Chapter 62
Earlier, when he’d heard Diana say she was curious about her father. It was then that Viern realized she had never once shown curiosity about her own birth father until now.
Until this point, he hadn’t found that fact particularly strange. He had complacently assumed that Diana, having grown up in an environment so different from others, simply didn’t feel much interest in blood relatives.
But the Diana who lost her memory was different. She was curious about her own father and even secretly went to see him. As if that unfortunate past had never existed, just like an ordinary, normal girl…
At that moment of realization, Viern understood what a coward he had been.
He had vaguely thought everything would just work itself out once her memories returned. So he’d worked tirelessly to help her recover them, simply waiting for them to come back.
But those memories she lost—over twenty long years of them—were they truly happy memories for her?
The traces of the life she’d lived in the tower remained on her body as indelible scars. And even after leaving the tower, she……
‘Viern—!’
‘Hey, Viern. I like you.’
‘I like Viern the most in the whole world!’
Diana, who always smiled as brightly as sunlight and poured out her overflowing affection toward me.
‘The Princess is merely a convenient chess piece.’
‘Nothing would be more meaningless than a union between Rosenheir and Erkman.’
‘I made it perfectly clear that Lady Sophia belongs to Erkman.’
But I, who never once repaid that affection of hers.
‘Don’t be angry, Viern. I’m also……’
‘…I’m hurt too.’
Remembering the person who ended up hurting her—himself—Viern clenched his fist in anguish. He truly didn’t know anymore. In the three or so years since she left the tower, had she truly been happy? Among the memories she had lost, had there been even a single moment of happiness?
‘If they are memories that hurt you, Your Highness, I wish you would forget them forever.’
In bitter irony, perhaps the memories that truly hurt her were none other than Viern Erkman—himself. So maybe that’s why she forgot him too.
When his thoughts reached that point, a sharp pain tore through his chest. Throughout their walk down the corridor, Viern found it nearly impossible to keep his emotions in check.
Until now, he had only wished for her to recover her lost memories. He had wished for the feelings she’d forgotten for him to return.
But what if the time she had lost held memories that weren’t happy for her? What if her subconscious had firmly locked away those bad memories?
“……But not anymore. It’s alright if Your Highness doesn’t remember. It’s alright if you don’t like me.”
It didn’t matter if she didn’t recover her memories. Memories could be built anew in the time yet to unfold.
It didn’t matter if she didn’t like him. Because I… love her.
“I love you, Your Highness.”
“……!”
At that confession, dripping with anguish, Diana instinctively held her breath and stared at him.
‘A confession, this suddenly?’
Once, in the carriage returning to the palace after the kidnapping incident, she had overheard him muttering to himself that he loved her. So she knew his heart was directed at her, yet she had deliberately not met his expectations, continuing the pretense of having lost her memory. It was because she couldn’t fully trust his love.
She couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t change. All she trusted in was a man’s possessiveness, his desire not to lose a pet he had tamed for so long. That’s why, to provoke it, she had toyed with him even more.
But today, she hadn’t even looked at another man in front of him, hadn’t even mentioned Aisen’s name.
‘I just came to get what those guys asked for, so why has it come to this?’
Bewildered, Diana’s heart pounded at the earnest look in Viern’s eyes and the emotion in his voice as he gazed at her. His eyes held a deeper, more profound emotion than what she had eavesdropped on in the carriage that day.
“Um, but, I…”
Not having expected a confession like this at all, she trailed off, not knowing how to respond.
“Aisen.”
Crack. A chilling sound echoed as he clenched his fist.
“It must be him on your mind, right?”
“…….”
“It’s okay if you don’t like me. I know all too well that Your Highness likes Aisen.”
As she stood silently, neither confirming nor denying, Viern took it as an affirmation, twisting his expression in pain as he continued.
“Then use me.”
“Huh?”
“Use me, and use me again, and if your feelings ever change one day, please look back at me then. Even if such a day never comes, I will gladly wait for you.”
“Wait, Duke. What do you mean, use me?!”
“You were never that kind of good woman. You were a woman who threw things like morality to the dogs.”
“What?”
Diana was internally flustered by his attitude, which had just declared love for her and was now criticizing her as a woman without morals.
“So, Your Highness, just act as you please.”
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