RAMHM Chapter 76

Not an End, But Another Beginning

"Criminal Novian Trovika, submit to His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince's command!"

Along with the booming voices that continued echoing like a round, the bedroom door was finally forced open. The panicked screams of the servants on the first floor poured into the bedroom like water from a burst dam. The imperial knights—polite but firm—bound Grand Duke Novian Trovika.

Ah. It's finally over. With the strange elation rippling from my toes, my entire body grew hot. No more tears fell from my eyes. If people weren't here, I might laugh until this room shook.

Novian's knees—which had been slowly rising—buckled helplessly. Novian, his body wound tightly with iron chains, looked exactly as I'd pictured him in my dreams.

"...Is it really Adrienne?"

Though kneeling, his brilliant blue eyes looked straight up at me. I smiled faintly without answering. Novian's cheeks quickly grew wet again with fat tears.

"Really—is it Adrienne?"

His trembling voice was a heavy noise layered thick with inexplicable despair. His pitch-black sunken pupils still seemed dizzy, confusing reality with fantasy. His gaze—raking over my face and eyes—somehow seemed to retrace the actions he'd taken toward me these past months. Because his glistening eyes were losing light as time passed, as if falling into an endless hell.

Though the knights had bound him, they couldn't carelessly drag away the Grand Duke, so they supported him under both arms and lifted him up. Novian—who'd been stepping back weakly as if he'd go quietly—suddenly shoved aside the two knights beside him with his body and rushed at me when he saw I wasn't avoiding his eyes.

"Answer me!"

"Your Grace!"

"Answer! Answer me, please!!"

Though his arms were bound, Novian lunged and bent his body to bury his lips against my neck.

"Adrienne, Adrienne...... Adrienne......!"

His cold tears touched my neck. His body trembled as if seized by chills.

"Do you really think I killed you? Is that it?"

"...I've decided not to believe anything that comes out of your mouth anymore."

More screams and signs of people gradually drew closer from below the Grand Ducal Estate. As the matter dragged on, Rhodness had clearly finally come in leading his knights.

A faint madness suddenly flickered in Novian's pitch-black deep blue eyes. Already half-mad, Novian smiled bitterly—as if sensing his end.

"I—I didn't betray you because of Bliea."

"......"

"Please, please don't misunderstand that. Don't make even my sincerity into something......"

Novian ground out desperately.

"Whatever else you think, that story about killing you...... that absurd story about killing you with my own hands...... don't even think it, I'm begging you. Adrienne. Adrienne..."

Just repetitions of the same words. As I'd learned over the past two months, I realized there was almost no truth to be heard from this shameless man.

"Don't disappoint me to the very end—just disappear quietly."

At my stiff voice, Novian—who'd been inhaling—once again refused the knights trying to drag him away and pressed close to me.

"...Why do you think I never spent nights with you?"

When I looked at him strangely for suddenly bringing that up, I met his blood-red eyes. His entire face seemed to roil like boiling lava. It seemed like the desperation or confession of someone who sensed his end.

"Because I didn't desire you?"

"...What are you saying?"

"Adrienne—whom I never had and will never have for eternity."

"Now of all times..."

"Have you ever thought about what that means?"

I'd never thought about it even once. I'd simply thought he used that expression because I'd shared my heart with Rhodness first, and because we couldn't have a physical relationship due to my illness. And that he said he'd never have me eternally because I'd died. Finally, the screams and shouts echoed loudly right outside the bedroom.

"I—I didn't kill you. Rather, I suffered watching you die. If you didn't die from illness, there's only one person who could have killed you. Please, believe me, Adrienne."

"......Keep babbling."

I answered coldly to Novian, who writhed desperately as if trying to clear up the misunderstanding.

"If someone killed you in this Grand Ducal Estate when I wasn't here, then surely..."

Right on cue, Rhodness's party burst into the bedroom. I saw Rhodness's face—flashing as he burst in to end everything. Cold—but crumbling the moment he saw my face. Simultaneously, amid screams erupting from everywhere, I heard Novian's final whisper distinctly.

"......Crown Prince Bardenaldo."

The name of the person Rhodness loved most.

"Only Crown Prince Bardenaldo."

Ah. Why does this man—to the very end—drag me into hell? I blinked slowly, as if time had stopped. Moving my gaze from Novian—immediately taken away by the knights—to Rhodness, my vision grew dizzy.

As if answering my words about wanting to be his hell. Novian Trovika. The man I'd once loved most gave me a gift—not an ending but another beginning, under a different name.

The fireworks display that had begun in the central plaza reached its climax. Unlike before, the fireworks show that had started with red fireworks had now changed to blue fireworks embroidering the sky.

"Are there truly no competent people?"

"You were too hasty. They would have brought him out on their own. If you'd waited, they would have managed it properly."

Originally, they'd planned to wait at the Grand Ducal Estate's main gate for those bringing out Novian. As the time dragged on and another commotion seemed to occur, Rhodness couldn't wait and went up himself to grab the Grand Duke and shove him into the carriage.

"A carriage for a criminal—absurd."

"Still, he is of imperial blood. With summary execution without trial, at minimum..."

"You all stay far back in the procession. Don't lead at the front."

"What?"

Leaving behind his aides' voices tinged with anxiety, Rhodness stared up toward the Grand Duchess's bedroom for a long while before finally tearing his gaze away.

He'd seen Novian Trovika babbling something toward Adrienne until the very end. While wailing frantically, he'd also growled like a wounded beast, whispering in her ear.

Adrienne—who'd been like a finely crafted porcelain doll—had her expression crumble from some point, then looked at Rhodness with eyes that seemed to sink into bottomless depths. The moment their eyes met, it was such a subtle gaze that his heart plummeted.

