RAMHM Chapter 98

The moment I first welcomed 'An' came to mind.

The letter asking to meet in that secret garden only Cowan and I knew, where we used to play.

That day too, music from Atilchard Hall had been audible in the distance. It had been midwinter.

"Adrienne... Adrienne? Adrienne!"

That day too, this man had stood before my eyes.

Novian stopped at the garden entrance, then strode closer. He cast a deep shadow over me.

I gave attention to his trembling, gaunt hands before slowly raising my head.

Deep ripples rose beneath his eyes as they met my dry gaze.

"You came... to see me. Me."

"Yes."

Having shaved cleanly to meet the Emperor, his face showed a quite sharpened jaw.

The most haggard and shabby of all his faces I'd seen these past years, yet still handsome. Though it stirred no feeling in me.

"I've wanted this opportunity forever. Even if it sounds like excuses, I need to say what must be said."

"No, don't."

The words pouring out urgently stopped all at once.

"If it's about loving me, especially don't."

Unable to hide his surprised eyes at my firmness, he moved like a broken clock.

"Why, why? Adrienne. You need to hear this. You need to know the truth. You need to know how much I love and want you."

"Your pathetic love talk isn't what I want to hear."

"You waited for me. Stay with that ominous bastard Rhodness and you'll eventually become someone's target. No matter how cornered I am now, you think I can't take responsibility for you alone? If you're Adrienne, you know what kind of person I am!"

The face that had been soaking in emotion gradually grew agitated following my indifferent reaction.

The bloodlessly pale face reddened progressively, hands trembling as if barely restraining himself from grabbing and shaking my shoulders.

"You're mistaken—I didn't wait here to see your withered face."

"..."

"Give it back."

I extended my hand at barely one step's distance.

"Give it back. My mother's necklace."

Ah. The face I'd wanted to see again someday crumbled wretchedly before me.

That expression that had given me a quite filthy thrill when I'd broken him down.

Just as he'd said, because I knew the man called Novian Trovika too well, I immediately recognized what that expression meant.

Seeing me mention my mother's necklace, he'd clearly blown away the last lingering doubt in a corner of his heart—surely not...

Doubt about this absurd situation of Adrienne Pirreta entering Bliea Acacia's body.

Veins bulged and subsided repeatedly along Novian's long throat. Soon after, his cold hand descended on my hand instead of the necklace, and he pulled me to him.

"Adrienne!"

I fell into his embrace. Thud—the moment our bodies collided, my not-fully-healed side twanged with pain.

"Adrienne, Adrienne, don't abandon me. I love you. The world without you is hell."

Crown of my head, earlobe, ear shell, then nape. Breath gone cold in the winter wind descended in succession.

A noticeably more gaunt body than before, but I couldn't possibly resist the strength of a man who'd once never neglected training.

Just as the dry lips nuzzling my nape climbed along my jaw toward my lips—

I mercilessly slapped his cheek.

Having struck to push him away, it made a thwack sound rather than smack.

Rather than avoid the briefly-stunned Novian, I tore at his disheveled collar like grabbing someone's throat, face full of contempt.

No necklace.

Though I'd messed up his clothes enough to reveal his bare chest, nothing hung there.

The thought that this man who'd come to this garden following his feet on such a day might have worn my mother's necklace shattered completely.

"...You know what?"

The necklace that had seemed caught in my hand turned to ash and vanished. Like clutching that vanished necklace, I gripped his collar tightly.

"You're truly useless."

The man's face hurt by those arsenic-laced words made me angrier.

Rage rising, I shoved the blankly standing man mercilessly. Thwack.

"If you won't tell me where the necklace is, get lost."

A gleaming light suddenly flashed in Novian's eyes as he'd been pushed back compliantly.

"I don't want to."

"Without the necklace, never appear before me again."

"I was sincere."

He grabbed my wrist as I tried to push him away again, imprisoning it against his chest.

"Even if the beginning was a lie, I was sincere! It was love! I still love you. Even now, every day... every day..."

He pulled me incomparably harder than before and buried his rough lips on my exposed shoulder.

"Every day I'm going mad chewing over you."

Lightly biting my shoulder as he spoke, his breath scattered across my skin. Goosebumps rose.

"I promised to make you happy, and I gave you happiness you could never receive from Rhodness. Things like stability and respectful gazes. I'm a man who keeps promises. I can make you happy."

"Let go!"

Novian finally collapsed.

His dry, withered face rapidly grew wet, then he knelt on both knees on the grass while clutching my legs, begging.

"Again... love me again, please. Choose me. Abandon Rhodness. Come to me. Please. I can't live without you. Adrienne, Adrienne..."

Tears poured ceaselessly from eyes maddened with regret and despair, frustration and rage, while strong force bound my legs.

I felt pulled into those unfathomably deep eyes filled only with despair.

It was around when I began groping for the dagger in my bodice.

"...Uncle, what is this disgraceful display?"

Crown Prince Bardenaldo appeared in disheveled dress, accompanied by the thick smell of alcohol.

