It's Too Late for Regrets - Chapter 6.5

 

There was no need for an answer. The words of the woman who had been alive and breathing in front of him just an hour ago echoed through his entire body.
“Please promise me. That you’ll protect our child.”

 

In that moment, a realization struck his head like a bolt of lightning.
Ah… so that was it.

 

Those words he thought were unusually long and unnecessary—
“I hate you.”
The words she whispered like she was coughing up blood.
Even if there’s a next life, let’s not meet again.
That was… her will.

 

“…No way.”

 

For a long while, Rayan stood frozen, not blinking once as he stared down at the woman on the bed. Then he suddenly let out a short, dry laugh.

 

What a ridiculous play. A third-rate play with an unknown writer. He wasn’t laughing because it was funny—just because it was absurd.

 

The sound of a maid stifling her sobs and the trembling voice of the doctor making excuses faded into the distance.

 

Rayan slowly sat on the bed and reached out toward his wife.

 

There was no pulse in her neck, but her skin was still warm and soft.

 

He lifted her limp, delicate hand and pressed it to his face.

 

Her gentle scent—Ines’s unique fragrance—still lingered. He had inhaled it hundreds of times over the past six years.

 

“…No.”

 

Rayan mumbled in a low voice, not even aware of what he was saying.

 

“No, right? Ines.”

 

She was right here, still warm.

 

There were so many things he hadn’t asked yet. How could she leave so easily like this?

 

Right in front of him, after drinking the tea he gave her.

 

How could something like this be possible?

 

He barely moved his lips as he kept his eyes on her peacefully closed eyelids.

 

“Open your eyes.”

 

This kind of joke wasn’t funny at all.

 

He knew she was angry with him, but this… this wasn’t right.

 

If she opened her eyes now, everything could still go the way he had planned.

 

Everyone in this mansion who had threatened his wife and son would be banished. Once he was confident his country was safe, Ines could start smiling again… even just a little.

 

That alone would have been enough for him. It had been a perfect plan.

 

But she had died before he even got the chance to begin.

 

He desperately clutched her small hand as it grew colder.

 

It was as if, by holding it tightly and never letting go, he could warm her with his own body heat.

 

But the warmth that kept slipping away never returned.

 

In the end, he grabbed her fragile shoulders and forced her upright, pulling her into his arms.

 

Rayan was someone who had learned since boyhood how thin the line was between life and death.

 

A body growing cold, a heart that no longer beat, a breath that could no longer be felt.

 

He knew better than anyone what those signs meant—he had spent most of his life putting others in that very state.

 

So he knew. In his mind, he already understood she was dead.

 

He blankly traced her thin back with his eyes.

 

“Why… why did you do it.”

 

His lips moved on their own.

 

“Why did you drink it.”

 

If she had known what that tea would do to her, she simply shouldn’t have drunk it.

 

But she did. Which could only mean one thing—she wanted to die.

 

“Why did you want to die…”

 

There was only one reason he could think of.

 

“I hate you.”

 

Because she hated him.

 

She disliked him. She had resented him, probably for a long time.

 

Maybe she had once loved him. But over the past few years, Ines had closed off her heart completely. He finally realized that.

 

But still…

 

He still didn’t understand everything. Rayan blankly opened his mouth again.

 

“But you loved Caesar.”

 

She had loved Caesar so blindly that she couldn’t stand being away from him for even a second.

 

Thinking objectively, there was no way she would entrust their child to him and then just walk into death.

 

Regardless of the fact that Rayan obviously saw Caesar as his heir, Ines had never truly trusted him.

 

What if he really didn’t plan to protect Caesar? Then what?

 

“You said you hated me. That I was cursed. So you can’t just leave him with me and go. Right? That’s not right…”

 

He couldn’t even hear his own words clearly anymore.

 

Rayan held the dead woman in his arms and exhaled a rough breath.

 

Then suddenly, a trembling voice came from behind him.

 

“She wouldn’t have lasted long anyway. She would’ve died soon no matter what.”

 

It was an unfamiliar old man’s voice, but strangely, Rayan knew who it was without turning around.

 

The owner of the small herb shop in Hyran—where Ines used to send letters three or four times a month.