"If it troubles you, leave it to us and stay at the Grand Ducal Estate, why don't you?"

"If Your Highness remains with the lady, unfavorable words will likely circulate about her."

Neil's worry and Vincento's advice flowed out in succession. Rhodness nodded heavily, thinking Vincento's words had merit.

Adrienne had finished what she needed to do. If he couldn't settle his own debt with Novian, he couldn't begin with Adrienne either. He'd certainly rushed here frantically with such thoughts, yet strangely his fingertips tingled with creeping anxiety.

Adrienne, frozen like stone. Novian, struggling desperately not to leave the Grand Ducal Estate while crying out for Adrienne to the very end. The successive rising memories were agonizing.

When Novian's desperately wailing voice came to mind, his heart grew more urgent. Adrienne had clearly revealed her identity. Though he didn't know how she'd made Novian believe her, the throat-tearing wails were cries he could only make from seeing the 'real' Adrienne in her.

"Your Highness, what is the meaning of this?"

From the annex direction, people from the East poured out with glittering eyes even while being restrained by knights. Rhodness gave a light nod without any particular answer and left Neil at the Grand Ducal Estate.

Until he returned, he couldn't let the people from the East hurt Adrienne any further. Barely moving feet that wouldn't lift, Rhodness escorted him north.

How long had they traveled? Novian Trovika was sentenced to indefinite confinement and house arrest at a frontier castle—a frontier beyond frontiers that required passing through the northern Trovika territory and traveling much farther.

It was the maximum punishment possible under the Crown Prince's authority without trial. Having left the vast capital and barely passed one small territory, Rhodness suddenly commanded the carriage to stop on a secluded forest road.

Vincento's anxious gaze examined him, but trusting that his lord—whose every nerve was already focused on the noblewoman at the Grand Ducal Estate—wouldn't commit any great folly, he had the knights pull back far away as desired. Thinking they both must have last words to exchange as faithful men of the Crown Prince.

Only after confirming the knights had moved more than a hundred paces away did Rhodness dismount and order even the coachman to move far off. Opening the carriage door, he saw Novian Trovika—head bowed low, corpse-like.

Rhodness grabbed a lantern from the driver's seat and tossed it onto the opposite seat, then seized Novian's collar with one hand. The gaze that had been fallen to the carriage floor immediately fixed on Rhodness—without a trace of repentance. It was a flashing gaze that suited his disheveled, lunatic appearance perfectly.

Right then, Novian—who'd been staring at Rhodness's eyes for a while—burst into laughter. Novian, laughing with heaving shoulders loud enough to echo low through the darkened forest road, opened his mouth before Rhodness could.

"Still living like a prince from a fairy tale."

A sneer crossed Rhodness's face—which had been mercilessly stiff.

"...Fairy tale princes don't roll around on battlefields."

"You think you saved Adrienne? Not a chance."

"That name. Don't say it carelessly. I'm holding back from smashing your mouth."

Still gripping his collar, Rhodness dragged Novian from the carriage and immediately hurled him to the ground.

"Don't hope for mercy either. You may not know about elder brother, but I have no bastard uncle like you."

"Going to take my head here?"

Wordlessly, Rhodness cut the rope binding Novian with his sword. Clean skill that severed only the rope without grazing even a collar. Soon after, a long sword fell before Novian's eyes as he lay face-down on the ground.

"I have no taste for prey that's tied up."

"...Barbaric."

"Pick up the sword. I'm used to killing wriggling vermin desperate to live."

"Why waste energy when you could just kill me?"

"Don't you know?"

Rhodness slowly drew the sword at his side. The blade's gleam—sharp even in the dim moonlight—was extraordinary.

"Did Bardenaldo order you to kill me? Is this your solo action? Not something a good younger brother would do."

Novian's eyes—spitting out a roughly hoarse voice—turned not toward Rhodness but toward somewhere endlessly far. But Rhodness didn't care much. One of them had to die. Naturally, the one who had to die was Novian Trovika.

"Am I wrong? If you—who loves your dear elder brother—aren't working for him, why else would you do something you can't handle?"

"Stop talking shit and pick up the sword."

"Resentment over me stealing Adrienne from you?"

"Speak properly. You're the one who pulled dirty tricks."

His patience reached its limit. Rhodness felt the impulse to behead him right now, to plunge a sword into his heart—yet simultaneously wanted to ask why. Why he killed Adrienne. Why on earth he tried to take Adrienne from him.

He intended to tear and mangle his entire body until he couldn't bear it without speaking, then the moment he poured out the truth, behead him without mercy.

"That's why you're naive as hell—a prince from a fairy tale. Rhodness."

Until the next words emerged from Novian's withered lips.

"Did I really steal what was yours?"

Novian staggered as he gripped the fallen sword and stood up.

"One sickly princess stuck in the East... how would I know to mark her as my wife? Love at first sight? Was Novian Trovika that kind of person?"

"What are you trying to say?"

"Without anyone's help... do you think I did it?"

The silent forest road at night—where not even insect sounds could be heard.

"The elder brother you so desperately want to protect—Crown Prince Bardenaldo arranged Adrienne and my marriage. You foolish bastard."

Novian's dead eyes gleamed eerily. Eyes that had drawn in life's every contempt and rage.

"Bardenaldo yielding Adrienne to you? Not a chance."

"...What?"

"From the moment Adrienne Pirreta became a Crown Princess candidate, the Crown Prince had no intention of letting go of either Doris Castagna or Adrienne Pirreta."

Cracks appeared in Rhodness's face as he looked down at Novian like a reaper delivering death.