The Impact Of The Villainess’ Fake Marriage On The Ending - Chapter 55

Chapter 55

“Kael?”

Adeline looked at Kael in surprise. She had never expected him to show up here.

“How are you feeling?”

“Ah, I’m fine. There’s no problem.”

Kael’s gaze on Adeline soon turned to Vanessa. His eyes were even sharper than when he faced Vanessa in the imperial palace.

“Anything else?”

Kael asked, making eye contact with Adeline again.

It was a question that omitted a lot, but it was enough to convey his will. He was asking if the dangerous woman in front of her had tried to hurt her.

Not only Adeline, but also Vanessa, grasped the meaning at once. Her already unstable light brown eyes shook like crazy.

A deep sorrow fell on her pretty face, which felt unusually innocent. Kael’s words and eyes showed his feelings.

“Your Grace.”

“It’s getting late. Let’s go now.”

Vanessa called Kael in a trembling voice, but he was too busy taking care of Adeline to even glance at her.

He acted as if he couldn’t see Vanessa, as if he were dealing with something invisible. If she had hurt Adeline, he would have punished her right away. But fortunately, that wasn’t the case, so it turned out that there was no reason to care about her.

“Come on.”

As Adeline hesitated, Kael’s hand wrapped around her waist.

He naturally led Adeline, and not long after, they had gotten quite far from Vanessa.

“Duchess.”

“Oh my, Your Grace. You’ve met with Her Grace. You don’t know how worried I was that you would miss each other on the way.”

Duchess Flora laughed as she covered her mouth with a fan. A tremendous event called ‘the appearance of Kael’ occurred at her party, causing her to rejoice.

And it didn’t end with the duchess. Many of the nobles who were in a frenzy due to Kael’s sudden appearance were looking at Kael and Adeline, their eyes shining brightly.

“If it’s not disrespectful, I’ll take my wife. She says she’s fine, but I’m worried about her.”

“Oh my, what do you mean disrespectful? Not at all. I was worried, too. I was afraid Her Grace was pushing herself too hard.”

When Kael kindly took care of Adeline, the various ladies gathered there fanned themselves with their mischievous eyes, and the ladies dreaming of a dreamy romance looked at Adeline with eyes full of admiration.

‘Things are going to be in turmoil again.’

Only Adeline swallowed a sigh inwardly.

‘That’ Kael showed up late to the party and took care of Adeline, so it was almost hard not to see how noisily this would be talked about.

“I’ll be going back first. It was a fun party, Duchess Flora.”

“It was an honor for you to come like this, Your Grace.”

Adeline smiled softly and said goodbye to the Duchess.

After their short conversation, Kael naturally escorted Adeline. It was good to see, and she could hear people gasping everywhere.

“I didn’t know you were coming.”

Adeline stepped into the carriage and spoke as soon as she was free of the surrounding gazes.

“If I hadn’t come here, you would have been in big trouble.”

Unlike Adeline, who was quite surprised, Kael was calm. Rather, the atmosphere was more subsided than usual, but he looked a little angry.

“Didn’t I tell you not to be near Lady Felix? I don’t have a good feeling.”

Adeline, who was somewhat puzzled, realized why and sighed lightly.

“Your body hasn’t even healed yet. I thought it was unreasonable to go to a party, but I can’t believe you were alone with someone who may have been directly involved in harming you. In such an isolated place.”

“I’m sorry if I worried you. But I also had my own lot to check. That’s why I had to see her myself.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t understand Kael’s feelings. Adeline had repeatedly said that it wasn’t his fault, but Kael was still feeling a sense of debt to what happened that day.

So, seeing Adeline not listening to his advice and being next to Vanessa, he couldn’t help but be sensitive.

“Are you sure nothing happened?”

“Yes. Nothing happened.”

Kael asked once more, and Adeline reassured him once more.

“Did you come here because you were anxious?”

This time, Adeline asked first. She wanted to know what brought him to the garden party.

“I think I need to strengthen the defensive barrier again.”

Adeline tilted her head slightly at the somewhat vague conversation.

