Chapter 57: The Past — After She Was Gone ⑨
A Merciless Thrust
As Ciel averted his gaze from the former Duke and Duchess of Vitkenstein and was about to move on, his sleeve was tugged.
When he turned around, Vered was staring with rapt attention at the many kinds of sweets.
One of Vered’s hands was gripping Ciel’s sleeve.
After shifting his gaze from the sweets to Ciel, Vered released the sleeve and waved goodbye.
Very few men could pull off a gesture like that and still look fitting.
Judging by appearances alone, neither of them looked their age.
‘…’
Ciel shot Vered a sidelong glare.
Unbothered and driven by his overwhelming desire for sweets, Vered ignored Ciel’s reaction and began piling his favorite desserts onto a plate.
With a deep sigh, Ciel shrugged his shoulders.
‘I’ll be lonely on my own.’
‘You won’t be lonely.
The former duke and duchess are here.’
‘There’s nothing I want to say to them.’
‘Hehe.
Have a good time.
I’ll be a good boy and wait on the terrace.’
‘You’re not eating here?’
‘Yeah.
Because—’
Vered cast a brief glance to the side.
Elvira was there, worriedly watching Bernhard, who stood frozen in place.
‘…Good grief.
This is why I didn’t want to come.
I wanted to relax at the estate instead.
It’s a celebratory day, so I had especially delicious sweets prepared.’
‘You ate the pie we baked together for afternoon tea.
Be satisfied with that.’
‘That’s true.
You worked so hard on it, and it was cute how depressed you were when you burned it black.’
‘In poor taste.’
Casting an exasperated look at Ciel, Vered finished loading his plate and headed for the terrace while eating.
Though his behavior was ill-mannered, no one stopped him, thanks to his elegant movements and beautiful appearance.
Still receiving sharp stares, Ciel quietly deepened his smile and left the hall, entering the prepared guest room.
‘Yeah.
It’s good.’
Out on the terrace, Vered moved to the far end where there was no sign of anyone and sat down on a lone bench.
He was eating a macaron, one of his favorite sweets.
As he had thought while heading to the royal castle, the full moon was especially beautiful tonight.
Macarons tasted even better when eaten while gazing at the moon.
Deciding to choose a drink after finishing all the sweets he had selected, he next cut into a cheesecake.
After chewing and swallowing, he lifted his gaze forward.
He had already predicted who would come.
Bernhard appeared, chasing after him with a grim expression.
Judging from Ciel’s earlier attitude, he must have assumed that following him would get him nowhere, and so came to Vered instead.
How shallow.
Ciel had at least chosen his words carefully out of consideration for his position as Bernhard’s uncle.
‘What’s wrong, Crown Prince?
Today is the Crown Princess’s auspicious day.
You should stay by her side.’
‘…I left Elvira with my cousin.
If Uncle won’t listen, then—’
‘Do you really think I’d talk when Ciel-sama won’t?’
‘…!’
Struck right on the mark, Bernhard clenched his lips shut.
Vered calmly cut into a blueberry pie next.
‘You know, Crown Prince.
You seem to think the miss abandoned you, but how did you possibly come to that conclusion?
You’re the one who threw her away.’
Holding up a bite-sized piece of blueberry pie toward Bernhard, Vered spoke before he could object.
‘“Try imagining how I feel, being engaged to someone as spiteful as you.
You’re the only stain on my life.”
That’s what you said, right?’
Bernhard’s eyes flew wide open as he stared at Vered, his face turning deathly pale.
A quiet chuckle escaped Vered as he looked up at him with eyes steeped in bottomless darkness.
‘And yet you think you were the one abandoned, after saying something like that.’
‘…’
‘What a pitiful miss.
Born to be loved, cherished, and happy.
Forced into becoming the fiancée of a crown prince she never wanted to marry.
Her personality twisted by a mother who favored her younger sister.
Rejected from the depths of the heart by the fiancé she longed to be loved by.
No matter how hard she tried, never once acknowledged by the person she wanted approval from.’
‘…Stop…’
‘Her fiancé and her mother gave their love to a sister whose only assets were her looks and tearful performances.
The emotions that should have grown properly became warped, until she reached the point of feeling genuine murderous intent.
—Because of her fiancé and her mother.’
‘…I said stop…!’
Bernhard’s voice was desperate, clinging, barely kept low.
He glared at Vered with a pained expression, but the rose-colored eyes staring back at him held not a shred of sympathy or mercy.
Vered speared the strawberry atop a shortcake with his fork and lifted it before his eyes.
‘What?
