Chapter – 37….
Those fleeting dreams in which she met Ludwig had been the only thing giving her the strength to live each day.
“Even so… why does it ache this much… why do I miss you like this?”
Her scattered, fragmented words flowed without order or context—just like her heart, which had lost its way and no longer knew where to go.
“Ludwig.”
The truth she had kept buried slipped out at last.
“I… need you.”
Her eyelids, heavy as lead, fluttered shut.
Perhaps because she had finally poured out a little of the sludge-like emotions that had pooled inside her.
Or perhaps because he was beside her.
With her voice slowly fading, Achille soon drifted off, as if someone had simply switched her off.
Into her quietened ears seeped a low whisper.
“I won’t leave you alone.”
Ludwig gazed quietly at Achille, fast asleep and breathing evenly.
Fingertips brushed lightly against her lips, faintly tinted violet, and in his ears her voice echoed vividly.
“It wasn’t for anyone else. I did it for you.”
“If you can recall even the smallest piece of our memories… that’s enough.”
“Say it. Hurry. ‘Thank you.’”
For you.
Everyone always said that—to him, for him.
He was one of the two people qualified to ascend the imperial throne.
He was the Duke of Caliente.
But had such words ever once struck his heart?
Suddenly, he recalled what his only true friend, the head of House Bolsheik, had once told him.
“Are you a plant? No—at least plants absorb water and sunlight to grow for themselves. You don’t even try to do that.”
“What exactly are you trying to say.”
“Drink yourself sick, do whatever—just do something purely for yourself. You need at least one joy in life.”
He hadn’t asked why.
Even if he had asked, he wouldn’t have done it anyway.
Ah, yes.
Just as Achille had said, he, too, had never felt a compelling reason to live each day.
He only did what needed to be done because he sat in the seat of duke.
That was why, no matter how unreasonable the emperor’s demands were, he would simply bow his head.
But after Achille came to him—
he bared his teeth at the emperor, at the crown prince, at anyone, without hesitation.
For her.
No… that wasn’t it.
The realization struck him suddenly.
Ah.
You are the only one.
Only you exist in my life.
“Only you make me move for my own sake.”
Nothing in the world had ever stirred his heart.
Though the dazzling world around him shone in a thousand colors, everything appeared in monochrome to him—yet he had never even thought it strange.
He didn’t know whether he was simply born this way, or whether losing his parents young and being raised to fit the title of “duke” had shaped him so.
But you were different.
Acting for you was the same as acting for himself.
When you laughed, a smile appeared on his lips.
When you cried, tears welled in his chest.
My dream.
My woman.
My Achille.
He liked her, but he still could not say he loved her.
Not yet… yes, not yet.
Still, this was a premonition.
No—perhaps a prophecy.
Someday soon, not far from now…
With a faint sigh, a soft voice escaped him—quiet enough that no one would ever hear.
“I suppose… I will come to love you.”
And you will…
“…say you need me.”
He understood well enough.
In this world where she had been cast utterly alone, he was the only one holding her hand.
Only him.
Even if Achille relied on him with her whole being, that was not love.
“I like you.”
“I like you.”
Ludwig repeated Achille’s words, though he knew his feelings were not the same as hers.
In dreams, when he met her there, his heart had surely mirrored hers exactly—so when had it changed?
No… was there any meaning in wondering?
It was just—
Just that although he knew someday he would have to let her go, he didn’t know what to do with this slow-tightening grip around his heart.
That night—
Holding the unmoving, peacefully sleeping Achille in his arms, Ludwig waited out a long, white night without closing his eyes even once.
* * *
The day after the storm, when thunder and lightning had crashed down and rain had poured relentlessly—
the sky was now so bright and the sun so fierce it was as if yesterday’s black storm clouds had been a lie.
The heat was suffocating.
And the Crown Prince’s palace, located slightly to the right of the imperial palace’s center, was stifling with hot air.
“When will I be granted an audience?!”
The young count’s son’s voice was already hoarse from shouting.
But the response was so calm—so neutral—it felt almost numb.
“If you have come without an appointment, I’m afraid there is no answer I can give.”
“I heard that yesterday as well—no, even just a few hours ago!”
Despite his outburst, in which a trace of desperation leaked through, the attendant simply bowed politely.
“When, exactly—”
The young noble, ready to erupt again despite knowing it was pointless, flinched.
A light, breezy voice cut through the stifling air behind him.
“What’s going on here?”
The voice was light, yes—but its owner was anything but.
All the attendants dropped to their knees in unison, heads bowed.
In the Crown Prince’s palace, there was only one person they would react to in such a way.
“It sounded quite loud.”
The Crown Prince tilted his head as he looked at the young noble, whose shoulders had shot up in panic.
Before the noble could even finish turning around, he blurted out, nearly coughing up blood:
“Glory to the Empire! I greet the Crown Prince, Your Highness. I am—”
But the Crown Prince, true to form, sliced through the long-winded greeting with ease.
“What’s the reason you’ve been loud enough to shake the entire palace?”
He wasn’t angry.
There was no warning or displeasure in his tone.
Still, attendants sank to their knees like waves cresting one after another, and the Crown Prince clicked his tongue.
“No, stop—if you all keep doing that, I can’t say anything. Stand up. And you—come with me.”
With light footsteps, just as he’d arrived, the Crown Prince walked deeper inside the palace.
The noble blinked dumbly for a second, then scrambled after him.
Soon the Crown Prince glanced around, then entered a rarely used room draped with dust cloths.
Seeing the space, the noble hesitated, but the Crown Prince waved casually.
“Anywhere else, and trouble will find me.”
The trouble he meant, of course, was all the duties he was expected to perform as the Crown Prince.
He himself was carefree, while his chief aide was losing more hair by the day.
Without delay, the Crown Prince asked:
“So? What was the matter serious enough to disturb the entire palace, hm, young man?”
The answer came without even a breath’s pause:
“I cannot live like this. I can hardly breathe. But only Your Highness can hear my plea, so I shamelessly came here without notice.”
The young noble spoke with the solemnity of a commander marching to certain death.
The Crown Prince, who had only escaped his aide to avoid paperwork and kill time, felt a spark of curiosity.
He had brought this dull-looking fellow inside on a whim.
Normally he would never have gone near that place—
the waiting hall where people foolishly came to seek an audience with no appointment.
Most gave up after long waiting and cold refusal.
None would dare raise their voice at the Crown Prince’s palace.
He knew exactly what sort of people waited there.
And he knew if he entertained each of them, there would be no end.
But today—
at that particular moment—
he had simply felt the urge to go there.
There was no point analyzing why; he often acted on impulse.
And because of that—
this young noble, who had been cast aside by the woman he loved due to the imperial competition for a duchess,
found himself before the Crown Prince by a stroke of fate.
“You cannot breathe…? What’s happened? Is your house in danger? Some plot against you?”
The more desperate the other person was, the greater his curiosity became.
The Crown Prince studied him carefully.
And then—
Ah.
He had said that only the Crown Prince could hear him.
From that one sentence, the Crown Prince knew instantly.
This was about his elder brother.
No—more precisely, it was because the shadow of “the Duke of Caliente” was always etched somewhere in the back of his mind.
“Don’t tell me the Duke of Caliente did something to your family—”
“Yes! Exactly so!”
