My Ex-Husband Clings Like a Leech - ✿ dusk blossoms ✿

Chapter 8 (Part 9)

Returning to the room he had used as a child, Gabriel Richard clutched his chest.

“Has it been eight years?”

Though the room had been kept clean, Gabriel found it utterly dreadful. This was the last place in the Empire where he wanted to be.

“…Damn it.”

After pacing the room for a while, he sat heavily on the bed. Gabriel’s face was pale, devoid of any color.

Gabriel Richard’s life had begun to unravel from the moment his father passed away.

His mother hadn’t shed a single tear over his father’s death. Instead, she had spoken incomprehensible words.

‘Your father fulfilled his duty as the Emperor’s sword until the very end. It was an honorable death.’

Gabriel couldn’t understand what was so honorable about never seeing his father again.

‘Our Duke may be young, but he’s already so dignified.’

After hosting a banquet, his mother would boast endlessly about her eldest son, Jeremy Richard.

‘You’re frail, so it’s best if you stay in your room.’

Meanwhile, she forbade Gabriel from attending the banquet downstairs.

Hiding on the upper floor, Gabriel had watched the laughing and chattering guests below with a vacant expression.

‘Why are you so useless? If only you were half as capable as your brother.’

‘You want to paint? Then you’d better not carry the family name. There’s no room for an artist in the Richard family.’

His mother had always disapproved of him, but after his father’s death, she became even harsher. She confiscated all of Gabriel’s paintings and tools and burned them.

As his brushes, paper, and paints went up in flames, so did Gabriel’s dream of becoming an artist.

It was around that time that his health began to deteriorate. He spent more and more days confined to his bed, even finding light walks exhausting.

Though his circumstances were painful, Gabriel wasn’t entirely sad.

Even though his father was gone, he still had his brother. Six years older, Jeremy was both a source of affection and admiration for Gabriel.

Clutching a flower, Gabriel had lingered outside Jeremy’s room.

‘Lord, His Grace the Duke has said he doesn’t wish to see anyone right now.’

Tears welled up in the eyes of the small boy staring at the wilting flower.

‘I wanted to give this to my brother.’

Leaving the flower outside his brother’s door, Gabriel turned away with slumped shoulders. For months afterward, Jeremy didn’t leave his room.

It was too much for Gabriel, who wasn’t even ten years old, to process.

Lonely and scared, he suffered from nightmares every night. Unable to sleep, he eventually sought out his mother’s room.

‘Mother, may I sleep with you just for tonight?’

‘A coward like you has no place in the Richard family!’

Maria hurled harsh words at Gabriel. Terrified, he wet himself.

Crying, Gabriel sought refuge in his brother’s room.

‘Brother, are you there?’

‘I’m too scared to sleep alone.’

‘Brother, I miss Father.’

‘I won’t be a bother. Could you please just leave the door open a little?’

Standing outside the door, Gabriel continued to talk to his brother. He was so frightened that he couldn’t bear to stay silent.

But Jeremy Richard never responded.

Gabriel’s body and mind gradually deteriorated. Then one day, his brother, who had succeeded the Duke’s title, left for the frontier to subjugate monsters.

He departed without saying a word to Gabriel.

‘To become the Emperor’s hound, the one who devoured Father.’

He abandoned Gabriel at Richard Castle.

And left far away.

The grand Richard Ducal Residence felt like an enormous, icy wall to him.

‘No one loves me.’

Overwhelmed by a profound sense of betrayal, Gabriel couldn’t even cry.

***

Footsteps echoed in the storage room, and the man collapsed on the floor froze in terror. Dragging a long chain attached to his ankle, he tried to hide himself as deep into a corner as possible.

“Don’t come closer. Please.”

His once-luxurious suit, made of the finest fabric, was now soaked in blood and sweat, filthy and tattered. His previously plump face had aged decades in just a few days.

“…Oh, Goddess Diana.”

His cracked lips, which now called out the name of a deity he never believed in, were blistered, and his chin was raw from the constant drooling.

Geoffrey Pablo, born into a prestigious Earl’s family, had lived his life without knowing hardship. Moreover, he had been secretly assisting the Emperor, earning the full trust of the ruler. In short, he had been in a position envied by everyone in the Empire.

But now, he looked worse than a beggar beyond the city walls.

‘The Emperor has abandoned me.’

The days he had spent foolishly believing someone would come to save him now seemed utterly pathetic.

Finally, as a long shadow fell over his body, Geoffrey trembled violently as though having a seizure.

He wanted to clasp his hands together and beg for his life, but both his hands had been stabbed through with a sword, leaving him unable to move them.

“So, are you still refusing to talk today?”

The man who tormented Geoffrey asked, sitting on his usual sofa without even glancing at the wall where Geoffrey was chained.

“No? Didn’t you say you’d talk?”

But the Pasa interrogator tormenting Geoffrey didn’t bother to listen to the end of his sentence.

He stabbed Geoffrey’s already injured hands with a sharp blade, his expression unchanged, displaying an unparalleled level of cruelty and indifference.

Having abandoned all hope, Geoffrey made one final act of defiance.

“You won’t be able to do anything anyway.”

That, at least, was an undeniable fact.

