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Chapter 26
“Young Lady! Please, wait a moment…!”
With a loud noise, the office door slammed open. Kazerre, who had been searching the bookshelf for a book, slowly turned his head.
He had already anticipated this situation when he heard the hurried footsteps pounding down the hallway toward the office, so he showed no sign of surprise.
Unlike the composed Kazerre, Aveline, who had flung the heavy door open with reckless force, was panting heavily.
Had she been riding all this time? She was dressed in equestrian attire.
Kazerre glanced out the window. The sky was already draped in darkness, with a thin crescent moon faintly glowing.
‘Was she outside until this hour?’
For what reason? A fleeting curiosity arose but was quickly swallowed down out of habit.
Where she went or what she did was none of his concern. Even if he cared, it would bring nothing good. It never had.
“What business do you have at this hour?”
Kazerre asked instead, making it clear that he had no interest in her nocturnal activities. As if the only thing that mattered was the reason she had interrupted him.
“Talk… to me… for a moment.”
Her words came out mixed with gasps.
She had weak stamina, so why had she run so hard that she could barely breathe?
With a look of disapproval, Kazerre signaled to the servants fidgeting behind her.
The office door closed quietly.
Kazerre put the book he was holding back on the shelf, then stepped forward, leaning casually against the edge of his desk. He pressed his fingers against his temples.
The workload had kept him cooped up in the office, skipping dinner, so his eyes were already fatigued.
‘And now, my mind will be exhausted too.’
They hadn’t even started talking yet, but his whole body already felt as heavy as if he were clad in chainmail.
“Speak. What is it?”
His voice came out unintentionally deep and rough. It was simply because he had been working alone in the office for so long that he hadn’t spoken in hours.
It might sound like he was irritated before the conversation began, but Kazerre didn’t care. It wasn’t entirely a misunderstanding.
‘Come to think of it, it feels like it’s been a while since we last saw each other like this.’
When was the last time?
As he waited for Aveline to catch her breath, such idle thoughts drifted through his mind. Then, as if a flower wilting, a fragile voice escaped her lips.
“…Is it true?”
“What is?”
“That woman.”
She said nothing else, but Kazerre immediately understood what she meant.
Her golden eyes, veiled in fury, glared at him like a serpent, ready to sink its fangs into him at any moment.
‘So that’s why she was strangely quiet.’
For once, he thought she might let it go, but it turned out she had only received the news late.
Of course. Kazerre, who had enjoyed an unusually peaceful few days, let out a short, dry laugh.
In the end, she was still Aveline Croeta. No matter how much he scolded, raged, or pleaded, she never changed.
Even the most optimistic person would lose the will to try if their efforts were constantly denied.
Still, Kazerre had tried because she was his fate.
No matter how dreadful, they were bound to live out their days together until their final breath—a cursed destiny.
“Do I need your approval for everything I do?”
“Don’t evade the question. Answer me properly. Did you really send flowers to that woman?”
“Yes. I did.”
Kazerre answered calmly.
His tone implied that he found the whole issue trivial. As if sending a simple bouquet to another woman was nothing to make a fuss over.
And that was precisely what made Aveline feel so incredulous.
‘Not even once… Not even once had he ever sent flowers to me…’
What kind of man was Kazerre Evuteren?
A man who never bothered to correct the rumors when she boasted about receiving flowers from him.
And yet, he had never actually given her a single flower.
Such an unfeeling man.
“Are you out of your mind? Why on earth would you—!”
“Do you really not know?”
Instead of speaking, Kazerre’s deep purple eyes darkened ominously, casting a cold, silent accusation.
“Hah. You can’t seriously mean it’s because of me?”
“Yes. Because you would never apologize to her.”
So he had done it in her place.
When he ordered his lieutenant to deliver the bouquet to Clonay, he had added only a single message.
‘Tell her I’m sorry.’
It wasn’t about seeking forgiveness.
What Clonay had suffered couldn’t be erased with a mere apology.
A young lady of marriageable age had been caught in a scandal and publicly subjected to brutal violence.
Even if she was innocent, high society would never welcome someone marked by scandal.
And certainly not at the risk of crossing Aveline.
But even so, he couldn’t not apologize.
A guilt, sharp as a spiky chestnut burr, tore at his insides.
Kazerre didn’t consider himself entirely blameless.
‘And yet, you were the one who kept turning a blind eye to me.’
Just as Aveline had said, he had long since resigned himself to tolerating her. That, too, was his sin.
