Held captive in Ahazan’s embrace, unable to move, Clodine murmured as though she simply could not accept what his words implied.

“It sounds as though you’ve made me into some shameless woman who’s holding you while thinking about another man.”

Even when Clodine bluntly voiced what she believed he meant, Ahazan did not deny it.

He did not tell her she had misunderstood.

He did not correct her interpretation.

Which meant only one thing.

She had understood him perfectly.

Transparent despair slid down Clodine’s pale cheeks.

“You said you loved me… You clearly said you loved me…”

Only a short while ago, she had given Ahazan her one and only heart.

And he had accepted it.

That was why they had shared such happiness and come this far together.

So why?

With a face twisted by grief and confusion, Clodine desperately clutched at his collar with both hands.

She wanted him to apologize.

She wanted him to tell her he had misspoken.

“What kind of grand shield is that supposed to be?”

But Ahazan cut her off coldly.

Then he released the body he had been holding so tightly.

Once more, he put distance between them.

Looking down at her with eyes full of disappointment, he let out a deep, weary sigh, as though this was exactly what he had expected.

Turning his back on her, he walked toward the window.

“You talk as if saying ‘I love you’ is some promise that can never change.”

Laughter from the masquerade drifted through the slightly open window.

“No matter what, Clodine… we both know that’s not true.”

The sound of that laughter mingled with Ahazan’s icy voice until it felt as though people were mocking her.

Ridiculing her.

Keeping his body turned toward the window, Ahazan glanced back over his shoulder.

“After everything we’ve been through. Isn’t that right?”

Still frozen in the exact posture she’d been in while leaning against him, Clodine stared blankly at his merciless back.

If a vow of love was not a promise of an unchanging heart…

Then what exactly had that desperate confession of love he had finally given her been a promise of?

Yet she was too afraid to ask.

Afraid another answer she could not bear would come back to her.

All she could do was tremble silently.

“Honestly, even if it were some grand promise, it wouldn’t matter. Maybe not to others, but you should know this better than anyone.”

His voice remained calm.

“A promise made with words becomes meaningless the moment someone decides to break it.”

The words sounded to Clodine like something far crueler.

You know that because you’ve already thrown me away once.

There was no other way for her to hear it.

Whether he knew or not how close she was to collapsing to the floor, Ahazan continued speaking as casually as if he were merely commenting on the beauty of the moon tonight.

“You look shocked. Like someone who forgot everything and decided to start over.”

Perching lightly on the windowsill, he folded his arms across his chest.

The moonlight, oblivious to the tension between them, poured around him with such beauty that it almost hurt the eyes.

Tilting his head slightly, he looked at her.

“Wasn’t this exactly what you prepared yourself for when you decided to love again?”

“I wasn’t…”

Clodine forced the words through a throat that felt completely blocked.

“I never imagined that was all your love meant.”

I never imagined our future was still grafted onto that cursed past.

One word at a time, she dragged the broken voice from her throat.

For Clodine, this was the first time she had ever truly held Ahazan’s love in her hands.

Their paths had crossed and missed each other endlessly in the past.

He had carved countless wounds into her heart.

But she had endured them all because she believed that, at last, he had come to genuinely love her.

That made every wound feel worthwhile.

But if his love meant nothing more than this…

Then wasn’t he saying that one day, after her luck finally ran out, he might abandon her again?

Just as he had handed her over to O’Neil Penelope years ago.

No.

She had already been married twice.

If there was a next time, perhaps he would find an even crueler way to cast her aside.

The thought alone filled her with such despair that death seemed preferable.

“If that was how you felt, then you never should have told me you loved me…”

Only then did Clodine fully realize the injustice she felt.

Curling her neatly lowered hands into tight fists, she spoke.

The resentment she finally believed she had the right to voice filled every word.

“If you intend to throw someone away, you shouldn’t reach out your hand in the first place. How can you still… still not understand that…?”

Ahazan listened quietly to her desperate voice, each word sounding as though it had been scraped from the depths of her heart.

At last, as though he could endure no more, a hollow sigh escaped him—something halfway between a laugh and a groan.

Then he strode toward her.

“Because I have to.”

His large, powerful hands seized her small shoulders and shook her roughly.

“Because even if it’s a bubble, even if it’s a mirage, even if it’s you disappearing all over again after only a short while… I’d burn myself to death from the inside if I didn’t try to have you anyway…!”

