May Every Wound Be Fatal - Chapter 23.1
Elizer failed to hide his agitation.
“Reyna.”
As he hurriedly tried to take a step forward, Reyna mercilessly pressed the ornament against the back of her own neck. The excessively sharp hairpiece looked as though it could pierce her delicate skin at any moment.
“Your Majesty!”
Behind her, the maids let out shrill screams, and Elizer froze in place.
“If you come any closer, I will stab my neck just like this.”
She was not saying it merely to get what she wanted.
Reyna was serious. She did not fear death, nor did she have any lingering attachment to life.
Tension and silence settled over the balcony. Below them, cheers and songs still rang out. The contrast was grotesque.
Elizer, pale as death, did not take his eyes off Reyna. Cold sweat poured down his body, and his fingertips trembled helplessly.
After silently watching him for a moment with an emotionless gaze, Reyna suddenly spoke.
“Are you afraid of me dying?”
Elizer’s face twisted violently as he barely managed to move his lips.
“Reyna, come back.”
“Why?”
“Stop. Please, come this way….”
“Do you love me, then?”
The expression slowly drained from his face as he bit down on his lips in restless agitation.
He looked flustered. He looked confused.
Soon, his eyes began to tremble uncontrollably.
That alone was enough for Reyna to know. No, to be certain.
“You love me.”
He hated her, and yet he loved her at the same time.
“…….”
Elizer could not deny it.
A cruel smile spread across Reyna’s lips, but it quickly twisted into something grotesque.
“…Why? How can that be?”
The Reyna of the past would have been happy simply knowing that he loved her. But the Reyna of now felt no joy at all in his feelings.
“You said I was horrifying.”
Reyna had been completely broken. The confident young lady who had been loved by all had died long ago.
And now, only now, he claimed to love her.
“You burned my homeland, killed all my blood relatives, and protected your sister-in-law instead of me….”
And yet now he could not kill her. Now he could not let her die.
That was simply too…
“…Too horrifying, Elizer.”
Reyna found her life horrifying.
Everything had become a regret.
Meeting him, loving him, waiting for him. All of it.
And so, the man who was forcibly clinging to her life filled only with regret, and his love, felt unbearably horrifying.
Reyna’s face twisted into something between laughter and tears, and she suddenly let out a hollow chuckle.
“You should have never let it show.”
Elizer flinched as though struck, his face contorting.
Reyna pressed her waist against the railing. Unable to endure it, Elizer tried to approach her.
“Reyna, stop. I….”
The hair ornament pressed even closer against her neck. His steps halted despite himself.
A brief silence followed.
Reyna whispered to Elizer, who was shaking his head.
“I am going to die.”
His face was dyed with despair and terror.
Reyna was certain that her death, and every memory of her, would become wounds carved into him.
She hoped that every one of those wounds would be fatal.
So that he would hurt exactly as much as she did.
The next moment, without hesitation, she leaned her upper body backward.
Someone’s sharp scream rang out, and Elizer, as if it were only natural, threw himself over the railing after her. His hand barely managed to seize one of her wrists.
Elizer called her desperately.
“Reyna….”
Reyna lifted her head.
Elizer’s body was completely beyond the railing. If Lyman had not been clinging to his lower half, he would have fallen straight down.
Meeting the blue eyes that stared at her in terror, Reyna slowly raised her other arm, the one not caught in his grasp.
The golden hair ornament in her hand flashed in the moonlight.
Elizer shook his head wildly.
“No. Do not do it. Please, do not.”
“…….”
And then Reyna suddenly realized that every prophecy spoken by the old woman of Dochioin had come true.
He loved her.
And that would become the problem.
Because she would make it so.
“…Elizer.”
“Reyna.”
“I truly loved you very much.”
“…….”
“This is going to hurt. A lot.”
With those final whispered words, Reyna drove the sharp hair ornament deep into the back of the hand gripping her wrist.
“No….”
His grip loosened reflexively, and Elizer let go of Reyna.
His face, twisted with terror, grief, and despair, rapidly receded from view. As she watched him struggle desperately to reach her, restrained by several people, Reyna quietly closed her eyes.
In that brief moment behind her shut eyelids, her short life flashed by in an instant.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