That sin alone weighed on him so heavily—
And yet, the true perpetrator of all the wrongdoing…
“Apologize? For what? What did I do wrong?”
The response he expected came right on cue.
Kazerre, who had been maintaining his composure, felt his expression slowly harden.
For a brief moment, a flicker of disgust passed through his shadowed violet eyes.
Aveline caught it and smirked, her lips curving into a twisted arc.
“I almost regret not snapping that wench’s neck myself so she could never lift her head again.”
“Aveline Croeta!”
Kazerre shouted her name furiously as if he could no longer endure it.
It felt as though sharp blades were tearing apart all his nerves.
If she wasn’t deliberately trying to drive him mad, how could she so mercilessly spit out such vile words to the one who had repented in her place without the slightest hint of remorse?
If she truly loved him even a little, as she whispered every day—no, even if she merely respected him—such a thing should have been impossible.
That was why he could never fall for her pathetic claims of love.
“Do you have no sense of remorse? Do you not even consider the wrongs you’ve committed?”
“That’s right! Because I haven’t done anything wrong!”
When Kazerre raised his voice to rebuke her, Aveline screamed back just as fiercely.
Her audacity left him speechless.
The rage that had been boiling inside him like molten iron rapidly cooled. Not because it had been quelled, but because there was simply nothing left to burn.
Even after she had reduced everything he had to ashes, leaving nothing but a wasteland behind, Aveline Croeta was still—
“I will never regret it. Not a single thing.”
Aveline declared, her voice biting down on each word like teeth gnashing into flesh. A gleam of madness flickered in her pale yellow eyes.
Kazerre could only feel devastated.
Of course. He had expected her to say that. He had known all along, and yet—
‘Why does it feel like I’m plummeting into the abyss every single time?’
What lingering attachment made him keep falling, keep getting pushed down into the mire by her?
He felt as though something was lodged in his throat, suffocating him. He clenched his jaw so tightly in an effort to suppress his emotions that his entire face ached.
And Aveline watched it all as if she were strangling herself.
She faced Kazerre Evuteren, who was rejecting her with his entire being, and yet, she did not look away.
“And you’re the same, aren’t you? You don’t reflect on your mistakes either.”
“…A mistake?”
“I heard you even went to see that woman yesterday. And yet you expect me to be merciful toward her?”
She wanted to say more—about how he had abandoned her that day, how he had left her behind as if she were nothing, how he had never once come looking for her, as if he had completely erased her from his mind.
But she couldn’t bring herself to say it because she knew those words would be a blade turning against herself.
That was always how it was with Kazerre. Even when she sharpened her claws with the intent to wound him, in the end, the one left bleeding was always her.
Sometimes, she felt as if everything about Kazerre was her weakness.
A weakness she could never grow numb to, one she had no way of guarding against—a raw, exposed wound that would never heal.
And yet, she couldn’t stop because she needed to confirm it for herself.
That, in the end, he would always return to her.
That no matter what emotions flickered in his eyes, they would always land on her in the end.
No matter how many times she saw it, the moment he turned away, she would thirst for it again.
No matter how much she pushed him, she needed to know that he could never truly leave her.
The wounds she inflicted on herself in the process, the blood that spilled—it didn’t matter in the slightest.
“Go on, make your excuses, Kazerre Evuteren.”
Aveline demanded, barely pausing to take a breath.
“Tell me what that woman means to you, that you would go to see her in person. Tell me what she whispered to seduce you. Explain why, even knowing it will infuriate me, you insist on shielding her so desperately. Explain everything.”
From the way she spoke, Kazerre might as well have been an irredeemable scoundrel who had abandoned his wife to chase after another woman.
But, of course, reality was entirely different.
He could have explained everything if he wanted to.
It had been Clonay who requested the meeting. And Kazerre had no right to refuse.
He had gone because it was the least he could do in place of Aveline’s apology.
He had been prepared to accept everything—to endure her anger, to comply with whatever reparation she demanded.
And yet, the only thing Clonay had offered him was something he hadn’t dared to hope for.
‘I’m fine, Your Grace. You don’t need to apologize anymore.’
Even with lips still bearing the wounds Aveline had inflicted, Clonay had smiled at him—softly, sorrowfully.
Her green eyes did not accuse him. Instead, they were calm and serene, as if offering him quiet consolation.
A warmth that soothed his turmoil—something he had never once received from the woman closest to him.
