After I Died, My Husband Went Mad - Chapter 244

Sebelia lay back on the bed as Watts examined her. After taking the medicine he had given her, her fever finally subsided, and Balak arrived.

“May we have a moment to talk?”

With no other excuse to send him away, Dehart reluctantly allowed the visitor into the room with a visibly displeased expression. The problem, of course, was that he had brought along Prince Shateian.

“Does the Prince really have nothing better to do?”

“I’m busy to the point of death, thanks to the mess you’ve caused. Consider yourself lucky I came myself instead of sending the Imperial Security Bureau.”

“Hah.”

“I know you don’t like me, but don’t show it so openly, Duke. We have unfinished business, don’t we?”

Not the person I wanted to speak with. Dehart swallowed the sincerity rising in his throat and folded his arms. Shateian gave a sluggish smile as he glanced at Sebelia, who was speaking with Balak.

“We should finalize the punishment for Nathan Wheddon.”

Dehart raised an eyebrow at the abruptness of the conversation.

“I thought you’d want a full report on what happened that day.”

“Why bother explaining? The moment you agreed to the invitation, your innocence was established.”

His smiling face seemed to know everything about Sebelia’s illusion magic already.

As expected.

The summons demanding an explanation for the walking corpses had only been an excuse. From the start, the Prince’s plan had been to make sure Balak and Sebelia met.

Dehart’s eyes swept over Shateian’s irritating smirk and then landed on Balak. After a few sharp blinks, he spat out his question.

“So where is the illusionist known as the Prince’s guard?”

“Hm? Sitting there, chatting with Miss Sebelia, isn’t he?”

Dehart’s lip curled with disdain as he tilted his head.

“You’re shameless by nature. Do you think I wouldn’t know that the Prince’s known illusionist and that person are two different people?”

“Huh. I thought you might not know yet, since you’re new to the capital. But apparently, you do.”

Shateian chuckled softly. As Dehart had noted, the illusionist known publicly to accompany the Prince was not Balak but Ludmil. The vague description on the invitation was simply due to the Prince’s whimsical personality.

While the two exchanged barbed words, Sebelia let out a sharp exclamation. Dehart stepped forward.

“What is it?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

Balak coldly blocked Dehart. A flash of fury entered Dehart’s golden eyes. Sebelia, who had been frozen, shook her head violently.

“No, that can’t happen. It simply can’t.”

Sebelia shook her hands, refusing. Doubt crept into Dehart’s mind. Could it be that outrageous invitation to come to his home was being repeated? Before he could say anything, she spoke again.

“I can’t go to Lockwood just like this.”

“What?”

Dehart was taken aback by the unexpected destination.

“You mean you intend to take Sebelia to Lockwood?”

“And why should that surprise you?”

Balak remained steadfast. He had finally found his long-lost cousin. Just recalling the childhood where she had been abandoned, he felt heartbroken. And now, knowing she had endured further suffering at the hands of her family…

There’s no way her life with those people could not have been happy.

Thinking of Nathan, who could barely be punished enough, Balak ground his teeth. If his cousin was mistreated, then the rest of the family was undoubtedly culpable. They clearly had never valued Sebelia.

“Every minute Bella spends in that rotten place is a waste.”

Balak was resolute. He intended to take Sebelia to her true home in Lockwood with a family who loved, cherished, and had waited for her.

If Dehart had heard this a few hours ago, he would have said nothing, consumed by guilt and the sense that he had no right.

But not now. Seeing Sebelia’s blue eyes glowing with certainty, he felt conviction.

“That cannot happen.”

“I repeat, you have no right to interfere!”

“No, he does.”

Interrupting Balak’s shout, Sebelia spoke. Balak looked momentarily stunned.

“No matter how I think about it, I can’t go back to Lockwood. Especially now, knowing the truth about my mother… I simply cannot.”

Her knuckles, gripping the blanket, turned stark white. Her fever broken, her face paler, she murmured.

“I will take revenge. Not for myself, but for my mother.”

How could the father and son be so alike? Sebelia felt her chest freeze with cold dread.

Her mother, betrayed by her father like the poor young women deceived by Nathan, had met and fallen in love quickly with him at the Belkram estate—but that story belonged only to her mother.

Her father had never intended to take responsibility. Her mother alone had dreamed of marriage. Poor mother, unaware he was already married, unaware that he intended only to toy with her…

He proposed an assassination instead of marriage after she confessed to having me.

The cost of love was bitter. She had barely escaped across the border, enduring her older brother’s curse and the shadowy violence surrounding the birth.

What followed was everything Sebelia already knew.