“Isn’t this the first event after what happened with the Red Knights? However, it was a big event. It was not an exaggeration to say that most of the nobles of the capital were gathering. There’s no better place than this to show them.”

“To show them?”

“Originally, the Inver family and the North were an iron fortress. Such an iron fortress that even those who had a grudge against me for any reason would not dare think about making things up.”

Kael calmly continued his explanation.

“But this time, a crack appeared in the iron fortress. The grand duchess was caught and suffered, and everyone in the empire learned about this.”

“…”

“Even if the iron fortress has been defending us for hundreds of years, once a crack appears, it won’t be as perfect as before. It gives people hope. Hope that the place they thought would never collapse might fall.”

“…”

“I had to step on that one sprout. We’re going to rebuild the defensive barrier stronger, and warn them that it won’t happen again.”

Adeline should not be seen as a weakness to the North.

The perception that she could be used to make Kael fall had to be prevented, and he had to show how sincerely he was protecting Adeline.

It was the same reason why Kael did not avoid conflict with the emperor.

Even if he had the power to drive out the capital at any moment if he wanted to, the emperor was a burdensome opponent. It was also easy for Kael to suffer damage if he went against him.

Nevertheless, the reason he was going against him harder was that each and every one of his actions became a message.

Of course, his anger for hurting Adeline was the greatest, but he had to clearly show it to the various factions who were looking for a chance to strike.

He had to clearly show that if he touched Adeline, if he touched the north, even the emperor would be subject to retribution.

“Ah. I understand now.”

Adeline, who had been quietly listening to him, nodded in understanding.

“You’ve been acting very politically,” Adeline added with a faint smile.

Kael looked at Adeline and thought for a moment.

As she said, he came to the party for political purposes. Kael repeatedly said that it was for this reason that he went there.

However, the real reason why Kael was trying so hard to ignore that fact was not so grand. He was just madly worried about Adeline.

He wondered if she would collapse at the party, if another noble with an evil mind would hurt Adeline again because of this, or if she would push herself for no reason and fall ill again.

He couldn’t focus on anything all day. His mind was filled with thoughts of Adeline.

But he couldn’t show those feelings.

She was a woman he could no longer treat with sincerity. Kael had to bury his feelings again.

“Lady Felix…”

Adeline, unaware of Kael’s true reason, mulled over Vanessa’s appearance alone.

She opened her mouth to tell Kael about Vanessa, but it was hard to say the rest.

Adeline’s mind was that complicated.

[Because of that, he looked at me like I was a bug. It was clear to me that he suspected that I was deliberately slandering Your Grace. I could feel it. I could feel it clearly.]

Vanessa’s extremely anxious appearance was still vivid in her mind.

‘She wasn’t simply hurt. She was freaking out. It was like she was trembling with anxiety that maybe Kael wouldn’t look at her ever again.’

It wasn’t a light emotion. Vanessa was genuinely trembling.

The more she thought about Vanessa’s teary face, and the more the yellow Freesia she had handed over overlapped with it, the more she was convinced of her reasoning.

‘She knows the ending. She knows how it’s supposed to go, and she has always believed that it will happen, but it is getting shaky. Just like me.’

Vanessa clearly knew the ending. How the story had to go, her position in it, and how much this situation differed from the set outline.

It was clear that she knew everything.

‘How is that even possible? There’s no way that a character in the book knows everything. That doesn’t make any sense.’

When Adeline was thinking that it was usually impossible and that she was an exception because she was the one possessed, a thought suddenly crossed her mind like a lightning bolt.

‘… What if Vanessa is also possessed?’

What if Vanessa was also someone who had been sucked into the book like Adeline?

What if she knew what the story was all about?

She unconsciously clutched the skirt of her dress at the assumption she had never even imagined.

“Adeline. Are you alright?”

When Adeline’s complexion suddenly turned pale, Kael looked at her with a worried face.

Instead of answering out loud, Adeline nodded. She felt like her trembling would be relayed if she spoke right now.

‘Then why did the story start to go astray? What will happen to us? What could be the truth?’

Countless emotions swirled over Adeline as she faced the worried blue-grey eyes.

Everything was a variable.

Kael’s feelings, Adeline’s feelings, and even Vanessa’s.