RAMHM Chapter 137

Die for Me

They say real shock doesn't even let you scream.

Novian crossed the room to me in an instant. His dark blue eyes moved with the same relentless, churning unsteadiness as before—but he didn't seize me, the way I had expected him to.

He simply covered my parted mouth with a gentle hand from behind, and as I scrambled to my feet he drew me back against him, quietly, as if careful not to startle.

Gooseflesh, all over. Not disgust. Not refusal.

From the sheer fact of it—that he had escaped Rubel Tower, that he had come through walls guarded by the Marchioness's knights, and that he was here, holding me from behind.

Novian. And me.

Both of us breathed hard.

I, to settle the shock. He, to quiet a body that had been running to get here.

When our breathing had slowed somewhat, Novian quietly withdrew his hand from my mouth. Because I didn't seem likely to cry out.

I turned around silently to face him—not in the mirror, but directly.

The sharp tension that had keened in his deep blue eyes softened by degrees, then settled into a gentle, wavering motion.

Those same eyes I had once loved.

"……You broke out?"

"Yes."

Novian reached a hand toward me and then stopped—and took a step back instead.

One of my eyebrows rose of its own accord. He had appeared without warning in my room in the middle of the night, and somehow his behavior was quieter than I'd expected.

"Rienne."

"Why did you come?"

Novian's lips parted slightly, then stiffened. Chapped and dry—the lips of a man who had been taking care of nothing.

Hollowed eye sockets. Shadow pooled beneath his eyes. A jaw gone sharp with weight loss. Pallor all the way through. He was not all right.

"To kill me? Or kidnap me?"

"No."

"Then what nerve brought you crawling in here looking like that? Did you think I'd be so moved I'd take you into my arms?"

"I wanted to see you."

"……."

"I wanted to see you living—healthy and alive……."

I took a step back. Novian's upper body inclined toward me slightly, then found itself again.

"As you can see, I'm alive and well."

"I wanted to see you."

I closed my mouth.

"I wanted to see you, Adrienne."

The composure in Novian's face crumpled for one swift moment—and then returned.

What remained instead was the clenched jaw, and those chapped lips beginning to tremble in fine, involuntary shaking.

"Because I wanted to see you so much……."

Thin tears dropped from his hollow cheeks.

Thud. Thud.

"Because I wanted you so much, I……"

A sob tried to tear loose from his throat. He bit it back, twisting.

"I wanted you so much, I couldn't——"

Why is it that memory always beautifies the past.

After everything he did to me. After erasing him entirely from my heart and finding new happiness.

"Can't sleep. Can't eat. The thought that you heard what I said to that woman—what I said thinking she was someone else—every time I think of it, I……."

The good memories from when I loved him surfaced like thorns and pricked, small and steady.

Why did his history suddenly come back to me now—how ruinous a life this man had led, inside all that sordid truth.

"I can't count how many times I've wanted to kill myself."

I disliked this man. But it was also true that I pitied him.

"I know you feel betrayed by me. I know that even if you forgave me, you couldn't stay beside me."

Yes. I pitied him, a little.

That's separate from no longer loving him.

That great and formidable man.

The Grand Duke Novian Trovika, who had once wielded unchecked power across all of Ronteaux with the Emperor and Crown Prince at his back—he was not here.

Only a wretched man was here, weeping in front of me, having broken every law he'd once kept like a blade, accepting the disgrace of escape.

"I've lost everything. But maybe I'm still someone useful. Remember?"

Novian drew a familiar dagger from inside his coat.

"I used this blade to kill the Crown Prince—my future, the man I had staked everything on. I did that with a single word from you, Rienne."

I drew a quiet breath, held the silence a moment, and then spoke.

"So—you've come to kill someone else for me?"

"……If that's what you want."

He said it softly, like a dark incantation, and stepped close—pressing the dagger into my hand.

I flinched when his cold, dry fingers touched mine. Novian took the hand that now held the dagger and brought it to rest against his chest.

THUNK. THUNK. THUNK. THUNK.

His heartbeat hammered straight into my palm.

"I'll do anything. Anything at all. If it means I can come one step closer to your side…… If you'd only allow me to see your back from a distance, I would gladly——"

Tap.

The hair he'd had neatly tied came loose on its own.

Black hair, unbound, spilled toward me.

Eyes like a dark night sky moved closer and closer.

'Is he serious?'

I kept staring into those eyes, genuinely wondering whether this was Novian's true intent.

Which was why I hadn't even noticed how close he had come.

Then.

BANG!

"My lady. I don't care how you slice it, before the investiture I really need to hear the pla— what the f—?!"

The door Epero threw open without knocking—the same Epero who had barged into Rhodness's study without so much as a tap.

