Chapter 44: Please Don’t Kill Me

Caelan was taking rough breaths with his head lowered. His fingertips were still trembling, and cold sweat that had formed on his forehead was running down his temples. While his face was covered in sweat, his lips were pale and trembling as if he were cold.

His shoulders were rising and falling as if his breathing hadn’t calmed down, leaving Bliss feeling both surprised and worried.

At first, Caelan had been worried that she might be shocked. But now she couldn’t understand what had made him like this. However, calming him down took priority over asking why he was acting this way.

“Caelan.”

Bliss carefully reached out and placed her hand on Caelan’s shoulder. While gently patting him in that position, she spoke.

“Only I am in front of you right now. So breathe out slowly.”

Bliss bent her knees to lower her eye level. Since he had his head lowered, his expression was even more visible.

“Look at me and focus only on breathing. That’s how you can calm down.”

Bliss moved her hand from patting his shoulder to wipe away the sweat running down his temple. Then, sliding from his temple, she placed her hand on his cheek to share warmth. As she gently stroked his cheek with her thumb, Bliss smiled. She hoped her smile would help Caelan stabilize even a little.

“I don’t know what startled you so much. But right now it’s just the two of us…”

Bliss took out her handkerchief and gently wiped his forehead.

“Let’s rest a bit before going back. Are you thirsty?”

Seeing Caelan’s Adam’s apple move, Bliss looked around. While searching for a place where she could get some water, she soon found a suitable spot and stood up.

“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

Bliss told Caelan she would return soon and stood up. If they wouldn’t just give her water, she was prepared to pay a reasonable price.

With that thought, she was about to take a step. That’s when she felt the warmth of a large hand wrapping around her wrist. Bliss looked down at her wrist before looking at him who had grabbed her.

“Stay here.”

Though Caelan still had his head lowered, his hand wouldn’t let go of Bliss. Though he still hadn’t gotten rid of his trembling, as he put strength into not letting go of Bliss, it made him shake even more.

Bliss thought she should stay still, but even that didn’t last long before she took Caelan’s hand. As she was removing his hand from her wrist, Caelan lifted his head to look at her.

“You don’t have to go.”

“I won’t go.”

Bliss sat right next to Caelan and placed his hand that she had been holding onto her lap.

“I was just going to place it like this.”

Telling him he didn’t need to use strength, Bliss calmed Caelan. Though she had intended to get water because he was thirsty, seeing his reaction, she thought it better to wait a while.

Sitting next to Caelan, that earlier commotion felt distant. The guards had already removed the dead woman, and people had dispersed. The surroundings had become quiet, creating a peaceful atmosphere.

Looking at the pitch-black sky and the fires burning here and there, the quiet night wasn’t bad at all. Perhaps because she lived as Bliss, always carrying worries, this peaceful moment felt incredibly precious. After staying like that for who knows how long, Caelan opened his tightly closed mouth.

“There’s something I want to ask…”

Instead of answering, Bliss looked at him. Looking at him now, she wanted to answer anything he asked.

“Even after I opened the rose garden, why did you stay quiet?”

“What? The rose garden?”

She couldn’t guess why he suddenly mentioned the rose garden. She wondered if it had anything to do with that dead woman from earlier, but nothing came to mind.

“You asked me to open the rose garden. You pressured me, saying you could only become a real Marchioness if you could come and go from there.”

“Did I… do that?”

Bliss asked with an uncertain voice. In the original work, the novel began with Bliss’s death. Besides the explanation that Bliss was a villainess who deserved to die, there was never any detailed mention of how she lived with Caelan.

“Despite asking so insistently to open it, at some point you stopped mentioning it completely.”

“I must have known you wouldn’t open it.”

Though she answered as if she were talking about someone else, Caelan didn’t dwell on that.

“Before that, you were always swishing around in your skirts calling yourself the Marchioness, so I thought you’d make an even bigger fuss if I showed you the rose garden.”

In truth, he had opened the rose garden intending to shake up the suddenly well-behaved Bliss. So that she could quickly show her true colors.

“But…”

Caelan tilted his head back to clear his blocked breathing.