 

The old man who had taken care of her for half a year when she fled to Apael.

 

The man… Rayan had forced her to leave.

 

How could he be here, when he was supposed to be in Apael? Why did Rayan still remember the voice and face of someone he’d never even spoken to before?

 

But he didn’t really care about any of that.

 

Footsteps of knights following the old man echoed loudly in the empty hall.

 

“We’re sorry, Your Grace! He insisted on seeing Her Highness, and in the confusion… We’ll remove him right away.”

 

“Wait.”

 

Rayan stopped the knights with a cracked voice.

 

“Leave him. The rest of you, go.”

 

“Your Grace!”

 

“I said leave.”

 

His teeth clenched tightly. The knight flinched at Rayan’s killing aura and reluctantly stepped back.

 

Ines…

 

The old man, Robert, looked sorrowfully at the girl with closed eyes in her husband’s arms.

 

His dreams had been unsettling, so he had been pacing around the estate since dawn.

 

He realized something had happened when he saw maids and the doctor rushing in and out of the front gate.

 

Feeling something was wrong, he ran in through the back door that Berry had once shown him.

 

He had always known a day like this would come, so unlike Berry, Robert didn’t cry.

 

He looked at the child who was clearly already gone and barely managed to whisper,

 

“It wasn’t even a long time…”

 

Rayan’s expression cracked at those words.

 

When he secretly visited this place with Berry, Robert had sensed that, even if Ines miraculously gave birth, she might only live up to three more years.

 

And now, it had come to pass.

 

She must have known better than anyone how little time she had left. So she had chosen the fastest, most certain way to die before the pain and weakness got worse.

 

Her peaceful face, as if she were just asleep, even looked relieved to be freed from the chains of a miserable life.

 

The silver-haired man holding her asked in a rough voice,

 

“Since when…?”

 

Robert turned his gaze to the Grand Duke.

 

The master of Eleanor, the one who had brought Ines here with promises of happiness.

 

He was asking since when her time had been so short. Robert’s face twisted in disbelief.

 

“You lived with her for six years as her husband. There’s no way you didn’t know.”

 

“….”

 

“No, even if you were with her just for a few hours, you should’ve known she wasn’t in a normal state.”

 

Not normal…

 

Suddenly, Rayan realized how much lighter and thinner her body was compared to just a month ago.

 

The clear outline of her ribs he had once seen came back to him like a hallucination.

 

He also remembered how she had started to find it harder and harder to accept him.

 

Whenever their time together lasted long, her begging voice always echoed from the back of his memory.

 

“Your Grace… Just a moment… Today is too hard….”

 

“If you’d even once looked at her properly, you would’ve known!”

 

“Please… just a little slower… Your Grace…”

 

Robert’s old voice trembled with emotion.

 

“Your Grace. What did you even know about Ines?”

 

Maybe he had known she was sick for a long time.

 

He had just ignored it.

 

He didn’t want Ines to take over his thoughts, so he had intentionally blocked her from his mind countless times.

 

All it would’ve taken was one look at the doctor’s records to erase his doubts.

 

Everyone in the mansion had insisted there was no problem.

 

So in the end, he never actually listened to her.

 

He didn’t know anything about her—what was wrong, where it hurt, or why.

 

How long she could live…

 

The old man’s frosty voice pierced him like a knife.

 

“If you had known, you wouldn’t have let her get pregnant in the first place.”

 

A child. At those words, Rayan’s vision turned pitch black.

 

Right then, he realized when Ines had started to weaken—after she became pregnant.

 

How had he felt when he heard the news of her pregnancy?

 

He had felt relieved, thinking he had finally found the perfect way to keep Ines tied to Eleanor forever.

 

He remembered what he said to her when she looked so anxious, whispering that the child might not be born safely.

 

“This baby will be born healthy. It has to be.”
“But what if it’s not…”
“Is it that you don’t want to have the baby?”

 

Ines had made such a sorrowful face then, like she was about to cry.

 

“You have to have it.”
“Even if something happens?”
“Yes.”

 

“…Damn it.”

 

A curse burst from between his clenched teeth.