186. I Don’t Love Her?

2024.04.03.

It was Emperor Igor, not the frozen Yuan, who immediately responded to Clade’s strained voice.

“You’ve got quite a face, haven’t you?”

He murmured with a flushed expression, as if he had just seen something precious.

“You’re so much like your father.”

“Leave irrelevant people out of this.”

Even with Clade’s sharp retort and hardened expression, the emperor’s gaze had already drifted past Clade, fixated on someone else reflected in that face.

“Your father was the same.”

The emperor, recalling Alexei, suddenly widened his eyes.

“He was struck by five of these hideous arrows, yet still worried about your mother laughing and chattering below.”

“You must be mistaken. Don’t you dare compare my parents to this moment. I don’t love that woman.”

Even as Clade spat the words, the emperor ignored him, layering memories from the past onto the present.

“When he shouted at you—asking what you had done to your mother, saying she was none of your concern—your face looks just like his now. Look at your face, Clade, crumbling to pieces.”

The emperor’s previously cheerful smile vanished.

“And yet… you don’t love her?”

The emperor growled like an interrogator whose fury had reached its peak.

“You don’t love her?”

The emperor’s crossbow shifted again, properly aimed at Yuan.

“Really?”

He pleaded as if he were about to die of regret.

“If you say you love her, I’ll gladly withdraw this arrow and leave that woman alone. Are you really going to let your wife die because of your rebellion? All because you claim you don’t love her?”

The emperor glared at Clade with bloodshot eyes.

“Since you’ve wagered your life on killing me, I shall respond in kind, as a true Euphris man should. I’ll let you decide.”

Let him decide? What exactly was he being allowed to decide?

In this space completely filled with the emperor’s men, with Yuan standing alone, a crossbow pointed at her.

The emperor seemed to have bet everything on the certainty that Clade would have no choice but to save Yuan.

“You can’t have everything, my dear nephew. If you kill me with Alexei’s sword, I won’t be able to stop this arrow from flying.”

The emperor smiled again, leisurely, as if he might release the bowstring at any moment.

“Kill me and lose your love. Or save that woman and die yourself.”

A cruel, hollow smile was poured onto Clade.

“Lose everything you love, just like your father. Or die protecting the one you love, just like your father.”

Malicious blue eyes slowly swept over his nephew.

“If you understood how futile it all is, you could beg me. It took me over ten years to teach you that.”

Yuan’s throat, smeared with blood, convulsed violently. She grew anxious at Clade’s silence.

Why was he just standing there, unable to even sneer at those words? Could he possibly be considering begging for her sake?

Clade wasn’t looking at Yuan anymore.

He wasn’t even looking at the enemy he’d waited over ten years to kill.

Yuan’s heart pounded as she saw her reflection in those amethyst eyes, fixed on the empty space between them.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Clade. He was already far stronger than she had ever imagined.

Had she not existed, he would have been more than capable of standing against the emperor.

And yet, such a man was no longer looking at his enemy.

His sunken eyes didn’t waver like someone tormented by inner conflict, nor did they ripple with sentimentality.

But Yuan felt she could understand why the emperor, risking even his own life, was provoking Clade so relentlessly.

“Why…?”

There was no option in Clade’s choices that involved letting Yuan die.

No will to convey his intentions showed in his downcast eyes or tightly sealed lips, yet Yuan instinctively sensed it.

Clade had no intention of sacrificing her.

“Why…?”

Just give up on me.

You could just let me go.

We were finished anyway, and we’d already said our farewells.

It was you who said our meeting that night would be our last.

You sent me away. Even knowing that Eugene Kimfri liked me, you still let me go—as if I could live perfectly fine on my own…

You tried to send me to another country without even asking for my consent.

You acted as if we owed each other nothing, as if we’d never see each other again.

Yuan remembered that final night with him.

She had refused to force herself to understand his incomprehensible actions by asking “why” once more.

She had tried to accept everything about him as it was and finish her mission. So why now?

Even though Clade had staked everything for far longer than she had, striving to kill his enemy…

Why had he stopped?

Why was he making her think “why” again, forcing that question back into her mind?

“Go on, kill me, Clade! If you surpass your father, if you can prove to me that love means nothing, then I’ll gladly die by your hand! I promise—I’ll place my life entirely in your hands!”

Trembling, Yuan sucked in a sharp breath and glared at the silent Clade.

Just kill him. Kill that demon. Just kill him!

Only Igor Euphris’s excited voice echoed across the silent peak of the canyon.

“If you kill me, on my final journey… I’ll take your despair as my companion to my Eleonore.”

