Roxana
Chapter 74
Chapter 74
How to Protect the
Female Lead’s Older Brother
Chapter 74
Cassis stared at me quietly.
His gaze seemed to ask, ‘Are you only asking that now?’ while at the same time questioning, ‘Why ask such a thing at this point?’
“……To put it simply, in terms of the outcome.”
Cassis answered curtly before long.
“Just as you wanted.”
Hearing those words, I let out a faint laugh.
“I see. So he died.”
Beyond the precariously flickering campfire, the burning castle of Agriche shimmered like an illusion.
Bit by bit, memories of that day resurfaced.
After parting with me in the office, Deon had most likely headed to where Lant was.
If so, I wondered who ultimately killed Lant, and what his end had been like.
Yet at the same time, it felt as though none of that mattered in the slightest.
It was a truly contradictory sentiment that had been swelling within me for some time.
“Isidore said he confirmed your mother escaping the manor.”
Still looking at me, Cassis added. At his words, I slowly cast my gaze down.
“I see.”
“Anything else?”
This time, Cassis asked me.
“Aren’t you curious?”
I remained silent, gazing blankly at him.
With the flames between us, we held each other’s gaze in silence for a while.
After a fleeting, or perhaps agonizingly long, stretch of time, Cassis’s tightly sealed lips finally parted.
“Everything turned out just as you wanted.”
Then, he watched me quietly.
He seemed to be waiting for my reaction.
So I gave him what he wanted.
“I see.”
There was nothing else left to say.
Crackle, crackle……
Tiny sparks flew from the firewood in the campfire.
“You don’t look very pleased.”
“What about you?”
A remarkably dry voice spilled from my lips, even to my own ears.
“Are you happy now that you’ve had your revenge? Do you feel relieved that Agriche has fallen?”
A desolate wind brushed past the nape of my neck.
As the sun set and the temperature dropped, the air brushing against my cheeks felt colder than before.
I could feel my body temperature dropping along with it, yet like someone incapable of feeling cold, I didn’t even pull my collar tighter.
Cassis was the same.
“I wonder.”
Closing his eyes for a long moment before opening them again, Cassis spoke in a slower tone than before.
“It only feels as though I’ve finished a task that had to be done. There is no greater satisfaction than expected.”
Hearing his words made me realize I felt the same.
“I’m much the same.”
“You’re like me?”
At that moment, however, a chilling smile bloomed across Cassis’s face.
His deep golden eyes, looking as though they had swallowed the campfire’s flames whole, pierced straight through me.
“You seem not to know what kind of face you’re making right now.”
Suddenly, Cassis rose to his feet.
He had barely taken a few steps, yet the distance between us closed in an instant.
Clatter! A dish kicked by his foot rolled across the ground.
Yet Cassis seemed not to care in the least.
Looking up at him from my seated position made him appear all the more imposing.
Perhaps because he had already stepped right in front of me with the campfire at his back, deep shadows cast over his body made his presence loom even larger.
Closing in uncomfortably close, Cassis lowered his body.
Faced from so close, his expression was cold as ice.
The eyes gazing down at me held a chill unlike any I had ever seen before.
“Were you planning to die that day?”
At that low, chillingly murmured whisper, I quietly looked at the man before me.
His shadowed, dark golden eyes seemed ready to swallow me whole in a single breath.
“What are you talking about? Why would I?”
Hiding the faint tremor rising within me, I calmly asked him back.
Cassis’s eyes, locked directly onto me, felt as though they were prying open my very soul.
“What were you planning to do if I hadn’t brought you here?”
“I would have left.”
“Where to?”
“Anywhere. Somewhere that isn’t Agriche.”
“Do you know what kind of face you were making when I found you that day?”
The eyes meeting mine sank even deeper.
“Back then, you looked exactly like someone setting off to find a place to die.”
At that moment, memories submerged in the distant abyss were dragged to the surface.
“What……?”
“Noona, where were you going all by yourself?”
“Why are you looking at me like that? As if this is the last time……”
“Noona…… are you going to abandon me too?”
The sorrowful face I saw back then, the pathetic, pleading gaze that had pursued me, lodged within me like a thorn and ached deep inside.
I closed my eyes to erase the scene of that day unfolding vividly like a phantom.
“……You ought to know.”
A moment later, a truth I had never spoken to anyone escaped my lips.
“I won’t live long anyway.”
Not much time remained in my life.
It was just as Cassis had told me three years ago.
Though I couldn’t gauge precisely how much longer I had left, at a rough estimate, it wouldn’t even be a year at most.
Having pushed my body to such extremes all my life, it was a natural consequence.
When I thought about what I had struggled so desperately for, it felt both futile and infuriating.
To think that no matter what I did, I was fated to die young just as in the novel.
Yet even that feeling was only fleeting. Upon careful thought, I felt no desire to scramble and struggle just to prolong this life.
Though I hadn’t even lived twenty years, seeing how little regret or longing remained, I must have consumed my life far more, and far faster, than I had thought.
I felt I had done more than enough.
Wherever I drew my last breath, no remains of mine would be left in this world.
Because before I died, the Poison Butterflies would devour every last drop of my blood without hesitation.
“So you plan to live like that, with neither desire nor lingering attachment, merely waiting for the day you die?”
Cassis’s eyes flashed coldly.
A cold gaze laden with silence lingered on my face.
Then, at a certain moment, Cassis curled the corners of his lips into a faint, dusky smile.
“Fine. If it’s a life you were going to throw away anyway, it shouldn’t matter if I take it.”
I did not immediately understand the meaning of the words that followed.
“Give your remaining time to me.”
In the face before me, not an ounce of hesitation or doubt could be felt.
And so, it took me longer than expected to process what he had said.
“If your destination doesn’t matter anyway, stay by my side. Until you die.”
My mind went blank at that moment.
Yet Cassis continued speaking without giving me a chance to react.
“You may have no regrets if you die right this instant, but I do.”
“Cassis……”
“So if you truly believe that the rest of your life, the time from now on, and the final moments of your existence are truly worthless……”
Just as the low whisper seeped into my ear, a searing heat enveloped my hand.
Soon, Cassis buried his lips against the back of the hand he had caught and lifted.
“I will gratefully take it all.”
Both the branding kiss descending upon my hand and the gaze intertwined at close quarters felt scalding hot, as if they would burn.
A night when a cluster of stars sparkled enchantingly overhead.
Just like that, the remaining time of my life was stolen by him.