dark shadow loomed over her.

“Helena.”

Just like when she first met him, her name carried on that pleasing, low resonance.

His voice, with its lilting intonation, always exuded a somewhat sensual ambiance.

Even if some might say it sounded cold and aloof, to Helena it was just one of the many reasons she fell in love with him.

However.

If she had known that voice would become such poison, strangling her breath, would she not have loved him?

‘No, I couldn’t have.’

So this is how it ended up. Helena struggled to lift her head and look up at Eugene.

“You are the worst.”

She forced herself to meet those eyes, now devoid of even a speck of warmth.

“If you were going to discard me like this, you shouldn’t have approached me in the first place.”

She wanted to remain composed until the end, but her lips trembled uncontrollably. It was worse as she barely held back her tears.

Sorrowful and grieving, her resentful lament gradually welled up.

“You shouldn’t have given me any affection. You shouldn’t have embraced me warmly. You shouldn’t have said you loved me. If you couldn’t see it through to the end!”

At last, her passion erupted in a near-scream. It surged and surged, finally collapsing miserably.

“You shouldn’t have… shouldn’t have… reached out to me.”

Her voice, now completely hoarse, subsided like dying embers.

His cold gaze alone hurt her more than the jeers and condemnation of the crowd. Especially since those eyes were not originally like that.

“Then I would have lived resigned to the fact that my life was always meant to be this wretched. Why did you make me hope, only to push me to rock bottom and make me even more miserable? Did you enjoy seeing me swayed by your every word so much?”

“Do you think you have the right to be angry at me now?”

“You said you loved me. You said you would be with me for life. After promising that… am I, am I… still worth only this much to you?”

“You brought this upon yourself, Helen. No matter how wronged you felt, you shouldn’t have killed Natasha.”

“I didn’t kill her. Really. Please believe me.”

“…Hah, Helena.”

Eugene let out a rough sigh, suppressing his anger as he rubbed his face.

Helena wished she could go deaf, unable to bear hearing his next words.

But her bound hands weren’t even allowed to cover her ears.

“Atone for the sin of taking Natasha from me with that wretched life of yours.”

The sound of him clicking his tongue once again cruelly pierced her heart.

His downward gaze seared through her entire body.

“Eugene, Eugene…! Don’t go! Eugene!”

Despite Helena’s desperate cries, he turned away with a disgusted expression, as if looking at filthy refuse.

The muffled sound of his footsteps grew distant. It was replaced by the roar of the crowd that had gathered to witness the execution.

Amidst the commotion, the executioner grabbed Helena by her hair and dragged her onto the scaffold.

Ah, ah, ah…

Only incoherent sighs circled her throat, unable to form sentences.

To her, for whom his love had been everything, if that love was now withdrawn, if there was no way back…

‘How am I supposed to live now?’

Her contemplation was brief. Under the dawn’s light, the thick blade glinted.

Soon it struck her nape with a thwack.

Slash!

Thus her first life rolled away.

“Huk, heuk…!”

After two more lives crumbled, when she opened her eyes for the fourth time.

Helena finally realized.

It was truly time to end her love with him.

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Once, Helena was clever enough to know her place. A tenacious witch of the destitute Owen family, who would throw away a noble’s name and face to beg for money. That’s who she was.

Without a dress to protect her, her innate face and body were sins, not blessings. She instinctively understood that if she sold the only thing she had, it would only bring greater misfortune.

So, because she knew too well. She even committed acts far beyond her station.

“Please leave now. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t come looking for me anymore.”

However, Eugene was not a man docile enough to accept her presumptuous rejection.

Despite the strange glances from others and numerous attempts to dissuade him, he promised eternity every day, offering flowers and jewels.

No matter how much she tried to ignore and push him away, he would appear the next day with an even larger bouquet. He kept coming, persistently coughing due to his flower pollen allergy.

Contrary to her expectation that he would give up soon, his courtship continued past a week, beyond a month, and over half a year.

Seeing his persistence, Helena helplessly gave her heart to him. Even knowing she shouldn’t fall deeper, the dripping water eventually broke through the wall.

The powerful Grand Duke of the North and the fallen Viscount’s daughter.