“You didn’t change at all. Rather, you became even quieter as you went in and out of the Imperial Palace as a maid.”

Looking at the sky, Caelan turned just his eyes to look at Bliss.

“If you tell me the reason why, I’ll tell you my secret too.”

If she told him why she had changed, he would also tell her about his strange behavior.

Though he hadn’t said it, his gaze had always been observing her and he always threw meaningful words at her. That was why Bliss was tense, even if he hadn’t given her the poisoned necklace. But now that he mentioned it directly, she was taken aback.

‘I thought he would keep hiding it…’

As time passed facing Caelan, his gaze had been changing. Watching as it went from containing weak curiosity to becoming serious upon realizing there was a secret that couldn’t be dismissed as simple, it seemed like he would now ask who she was, beyond just suspecting her. So trying to break that atmosphere, Bliss spoke up.

“I’m afraid of dying.”

Seeing Caelan frown, Bliss added more words.

“I’m afraid you’ll kill me.”

Even Bliss hadn’t known she would end up saying this. She had always spent nights full of tension with Caelan, and even obtained a note with meaningful words stating that if she died, Caelan would be the culprit. But she never thought she would reveal her truth like this.

“Bliss…”

“You’re not my parent, nor someone I married for love. But I’ve been doing all sorts of bad things while calling myself the Adrian Marchioness…”

“I will kill you?”

Bliss nodded and naturally turned to him.

“That’s right. Of course, I did things deserving of death, but I didn’t want to die. That’s why I did it.”

Bliss spilled out everything that had been in her mind. She had never imagined she would speak so openly like this, but in a way, it felt refreshing.

Bliss showed a small smile before quickly erasing it. Though she smiled because her current situation was amusing, she absolutely didn’t want to ruin this atmosphere. Looking back at Caelan, Bliss placed her hand on his arm.

“So Caelan, please don’t kill me.”

Bliss spoke clearly while looking straight into his eyes. At her plea to please not kill her as she would stop her evil deeds, Caelan just looked at her silently.

“I’ve said everything I needed to say.”

When she said she had nothing more to say, Caelan nodded slightly and looked ahead. And as he kept his mouth shut, Bliss who was watching him gradually frowned. He had brought up the rose garden and asked why she had changed, but now Caelan wasn’t saying anything.

‘I’ve been had.’

She hadn’t expected it to end with just her story. Even though she knew she had been tricked, Bliss couldn’t express her frustration.

“Your sweat hasn’t dried yet.”

Bliss wiped the sweat that had formed on Caelan’s forehead with her handkerchief and held it out to him.

“With this…”

“I…”

Bliss and Caelan spoke at the same time. Their words overlapped, leading to silence again, but Bliss waited for Caelan to speak again.

“I hate poison.”

“…What?”

Bliss was startled by the result he presented without any explanation of the reason. He hates poison? In the original work, it was Caelan who had put the poisoned necklace on her. Though after Bliss died, Caelan’s silence about the necklace did cause him some awkward moments. But even those moments passed quickly, and soon Caelan went on to reconnect his broken relationship with Latte.

So why did Caelan say he hated poison?

“I have bad memories about poison. So when I see poison, my whole body won’t stop trembling.”

“When was that?”

“I don’t remember when it started. Just that it was when I was young. But pathetically, my body still reacts sensitively to poison.”

Learning his secret that she had never known about, Bliss stayed still, not knowing how to react. It was a series of bewildering moments for Bliss as she tried to figure out how to take this in. And then, Caelan, who hadn’t been looking at Bliss, muttered very indifferently.

“More than hate, I fear it.”

***

Throughout the entire return journey to the mansion, Bliss and Caelan kept their mouths shut while looking out their respective windows. They had been like this once before, and again they were turning their heads in opposite directions. There was much to think about. With her head becoming complicated, Bliss secretly bit her finger to hold back a sigh that was about to come out.

‘Caelan fears poison… Then what exactly killed me? What’s going on here?’

Could someone who fears poison so much that just seeing it makes their fingertips tremble like this really have put poison on a necklace and given it to her?

Perhaps, had Caelan not used poison?