TFM 239

Trash Gareth should rot in the deepest hell!!!! 

Gareth, Ayla, and even their mother Bernadette... they are more devil than the devil itself.

Gareth, sprawled across the carpet, was thrashing desperately.

His hands, veins bulging from the strain, clawed endlessly at Varkas’s hands, and his muscular legs kept kicking against Varkas’s body. Yet Varkas did not flinch. He only put more strength into both hands.

In Gareth’s eyes, wide with terror, bloodshot veins surged vividly.

His mouth gaped open as though he were trying somehow to draw in air, and he stretched one hand out, fumbling across the floor.

His fingertips caught the wine bottle that had rolled down from the overturned table.

Gareth seized it and struck it toward Varkas’s head with all his strength.

The blunt impact hit his temple hard. At the same time, sticky wine and shards of glass trickled down one side of his face.

But he did not move.

He only tightened his grip around the man’s throat even more.

He could not understand why he was attacking the very person he had protected at the cost of nearly his entire life.

As he lay over Gareth, choking the breath from him in a rage that felt as though his veins were burning, the muscles in his fingers suddenly began to tremble violently.

In an instant, the spasm spread through his entire arm. It was as though every strand of muscle had begun moving on its own, against his will.

He forced strength into his shaking hands and pressed down harder.

Then, this time, he felt a powerful pressure in his chest.

The pressure stabbing sharply through his heart soon climbed up toward his throat.

The pressure that pierced sharply through his chest soon climbed up to his throat.

It felt as though he were strangling himself.

A suffocating sensation, as if his breathing were about to cut off, gathered in his eyes like veins of blood. Yet Varkas did not blink once, and forced more strength into his convulsing fingers.

Just then, someone clung to his arm with a scream of horror.

He did not so much as flinch. Then, four pairs of hands gripped him hard from either side, as though trying to pin him down, and forcibly tore him away from the crown prince.

“Your Grace! Please stop!”

Only then did the fingers strangling Gareth’s throat fall away limply. At once, Gareth slipped out from beneath him, clutching his throat and coughing violently.

A woman who had run to his side wrapped both arms around the crown prince and stared at Varkas with shocked eyes.

Only after a long moment did Varkas recognize her as Ayla Roem Guirta.

Why is this woman in Laedgo Castle?

As he slowly lifted his eyes, the man restraining him swallowed dryly.

“Y-Your Grace. Blood…”

The man’s gaze was fixed on the corner of his mouth.

Varkas frowned. His injury was on his head, so why was the man looking there?

He raised a hand and touched his lips. Something slippery smeared onto his fingers.

Only then did he realize that blood, which had climbed up past his throat, was soaking his chin and the collar of his shirt.

That was not all. His palm was strangely stained, as though burned.

As he looked down at it from a distance, a low laugh came from close by. Varkas lifted his head and looked at the man collapsed across from him.

With one hand wrapped around his throat, where clear finger marks remained, Gareth—still breathing roughly—was staring at him.

Gareth, one hand wrapped around his throat where clear finger marks had been left, was laughing in a cracked, breathless way.

In his eyes, fury, betrayal, and twisted delight flashed through the darkness.

“Look at yourself.”

A ragged laugh spread through the room.

“This is what happens when you try to defy your fate.”

“G-Gareth…”

Ayla, who had been clutching at her twin brother’s ruined collar, screamed in a terrified voice.

“It’s useless to rebel! You belong to us! Because you tried to deny that, that woman died!”

In an instant, the air in the room froze solid.

The Siorkan knights looked at the crown prince with hardened faces. But even within that oppressive atmosphere, Gareth did not stop.

“Listen to me! If you hadn’t married her, that woman would still be alive now! Because you tried to leave the path set for you, Thalia Roem Guirta died! Fate tried to put you back where you belonged and erased that woman!”

“Your Highness!”

Daren, who could bear it no longer, stepped between them.

But Gareth ignored him and kept screaming.

“You can’t escape! From the moment my mother pulled you out of that stone coffin, your life belonged to us!”

