It's Too Late for Regrets - Chapter 5.9

“You said you’d kill them for me…”

Ines murmured in a dry voice.

“After killing them all, what about Caesar?”

[…]

“If you kill them all… and then I die too, what happens to our son…?”

Ines didn’t have many choices left.

Even if she used her body to ask Kian to destroy the entire grand duke’s estate, if she used such a great power, her breath would stop before Caesar even learned to walk.

And once she died, there would truly be no one left to protect Caesar.

But she couldn’t pass the darkness on to him either. How could she give a power that eats away at life to a newborn baby?

Many thoughts spun wildly in her head before slowly calming down.

‘The truth is…’

Ines moved her lips.

“I don’t want to do anything anymore.”

The voice that always carried even a sliver of hope now sounded hollow.

“I don’t want to do anything more for them.”

She felt so helpless that she couldn’t even lift a finger. The betrayal, the sorrow— even the anger felt dry and distant.

Everything was just too much.

Even when she thought of Robert, Berry, Neia, and Ronya, she felt nothing.

Ines thought about death.

And then, something made her curious.

“Kian. What do you think is after death?”

[…]

“Whatever it is, wouldn’t it be better than this?”

She felt like she was going insane. Or maybe she already had.

Maybe she’d just been stubbornly pretending she hadn’t.

A faint cry came from the baby. At the sound, Ines forced her eyelids open.

Caesar flailed his tiny arms and cried. Time, which had seemed to pause for a moment, began to flow again.

Ines quickly got up and rushed to the bed. The baby cried sadly, reaching out to her with his arms.

She held the tiny, warm body in her arms. She could feel the beating of his little heart.

The invisible wall that had separated her from time and space slowly began to melt away.

Tears slid down her pale cheeks.

“…I’ll just try to endure.”

[Ines.]

“I’ll hold on a little longer. Just a little. Just a little more…”

At least until Caesar could walk and speak— until then, she had to hold on. She couldn’t touch the darkness again.

Ines stared out at the darkness through dead, empty eyes.

“So you should go now.”

[…]

“I won’t call for you again.”

Her voice, so weak it might vanish at any moment, scattered like a sigh in the dim room.

After Kian disappeared, Ines sat alone, thinking for a long time about when things started to go wrong.

“…I shouldn’t have chosen Rayan.”

It might’ve been better to rot away in Lezan’s imperial palace and choose Edgar instead. What would’ve happened if she had picked that kind man from the start?

Even if Edgar hadn’t really been that warm of a person…

At least if she’d been willing to use her body however needed, lying with anyone just to survive— maybe then she could’ve carved out her own place in this world.

If she’d done that, she wouldn’t have clung to someone and held onto hope.

She wouldn’t have dreamed of a happiness far beyond her reach, only to be cruelly cast aside.

But regretting it now wouldn’t change anything.

Nothing at all.

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