The Tyrant's Terminally-Ill Childhood Friend (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 117

Lowell Hessen was mad. In truth, looking back, one might even wonder if she had ever been sane.

‘If she’d been a normal person to begin with, she wouldn’t have been so consumed by revenge.’

Noah could confidently claim that he himself clung firmly to the utmost commonality. Most ordinary people were like that. They didn’t burn their entire lives in such a blaze of vengeance. Could anyone truly believe that the last ember of a ruined noble house and the sovereign of an entire nation could align on a single straight line? Even a moth leaping into a wildfire would have better odds of survival.

Thus, most people didn’t choose such a path. Forgetting, compromising, and submitting—these were, in truth, survival skills. Now, whenever Noah recalled the fire at the Hessen estate, all he could picture was blackened ash. He hadn’t seen the burned Hessen mansion with his own eyes, yet that was precisely how it appeared in his mind. So utterly empty was his heart.

Even if the tragedy of House Hessen had cost him his brother and his former life, it was still merely the past. Though some days the ember left in the ashes glowed red-hot like charcoal, searing his insides and jolting him awake in sudden terror, it was only a fragment—a remnant in the ruins.

But Lowell was someone who had never stepped out of the flames, not even for a moment. He realized this the instant he learned she had devoted her entire life to revenge.

That strange sense of dissonance he’d always felt from her—the source of the wariness that set his nerves ablaze—was because such a person simply didn’t know how to live outside the fire. Having grown so accustomed to a life of self-immolation, they’d freeze to death in midsummer if the flames ever went out.

Thus, Noah could foresee this ending. He had joined her on the road to Martinek because he himself wished to witness this conclusion. Perhaps, just perhaps, there was a faint sliver of hope that Lowell might have escaped the wildfire….

‘Did I truly wish for such an ending?’

Maybe he’d hoped Lowell would find peace in the same way he did. Was that why he’d insisted on being present at that very scene? Noah asked himself but found no answer. One thing was certain, however: Lowell hadn’t changed at all since leaving the imperial palace. If anything, she was even aware that she stood within the wildfire.

The only reason Lowell seemed different was that. And Peter, too, likely appeared equally mad for the very same reason.

“Lowell Hessen is mad. And His Majesty is no different.”

“But is that really acceptable? She was needed to control His Majesty’s madness…”

“No, this has nothing to do with von der Leyen.”

Their madness was unlike that. It diverged entirely from the kind of madness etched into bloodlines and passed down through generations. They devoured and nourished each other. It was a wound that would never heal—and its own remedy. They awakened life through pain, stoked flames with hatred to boil water, and ultimately would cover their affection and fall asleep.

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