And I’ll shout that I was right.

That Clade, the so-called proof of your precious love, has finally chosen revenge over love! That your son, the one you protected, has become exactly what I trained him to be over ten years.

That he has finally learned to discard pointless love! That because of my teachings, your son survives—so wasn’t I right all along?

Yuan looked at Clade, gripping his sword so tightly his knuckles turned white, across from the emperor spewing incomprehensible words.

The man who, just minutes ago, seemed utterly detached from this world, unwavering and solid, now appeared on the verge of shattering.

She saw the face of a man who couldn’t cut away every word the emperor hissed like a snake, all because of her existence, enduring humiliation.

Then—

“The South never forgets kindness!!”

From below the canyon, a roaring wave of southern shouts crashed toward the spot where they stood.

And that wasn’t all.

“The East never forgets its enemies!”

The eastern knights led by Lancelot roared in response, their cries reverberating through every corner of the canyon.

The emperor’s face, which had maintained composure with a faint smile until now, drained of color.

As the shouts drew nearer, he roared like a tiger trying to overpower their momentum, laughed for a long while, then forced a grin onto his furious face.

And the moment Clade, who had been standing still, flinched and took a single step forward, the emperor fired the crossbow at Yuan.

The arrow, shot in excessive excitement, veered wildly off course.

Gumneth Yotpha, standing nearby, rolled on the white ground with a scream.

The emperor furiously threw down the crossbow and swiftly drew the black sword sheathed at his side, aiming it at Yuan.

The instant the blade pointed directly at Yuan, a buzzing filled her head.

Only then did she realize that the nausea she’d felt whenever near the emperor wasn’t just from tension.

The black sword. The very weapon that drove her parents to death and killed her sister now dared to call out to her.

She felt blood trickling down.

Blood streamed from both ears, her nose, and her mouth—a signal flare of the agony contained within her shattered body.

“Don’t you dare hope to win just because some brats are causing trouble, Clade!”

Emperor Igor forcibly steadied his trembling eyes and tightly gripped the black sword.

“Our deal isn’t over. I clearly stated I’ve also wagered my life.”

He assumed the stance to hurl the black sword at the swaying Yuan at any moment, stretching both corners of his mouth into a smile.

“If you can’t kill me now, you’ll never have another chance. So if you can’t do it—beg! Beg! Beg!”

Words that would have been mere last desperate cries if Yuan hadn’t existed.

In the emperor’s eyes, which had seemed indifferent to the wavering of mere knight units, uncontrollable killing intent finally surfaced.

The cries of those who never forget kindness, who never forget their enemies, drew closer and closer.

Spotting Clade slowly lowering his stance, the emperor’s eyes lit up with sudden awareness.

This was the final outburst—the desperate cry of one who sensed his own end.

“You insolent brat!”

The black sword finally flew from the emperor’s clenching hand as the shouts drew nearer.

Clade, seizing the opening, kicked off the ground.

Yuan shook her head, as if trying to escape the overwhelming buzzing that had taken over her mind, covering her ears. At the same time, she felt relief.

By the time the emperor, desperate to witness Clade’s despair, was killed by Clade’s hand, and Clade turned to look at her…

She would already be gone, struck by the black sword and fallen over the cliff. At least she wouldn’t die before his eyes.

Yuan, who had braced herself to face her enemy’s end and accept death bravely, instead saw the hilt of the black sword quivering in her chest—before she could even scream.

It had flown so forcefully that, despite her feet not moving, she was already shoved to the very edge of the cliff.

Her legs wobbled, and her empty back hovered in midair.

The emperor’s face lit up with triumph, unable to contain his rage as he hurled the black sword at Yuan.

At the same moment, Clade fiercely pulled Yuan’s arm, drawing her into his embrace.

Boom!

A sound erupted as if someone had shattered the very edge of the cliff where they stood.

The bright blue sky filled her vision.

Falling. Endless falling.

Only now did the voice she had heard in that instant—when she first felt her feet no longer touching the ground—finally seep into her mind.

“Yes… I wanted to see that face exactly like this.”

In a moment when all time around her seemed to slow.

It was the emperor’s voice, sounding as if lost in ecstasy, cutting through the roars of furious men.

***

The moment Clade moved, Eddie, who had launched the ambush simultaneously, stood dazed on the cliff edge the emperor had severed.

“Clade…”

Instead of seizing the opening to drive his sword into his enemy’s heart, the fool had thrown himself after a woman already beyond saving, vanishing into the misty vapor below.

It was a sheer, endless cliff.