Episode 9
The Crack (9)
Celia had always been confident.
Until now, she had always been able to endure Lucius, and sometimes she had even beaten him.
So even if Lucius tried to intimidate her with strength she couldn’t possibly overcome, she was confident she wouldn’t back down.
But this?
She had never even imagined something like this, so she had no idea what to do.
She wasn’t innocent, nor was she dealing with someone who had genuinely given her his heart.
And yet she was completely helpless against an attack she’d never experienced before.
She couldn’t handle the heat that kept rising to her face.
Her mind, which had gone completely blank, couldn’t process all the things he was saying and felt ready to explode.
His teasing fingers and voice that seemed to gently scratch at her senses made her eyes sting.
“I’m curious, Celia.”
The moment he noticed her floundering, he took advantage.
In this place filled with her things, a man who could never truly belong to her curved his sly lips and toyed with her using shameless words.
“Fill in the moments I can’t remember.”
His tongue slowly swept across his lips.
“So I can touch you the way I used to.”
A faint desire flickered in his eyes.
The red longing hidden within those green eyes was unfamiliar.
His fingertips gliding across her skin left behind a cool heat.
His breath lingered near her temple before slipping out slowly between his lips.
Hot.
Law.
His desire was spilling out openly through his breathing and the slight tremble in his voice.
Is he serious…? Does he really want me?
Even if losing his memories had erased his feelings toward her, this still shouldn’t be possible.
This was not an emotion that Lucius Windmere could ever direct toward Celia Brickwell.
At this moment, Celia alone remembered the resentment between them.
Years of misunderstandings, disregard, rivalry, and humiliation had piled up into layers of hardened emotion.
Lucius shouldn’t be acting like this toward her.
He absolutely shouldn’t.
Each represented everything the other should never become.
The memories she alone still possessed felt painfully vivid, lodged somewhere deep in her throat.
Maybe everything inside his head had fallen out and been replaced by some wicked goblin from a fairy tale.
And that goblin was whispering the most effective ways to torment Celia into his ear.
Whenever she clashed with Lucius, he used every method possible except outright violence to suppress her.
The man known as the greatest gentleman in the empire often lost control in front of her like an aggressive beast.
But because she never gave in easily and always tried to sit above him and mock him, he had finally decided to use a different tactic.
Her eyes trembled.
Cold sweat slid down her back.
The tension spread all the way to her fingertips, making her grip her clothes even tighter.
“D-don’t…”
The broken sound escaped her lips and scraped through the air like a discordant note.
Lucius, who wasn’t cruel, felt unfamiliar.
He felt like a completely different person.
Because of that, she couldn’t bring herself to say the usual cutting words she always threw at him.
She should have been cursing him out.
She should have been mocking him for acting like a dog in heat toward someone who was practically his enemy.
She should have pushed aside this dazed version of him and finally forced him beneath her feet.
But she missed the opportunity.
No.
Rather than missing it, she was practically begging him to stop in exchange for letting him have that victory.
The smile on Lucius’s face finally faded.
Instead, he quietly observed her trembling form.
The eyes that had been full of desire now carefully studied her pitiful shoulders as she curled inward and avoided him while clutching her clothes.
“They said we’ve been married for… about two and a half years, right? And that we’ve known each other for over ten years.”
He muttered something else afterward, but Celia didn’t hear it.
The silence felt endless.
Then it passed.
The hand resting against her back moved away.
The place where his warmth had been was filled by the summer night air, which she sometimes loved and sometimes hated.
The moment she sensed him moving, she reacted immediately.
Like a squirrel caught gathering acorns by a human, her whole body jolted.
After spending a long time searching for the right words, he finally spoke.
“Come to think of it, it’s gotten late, Celia.”
Only then did her eyes move.
His voice was gentle and soft.
The kind of voice a normal Lucius would never use with her.
He lightly took hold of her fingertips.
Because noblewomen weren’t supposed to allow skin contact with anyone other than a fiancĆ© or husband, the unfamiliar warmth passing from his hand to hers made her wrinkle her nose.
