Chapter 73
Gredy finally looked around after staring blankly at her, her face a mess of tears.
The palace was silent; the nobles had already trickled out like a receding tide.
But the servants hadn’t all left either. Even palace walls had ears.
Gredy lifted Eliana, supporting her hips. Startled, she wrapped her arms around his head.
Eliana, cradled like a child, sobbed uncontrollably. Her cries sounded just like a child calling for her mother.
The sobs, scraping at his chest like sandpaper, made Gredy exhale a low, involuntary sigh. His frozen heart felt like it was splitting in two.
Thinking back, it had been he who first called himself her husband.
When she had wandered the streets, drunk on strong liquor, hadn’t he, on a whim, declared himself her husband and taken it upon himself to decide her fate?
Gredy looked down at Eliana crying in his arms.
Her beauty was something he might never have noticed if not for the rumors of her being a femme fatale.
He hadn’t wanted to chase after her—her back stiff like an angry cat, then drooping like a drenched dog.
He hadn’t realized that the embrace he had claimed with talk of bodies would be something he would long for in less than a day.
If he had known that what he had secretly accumulated day by day in his arms was love, he wouldn’t have taken her hand that day and run through the rain-soaked streets.
He wandered the corridor bathed only in a faint moonlight, consumed by regret.
“I’ve come too far.”
Even after meeting so many people and mingling with them, Eliana was the first with whom he had shared warmth.
The woman who had reached for him first, crawling into his embrace, drooped her shoulders and sank into him endlessly.
After all, it was a relationship formed by contract—a bond that would break with time. The man wanted it, and the woman had agreed.
So in that early dawn, there was no need for excuses. Yet the woman wanted to explain, and the man wanted to look away.
He didn’t want to admit that he had been hurt.
What held him back wasn’t her excuses, but Eliana’s murderous confession.
“Tell me.”
It was that same room again.
The messy bedroom had been tidied, leaving no trace of the previous chaos.
“I killed him.”
Her eyes were hollow, as if the tears that had endlessly poured out had already dried up. Eliana confessed with nothing hidden as she crouched on the sofa, knees pulled to her chest.
“Who?”
“My ex-husband.”
There was no warmth left in the room that had lost its master. The wind made the curtains flutter ghost-like through the window left open for ventilation.
“You killed your ex-husband, Marquis Neumann?”
Eliana nodded slowly. Her fingers intertwined nervously on her knees. Tear drops, too heavy to remain on her eyelashes, slid down her cheeks.
“It hurt too much… I thought I’d die if I kept taking it, so I did it.”
“…What?”
Gredy froze at her confession.
Even as he gaped, seemingly unable to form words, Eliana couldn’t look at him. Her bowed head and frail shoulders trembled incessantly.
“That day was worse than usual. It rained, which made my back hurt even more, and he whipped me for a long time without stopping.”
“……”
“I barely escaped and hid under the bed, but he found me anyway and raised the whip.”
Eliana seemed to have returned to that day, shivering in the corner of the sofa with nowhere else to go.
“……”
Gredy was lost for words at the merciless violence she recounted as though it were everyday life.
“I tried to push him away to escape, but it was too dark to see anything! I really didn’t think there would be a bedpost there.”
Her eyes were not confessing guilt; they were a testament to her struggle to survive.
Unable to watch her trembling in such fear, Gredy pulled her tightly into his arms.
The realization that what he had once criticized as a peculiar taste was actually the remnants of abuse made him want to bite his tongue. Seeing the blood whirl away in the rain and realizing it was the aftermath of violence made him gag involuntarily—disgusted with himself for having toyed with her life.
“It’s okay, Eliana. It’s okay.”
“I was alive then. If I had called someone, I could have survived.”
“……”
“I left him and ran away. I wanted to die, but also wanted to live. I thought happiness for me might exist somewhere.”
Gredy recalled the first day they met.
Soaked in the rain, burning with fever, she had tried to escape death from her husband’s abuse.
And he had ruined her life out of mere curiosity.
“Eliana.”
“Last night, the Emperor came. I had been happy and forgotten, thanks to you, but when he choked me, I remembered that day. It was thunderous and rainy, just like yesterday.”
“The Emperor came for you?”
Gredy’s eyes widened. His hands trembled as he held her.
“I only had a seizure, and Rodin was by my side. Rodin and I aren’t that kind of people.”
Eliana clung to him, ready to do anything to prove her innocence.
“No, I mean… the Emperor came for you?”
Holding her shoulders, Gredy asked with a dazed expression. He had only heard that Emperor Mateo had been attacked last night and fled to Orante Castle—never imagining this story.
Now he understood why Mateo had pushed him into the rain-soaked Orante Forest.
“Hah!”
He had suspected something, but hadn’t imagined that someone would target Eliana alone.
Gredy slowly untied the scarf around her neck, noticing the dark blue bruises he hadn’t seen at dawn.
“Ugh.”
A low, stifled cry escaped. He clenched his teeth, caressing her bruised nape, swallowing back tears.
Violence directed at him he could endure alone, but Eliana was his family. The thought that she had been treated like him made his blood boil.
“Nothing happened. Really, Gredy.”
Even now, as she insisted on her innocence, Gredy held her tightly. Uncontrolled tears slid down his cheeks.
The only way to hide his own tears was to hold her in his arms.
“…Mm.”
The single word barely slipped from his lips, and she sank fully into his embrace, her tense body warming slightly.
“Did you stab the Emperor?”
Eliana shook her head. Gredy, holding her trembling body, glared, his eyes sparking with restrained fury.
“It wasn’t me. Someone else… it was too dark and scary, I couldn’t see.”
Gredy nodded. Relief surged at the thought of another culprit, but he forced himself to suppress it, recalling Eliana in his arms.
“Right.”
“Am I going to prison now?”
Gredy shook his head at her weak words. No matter what, he would never let her go to prison.
“That night… who else knows that you pushed the Marquis?”
Wiping his own tears hastily, Gredy looked into her eyes.
“…My father knows.”
‘Damn it!’
The metallic taste of blood spread in his mouth. Judging from the way Marquis Hoffman had feigned ignorance despite knowing everything, he still suspected the two of them.
‘Sly bastard.’
At the Marquis’ funeral, Gredy had revealed his night with Eliana to her. Despite being utterly infatuated with her, he had never once brought up their first meeting.
Even though he could have used her confession of murder to get whatever he wanted.
Gredy’s mind was a whirlwind.
“And yesterday… I actually don’t know when Rodin came in. When I regained consciousness, you were in front of me.”
“Haa…”
Sighs escaped repeatedly. They were the only thing to replace tears.
‘What the hell have I done to this poor woman?’
He had come too far to atone. Overwhelmed by the flood of emotions, he could not think straight.
That night had been long and exhausting.
Eliana’s confessions, like a dam breaking, left Gredy unable to regain composure. He regretted not asking gently why she wanted to disappear the first time they met.
