189. I Said It

2024.04.06.

Emperor Igor was captured and transferred to the Grand Villa.

Due to the involvement of Grand Duke Drietter and Duke Jurgen Racha, the decision regarding his punishment was temporarily postponed.

The moment the Emperor saw Noel’s face—the man who had stood atop the cliff earlier—he erupted in furious shouts, thrashing wildly as if he might escape capture.

He kept frantically calling out for Bollonico, someone he had never particularly missed in life.

An enormous number of personnel were required to move the Emperor to the Grand Villa.

With the deeply divided southern and northern factions surrounding the Emperor, no one could predict when new conflicts might erupt.

Eastern oversight was necessary—especially since, at this very moment, the Duke of Western Selentina, with his keen judgment, had quietly joined the East.

All that remained were the dozens of elite soldiers from Marquis Rev’s house and Count Kimfri’s house, who had first climbed this canyon with Clade.

They took over from those who had already headed to the Grand Villa, beginning their search systematically from the cliff’s summit.

Lancelot followed Eddie, who nervously lashed out at bare twigs with trembling hands, repeatedly steadying his crumbling heart.

Eddie had been slashed nearly to the point of losing an arm while fending off several hyena-like men rushing to find the exiled prince and his wife first.

Seeing him tirelessly continue the search for hours with only hastily wrapped bandages and no painkillers made Lancelot feel like bursting into tears.

He glanced up at the darkening sky and clenched his teeth.

Below the cliff lay a deep hot spring.

Though the fall from such a dizzying height was deadly, survival was still possible—if one was lucky.

Each time they spotted irregularly protruding rocks along the cliff face, they cycled between despair and hope.

When they found scrapes from falling bodies or bloodstains, their hearts sank with a flicker of dread, and they desperately searched through thickets—only to breathe a sigh of relief when they failed to find the cold, lifeless bodies of the couple.

“He’s not someone meant to die like this.”

Eddie muttered, eyes bloodshot.

Having stood closer to the couple than Lancelot, he had been half-mad with shock since the moment they fell.

“That man isn’t meant to die like this.”

Lancelot didn’t respond, silently searching the opposite side. In truth, an ominous premonition had been crawling up his spine since earlier.

Muttering to himself, he turned his back on Eddie, who was absorbed in the search, and finally pulled out what had been bothering him since morning.

It was what Clade had handed him just before they parted, saying, “I’m leaving the rear to you.”

The paper, stained with unknown fingerprints, had been folded and unfolded so many times it was nearly tattered.

With trembling hands, he unfolded it and stared at it for a long time.

Eddie suddenly noticed that Lancelot had become uncharacteristically silent and turned around.

All the knights nearby were intently searching, eyes peeled, but Lancelot stood frozen.

Frowning, Eddie quickly approached and growled.

“Get your head straight, Lancelot.”

“…From the beginning, Clade came up here intending to give his life.”

Eddie flinched, vividly recalling Clade’s words to Igor, even though they had been apart.

Eddie looked at the paper Lancelot was desperately trying to deny existed.

Lancelot kept shaking the paper with trembling hands.

“Do you know what this is?”

It was a bucket list. Neat handwriting, clearly written after much hesitation and deliberation, listing items from number one onward.

Lancelot burst into tears.

This was the same bucket list Yu An had written when suggesting a tour of the estate—Clade had given it to him before leaving, asking him to take care of things afterward.

The items on the list were painfully familiar.

Had Clade been continuously changing Roxenhardt ever since Yu An Pelliese left?

The order in which the estates had been transformed matched Yu An Pelliese’s bucket list astonishingly well.

An overly large bookstore in a city without an academy, an excessively grand and flashy candy shop criticized for catering to so few children, a restaurant and café street where the traces of poverty had been erased enough to enjoy a leisurely afternoon.

All the endless approvals he had signed while holed up in his office, barely sleeping, like a madman…

Lancelot couldn’t even crumple the paper, sobbing uncontrollably.

“That bastard left this with me, knowing he hadn’t even checked off any of these?!”

“Stop crying and keep searching.”

“He was planning to die!”

He shouted, wiping tears streaming down through his crumpled eyes.

“To think that, with that kind of mindset, he’d leave me something like this—something that can’t even be fulfilled without his wife—”

Like assigning me homework to finish what he started.

The rest of his words were muffled by sobs.