“Gareth!”

At that moment, with a sound like a whip cutting through the air, the crown prince’s head snapped to the side.

Ayla stared at her twin brother as though she could not believe it.

Ayla, who had looked down at her brother with eyes coldly frozen over, finally rose from her seat and snapped at the Royal Knights standing by the door.

“What are you doing, not attending to His Highness the Crown Prince? Take His Highness away at once and have him treated!”

Then she turned her eyes to Varkas and added in a low, subdued voice,

“The Grand Duke should also receive treatment at once. As for today’s unfortunate incident…”

The woman’s voice, which had maintained its composure, trembled slightly.

As though swallowing the dryness in her throat, she slowly finished her words.

“I will consider it carefully and let it pass.”

“How very generous of you.”

Daren answered sarcastically.

“But do not expect House Siorkan to show the same generosity regarding His Highness the Crown Prince’s reckless words.”

For a brief moment, Ayla looked at him with eyes carrying a light of anger. Then she quickly took Gareth and left the study.

Daren watched them with caution before stepping in front of Varkas.

“Are you all right?”

Varkas, who had been staring down at his own hand with hollow eyes, slowly lifted his head.

The eyes watching him were mixed with concern, worry, and sympathy. He could not understand why they were looking at him that way. What reason was there for him not to be all right?

He roughly shook off the hand holding him and staggered to his feet. Then, as he tried to dismiss the people gathered around him, a surge rose in his throat, and dark crimson blood flowed back up.

“Your Grace!”

“Call a healer at once!”

Someone hurriedly caught him as his body collapsed without resistance.

He stared down with dim eyes at the blackened blood pooled on the floor. Over it, the remains of Thalia, stretched out cold, overlapped. Her bloodstained dress wrapped around her delicate body.

He slowly reached out, staring as though transfixed at that deathly pale, frozen face, and touched her white cheek with his fingertips. Then her form shattered into pieces, scattering sharp fragments in every direction.

Thousands of shards pierced his eyes, his skin, his bones, and his heart like blades. It felt as though he were being carved apart while still alive.

Unable to endure that wretched sensation, he finally sank to his knees as if collapsing.

His vision, dyed in black and white, slowly turned crimson. He could no longer tell whether it was an illusion or reality.

A muddy wave came surging from somewhere, swallowing him from his feet upward. In the river of blood, everything disappeared.

He soon realized the name of that river.

It was despair.

The despair he had forced aside all this time came pouring into his nose, his mouth, and his ears. In that dreadful suffocation, he finally let go of consciousness.

⊹ ࣪˖ ┈┈ ˖ ࣪⊹ ┈┈˖ ⊹ ࣪

She sat by the window, gazing at the setting sun.

The wind blowing in from the forest gently swept past her long hair and thin hem.

Suddenly, a soft smile appeared at the corners of her lips.

He stared at her without even blinking, then followed her gaze and looked out the window.

It was only the same scenery as always. He could not understand what, exactly, had made this difficult woman smile.

“What are you looking at like that?”

When he finally could not overcome his curiosity and opened his mouth, her eyes, which had seemed languid as though caught in a daydream, turned toward him.

“Just the sky.”

At that insincere answer, his eyes narrowed slightly, and the woman added brightly,

“The sunset is especially beautiful today, so I was admiring it.”

He turned his head again and looked out the window.

Beyond the horizon, the sun, already half-sunk, was dyeing the western sky red. But he could not find any special beauty in it.

He looked again at her face, soaked in the glow of dusk.

Her eyes, floating in the sunset, sparkled with a strange light. Only after seeing that light could he sense the beauty she had admired.

It was always like this with her.

Things he had never once noticed before became visible, and things he had never felt before came alive.

The subtle change in sunlight, the density of the air, the touch of wind brushing against his cheek, the soft sound of rain and the vivid smell of grass… At times, it even felt as though his senses were connected to hers.

His drab, colorless world was being stained with all kinds of colors because of this peculiar girl.