I Regret The Kindness I Gave You - Chapter 91

Mariette was gone. Across the river from which she could never return, forever.

The word death could not be dared to be uttered.

Merche simply kept her mouth shut as if dead, mustering a handful of strength to keep her crumbling body from collapsing.

Iler Widentia, one of the few survivors of this horrible Venenum tragedy, gazed deeply at Merche.

“…Lady Merche. The young lady has been captured by the prince.”

It was a cruel sentence. Iler watched as Merche, who had barely managed to stand on two feet with the words he uttered, crumbled and collapsed.

“…Carla…”

It can’t be. Please, no. Incoherent pleas seeped through Merche’s lips like breath.

Mariette, Carla, …and Venenum.

They were what Merche had so desperately tried to protect.

The prince, who had cast a catastrophic shadow over everything, had taken and crushed them all. Why on earth? What have I done so wrong to you?

On her pale cheeks, lukewarm liquid fell, plop, plop.

Merche wanted to cry out loud, but not knowing how, she could only scream silently.

Truly, she had intended to die as the prince wished.

If only she had managed to prevent the Sano disaster in time. If only she could have confirmed Christine’s safety and returned to Venenum.

She was prepared to willingly offer her neck to the blade Magnus thrust without a single rebellion.

“Lady Merche.”

“Why… Why on earth…”

The faint call brushing her ears scattered easily. Muttering with empty eyes, Merche crumbled and sank to the ground.

“Get a hold of yourself.”

Lady Merche. At the icy cold voice, her dazed mind returned, albeit vaguely.

Merche slowly lifted her head. There, Iler, with an unusually frigid face, was looking down at her.

“Are you going to collapse like this? Without doing anything, just being driven by him?”

Merche blinked at the gaze that pierced straight without the slightest deviation. Something surged up hotly, making her throat feel stuffy.

“Then… what can I do? What more can I struggle with here, and how?”

The emotion that flashed in Iler’s eyes was a kind that Merche was well accustomed to receiving.

For instance, the eyes with which Genovefa would look at her whenever she failed to control the wolves at Lupinus Castle.

The surging disappointment contained within them.

Hazy tears welled up on their own, obscuring her vision. If the emotion Iler harbored towards her was disappointment, then the emotion she harbored towards Iler was anger.

No. In fact, it was closer to sorrow than anger.

Not knowing how to properly express that naive emotion, Merche only exhaled ragged breaths.

Were her efforts thus far, that desperate struggle, insufficient? She had knelt before Magnus to protect everyone and chose to live a life cowering as if dead, as he wished.

In all aspects, she had resolved to sacrifice and protect, and the only things she had dared to desire were just two.

Christine and Rude’s well-being, their safety. That was all. That was everything she had wished for.

“…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get angry at you or argue.”

However, that too was short-lived. The anger that was about to burn died down like ashes left after the flames had consumed everything.

Merche familiarly turned the anger she had been about to direct at others towards herself. For Merche, it was as natural and easy as breathing.

To begin with, the very act of turning thorns on others was so unfamiliar that it evoked a sense of rejection.

Rather than turning thorns on others, it was better to turn them on herself and bleed.

Merche receptively followed that stubborn thought, which had transformed into a way of thinking akin to a belief and habit that she had ingrained in the past to beg for others’ affection when she was starved for it.

However, watching that, Iler narrowed her eyes. With a rather displeased and astringent expression, she asked subtly.

“How can you so easily utter words of apology?”

“Is even apologizing a mistake?”

“Of course it is. If not for others, then for you, Lady Merche. Such things do not suit you.”

As she responded resolutely, Iler met Merche’s eyes.

“As you may already know, there is no longer anywhere to run. No matter how much you run away, the prince will chase you and surely seek to harm you.”

Will you still look for a hole to escape through?

It was a question, but not one that truly sought to confirm her intention. There was nowhere left to run, so fight back.

Merche closed her mouth once more at the blatant intention to urge her, a kind of whipping and urging.

−Merche. You can’t run away forever.

−If someone is determined to fight you, then what will you do?

Advice from Mariette in the not-so-distant past. And a warning.

−Magnus… He is not one who will not kill you just because you hide. Merche, if the prince tries to kill you, you must also fight back and try to kill the prince. Please remember my words.