Eddie stared at the paper Lancelot held out, then finally couldn’t hold back and shoved his shoulder.

“Snap out of it.”

“You knew he went to face Igor intending to die… and you still went with him?”

“If you don’t get yourself together, that bastard really will die.”

Eddie warned fiercely as Lancelot’s grief turned to rage.

“Whether he went there ready to die or not—it’s on us to protect him now. Understand?”

Shoving the bucket list firmly against Lancelot’s chest, Eddie turned and walked away without looking back.

Lancelot, drenched in tears, blankly stared at Eddie’s retreating back—still desperately searching for Clade despite the warning that his arm might never work again.

Yes, anger can come later.

Forcing himself to clutch his shattered heart, he firmly pressed Clade’s unfinished task back into his own chest.

Just as he sharpened his gaze once more.

“….”

He suddenly lifted his head sharply, as if hearing someone’s sobbing from not far away.

Eddie, who had been searching elsewhere thinking it was Lancelot’s voice, simultaneously raised his head and sharply turned toward him.

The brothers’ eyes locked intensely.

They rushed through the thickets toward the sound without hesitation.

Lancelot, leading the way, froze abruptly at the sight before him.

***

In a snowscape where snowflakes flew fiercely, a man knelt on the ground.

Over his pitifully trembling shoulders and hunched back flowed a darkness of despair so thick no one could bring themselves to approach.

Though his back was covered with an old scar from a monster’s claw and fresh red bruises, what first caught Lancelot’s eye was the thick golden hair and the snow gently piled on the man’s shoulders.

He was crouched low, cradling someone tightly in his arms, desperately shielding them from the falling snow.

It was Clade.

“There’s still so much I haven’t shown you.”

Clade murmured, holding the person in his arms even tighter.

“Your bucket list. I can’t just leave like this without even checking off number one… I can’t do that. I mustn’t do that. I can’t just leave like this…”

His voice was a whisper, like wind forced through a narrow crack.

“It’s changed, you know. It’s not barren, desolate, and empty anymore… It’s not.”

Hot tears streamed down, pooling on eyelids that refused to open.

“…Clade.”

Lancelot approached hesitantly, like someone seeing a vision.

Even as he drew near, Clade continued sobbing. Yes, it was clearly sobbing.

Like the groaning of a great beast mortally wounded.

Just like yesterday, when Lancelot had rushed here in frantic gratitude to God upon finding Clade.

Now, suddenly crushed by a wave of dread, Lancelot stopped, unable to take another step.

Staring blankly at Clade’s ragged, gasping breaths, Lancelot muttered dully.

“Clade… Clade, don’t tell me…”

Even Eddie, who had stayed at a distance, drew closer—then Clade slowly turned his head.

Seeing the wet, broken eyes beyond those strong shoulders, the brothers flinched, unable to speak further.

“…I killed her.”

The brothers had never seen Clade collapse so helplessly in tears like this in over a decade.

This was the man who, even at the death of Mousan Rev, had shed no tears—like a broken machine, he had only stared at the blood streaming from his split forehead.

And now, this Clade was crying like a child.

His voice, slipping between breaths that sounded like they might choke off, was uneven and unstable.

“I said it.”

The brothers looked past Clade’s shoulder, at the figure he was shielding obsessively from the falling snow, sharing his warmth.

Seeing Yu An Pelliese’s face—her small jaw slack, bloodless lips and pale eyelids tightly closed—they stopped breathing.

“I should’ve held it in… but I said it…”

The man, unable to suppress his bursting sobs, clutched the fading warmth like a child, rubbing it incessantly as he murmured.

“I killed her…”

The curse that must never be spoken.

The curse of love he had harbored since meeting her, a curse he had failed to kill by slaying his enemy, had now killed the woman after all.

“I swore I would never say it.”

He had never truly believed Yu An Pelliese wouldn’t die.

So when he sensed her death drawing near, he couldn’t keep silent.

The greed that this was his only chance to confess.

The fierce desire not to relive the desperate regret of letting someone go without ever saying “I love you.”

The fear that the woman who had lived a painful life, stubbornly clinging to a foolish promise until the end, might leave this world alone, carrying only the sorrow of having loved him in silence.

His tongue moved on its own. His lips moved without permission.

He hadn’t killed his enemy with his own hands.

He hadn’t broken that curse with his own hands.

And yet, driven by selfish desire, he had spoken love.

Without even realizing a greater regret might await him.