Lucius gently guided her hand.
“Should we sleep before it gets any later?”
“Sleep… together?”
He bit his lip lightly before letting it go.
“No. I’ll just watch you fall asleep and then leave.”
The words of refusal reached the edge of her lips but ran away before she could say them.
She didn’t want to continue the conversation.
And honestly, even if she kicked him out herself, he didn’t seem like he’d leave.
In the end, she found herself being dragged toward the bed.
She immediately turned away from him as he sat on the edge of it.
Curling beneath the blanket like a caterpillar, she pulled her knees tightly to her chest.
The very air in the room felt uncomfortable.
Everything pricked at her like thorns.
Celia squeezed her eyes shut and silently recited one of the few prayers she had memorized.
She needed to regain her peace of mind.
But even sacred prayers couldn’t untangle her thoughts.
Her mind only became more knotted.
How much time passed like that?
Eventually, Lucius seemed to decide that she had fallen asleep after hearing her breathing settle.
He finally stood up.
The mattress dipped beneath his weight before rising again.
Apparently, some things don’t change even after memory loss.
His footsteps remained slow, steady, and disciplined.
He carefully opened the heavy door and closed it without making a sound.
Only then did true peace arrive.
Celia pulled the blanket over her head.
That disgusting, arrogant, irritating Lucius Windmere.
Fine.
Since you’ve lost your memories, I’ll let you win this once.
But you don’t know this because you’ve forgotten.
If someone challenges me in a way I’ve never seen before, I might lose once.
But never twice.
We have fought countless little wars, both in public and in secret.
Yet neither of us has ever managed to gain a decisive advantage.
“The humiliation from today… I absolutely… absolutely won’t let it go.”
Celia gritted her teeth and muttered into the blanket.
Damn Lucius.
That blasted Lucius.
“He’s never done a single thing that’s improved my life!”
Early the next morning, after staying awake all night, Celia clenched her fist so tightly around her pen that it nearly snapped.
“No. This is definitely a trial sent by the gods to help me discipline my weakened resolve.”
Last night, she had simply been too shocked and got swept along.
Because he was acting like a different person.
That had to be why she’d lost her composure.
Otherwise, there was no way she would have acted so foolishly around him.
If he had been a stranger, it would’ve been one thing.
But the face attached to that neck was undeniably Lucius’s.
That low voice sinking into her ears one syllable at a time was his.
That annoyingly refined way of speaking was his.
Those large hands and that body nearly twice her size were unmistakably his as well.
Finally, she threw the pen she’d been using to write a letter to her father onto the table and shouted,
“The divorce can still happen. His fingers still work, don’t they? We even have a contract signed by both of us. What’s he going to do about it? I don’t care if his brain is broken or not.”
It annoyed her that he was misunderstanding things.
It annoyed her even more that she was getting caught up in it.
“I was just too shocked yesterday.”
In high society, intimate physical contact wasn’t allowed unless someone was your fiancĆ©.
And Celia had gone straight from having potential marriage candidates to marrying Lucius without ever having a fiancƩ.
Being startled by an attack she had never even imagined was a perfectly human reaction.
Just as she was convincing herself of that, one of the maids entered the room.
“My lady, you have a visitor.”
“A visitor?”
Normally, if she stayed quietly in her room, nobody came looking for her.
The Duchess wouldn’t have sent for her.
And if it were Lucius, the maid wouldn’t have bothered announcing it like this.
“Yes, young master has arrived.”
There was only one person the maid she had brought from Brickwell would call “young master.”
Looks like Evandor is here.
Why was he visiting so early in the morning?
A headache was already forming.
“…Let him in.”
The door opened smoothly.
A figure bathed in sunlight slowly stepped inside.
Maybe because it was still early morning, he was dressed rather casually.
Without any concern for dignity, he yawned as he lazily approached.
“Noona, did you sleep well?”
Looking at Evandor cheerfully waving at her, Celia was reminded that Lucius wasn’t the only person in this family capable of getting under her skin simply by existing.
