[CHAPTER 125]
Lincia looked startled by herself after slapping his cheek.
She spoke while breathing roughly, meeting Harvich’s eyes.
“Why would you say something like that?”
Lincia’s eyes reddened as she spoke.
They looked exactly like those of someone deeply hurt.
“To me, you……”
Even if she struck him with that slender body, it should not have hurt, yet the cheek that had been hit burned as if pressed against fire.
Harvich lowered his head.
“I have no value at all.”
It felt as though he was falling to the deepest bottom, far beneath everything.
His tongue stiffened after barely finishing the sentence.
The headaches that had relentlessly followed him for two years began again.
The sensation rattling his brain had never become familiar enough to endure easily, so Harvich had to clench his fist to bear the pain.
The hand resting on his knee trembled uncontrollably.
“I cannot give you anything, not a single thing, when you will suffer after coming to the North.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Did I ever ask you for anything?”
“……”
“I want to be in the North with the child.”
“That is my choice.”
Harvich raised his head.
“It is something I truly want right now.”
Ironically, Harvich recalled the first time Lincia had come to the North as a bride who had been sold there.
He had neither thought deeply about nor fully empathized with what emotions she must have felt, being reunited in such a land with a man she had never expected to see again.
At the time, the situation of having to marry someone from the Durand imperial family had been extremely troublesome for him, and he had been preoccupied with managing public opinion.
But now, only after being placed in a situation similar to hers back then, did Harvich feel as though he could vaguely understand what she must have felt.
A sense of helplessness and humiliation.
Disgust toward oneself for being useless even to the person one loves.
How had she endured and borne all of that?
Harvich was not as strong as Lincia, and he had no confidence that someone as insignificant as himself could remain by her side.
If he lived like that only for Lincia to break again before his eyes, he felt he truly would not be able to go on living.
“Please reconsider.”
“It does not seem to be a very wise choice.”
“Why have you changed so much?”
Harvich parted his lips slightly.
“……People always change.”
Those who experience a painful defeat usually show one of two reactions.
Those who overcome the pain of defeat and prepare again, and those who sink into despair and cannot even imagine the next game.
When it came to love, Harvich was closer to the latter.
The more he recalled memories of love, the clearer only the reasons they could not work became, leaving him unable to imagine anything beyond that.
Even though Lincia said she would return, he could do nothing but try to dissuade her.
“I thought you would be happy if I said I was going back to the North.”
He loosened the fist he had been clenching.
Deep nail marks were etched into his palm.
“……Is that not shameless of me?”
Two years ago, in the North, Lincia had been no different from someone who had died once.
The North, and he himself, had made her that way.
How could he possibly be happy at the thought of her returning to the land that had killed the one he loved?
“Can you forgive me?”
“……”
“Can you love me?”
It was a question to which Harvich had not expected a positive answer anyway.
“If you return to the North when you do not love me and stay only for the child, you will be unhappy.”
At Harvich’s blunt words, Lincia’s lips trembled.
“Even so, if your thoughts do not change after three days, I will not stop you from coming to the North.”
* * *
Once, Lincia had wanted Harvich to be hurt.
She had hoped he would think, even a little, about the pain and wounds she had endured in the North.
“To me, you……”
“I have no value at all.”
But the man she faced today looked as though he might suffocate and die at any moment.
Seeing that man, Lincia felt a familiar sensation wash over her.
Ever since she had been told that the child she bore alone did not even have a name, Lincia had worn the same expression every time she looked into the mirror.
On a gaunt, sickly face, a mass of emotions clung thickly, existing in a crushed and formless state.
Harvich now bore a face similar to Lincia’s back then.
Despair rested upon features that had grown sharper and more defined from being so thin.
The current Harvich seemed to be suffering even more than Lincia had wished for.
For over two years, she had never wanted him to suffer this much.
Had she not once hoped that Harvich would someday be fine and live well even without her?
Honestly, Lincia had thought he was fine after seeing him smile at the child at the banquet.
Aside from looking a little tired, he had truly seemed fine then.
“You just looked good.”
“You seemed like you were doing okay too.”
Thinking back now, Lincia could not remember what expression Harvich had worn at that moment.
“That’s a relief.”
“I truly hope you live well.”
“……I also sincerely hope you become happy.”
All she could recall was the answer he had barely managed to give, neither affirming nor denying her words that he seemed fine.
The next day, around lunchtime, Lincia went to find Yulias.
Harvich had told her to think about it more, but no matter how much Lincia thought, she did not believe her heart would change.
“I think I might go back to the duchy.”
“……What?”
Seeing Lincia’s resolute expression, Yulias asked again and again like a child who had just learned an unwelcome truth.
“Really?”
“You mean it?”
“Yes.”
In truth, Yulias had often thought this might happen ever since the moment Lincia met the child.
She had never submitted the divorce certificate she must have brought, nor had she summoned the Grand Duke to draft a new one even as the founding festival drew to a close.
And above all.
Even to Yulias, his nephew Lucas was an incredibly lovely and endearing child.
How could it be any different for Lincia?
Yulias wanted to respect her choice.
Even so, the idea of her returning to the North was difficult to accept.
“Can’t you raise Lucas here?”
“I might not be a good father, but I could be a good uncle.”
Lincia shook her head.
“Would that really be a good choice for everyone?”
“……Are you really okay with this?”
Yulias had thought that even if Lincia did not remain in the imperial palace, she would not leave the South.
But Lincia was more resolute than ever.
“Yes.”
“I think I’ll be fine.”
“If you’re making this choice because of the child, I want to stop you.”
It was true that without Lucas, Lincia would not have returned to the North.
But Lucas was not the sole reason she had decided to go back.
“And if I don’t go now, I think I’ll regret it.”
