Chapter 55
Sleeping pills…? Elia stared incredulously at the glass bowl holding her meal. Could this be why unfamiliar people had been attending to her lately? More importantly, why suddenly give her something like this to eat?
“Miss, please go to bed early tonight. You really must rest early. Once you’ve slept, everything will be over.”
Susan repeated her plea to Elia several times, unable to ease her own worries. Susan’s eyes, who usually held a gentle smile, were unusually cold and resolute.
Leaving behind words whose meaning Elia could not fully grasp, Susan hurried out of the room.
“Susan!”
Elia got up to stop her, but Susan had already gone. Elia quietly stared at the firmly closed door and pressed down on her pounding heart. Only now was the source of the anxiety that had tormented her beginning to take shape.
“Could it really be…?”
Throwing aside the curtains roughly, Elia fixed her gaze on the flag that bore the Reiffers’s mark, fluttering outside. Her vision trembled uneasily at the instinctive premonition.
Her father was apparently choosing self-destruction tonight.
* * *
It was shortly after midnight when Duke Reiffers received his armor. With a resolute expression, he knelt, clad in the armor and helmet. The man sitting in the place of honor by the window smiled gently and spun his chair around.
His face, long hidden in darkness, became vividly clear.
“The late Crown Prince would have awaited this day as well.”
Reiffers, thinking of the lord he had followed with his life, was momentarily overwhelmed with emotion. Remembering the times he had trailed behind him, wandering to the ends of the world, his throat tightened painfully.
The man smiled faintly at Reiffers’s loyal attitude. Too young a face to be bowed before, he was the only remaining trace of Mons Edelward, brother of the current Emperor Mondol Edelward and a defeated man who had taken his own life.
“You disappoint me enough with your own daughter.”
The man chuckled lowly, amused by the whole situation.
Thinking of Elia, who eyed him warily with her sharp, rabbit-like gaze, he broke into a wicked smile. What a cruel joke of fate this remarkable connection was.
“Duke Reiffers, I never wanted it to come to this.”
The man spoke slowly, reflecting on the miserable years he had lived, wearing a mask that never fit like it was his own face.
If only Elia had seen him that day, at that moment. If the Crown Prince standing on that platform had been him, would she have loved him instead of Cyrone?
Elia’s existence was an unpredictable variable in the man’s life. One that made him covet the unwanted throne, one that made him desperately need the power to have it all.
Feeling his patience reaching its limit, the man quietly glanced at the clock.
“I can’t go on like this anymore.”
Though his original name was Eyl Edelward, that identity was long dead. Now, people called him Rias Damon.
* * *
It was time to set out on the campaign. The night concealed many things, but it would not wait forever.
A black curtain obscured the man’s shadow. Rias stared long at the red banner that would lead the rebels. The night was as deep and chilling as the changing seasons.
“I will restore everything to its rightful place.”
Kneeling before him, Reiffers spoke with determination. Rias glanced at the shining tip of his sword and smiled sharply.
Would he truly find satisfaction once everything was back where it belonged? The throne, the power of a ruler. Was that what clouded Rias’s eyes with greed?
“…The rightful place.”
Lost in thought, Rias furrowed his brow in silence. In truth, that was merely his father’s will. Not something he truly desired.
He quietly recalled the moments when his heart had trembled with genuine desire.
In recent years, he had purposefully lingered near Elia. There was only one goal, to find a compromise acceptable to both the Reiffers family and himself. Maintaining a plausible relationship would help avoid suspicion.
To him, Elia was just a link, a means to an end. But then—
“That no longer matters.”
When those pale green eyes looked straight at him, when she faintly smiled at his careless jokes, when her red lips formed gentle words. And when she couldn’t hide the love in her eyes for Cyrone.
Perhaps it was then that his heart ached painfully. What was the name of that feeling?
Greed. Yes, it was greed.
Cyrone saw countless things that Rias did not. Cyrone felt countless things Rias couldn’t. Cyrone possessed countless things Rias lacked. And that countlessness was called Elia.
The gaze soaked in love, the face flushed with passion, the lips confessing affection. How Elia showed anger, how she expressed sorrow, the way she spoke her heart with her eyes.
All of it was something Elia only allowed Cyrone to see.
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