<CHAPTER 29>
Forgive the Foolish Days
Her head was spinning.
It felt as though all colors, lights, and sounds were tangled together, pushing her consciousness beyond the realm of thought.
While focusing on the body heat of the man pressed against her and the sensation of his fine hair brushing against her, Evelyn wished for her first experience to end.
Before her helpless body could burst, she hoped Rexfail would drive her to the brink and plunge her consciousness into darkness. That was what she wished for.
But Rexfail, who lightly wiped her tear-stained eyes with his thumb, held Evelyn tightly for a moment before withdrawing his body and stepping back.
Her wet eyes opened wide, and her blurred vision searched for the man moving away from her.
Maxwell brushed her shoulder as if to comfort her, then pulled the blanket up to cover Evelyn‘s body.
“…Why?”
Disappointment was all too familiar, so she didn’t even think to protest. She was simply curious.
Why he had sought her out when she would only push him away, what meaning it held for him to lift her up and set her down when she was of no use.
She wanted to know if his amusement was satisfied by toying with her.
“Why, you ask.”
She grabbed what she could reach and threw it. The fluffy pillow didn’t fly as fast or as powerfully as she wished.
The pillow that drifted lightly struck Rexfail‘s shoulder and fell.
Her face flushed with shame and humiliation. Evelyn, whose ears had turned bright red, screamed with all her might.
“Can’t you just leave me alone! What did I do so wrong!”
She fiercely swatted away the hand trying to soothe her, clutching the sheets as she cried bitterly.
Then finally, she pulled the blanket over her head and curled up like a large squirrel hiding in its burrow, crying for a long time.
Rexfail, who had been quietly watching Evelyn cry her heart out, lightly embraced her body through the blanket.
He felt her movements trying to push him away as if to shake him off, but he didn’t let go.
“I do not wish to hold you in this manner.”
Rexfail pressed his lips against the rounded bulge of the blanket and spoke.
The sobbing subsided, but the tears had not stopped.
Evelyn sniffled and then roughly pushed the sheet away. Static electricity from the fabric made her hair stand up in disarray.
Rexfail had never seen her so disheveled before, so he smiled lightly without realizing it.
“What are you laughing at?”
Evelyn snapped at him sullenly. But the venom that had been in her voice was gone, so Rexfail was not afraid.
He simply smiled quietly.
“Getting hurt and wandering about.”
Evelyn staggered as she raised her body. Rexfail quickly caught her as she tripped on the sheet, and she escaped the bed leaning on his arm.
“What is Count Stop doing? What about Count Acrain? How do they work that you end up getting injured?”
Rexfail smiled as he listened quietly to her nagging, and Evelyn soon heard it.
“What are you smiling about as if you did something good?”
Then he answered.
“Because I’m happy.”
Before the nagging could fly out again, he added an explanation.
“Because you worry about me.”
“…What a shameless person.”
Evelyn picked up the Israji that had fallen to the floor and touched the hardened sap that had flowed out from the cut surface.
“Didn’t you say that was poison?”
“It is if taken immediately.”
Evelyn kneaded the sap that had dried to an appropriately viscous state. The sap, now nearly solid, changed shape in her hands.
“If it’s dried to this extent, it can be used as a hemostatic agent.”
“…The tree of your family is truly a panacea.”
“It’s also poison.”
Evelyn tilted the kettle to pour water, then wiped his hand clean with a damp towel. She examined the wound.
“How did this happen… Did you crush a glass marble or something?”
“Well, something like that.”
While Evelyn spread the sap and applied it to the wound on his hand, Rexfail inhaled her scent from up close.
His barely settled center was beginning to swell again.
As Rexfail sensed something strange and hesitated, Evelyn continued her nagging.
“Go see a physician next time. If you’re going to get hurt so severely, at least bring yourself to me. I can no longer calm your poison now.”
“…But, Evie.”
Rexfail looked at her with a bewildered face and spoke.
“I think I’m alright.”
“…How could that be?”
It was clearly a poison-induced seizure state.
The excitement heightening his body’s senses while the poison circulated through his blood causing agony was exactly the same condition she had often seen him in before.
At such times, Rexfail would be calmed by the special medicine made from the sap of the Israji tree and the secret techniques of the Embrio family.
Otherwise, he would slowly recover after suffering for a long time, a process that took weeks to months.
But to suddenly be alright like this?
“…Has your constitution changed or something?”
“No… The same thing happened occasionally even after you became like that, but never like this.”
The bewildered Rexfail touched his face. Evelyn examined his body here and there, checking his temperature and complexion.
“…It’s true.”
She concluded that Rexfail‘s condition was completely normal.
“I don’t know the reason, but… congratulations.”
Perhaps Rexfail was truly alright now. Without the help of the Embrio family, he might have become a body that could live perfectly well on its own.
But somehow, it felt as if her usefulness had come to an end, and Evelyn grew a little melancholic.
As if piercing through her thoughts, Rexfail reached out and cupped her cheek.
Then he began a sudden and unexpected, yet long-overdue confession.
“I thought you would abandon me again.”
Upon hearing his words, Evelyn raised her hand to push against Rexfail‘s chest, but he didn’t budge. Holding her even more firmly and securely, he continued his confession.
“That young day, in the temple, I thought I had been betrayed.”
“I…”
“I thought you had chosen your father, and declared that you would stand with the duke, against me.”
“That was—!”
Evelyn opened her mouth to protest, but Rexfail buried her small head against his chest and held her, calming her down.
And waiting for her to settle, he spoke.
“While you were my secret ally, I remember how you helped me. I believed… later, when I tried to overthrow Duke Embrio, that you had done so to quickly save me.”
“How could you!”
Those humiliating times.
She had endured every moment of being despised by her father, of being miserable for failing to carry out orders properly, all for Rexfail, solely for him.
She had betrayed the father who gave birth to her and raised her for his sake, ignored commands and acted arbitrarily for his sake. How could he think such thoughts?
“What was I thinking! What kind of thoughts did I have!”
“I know. I know now, Evie.”
Rexfail held the sobbing Evelyn and quietly comforted her.
“Give me a chance, Evie.”
So that his soft breath would scatter against her face, he brought his face close.
With their foreheads touching, Rexfail, who held Evelyn tightly, closed his eyes as if in prayer and murmured.
“I was afraid of being hurt, forgive the foolish days when I could not even look at you. I feared a future that had not yet come, I was pained by a single failure, I did not know of your devotion. I pretended not to know.”
“With such, with such words…”
Her wet face rested on Rexfail‘s hunched shoulder. The crown prince gently pressed his chin against Evie‘s face on his neck with his own cheek.
Without any reason. Without any inevitable cause that required contact.
When had they embraced each other like this, simply because they desired each other’s warmth, because they were so reluctant to part?
That young day they met at the Remensias Great Temple, those fleeting and distant hours under the apricot tree shade where they held each other away from people’s eyes.
The foolishness of those days when they knew neither names nor stations, when they could see only each other, finally bore fruit after so long.
Their simple, earnest, and pure devotion had finally reached each other completely without distortion.
A heart that had never changed or faded despite waiting so long was finally fully acknowledged.
Their bodies separated almost simultaneously. Even so, their hands held each other’s arms tightly.
The two faced each other for a moment, gazing into each other’s eyes, then as if by promise, lowered their eyelids and tilted their faces to accept each other’s breath and warm their bodies.
Lips that separated regretfully gently brushed the cheeks where traces of tears remained beneath the eyelids.
Fingers traced regretfully over the skin where breath scattered and dispersed, and the man who caught that hand pulled it close and kissed each knuckle.
It was a day when autumn was clearly deepening under the bright moon.