Epero took in my hand holding the dagger, and Novian—who had been a breath away from pulling that hand and my entire self into his arms—and the wide-open window with curtains still fluttering along its edge, and he drew the sword at his hip in one motion.

The hand Novian hadn't caught was immediately seized by Epero and pulled away.

Before I could register it, Epero's broad back had placed itself between me and Novian.

"What—you break out of prison, and the second my brother's gone you crawl in here? That's some sick, twisted shit."

"Epero. I have no business with you."

"You don't, but I have plenty with you. My lady, are you all right? Did he do something to you?"

Both Novian and Epero, locked in a standoff, waited for my answer at once.

I stepped out from behind Epero and pulled him around behind me instead.

"My lady!"

"There is one thing I want from you."

The words came to me clearly, and I said them to Novian.

As Epero's expression darkened, Novian's face softened by degrees.

He sank to his knees in front of me—entirely naturally, as though it were inevitable. The posture of a man seeking pardon, even after pardon had already been promised.

I pressed down the flicker of pity that surged in me. I pitied him. That was a separate thing entirely from love. I let neither show.

I smiled—forced, and faint—and returned the dagger to him.

"Die for me."

The eyes of Novian, taking the dagger back from my hand, moved roughly with an unsettled, unsteady motion.

The date for the sainthood investiture ceremony had been set.

One week away—and the county was in upheaval at the news.

We threw together our things in haste and prepared to return to the capital. Rhodness had urged us to wait until after the ceremony, but I had already agreed to assist Grand Prelate Telrn with the investiture, and there was no time to delay.

Olivia chose not to travel with us. She would head east instead.

"I've already sent a carrier pigeon to Bianca, so Ollie only needs to find Father and deliver my letter."

"Take care of yourself, my lady."

Olivia pulled me tightly into her arms once, then climbed into a carriage with a small escort of knights.

Watching her go, Rotsy quietly boarded a separate carriage. She had made clear she was willing to travel to the capital with us.

Canulla said she preferred her own carriage and took the Marchioness's vehicle. Epero joined mine.

Count Acacia judged it unwise to reveal himself yet and agreed to follow separately and in secret.

"If you wanted to kill him, you could've just stabbed him yourself. You think the Grand Duke's going to die on command if you hand him a dagger and tell him to? Really, my lady."

The moment the carriage moved, Epero unloaded his complaints with the energy of someone who had been saving them.

Last night.

Along with the command to die for me, I had added one more request.

Quietly enough that Epero hadn't heard. Which was exactly what was written on his face now.

"That man's eyes were dripping with longing. Rhoan's going to lose his mind when he finds out. You know I can't keep a secret. The second we get to the capital, I'm telling him everything that happened last night."

"I have a plan for all of it. And a friend wouldn't normally do that sort of thing."

"A real friend would share the entire plan. I don't know how you're going to deal with Doris Castagna, you won't tell me anything, you're keeping it all locked up—and if it doesn't work, I swear I'll——"

"So you won't be my friend?"

Epero's lips, which had seemed ready to say yes, moved once and then pressed shut.

He stared at my faintly smiling face for a moment, then turned sharply toward the window.

His face had gone a little red.

"……Sounds like somebody's planning a funeral."

"I still intend to be your friend for the time being, so please don't be like this. Friends need trust too—trust me a little. Even if I end up at a funeral, I won't cause you any trouble, Your Highness."

"For the time being? What does that mean—is this plan going to end with me as your enemy?!"

Epero's panicked voice rang through the carriage.

The tight, sinking anxiety that had pressed on me since last night loosened slightly.

"What? Why aren't you answering? My lady!"

Smiling again—barely, but genuinely—I spent the rest of the journey to the capital soothing an increasingly agitated Epero.

When no word arrived from Olivia—sent to Ellaconia—Duke Pirreta, who had taken to his bed in collapse, finally rose again.

「A daughter born of your blood, Bliea Pirreta, has enthralled the Second Prince Rhodness. Help your daughter become Crown Princess. Lend your support to His Highness the Second Prince in the name of the East. I will make you the father-in-law of the next Emperor.」

When the letter was delivered to Duke Pirreta—belatedly, through Olivia—something transformed in his face.

The pallor that had drained it flooded back with color. Teeth appeared in a smile that had been a long time away.

Bianca and Olivia watched that dramatic change in silence, barely breathing.

"Gregory. I'll be going to the sainthood investiture ceremony as well."

Gregory, who still knew nothing of Bliea's true identity, looked worried.

"Father……? You're not well."

"Not well or not—do you think I can miss the first sainthood investiture in centuries?"

An entry into the central political world—the thing he had spent his life wanting.

Not as a son-in-law taken into Pirreta. But as Duke Pirreta himself, attending a capital ceremony with his own name.

A shadow of desire—deep and long—settled across that face, which had always been cold.