At the voice ringing in her head, a surge of tears welled up again. Barely swallowing it down, Merche opened her mouth.

“I cannot defeat the prince.”

It was a thin, powerlessly trembling voice.

Like a helpless lord hastily surrendering at the sight of the black number of enemy troops filling the front of the castle walls.

Merche declared in that submerged tone.

“Prince Magnus is stronger than me, and I don’t have the power to defeat him. So I cannot fight him.”

“Do you really think so?”

Iler tilted her head, questioning Merche’s words.

It was Merche who confessed her lack of ability and shortcomings, yet Iler possessed confidence as if she were Merche herself.

You can defeat the prince. It will surely be so.

The implied meaning was clearly read in Iler’s eyes.

Merche looked at her and let out a long, thin sigh.

“I can’t understand why you and Carla have such conviction in me, what the root of it is.”

“It’s a clear fact and the belief in it. That’s all there is to the basis of my conviction.”

The unwavering answer scattered like the noisy commotion heard from afar.

At the sound of the servants busily moving to hold a funeral after neatly arranging Mariette’s body, Merche once again shrank under the despair she had pushed down for a moment.

“What are you doing here?”

At that moment, a familiar touch pulled Merche close.

“What nonsense did you hear? Why do you look like this again?”

With those few words, grumbled as if it were nothing, a solid sense of stability rushed in like a tide.

What Merche desired the least. The only place she, who had to endure all these moments, could lean on.

Rude lightly lowered his head and kissed Merche’s ear before releasing it.

With the intimate sensation left by the touch of his lips, even the despair and gloom that had been devouring her every nerve vanished in an instant.

“Don’t think. How many times do I have to tell you that wasting time on useless thoughts is your problem?”

It’s not your fault that the old lady died. So close your eyes and stop overthinking.

As his thick, rough fingers traced down her eyes, Merche unwittingly lowered her eyelids obediently.

Just a moment ago, it was suffocating to the point of being unbearable, but as soon as Rude embraced her, her breathing gradually subsided as if her airway had been forcibly cleared.

“What are you looking at?”

While familiarly holding Merche in his arms, Rude naturally picked a fight with Iler as if it were a necessary obligation.

“…I’m looking at a beast trying to tame its master. It’s an absurd sight.”

“What?”

Even in front of a man who looked like he would rush to devour her with his hulking body at any moment, Iler remained composed.

Tsk, Iler clicked her tongue softly.

“It’s good that you’re helping Lady Merche not to break down. But don’t interfere with her taking the path she must take. It’s overstepping your place.”

“What are you saying? Judging by the way you’re running your mouth, it seems like you don’t want to live long. Is dying young your dream?”

“…Sigh. Lady Merche.”

Regardless of what Rude was roughly jabbering about, Iler quietly called out to Merche.

Around that time, Merche, who had been standing while leaning against Rude’s embrace, finally stood on her own feet and looked at Iler.

“We don’t have much time. Even considering the prince who has no patience and the young lady captured by him, you’ll have to make a decision one way or another soon.”

Then, please rest, even if only for a short while. Iler, who didn’t let go of her subtle urging until the end, turned around neatly and left.

Even if only for a short while. Merche absentmindedly repeated a fragment of the words Iler had left behind.

So that meant the few days it would take to hold Mariette’s funeral.

Lady Mariette’s funeral? …Ah. The lord has passed away. Prince Magnus came to take the divine object, and the lord… So the lord…

“Merche?”

Her head felt unusually hot and her ears felt muffled. Merche shook her head furiously, staggering.

“What’s wrong, why are you suddenly unable to breathe again? …Merche!”

The exhaled and inhaled breaths hung heavily like cotton soaked in water.

With a dizzy sensation, a splitting headache assailed her body, and Merche realized.

The lord is really dead. I can never see the lord again. Never again…

The dark and damp emotions that had been pushed to the limit surged like a tidal wave.

Merche, Merche. A muffled voice, as if heard while submerged in water, kept calling her endlessly.

Yet Merche was endlessly buried in emotions, sinking to the very bottom, like a cesspool-like underground.

−Merche. You suffocating, foolish child.

Was it a dream? It was as if Mariette was smiling and calling her.