Chapter 304
‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.
Even then, I turned it down with a plausible excuse, hiding my bleeding heart behind an indifferent face.
So of course, you never knew the real reason I refused to officiate your wedding.
“Couldn’t you be the one to bind us as husband and wife?”
The next morning, after mass ended, you came to find me and asked again.
“If you wait a few days, a far more experienced priest will officiate for you.”
I refused once more with the same excuse. But you didn’t back down.
“We don’t need an experienced priest. I want you to do it. You only need to follow the basic rites.”
“If you must hold the ceremony today, then another—”
“I’m not insisting because it has to be today. I just want you to be the one.”
“Why should I be the one to conduct your wedding?”
By then, my patience had run thin. I may have failed to hide that I was refusing simply because I didn’t want to. But you didn’t seem to notice, because you said this instead:
“If you officiate, I think Rupert and I will be able to live happily. You’re someone who’s been blessed by God.”
You were cruel too—just as cruel as Rupert. But how could I blame you, when you had no idea you were carving into my heart?
…In the end, I couldn’t refuse you.
What kind of man joins the woman he loves to another man? No matter how earnestly she asks.
‘No. If Rupert dies as he wishes, then at least Dana should hold the title of Marchioness. That way, she’ll have something to compensate for what she lost because of him. A mere fiancée would gain nothing.’
Even knowing I was the biggest fool alive, I had to make these hollow excuses to myself. To believe I wasn’t committing the most idiotic act imaginable.
But the moment the ceremony began, those excuses lost all meaning.
Dana…
Do you know what it feels like to stand in the wrong place and watch another man slip a ring onto your finger?
And when I had to declare with my own mouth that you and him were husband and wife, it’s truly…
I want to tell you how it felt, but there are no words in this world that could ever capture it.
Still, it was fortunate that I was there. Because during the wedding, as I watched Rupert, I realized something.
And because of that realization, you’re still alive, can you believe that?
It may sound like the rationalization of a man who’s finally gone mad, but listen.
You remember it now, don’t you? On the day of your wedding, enemy fighter planes flew all the way to the military base.
“At a time like this, do you really have to go through with the ceremony? I’m not saying cancel it. Can’t you at least delay it a few hours until it’s over?”
“Father, you’ve always been timid. You still are.”
“…You know I’m not suggesting this out of fear.”
“Dana, are you afraid of Highland’s swarm of flies too, like the priest is?”
Rupert showed not the slightest concern for your safety.
“May our love and valor, like Godwin and Philomena’s, be remembered forever in history.”
As he spoke words that were no different from a curse, he placed the wedding ring on your finger. The heirloom of his family, the ring of Godwin and Philomena.
“My Philomena.”
I should have realized it then, the moment he called you that.
That the man who claimed aging was ugly and wanted to die at his most beautiful moment…
also intended for you to die at yours.
From the beginning, he didn’t want a woman to love, he wanted a woman to be buried with him.
When you said you’d be participating in the mission, I still believed Rupert wouldn’t let the woman he loved die. That even if you were caught up in misfortune, he wouldn’t wish for your death.
I wasn’t trusting Rupert, I was trusting common sense. After all, it’s common sense not to want the person you love to die.
“Dana, my wife, I love you. I’ll love you passionately until the moment we die.”
But that’s when I began to suspect that he didn’t love you at all. That every display of affection had merely been an act—performed because I was watching.
“Don’t you love me too? Say it out loud. So God Himself may be pleased to hear it.”
After the ceremony, we took shelter underground and he suddenly demanded that you declare your love aloud.
That was when it felt wrong.
After all, the only one who could hear was me.
And little by little, I became certain.
You were nothing more than a flower meant to adorn Rupert’s grave.
He was going to kill you too.
This time, the words ‘let it be what it will’ didn’t come to me.
I could endure losing you. I could endure you loving that demon.
But I could not endure you dying.
After agonizing all night, I went to find Rupert the next day.
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