The reason Bardenaldo had no choice but to get drunk was quite simple.

"You're not the party's guest of honor, so do this moderately and come to the Crown Princess's Palace tonight."

Doris's notification of their consummation night, which had been oddly quiet.

Doris raged at seeing the openly smiling Bliea, chewing over people's indifference toward her who showed not one grain of interest, and began taking it out on Bardenaldo.

The drinking that began with Doris's relentless urging became uncontrollable—enough that he, who always showed only upright appearances, momentarily staggered.

And strangely, heat rose in his body.

Empress Grace, who'd been entertaining more guests than the Emperor, looked worriedly at the Crown Prince couple.

"Your Highness, your son looks quite unwell."

"Oh my, it's a party for His Imperial Majesty, so perhaps that son got too excited."

Seizing the gap when the Emperor left to meet Novian Trovika, Doris affectionately supported the Crown Prince and led him to her bedchamber.

So naturally flowing it seemed she'd aimed for today from the start. Doris dismissed everyone—not only the Imperial Palace guards patrolling around but even attendants.

Smack!

Then she mercilessly slapped the drunk Crown Prince's cheek. Shoving the blankly cheek-clutching Bardenaldo onto the bed, she climbed atop him.

"What exactly is the problem? You think you could've become Crown Prince if not for me? What exactly are you relying on acting like this? Hmm?"

Bardenaldo was already drunk on drugged alcohol, complaining of heat.

Having thrown off his uniform jacket upon entering the bedchamber, the remaining shirt buttons scattered at Doris's hands. Patter-patter.

Doris hysterically tore off her own clothes. Not only the petticoat that had puffed her skirt but also her hair ornaments, which she threw onto the marble floor.

The black hair she'd copied from Bliea Acacia cascaded down.

Bardenaldo's gaze following the tiara that fell making clanging sounds turned toward the nearly naked Doris.

And in that moment, Doris felt humiliation from the depths of her heart.

Despite feeding him aphrodisiacs, despite her being in this state, the front of Bardenaldo beneath her wasn't swollen at all.

His exposed upper body even tilted toward the bed's edge and began dry heaving.

Listening to the retching sounds, Doris glared at Bardenaldo with a devastated face.

He crawled away, hurriedly threw on a night robe, and fled Doris's bedchamber as if escaping.

"Are you really impotent?"

What the hell.

On Doris's collapsed face, alongside devastation, a faint sense of liberation burst forth.

Novian, who'd resisted leaving until the end, was dragged away by the knights who'd followed the Crown Prince.

"No, no! Adrienne! Adrienne, Adrienne!"

Noisy and wretched to the end. The raw metallic screaming, more so than the day he was driven north, rang deafeningly through the vine-tangled tunnel.

The Crown Prince pressed his pale hands firmly against his temples.

I sighed deeply and bowed my head low to hide my grimacing expression.

"I was in trouble, so you came at the right time, Your Highness."

"Someone who nearly got kidnapped... You must be careful even though it's inside the Imperial Palace. I hear Uncle often does drugs—he must have mistaken you for the late Grand Duchess."

He didn't scold me.

Not even asking why I'd met Novian alone in a dim place without Epero or Viktor.

The Crown Prince, drunk enough that the smell was clear even two steps away, shook his head. Seeming to try regaining his senses in the cold wind.

"I'm always sorry to you, and grateful."

A voice containing various emotions. Perhaps he too saw Grand Duchess Adrienne in me.

'I wish you were an innocent person too, like Rhodness said.'

Perhaps that wasn't entirely hopeful thinking.

Look at that shining saint's face!

Thinking of Doris's face forcing smiles at me while doing cunning things behind the scenes, wasn't the Crown Prince the real saint?

'If only Doris had killed me.'

If Doris, who's clearly my enemy, had even killed me—

'Then you, so upright. Me too. Rhodness too...'

Wouldn't everyone be happy—that selfishness rose unbidden.

"You're my lord now, so please don't say such things."

Was it because he was drunk and disheveled?

The slightly staggering Crown Prince chuckled softly and, even in his senseless state, bowed his head slightly to me in keeping with his usual character.

As I steadied the about-to-fall him and bowed even deeper in return, I raised my head.

"...Ah."

And my breath stopped.

I couldn't tear my eyes from the Crown Prince's bare chest right before me.

No—I had no choice but to look.

On the Crown Prince's bare chest beneath his barely-worn night robe, a very familiar gold chain glinted.

Ah.

Blood stopped flowing to my frozen-solid hands.

Aah.

Why was my mother's necklace on the Crown Prince?

"How could..."

"Ah, this embarrassing... embarrassing appearance—I'll return first."

Seeming genuinely to blush, he turned and disappeared briskly. Toward the vanishing Crown Prince, I extended my trembling arm.

"Your...!"

An old metallic sound not my own came from my throat.

My own hand clamped over my mouth trying to scream for the Crown Prince.

Instead, my legs moved on their own.

Like a madwoman, I chased after Bardenaldo cutting through the winter wind, my hand clamped over my mouth.