Chapter 13: Words That Cannot Be Spoken

Yet despite his rough touch, the erratic rise and fall of her chest gradually began to calm.

Elana’s breathing slowly returned to normal, and the cheeks and eyes wet with tears began to dry.

“Haa.”

Only after a long while did Calliod release her.

The hand that moments ago had seemed ready to grip her lifeline and snap her slender neck withdrew with surprising ease.

He looked down at her with a face so cold it was hard to believe he had just helped the woman who’d been gasping for breath moments earlier.

Elana calmly wiped the tear-streaked corners of her eyes, meeting his icy gaze in silence before walking past him.

Her actions were composed, but the situation left her deeply unsettled and embarrassed.

Of all places, of all moments—she had not wanted to show herself like this, in this state.

The only small relief was that her legs, which moments ago had seemed frozen in place, now moved without issue.

But then Calliod seized her arm.

“You can’t just walk away like this.”

“……”

“You should have stayed quiet. You shouldn’t be here. And now—what scheme are you plotting with that woman? Your Highness, the precious princess.”

His mocking voice fell over her like a shadow.

Calliod found it impossible not to doubt her intentions for being here.

Leaving her alone these past few days had been, in his mind, a form of consideration—time to rest after all she had endured in her fragile state.

But she had thrown that away, unable to restrain herself, and now had done this.

He had no idea what to make of her actions.

Elana, held fast in his large hand, tilted her head up.

Her golden eyes, deeper than usual, met his.

Calliod found the clear, innocent gaze intolerable.

How could she look at him like that—eyes that seemed incapable of harming anyone?

It made his skin crawl.

“Why are you looking at me like you don’t know anything? Like you want me to believe you.”

“And what exactly should I know? I only wanted to see what expression that woman would make when she realized you weren’t a ghost.”

Her guileless eyes made Calliod grit his teeth before letting out a derisive laugh.

“If you don’t know, I’ll tell you myself. Eight years ago, wasn’t it you and that woman who set the stage so you could live? And yet here you are, meeting her again?”

“…I only passed judgment based on the evidence at the time.”

“Elana!!”

His grip on her tightened.

She winced for the briefest moment at the sharp pain, then composed herself and spoke evenly.

“The royal court was unstable then, and it wouldn’t have been strange for anyone to exploit that. I was taught to doubt everything.”

“Everything pointed to Ridges with unnatural clarity—so much so it was suspicious! Once… just once, for the sake of our loyalty and devotion, you could have given us at least a chance to defend ourselves—just that much…”

Elana tore his hand away as if clawing at it, cutting him off with a raised voice.

“There was physical evidence of treason! What more—what more could I have done?!”

Her frail body couldn’t withstand even her own outburst; she swayed unsteadily.

Calliod instinctively reached out, then pulled back, muttering a low curse.

“I was about to die myself—what was I supposed to do? You weren’t even there! You don’t know what it was like, yet you dare to—!”

Elana played her part well, concealing the truth behind a practiced lie.

That day had been the result of her own excessive suspicion toward Robellina and her daughter, combined with the Duke of Ridges’s moment of carelessness.

Her excessive wariness had, in the end, blinded her, while the Duke of Ridges—burdened with the deep grief of losing his wife—overlooked something he never would have missed under normal circumstances.

The gap created by that oversight had led to the outcome they faced today.

Elana knew well that the greatest culprit in all of this was the malicious Robellina, yet her own heavy guilt kept her from placing the blame entirely on her.

After all, the fact remained—she had killed his blood.

How could she possibly tell him, ‘I killed your father to save you?’

How could she say, ‘Your father gave up his life to save his own child?’

‘How could I tell him these hands personally delivered the poison?’

Even if he learned the truth, who in the world would simply respond with, ‘Ah, I see.’

Then it couldn’t be helped, and accept it?

If Calliod were ever to learn the full story, he would carry an unbearable weight of fury with no place to unleash it.

She could already see how much it would torment him, how it would drag him into an endless mire of anguish, the kind born from a truth so cruel there was no one to blame.

Forcing the victim to decide whether to forgive the perpetrator… that in itself is too cruel.

She had no intention of burdening someone already suffering enough with another impossible choice.

She would not ask for his forgiveness.

She would take on the role of the villain completely—someone he could hate without hesitation.

Elana believed that was her duty.

That was the only way she could atone to him.

‘It’s enough that I alone bear such pain.’

The crime she had committed was one that neither understanding nor forgiveness should touch, and his adding one more layer of hatred toward her would change nothing.

She had chosen from the start to be hated—this was nothing in comparison.

“Did you just say ‘how dare you’? Ha!”

Her sharp voice made Calliod let out a hollow laugh.

At last, he thought he understood why she could stand before him with her head held high, without the slightest trace of apology.

‘Ah. So that’s it. She never even thought she’d done anything wrong to begin with.’

Laughter kept escaping him.

While he had spent all these years burning with outrage at the injustice done to him, she had slept peacefully, never even realizing she was at fault.

Like a man half-mad, Calliod laughed before his expression hardened.

“So you claim you knew nothing? You expect me to believe that? That you truly suspected us?”

“……”

Elana fell silent under his relentless questioning, turning her head away.

There was so much she wanted to say, but none of it could be spoken aloud.

She had already decided as much.

“My loyalty and trust—that’s how you repaid them? That’s all you have to say for yourself?”

“People’s hearts can turn in an instant. If I needed to survive, what use was any of that?”

Elana carried herself as though she were entirely innocent, acting as if she bore no guilt at all.

Calliod’s eyes grew wilder.

If it had been for survival, then perhaps she had no other choice.

But such an excuse—such a pitiful hope that it was an unavoidable decision—was something only the victim could cling to, not the one who had ruined everything.

Rationalizing that she had to do it to live was the only way Calliod could try to understand her, to take her side.

It was the only way he could make sense of it—for the woman who had been bound to him as a partner in life.

Yet hearing the words “I had no choice” directly from her lips made the curses rise unbidden in his throat.

“So I should understand because you had no choice? My father’s death and my family’s disgrace?!”

“If you were truly a loyal subject, then you should accept that kind of sacrifice if it meant protecting your liege in a moment of crisis. That’s what happened that day. This isn’t something you should be blaming me for.”

Elana concealed her true feelings completely, wearing the mask of a beast that had abandoned its humanity.

Calliod, utterly fooled, felt the heated rush of his emotions and, for the first time, thought:

‘I should have just ended her breath earlier.’

If this was the sort of answer he was going to hear, he should have saved himself the trouble and killed her on the spot.

He regretted ever listening to his advisors, who had urged him to make Elana his empress for the sake of public sentiment in Cliphes and internal politics in Gladius.

‘I’m a madman for wanting to keep poison at my side just to use it as a shield against the flies swarming around me.’

Was it truly necessary to keep so near someone who, though useful, was no different from poison?

Surely, if he looked, there would be others who could serve the same purpose.

Elana turned toward him, standing straight, accepting the heat of his emotions head-on.

Her eyes did not waver as she stared at him.

Then her tightly closed lips parted coldly.

“Don’t act like you’ve been betrayed. You never loved me anyway.”

“What?”

“You stayed by my side out of a sense of duty because I was a woman suitably matched to your position. So don’t make that face, as if I’ve betrayed you, just because I didn’t spare you back then.”