He ground out each word through clenched teeth, only to finally hurl them at her as though he could no longer keep them contained.

The words struck Clodine like stones.

Then, like an eagle folding its wings at the peak of its flight and plunging toward the earth, Ahazan’s voice dropped suddenly.

“But you can’t start this already.”

The hand gripping her shoulder as though it might crush it slowly rose to cup her face.

“Just because you saw someone who looked a little like him, you can’t stand in front of me and start reminiscing about a dead man. Am I wrong?”

“Reminiscing…? No, that’s not true. You’ve misunderstood. I wasn’t doing that, I—”

Clodine desperately tried to correct his misunderstanding.

But there was no opening.

No space for her words to enter.

The distrust filling Ahazan’s eyes as he looked at her stole the rest of her voice away.

“…Ahazan, why won’t you listen to me? Why won’t you believe me when I tell you that’s not what happened?”

“Ha.”

At Clodine’s frustrated question, Ahazan let out a short, sharp laugh.

As if she had asked something so obvious it wasn’t even worth asking.

As if she already knew the answer and was foolish for pretending otherwise.

A bitterly twisted response slipped from between his lips.

“Who knows? Maybe I’m so crazy about you that I’ve lost my mind.”

“…Ahazan…”

At that point, Clodine no longer merely found him unfamiliar.

She was afraid of him.

Whispering his name in a trembling voice, almost like a sob, she instinctively took a step back.

Ahazan’s sharpened gaze followed the movement in a chillingly straight line before settling on her retreating feet.

After a brief silence, he spoke in a regretful tone.

“Just when I thought I could finally have that damned love with you, there are still so many things getting in the way.”

To Clodine, who had spent her entire life learning through painful experience that nothing in the world could stop or erase her love for Ahazan, those words were impossible to understand.

For her, love had never required such effort.

Yet it seemed that for Ahazan, loving her had always been a struggle.

Even now.

“If it takes that much effort… then you don’t have to love me.”

Whether she was a bubble or a mirage, if his feelings could be so easily shaken by every obstacle despite him claiming he would die without having her, then that wasn’t love.

It was merely an overwhelming desire to possess.

Some might argue there was little difference between possessiveness and love.

But Clodine believed they were fundamentally different.

And that realization made her feel as though her heart were collapsing.

After that, she could not speak for a long while.

Neither could Ahazan.

The two of them surrendered themselves to the brief silence, letting their gradually softening breaths speak for the emotions neither could voice.

Anyone else would have walked away by now.

Anyone else, exhausted by such endless suffering, would have abandoned the other and left.

But Ahazan and Clodine could not.

Even with each other standing right before them, they could not stop hurting.

It truly was a cursed kind of love.

When the trembling finally faded from her lips, Clodine spoke in a voice that sounded like a white flag raised in surrender.

“You already have me, Ahazan. It’s unfortunate for me, but… even if you never love me, I don’t think I can leave you.”

Sadly, she already knew the truth.

Living as another man’s wife while longing for Ahazan had been far more painful than holding a version of him who might never truly love her.

Even that life was closer to happiness.

“So let’s stop for tonight. I’m too tired right now…”

Her heart was so tangled and exhausted that she felt she might collapse where she stood.

In truth, her condition had begun deteriorating the moment she saw the young man with albinism outside.

The sight of him had reminded her of O’Neil Penelope.

Even now, she sometimes felt as though O’Neil’s severed head—cut down by Ahazan’s hand—was still rolling at her feet.

She was afraid.

Afraid that some curse might fall upon Ahazan.

Afraid that the gods might punish him.

And she hated herself for another reason as well.

Because deep down, she had been happy.

Happy that O’Neil’s death had finally allowed her and Ahazan to love each other.

That thought made her feel like some hideous demon.

And she was terrified that O’Neil, whom she had completely forgotten for so long, would return once more, night after night, as a nightmare, wearing that deathly pale face.

“How can you say something like that while looking so miserable?”

Clodine’s face, pleading to end the conversation because she was exhausted—

No.

The tears soaking that face—

Ahazan’s icy hand reached out and gently brushed them away.

“So that I can’t even hate only you.”

As he looked at the broken woman before him, something that had been absent until now finally surfaced on Ahazan’s face.

Guilt.

It forced its way through the blazing fury consuming him and slowly rose to the surface.