I’m only stating facts.
Did hearing it from someone else finally make you realize what you did to her, and now you want to run away?’
‘What could someone who knows nothing possibly understand!?’
‘Yeah.
I don’t know.
And I don’t care.’
He popped the strawberry into his mouth.
Sweet and tart, strawberries were delicious no matter how many he ate.
Since he had attended the Crown Princess’s birthday party at Ciel’s request, tomorrow it would be Ciel’s turn to indulge him.
He decided he would go to the market first thing in the morning to buy strawberries.
‘I truly couldn’t care less about how you feel, Crown Prince.
Call it disrespect or whatever you like.
The only person I care about is Ciel-sama.
But I do know what you put the miss through.
Otherwise, how would I know the words you spat at her when you were eleven?’
‘…!’
‘Here’s something useful for you, Crown Prince.
Everything has its limits.
People’s feelings are no different.
No matter how much the miss loved you, there was a breaking point.
…What kind of fool would keep loving someone after being told something like that?’
Bernhard stared at Vered in shock.
The eyes looking up at him grew even more merciless.
‘Everything you saw in the miss was an act.
All of it was to give that cute little sister the position of fiancée—no, to push you into choosing her.’
‘…Faustina…
Elvira…’
‘Yeah.
Think the rest through yourself.
I’m not obligated to teach you.’
With a single glare, Vered silenced Bernhard when he tried to speak.
Seeing how quickly the sweets had disappeared, Vered lowered his brows.
He had taken plenty, but stress-eating had left his plate empty.
Concerned about Ciel, he decided to grab more sweets and head to wherever Ciel was.
As he stood up, he also considered getting a drink.
A cocktail would be nice.
A Gimlet, a sweet Martini, or perhaps a Stinger to change his mood.
Then again, he didn’t even know what cocktails were available.
If there weren’t any, he’d just drink something random.
Vered stopped beside Bernhard instead of walking past him.
‘Trying to pick up what you threw away really does make you just like the king.’
He whispered the cutting sarcasm and started walking.
‘…What…
would you… know…’
Bernhard’s faint voice reached his ears, making Vered halt.
‘What could you possibly know…’
‘Who knows.’
‘I did say something terrible to Faustina back then.
After I cooled down, even I realized how cruel it was.
So I wrote a letter of apology.
I sent word that I wanted to apologize in person too.
…but—’
Faustina never replied, nor did she agree to meet him.
That was when her attitude toward him changed, but only when Elvira wasn’t around.
Bernhard clenched his fists until they bled and turned toward Vered.
Seeing the face carved with nothing but regret stirred nothing in Vered’s heart.
He let out a sigh of complete indifference.
‘You really are identical.
You push her away, and only after realizing what mattered most, you get pushed away in return—just like the king.’
‘You know where Faustina is, don’t you!?’
‘Didn’t Ciel-sama already say it?
I don’t know.
If Ciel-sama doesn’t know, there’s no way I would.’
‘Then why do you know so much about Faustina!?’
‘The day you said those cruel words to her, Ciel-sama happened to be visiting the castle.
I went with him.
That’s when we found the miss, crying so hard she couldn’t even speak.
Once she calmed down enough to talk, she screamed that she was done.
That she wanted to be freed from a fiancé who would never look at her or acknowledge her no matter what she did.
If he loved Elvira that much, then he should just make Elvira the Crown Princess.’
‘…’
The raw truths Vered thrust upon him pierced Bernhard’s heart like sharp roses.
‘How do you possibly arrive at the idea that she abandoned you?
This is all your own doing.’
Vered walked away without looking back at the collapsed Bernhard.
The letter of apology Bernhard mentioned had been thrown away by Vered, who was serving as the butler Cain Fuchs at the time.
Curious about its contents, he had read it.
It was nothing more than a hastily scrawled apology, likely written after Bernhard had been scolded by the queen or someone similar.
Showing it would only have burdened Faustina’s fragile heart even more, so Vered chose not to.
Besides, Faustina hadn’t expected anything from Bernhard after that anyway.
Returning to the hall, Vered handed his empty plate to a passing server without caring about the surrounding gazes, then exited in a different direction.
He no longer felt like eating sweets.
His destination was the guest room where Ciel was.
Somehow knowing where Ciel would be, Vered knocked on a randomly chosen door and entered without waiting.
Inside, the former duchess sat collapsed on the floor, sobbing, while the former duke clutched her shoulder and looked up at Ciel with a deathly pale face.
Ciel stood above them, gazing down with an expression utterly devoid of emotion.