#33. It Wasn’t Your Problem
“He said marrying you wouldn’t change anything.”
Before she even realized that was something Taeran had said to her, Ophelia placed her hand on his shoulder. A small, light hand landed gently on him.
“He touched me here.”
Ophelia rose slightly on her toes. Idren felt her faint breath brush the bottom of his chin.
While keeping her hand on his shoulder, she whispered:
“He leaned in like this and said he’d treat me just like my brother used to.”
Then Ophelia stepped back to her original spot. She tilted her head slightly as she looked at him—as if asking, What are you going to do about it?
The moment Idren saw her icy blue eyes and indifferent expression, it felt like a bucket of cold water had been dumped over him.
Ophelia’s words were calm, but he could tell exactly what had happened to her.
Taeran Rojos had laid hands on his wife. On the woman who should’ve been treated with the utmost respect in his territory, he dared touch her with his filthy hands…
And then, as if everything had been her fault, he went around slandering her.
Idren wondered what kind of confidence Taeran must’ve had to do such a thing. If he had known the truth, that lord wouldn’t have died easily. At the very least, he would’ve lost all his limbs.
But then he realized why Taeran had acted so brazenly.
Because Ophelia wouldn’t tell him.
No matter how Idren felt about her, the two of them weren’t close. In Aglanthe, a noblewoman’s rights depended on her family’s power.
Ophelia’s family, the kingdom of Reden, was weak. Its crown prince even owed a debt to Taeran. To him, Ophelia was just a younger sister treated like property by her homeland.
So how insignificant must she have seemed in his eyes?
It had been shortly after she got married too. Even though Idren had given her wealth and power, it would’ve taken time for them to truly take root.
With nothing solidly hers yet, Taeran must’ve thought even less of her. He probably wanted to crush her before she could gain her footing as queen.
And since she didn’t push back, he must’ve assumed it was fine to run his mouth.
Only now did Idren realize how laughable his earlier proposal must’ve seemed—to either keep quiet or reveal everything and demand justice.
Had he known his wife had been harassed, he would never have said such a thing.
Idren looked at the woman standing calmly before him.
He asked her, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He tried to sound as gentle as possible, not wanting his words to come across as blaming her, but he couldn’t stop his voice from trembling.
She was the wife he had once hesitated to even share a room with. Though he knew she was with him only in body, not in heart, she was so precious to him that he couldn’t bear it—he’d only ever tiptoed around her.
He had treasured her so much that he’d ended up ruining everything.
And now someone had dared to do something so vile to her.
Ophelia didn’t answer and simply looked at him. To avoid any misunderstanding, Idren added,
“I’m not blaming you. I just need to know—so I can make it right.”
His voice trembled as he said it.
Ophelia looked up at the man who, despite his anger reaching his throat, was trying to stay composed in front of her.
She found herself wondering why he was so emotional. She knew it was a feeling she shouldn’t understand, but she couldn’t help but be curious about his motivations.
It was a useless curiosity. Ophelia tried to suppress that impulse and said to the man treating her pain like his own,
“It wasn’t your problem.”
“Then why…?”
“I had a plan. But you acted before I could carry it out.”
Then, with the same gentle voice she’d once heard from someone else, the woman explained her plan:
“The lord’s daughter planned to assassinate her father. I agreed that if she reported him, instead of sending an auditor, I’d hold a trial at the Sigrazil Castle. She planned to use that time to take control of her household.”
Hearing this, Idren remembered how Taeran’s daughter had accused her father.
Normally, an auditor would’ve been sent for such matters. But as queen, Ophelia had the right to summon any noble to the capital.
“But you executed him first.”
He had been waiting for a reason to get rid of Taeran. And when one finally presented itself, of course he took it.
While Idren was processing all this, Ophelia added:
“Don’t think I was being naive. If the daughter failed, I planned to poison him myself.”
“…I don’t think that at all.”
Listening to her, Idren felt newly grateful that she wasn’t someone who just endured things. At least if anything happened again, she would strike back—he could find some peace in that.
But still, his rage hadn’t subsided.
And now he felt pathetic.
He should’ve asked more questions. He should’ve known Ophelia wouldn’t have done something like that without a reason.
If she didn’t tell him, he should’ve pressed further.
A thought struck him. Running a hand over his flushed face, he asked carefully,
“If I had asked you… just a little more in our past life… would you have answered me like this?”
Ophelia, seeing the man asking in a voice tightly reined in, found herself once again wondering.
Would she have told him the truth if he had asked back then?
She’d never considered that scenario before.
She recalled how she had viewed him in the early days of their marriage.
Idren had been quiet, distant, and didn’t ask much of her. But he wasn’t particularly warm.
He had excluded her from state affairs and never brought any issues to her.
Recently, in the royal gardens of Reden, Idren had said those actions were out of consideration. Looking back now, she could see it that way, but at the time, Ophelia had thought he simply didn’t trust her.
Not that it had hurt her or disappointed her. She hadn’t trusted him either.
On top of that, early in the marriage, she hadn’t even known what to do with herself. All these rights she’d never had before were suddenly hers—just because a man had paid her price.
She hadn’t known if she was even allowed to hold them. And when she realized she could, she wasn’t sure how to use them.
So in that state, would she really have told him the truth, not knowing how it would end?
Besides, she believed revenge was cleanest when done with her own hands.
Ophelia lowered her gaze slightly.
“I don’t know.”
And then she wondered—why had she told Idren now?
Was it just because he had asked?
But that contradicted what she had just said.
Moreover, she wasn’t someone who answered everything just because someone asked. When Idren had asked why she took her own life, she hadn’t answered him even then.
Even now, she had no intention of telling him about the flowers wrapped in silk, or the fragrant osmanthus executed before her.
But at the very least, she now had the desire to explain why she had hurt someone, and to say that it wasn’t his fault that she stayed silent.
These were emotions she hadn’t had at all before. Ophelia could swear that, up until the end of her first marriage, she had never felt anything like this.
So what had changed?
Suddenly, she recalled the image of him picking up pieces of a broken chair in a wrecked room.
She had flinched, expecting violence, but instead, Idren had calmly tidied up the room. He hadn’t explained himself, but she had understood—it was because he was worried she might get hurt.
That night, he sat her down and applied medicine to her legs. Even though she acted like someone who’d learned all the wrong lessons, he hadn’t said a word of blame. The scars he treated were still on her legs.
Ophelia thought of the boat that had drifted along the canal for so long. Why hadn’t Idren switched to a carriage? If they had, they would’ve reached the lord’s estate much sooner.
Even if it meant she wouldn’t have gotten much sleep.
And the candy too.
She remembered how he had picked a blue candy from the jar she offered. And how there hadn’t been any blue candies rolling at the bottom of the paper bag.
She stared at the floor, her eyes clouded in confusion.
But Idren didn’t ask her for an answer. Instead, he pulled her into an embrace. Though it wasn’t the first time, it somehow felt like the first.
“Thank you for telling me.”
And so Ophelia wondered—was this really something to be thanked for?
Was there some meaning in what had just happened that she hadn’t caught? Had there been more than just words between them?
But she had long lost her touch with other people’s emotions, so she couldn’t grasp any of it.
