134. The Person Who Makes Me Want to Live
“What…… do you mean?”
Katya asked with a trembling voice.
She remembered Nikolai groaning in pain from nightmares at the hotel they moved to after their failed wedding night.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
It was the first time she had seen him suffering like that, when he always smiled and seemed bright in front of her.
She realized then that while Nikolai would step in for his wife’s matters as if they were his own, he endured his own pain alone.
I like this man.
She wanted to share his burdens.
But after that day, she rarely saw his vulnerable side.
Perhaps she had vaguely thought the Grand Duke was a strong person.
A man who overcame the pain of his unfortunate childhood to become the ruler of a country.
To think that such a man had wanted to die.
Death was a word that didn’t suit Nikolai.
Rumors described him as a bloody monarch who would kill those who opposed his will to force submission.
Of course, she learned those rumors were exaggerated after meeting him.
Still, she had never imagined.
That Nikolai had tried to turn his back on the world himself.
He walked into my world.
With this, his life and my life became one story.
That’s why even imagining our story without him felt unrealistic.
Luka said the Grand Duke was like that before meeting Katya.
Then had he changed after meeting her?
If she hadn’t met Nikolai, would he have left this world after completing all his revenge as planned?
The thought alone was horrifying.
A world without him.
“Someone who has a reason to live, and someone who has many attachments to this life, never just charges straight ahead. To survive, they sometimes hesitate and prepare alternatives.”
“……”
“But His Highness never hesitated at dangerous things. He wasn’t prepared to die while carrying out his work—he truly intended to die. It’s not easy to defeat someone who has erased their own future from their life.”
A palace revolution was something everyone dreamed of but couldn’t execute.
If it failed, they would be beheaded for treason, recorded in history as rebels, and families involved in the plot would be persecuted for generations.
But Nikolai had nothing to lose, and after his mother died, his desire to survive completely disappeared.
The night the former Grand Duke Yuri passed away.
When he led officers to seize the Grand Duke’s position before dawn, the boyars had no choice but to be helplessly defeated.
Since Yuri died without naming a successor, Nikolai also had justification.
Though he was the son of the deposed Grand Duchess, he was still of Grand Ducal blood, and he was older than Mikhail, the youngest.
To overturn the situation would require rebellion.
Though not impossible, most boyars disliked taking risks.
Rather than losing their generational wealth and power through a likely-to-fail plot, they chose to maintain the status quo under the current Grand Duke.
As long as the Grand Duke didn’t touch what they had, they planned to at least pretend complete loyalty while prostrating themselves.
Nikolai also knew their loyalty was halfhearted.
That they secretly supported Oksana and Mikhail, keeping one foot in that camp too.
Since they were weighing between Nikolai and Mikhail, it would have been better to humor the boyars to keep the Grand Duke position.
But war was inevitable to fix this country that the boyars had ruined.
“He could have lived turning a blind eye to the nobles’ atrocities, but His Highness didn’t. Because he couldn’t ignore the people’s suffering.”
The boyars fell helplessly into the trap he designed.
The results he gained from the southern incognito trip were remarkable.
Cracks started appearing in the northern nobles’ power after seeing the precedent of their money supply being cut off.
Luka went on to tell many stories about Nikolai.
How 13 years ago, when Yuri blamed Nikolai for his eldest son Ruslan’s death and locked his young son in a tower.
When Tatiana was Grand Duchess and Nikolai was the beloved youngest son of the Grand Ducal family, Luka, who studied under the same teacher as him, couldn’t forget his friend and one day secretly headed to the top of the tower where he was imprisoned.
And that day he saw it.
The terrible conditions that even the lowest noble’s child would never experience, and his friend who had become thin and gaunt in that environment.
And the nobles surrounding him, verbally abusing him.
The one who led them was none other than the teacher who had taught both him and Nikolai.
“The shock of that day gave me depression and mutism for a while. While I stood frozen with my legs paralyzed, a patrol dog even bit my calf.”
Luka added that though he became afraid of dogs after that, he was getting better thanks to Laika.
But Katya couldn’t laugh even hearing those words.
It was the first time she heard that Nikolai had been imprisoned in a tower.
That was because only the Grand Duke’s closest confidants knew, and the story hadn’t spread to the South.
The northern nobles felt a kind of pleasure in being able to mistreat a member of the Grand Ducal family they were supposed to revere.
While they took out their daily frustrations big and small on the son, Yuri turned a blind eye.
Their cruelty made Katya’s teeth chatter.
“The rumor that His Highness killed his teacher right after becoming Grand Duke isn’t true. That man, whom I don’t even want to call Teacher, died of heart disease from fear when he heard the child he had tormented became Grand Duke.”
The black tea he received then was what Nikolai had bestowed on all nobles to commemorate his ascension.
But when the Grand Duke’s teacher suddenly died, the guilty-feeling nobles arbitrarily concluded there was poison in the tea and became terrified.
That’s how the ‘Bloody Grand Duke’ rumor spread.
But Nikolai didn’t bother explaining the rumor that he killed his teacher.
Because he needed them to fear him.
“Regretting that I couldn’t protect His Highness when I was powerless and cowardly, I resolved to live again. To live the rest of my life for Grand Duke.”
The grown Luka built up his strength and internal foundation.
He was the one who informed the Grand Ducal knights and officers about the atrocities in the tower and persuaded them to gather supporting forces.
Nikolai’s ability to seize power while imprisoned in the tower was based on Luka’s efforts.
Though he pretended to have no interest in politics on the surface so even his father, Duke Oblonsky, didn’t notice, Luka did many things for Nikolai.
And now, the Grand Duke told him it was enough, that he just wanted him to be happy.
“When he said to stop this and take care of House Smirnov, I felt anxious.”
“Why?”
“His Highness always takes care of those around him before himself. I thought he wants to send me to the South quickly to get me away from the coming danger.”
The time to completely sweep away Oksana’s forces was drawing closer and closer.
Was Nikolai trying to handle all this alone?
Katya finally realized.
“You must not love me.”
“I just needed someone to fill the position of Grand Duchess.”
“I needed someone who wasn’t her spy and wouldn’t die easily. I chose you because you seemed suitable, that’s all.”
“What wouldn’t I say to make you completely come to my side.”
“I never loved you, not even once.”
The reason he pushed her away with such insincere words.
No, the reason he proposed marriage premised on divorce from the start.
Nikolai planned to send his wife to the South, far from the capital’s political strife after divorce, and proceed with revenge against his enemies.
From the beginning until now, everything he did was ultimately to protect her.
“Always protect the Grand Duchess first. If blades fly at both of us simultaneously, don’t hesitate—save the Grand Duchess.”
She finally understood the meaning of his words when appointing Pavel as Guard Captain.
Nikolai had never once feared his own death.
Even after meeting her, falling in love.
If his wife was in danger, he would gladly throw away his life.
“Where shall we go for our honeymoon after the royal wedding?”
“We already went on our honeymoon.”
“Last time was a horror honeymoon. I want us to have a real honeymoon, just the two of us.”
“I don’t care where as long as I can be alone with Your Highness.”
“I agree.”
When he said those words, had he really thought about the future?
Nikolai had no future he imagined.
It wasn’t that he now wanted to live—he just added the thought of protecting his wife with his life.
Katya felt differently.
They needed to survive together. Just one person surviving held no meaning.
Rather than sending Nikolai first, she wanted to die together on the same day.
That was how Katya felt.
She wished he would fear death.
She wished he would be greedy to live.
‘I wish you wouldn’t stake your life to love me, but rather want to live because of me.’
Just as you are the person who makes me want to live.