An ill-fitting pair, like mismatched puzzle pieces.

So when the Grand Duke of Evergail finally announced their marriage, it was truly sensational. Helena became the best appetizer to whet the appetite of those who loved to gossip.

⌜She certainly knows how to use that pretty face of hers.⌟

⌜How shameless, I hear she made clearing all her family’s debts a condition for marriage? I wonder why the Grand Duke is so desperate to keep such a brazen woman by his side.⌟

⌜She’s always been quite the scandalous woman. I suppose this time she might have gotten herself pregnant.⌟

Whether commoner or noble, the weight of their tongues was no different. While they kept quiet to her face, the moment they turned their backs, base speculations and gossip pushed her into an abyss.

But Helena endured all that persecution.

“Forget it all. No matter what anyone says, you will be my wife.”

Solely because of the fact that Eugene loved her.

That one fact, which should be natural between lovers, kept her alive. He was her reason for living and her savior.

She believed that a fateful encounter like those in fairy tales had come to her too. It was the first stroke of luck in a life full of nothing but misfortune.

It was like that until that beautiful blonde woman, Natasha, appeared.

“I don’t want to steal your position as the lady of the house. Let’s be friends, shall we?”

Sadly, the other side of fairy tales always harbored a snake cloaked in cruelty. Those who coveted a place they shouldn’t dare to look at had to be punished.

The snake opened its maw, and Helena realized. She was not the protagonist.

When had it begun, that Eugene’s lips spoke only Natasha’s name instead of hers?

Foolishly, by the time she realized, it was too late. So this time, it couldn’t end the same way.

‘Even if I die again, I can’t die by your hand.’

Her life was nothing compared to the pain of being abandoned by him.

It was the most peaceful ending Helena could have right now.

[This is the timeline separator]

In a sun-drenched indoor garden. The Duke and Duchess of Evergail sat across an elegantly set tea table.

The steam rising from the teacup moistened Helena’s cheek, awakening her from her daze.

Helena scratched the gold-decorated rim of the teacup with her fingertip before lifting her head. Outside the large window, she could see her dedicated maid, Madame Tara, waiting. She was the only one in the mansion who knew about her relationship with Eugene.

They say life is a comedy when seen from afar, but a tragedy up close. Even from afar, the scene inside the greenhouse looked quite miserable.

Madame Tara, perhaps maintaining minimal courtesy, kept her head bowed, desperately avoiding her gaze. Her demeanor made Helena more acutely aware of her situation.

‘It seems nothing has changed this time either.’

The fourth life she faced after going through three regressions was a bit different from before. She had always returned to the third year of marriage, to the moment she spent the night with him. But this time, she woke up in the fifth year.

At first, she was a little excited, wondering if some turning point had occurred. But it was a vain hope.

In fact, from the moment she woke up in her own separate room instead of Eugene’s bed, she had vaguely sensed it. Thinking that it was God’s arrangement telling her to stop making futile efforts since there was only one ending anyway, made her feel more at ease.

Helena spent the night doubly steeling her heart to feel at ease. That’s why she was sitting here like this.

To put an end to this relationship where not a single conversation or glance was exchanged.

‘We were a couple that hardly deserved the word, weren’t we?’

Swallowing a faint sense of futility, Helena brought the teacup to her lips.

Eugene possessed vast territories in the northern part of the Instantia Empire. The previous Grand Duke was a great man who ended the long-standing territorial war, and Eugene too inherited his fame as an invincible national hero.

Moreover, Evergail had several massive ventures that had been ongoing for decades since the previous generation. The shipbuilding industry in the Senova Archipelago and the magic stone mines in the Hecate region boasted the largest scale in the empire. Eugene maintained these firmly, proving himself a capable businessman who extracted enormous wealth.

But as is often the case with figures of his stature. He was always busy.

Just this month alone, she could count on one hand the number of times she had seen his face, let alone heard his voice.

So, given how occupied he was with public and private affairs.

‘I suppose that’s why he never opens his mouth first even when we’re face to face like this.’

But whether he was the empire’s hero, the enviable Grand Duke of Evergail, or secretly having an affair.

It was all irrelevant now.

Because he and she would soon be strangers.