How the Villainous Consort Avoids His Death Ending - Chapter 99.2
“Uncle said he would be here soon. Why is he not here? I am going with Uncle!”
I silently pulled the child closer. Holding Constantine quietly in my arms, I followed Sir Mildred. The wooden planks of the gangplank thudded heavily beneath our feet.
Everyone packed along the pier held their breath. Only a frozen silence hung in the air. Then, slipping through the crowd, a familiar face suddenly appeared and stopped directly in front of us. He had run so hastily that his wrinkled face was drenched in sweat.
It was Wilhelm, the butler, who should have been busy preparing to welcome the fleet at the Grand Ducal Palace.
Wilhelm’s gaze passed from Sir Mildred, to Constantine, and finally to me. He froze, pressing trembling hands to his mouth. A broken, hoarse voice escaped in a faint whisper.
“Grand Consort… What has happened to the flagship… How… how is the Grand Duke…”
Wilhelm could not continue his words and sank to the ground. Soon, muffled sobs began to erupt here and there. Even among the knights following behind Constantine and me, and from the crowd still peering over the sea to find the flagship and the third ship, restrained cries and murmurs gradually began to slip out.
I slowly walked among them.
I passed Wilhelm, who could not speak through the lump in his throat. There were no words that could be said to the old butler who had raised Tristan since childhood and had served the Grand Ducal family since the previous Grand Duke’s era.
Not long ago, Wilhelm’s son had finally returned alive after many years.
But Tristan, who had been with him, would never return.
“Grand Consort… Uncle is not coming?”
Constantine wrapped his small arms around my neck and asked. His face was filled with fear, heightened by the strange atmosphere of the harbor and Wilhelm’s grim expression. I carefully held the child and murmured in a hoarse voice.
“The Grand Duke will be arriving a little later. Perhaps…”
My voice sounded strange and hollow in my own ears.
“…Much later than expected.”
“How much later? So late that we must wait a hundred nights?”
“A hundred nights… or perhaps even longer…”
“Hmm. Then I will go to sleep quickly now. When I wake up, Uncle will have arrived a day early, right?”
Constantine smiled brightly and responded before closing his eyes tightly. I lowered my gaze once more and quietly stared down.
At last, the Grand Ducal Palace arrived, silent as if not a soul breathed. I had been dazed and left to collapse in the bedroom, with no one looking for me. Or perhaps someone had come to force a meal into my mouth and water into my hands.
When I regained awareness, sometimes I had collapsed on the bed, and at other times, I would open my eyes to find myself seated by the window, head lowered. For some time, heavy rain fell outside. The storm pouring from the darkened sky did not stop for days, and the nights it carried were always long and deep.
I quietly endured that time. Eventually, one night, I stepped softly into Tristan’s study. Silence and darkness lay low over the empty space, greeting me with loneliness.
Traces of Tristan remained throughout the room. Stacks of documents lay on the zelkova desk, the long window seat where Tristan would rest, and his garments hung on a vintage clothes rack.
My gaze fell on the woolen cloak Tristan had placed around me when we arrived at the cold port of the northern continent. The long cloak had dragged through the mud of Kalhaven Port and had been soaked by rain, leaving it unusable and abandoned here.
I remembered what Tristan had said when he saw me wearing his cloak.
“The Grand Consort will need to grow taller. Are you eating properly? If your nutrition is insufficient, your growth will be slow.”
“What are you saying, are you an idiot…”
Even then, I had found it absurd. Thinking back now, it was still completely ridiculous. Yet strangely, my voice broke and faltered as I recalled it.
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