– The weather is so nice.

Even with the anticipation in her voice, he didn’t look at her.

– There’s a festival on Etorsen Street. They say you can taste food from all across the continent.

As expected.

Though she knew she couldn’t draw a reaction from him with probing words, she was afraid.

Before being her fiancé, he was the empire’s only Grand Duke.

Despite being his fiancée, she found it difficult to speak to him rashly.

– …Won’t you go with me?

Still, she couldn’t bear it—being trapped only within the Count’s estate was suffocatingly horrible.

So to the question that burst out, his answer was always the same.

– That seems difficult.

What he could permit her was only the Count’s estate garden.

Still without taking his eyes off the documents, he replied that way.

For the long three years, their conversations had always been like that.

She actually knew that was all there was to this relationship.

But she didn’t want to believe it.

If she let go of even that, she would be completely alone.

In the Count’s estate filled only with people trying to kill her, she would truly be alone.

So Serena didn’t stop talking.

She endlessly poured out words no one listened to, stories even she herself couldn’t bear.

Afraid that if even she stopped talking, it would end here.

‘How foolish.’

That was the only way to describe it.

Nothing but foolishly stubborn.

Just because she didn’t acknowledge it didn’t make a nonexistent relationship exist.

Serena was drowning in such terrible loneliness that she couldn’t even grasp that simple fact.

When she quietly cast her gaze, Hayden finally raised his head.

Like he’d forgotten her existence while looking only at documents, his pupils trembled finely when their eyes met.

“This feels like the first time I’m seeing your face.”

“…?”

At the casually thrown words, he frowned.

His displeased expression was quite familiar.

“No, would that feel unfair to you? At least when we met every week, you called my name and made eye contact.”

‘Though it’s regrettable that those actions, which meant nothing to you, were everything to me.’

How could she have been so naive?

Something so clear—why couldn’t she see it before dying?

Bitter laughs kept escaping.

She was so pathetically pitiful to herself that she couldn’t bear it without laughing.

“You don’t look well.”

Though she’d been laughing for once, he spoke in an irritated tone.

Like the wind stopping, her laughter ceased abruptly.

A chillingly indifferent gaze turned toward Hayden.

“…Are you perhaps unwell? I understood you could live until twenty.”

His words stabbed into her heart like a dagger.

She had no more attachment to him. She too had only clung to him out of unbearable loneliness—she’d never loved him. She wouldn’t suffer just because he didn’t love her.

‘But still, that’s too much.’

Treating her like a sacrifice about to die right to her face.

Disgust surged at his face, worried the precious sacrifice might die.

Hayden had always been like this.

What she wanted, what she needed.

Or even what was natural as a fiancé—he granted none of it, yet reacted sensitively about Serena’s health.

He hadn’t granted the small request to take her outside for three years, yet even when she was smiling, he’d say her complexion looked dark.

In the end, it was just him worrying she might die on her own before he could benefit.

‘He just wished I’d stay quiet and still.’

Until her death, Serena had accepted all his words as concern.

Knowing it wasn’t the truth, she still stuffed his words into her heart forcefully, like wearing ill-fitting clothes.

On nights when her whole body ached from cruel *buse and she couldn’t even sit, only those words were all she had.

If she didn’t package Hayden’s words as plausible concern to comfort herself, she couldn’t endure the overwhelming loneliness.

During those long, long past days, Hayden was Serena’s only comfort and hope.

Only when thinking of him could Serena dream of the future, even momentarily.

Knowing it wouldn’t exist, she still pictured a future living as his wife.

Those were days when she had to live leaning on such vain hope.

No matter how much she knew his true feelings deep down, and though she truly expected nothing, Hayden was an irreplaceably important existence to Serena.

But now that she faced all the facts, his words were nothing more or less than disgusting to her.

He was different from Kyle.

Kyle had been an object of fear from the start, an existence that left only hatred even before death.

But Hayden had been her only hope before dying.

A hope as insignificant as a straw she had to cling to with all her strength.

What she’d wanted from him wasn’t to be rescued from this hell.

Just so she could endure each day.

So she could believe until the end the clumsy lie that her death had value.

She’d only wanted that much comfort.

‘I’m sick of it.’

Because he was the existence she’d clung to until the end, her hatred toward him was deeper than any other emotion.

“Serena?”

Only now realizing she was different from usual, that she wasn’t chattering about anything like usual, Hayden called her softly.

Clear blue eyes hiding a storm faced him head-on.

“Actually, I’m not well.”

“…!”

His shoulders flinched slightly, seemingly shocked.

It was a natural reaction since she’d never once said she was sick first during all that long time.

‘The sacrifice must be quite precious after all.’

Serena bit her trembling lips, swallowing the scorn trying to escape.

‘If my life is so precious to you, I should use that. Just for a very short time, only as long as I need you.’

Her neat lips parted without hesitation.

“Please take me to the Grand Duke’s estate.”

At the firm request, his gaze tangled deeply with her clear blue eyes.

“I’m being abused at the Count’s estate.”

At the words thrown in an indifferent tone, pale veins rose on the back of Hayden’s hand.

“What do you…!”

His bright blue eyes trembled finely before he could finish speaking.

Though she hadn’t expected it, it wasn’t a bad scene.

Seeing Hayden Havernian show such a disheveled appearance.

An exhilarating feeling, like drawing a crack on the perfect statue that had crushed her, one that couldn’t allow even a speck of dust, lightly brushed her heart.

After being unable to take his eyes off her for a moment, he finally turned his head.

His large Adam’s apple moved beneath his tightly pressed lips.

While he wasn’t conscious of it, the pile of documents that had been like his alter ego crumpled under his rough fingertips.

‘So it had to be this much.’

To get your attention.

All the countless stories she’d babbled until now—none of them reached you.

The futile efforts to find things to say to you from a daily life full of pain were mercilessly trampled by you.

Only now that the precious sacrifice’s life is in danger do you finally put down the documents.

Her satisfaction with Hayden’s reaction was brief.

Knowing where that confusion originated from, unbearable mockery flowed between her red lips.

“Did you really not know?”

At the question spat out like chewing, his gaze turned toward Serena again.

She hadn’t planned to interrogate him.

But seeing him flustered enough to throw aside his documents, she couldn’t help finding it ridiculous.

“My appearance, coming out to meet my fiancé just once a week, must have looked so happy to Your Grace.”

At the laughter flowing between her twisted lips, he averted his gaze again.

Like there was something he couldn’t bear to see.

With an expression desperate to turn away from this moment.

Watching him like that was unbearable pain for her too.

Every action Hayden took grated on her nerves, making her head throb.

“You were so busy handling the documents you brought every time you came to meet me, you probably didn’t even think to look at anything.”

“That’s…”

“I’m not asking to hear excuses.”

She didn’t need to hear pathetic excuses, nor did she want to.

Perhaps having nothing particular to say, Hayden quickly closed his mouth too.

‘You wouldn’t bother making excuses to me anyway.’

Just an existence who’d be offered as a sacrifice after serving as a public fiancée.

He wouldn’t even feel obligated to make excuses to such an insignificant existence.

Forcibly suppressing the disgust surging up like vomit, Serena brought up the main point once more.

“Please take me to the Grand Duke’s estate.”

“…”

At the request raised again, he hesitated.

His mind was probably busy wondering whether taking her would complicate matters more.

Serena had no intention of staying long at the Grand Duke’s estate either.

That place would just be another hell.

She was merely trying to create a pretext.

A pretext to escape the Count’s estate that clung to her so terribly.

Near Serena, the only person with power to match Count Ashterton was Hayden Havernian alone.