Felipe Morciani, the Emperor, was completely insane. On the first day Geoffrey had been summoned to the Emperor, he had witnessed the creature imprisoned in an iron cage submerged in water.

‘That’s no human.’

Its pale face, red eyes, and the hooks and scythes in place of fingers had made his knees buckle in fear.

‘It’s terrifying.’

It looked as if it could slash his throat at any moment.

But as Geoffrey continued the tasks the Emperor assigned him, he grew numb to it all.

‘It’s not like I’m the one being hunted.’

The targets of the Emperor’s hunts were usually powerless, impoverished young people. Later, Geoffrey couldn’t even tell whether the Emperor was catching humans or beasts.

***

Therese, who had returned early, was waiting for someone at a gazebo in a corner of the garden.

Though it wasn’t well-maintained, it still appeared picturesque to her. The cozy garden, shaded by ivy covering one wall, looked like something out of a fairy tale.

Leaning against the gazebo, Therese closed her eyes when she heard a rustling sound from the bushes. Gabriel, the one she had been waiting for, emerged.

“You’re here.”

“Why did you call me out?”

Gabriel’s tone was curt as he glanced around. Squinting against the sunlight filtering through the trees, he continued.

“I’ll be returning to the Academy soon.”

“It’s still dangerous.”

According to the information Roshan had obtained, the Emperor’s soldiers were combing the area around Oxford Street in search of the person responsible for publishing an illegal newspaper.

Even the slightest suspicion could lead to being dragged to an underground prison and subjected to brutal torture.

At Therese’s words, Gabriel replied indifferently.

“I’ve managed fine so far.”

“Lord, this isn’t something you can overcome on your own.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Gabriel reacted as if he were having a fit at the word “Lord,” as if he had heard something he shouldn’t have.

Tilting her head slightly, Therese spoke firmly.

“Regardless, returning now is not an option.”

“No one has the right to give me orders.”

He had always lived as he pleased. Not long after his brother left for the battlefield, Gabriel had entered the Academy. This was his first time returning home in eight years.

‘Mother never once called for me.’

Occasionally, she sent gifts for special occasions, but he always threw them away without even checking what they were.

Years later, when his brother returned from the battlefield and visited him at the Academy, Gabriel no longer wanted to see him.

Given his circumstances, hiding at Richard Castle now felt like a blow to his pride.

“It’s not an order; it’s a request out of concern.”

“I’ll decline your concern.”

In the past, he might have been touched by someone expressing worry for him. But Gabriel was no longer a child.

“That noble work you’re doing.”

Gabriel reacted sharply to her praise.

“It’s not something I do to impress anyone.”

For years, Gabriel had been secretly investigating his father’s death. He was certain it was connected to the Imperial Family, but finding evidence was difficult. That’s why he had turned to publishing a newspaper.

What had started as a personal endeavor had revealed to Gabriel just how many others shared his sorrow.

‘I’m not the only one living in hell.’

The death of a man who had died building the capital’s walls wasn’t even mentioned in the Empire’s newspapers. No one knew that he had a wife who was pregnant with their second child and a toddler learning to walk.

As Gabriel was about to laugh bitterly, Therese tilted her head slightly and spoke.

“That’s precisely what I find admirable. As a merchant, I’m not one to work hard on things that don’t yield profit.”

When Gabriel looked up in surprise, his eyes met Therese’s, who was smiling faintly.

“…?”

Having grown weary of noblewomen, Gabriel was shocked to find one who spoke as she did.

Flustered, his ears turned red, and Therese spoke lightly.

“Do you think I’m acting like a merchant’s daughter?”

“N-no, that’s not it.”

Though he hadn’t attended Jeremy Richard’s wedding, it didn’t mean Gabriel had no interest in his brother’s marriage.

‘Duke Richard is marrying Baron Demori’s only daughter.’

‘Isn’t she far too unworthy of our Empire’s hero?’

Everyone criticized Baron Demori’s family upon hearing the news of the marriage. They claimed Therese Demori was frivolous, vulgar, and utterly unrefined.

‘But she’s nothing like the rumors.’

From their first meeting, when she had appeared before him in shabby men’s clothing, to now, she had never struck Gabriel as vulgar or unrefined. In fact, her candidness and confidence were admirable.

At that moment, Therese removed the shawl she was wearing and handed it to Gabriel. When he reluctantly accepted it and stared blankly at it, she gestured with her chin.

“Put it on. Your face is pale.”

When he draped the shawl around his neck, the fabric barely covered his shoulders, but it carried a faint warmth.

“To continue your work, you need to stay alive first. So, why not endure the things you dislike for now, Gabriel?”

“G-Gabriel?”

No one, aside from his family, had ever called him by his first name.

“If you dislike being called ‘Lord’,’ then what should I call you?”

Though they weren’t particularly close, Therese found Gabriel likable.

Perhaps it was because she felt a sense of camaraderie, having experienced death herself. She didn’t mind his prickly demeanor.

Moreover, the two of them could, in a way, be considered family now, so it wasn’t strange for her to look after him.

‘If I had a younger sibling, would it feel like this?’

When Therese smiled warmly at him, Gabriel, on the contrary, became more apprehensive.

“I… I don’t think of you as the Duchess…”