Acidity of Regret Ch 82
- Feb 3
- 8 min read
[Helia] "Grand Duke! Wait...... ah!"
He pulled Helia out of the carriage without hesitation. His touch, usually somewhat kind considering she was his friend’s sister, was now ruthless and devoid of compassion. She tried to stop him, but his knights grabbed her and pulled her aside.
Without sparing her a glance, Declan turned his cold gaze toward Vanessa, who was huddled in the corner of the carriage.
Seeing her expression shift from relief to utter loathing the moment she saw him, a sharp, unpleasant irritation flared within him.
He stepped into the carriage and slammed the door shut.
[Declan] "Why are there...... so many meddlers trying to interfere with us?"
He slowly bent his knees to meet her eyes. His low tone sounded less like a threat and more like a sincere, weary lament.
Vanessa, though she had nowhere left to retreat, continued to squirm away from him. Her answer came out like a jagged sigh.
[Vanessa] "It is because you are trying to do something insane."
[Declan] "......"
[Vanessa] "You are trying to do something that everyone, with one voice, says is wrong."
His pupils narrowed like those of a predatory beast before he reached out without hesitation.
She let out a shrill scream as his grip tightened around her sprained ankle, which was still swollen and bruised a deep purple. Before she could struggle, he dragged her toward him.
When she opened her eyes, which had been squeezed shut against the stinging pain, she was pinned beneath his body. His hand, previously resting on the floor, suddenly touched her clothes. A chill ran down her spine as his fingers began to undo her buttons—clumsily, yet with clear intent.
[Vanessa] "What...... what are you doing?"
Her voice trembled as it left her throat.
He did not answer. He was focused solely on stripping her clothes. Belatedly, her face paled with horror, and she began to thrash, hitting and pushing him.
[Vanessa] "Don't do this! Stop...... stop it!"
[Declan] "You said you did everything with Hayden that you did with me."
His breathing was ragged and uneven. It was not the heat of lust, but rather a desperate urgency, like a man searching for a lifeline. It mirrored his past, immature confessions—his claim that he only knew how to love in this broken way.
[Declan] "You said you couldn't even remember me...... Then I should do something that will make you think only of me."
[Vanessa] "What?"
[Declan] "Have my baby, Vanessa."
Her fingertips, which had been gripping his forearms, flinched and curled inward. The focus in her eyes, which had been searching his face frantically, grew blurred.
The words were so horrifying that she couldn't help but doubt either his mouth or her own ears.
[Declan] "If we’re going to get married anyway, having a child isn't such a bad idea."
Looking at her as she sat frozen in shock, Declan spoke in a flat, conversational tone. His absolute certainty about their marriage made him look like a dreamer lost in a narrow, delusional world, denying reality.
He had long since cast his lifelong resolution into the mud.
I will never create another being like myself. I don't need a bloodline.
Through this ordeal, he had realized one thing for certain. A mere iron chain around her ankle was not enough to restrict her. He needed a more definite, more thorough shackle to keep her. That single thought had dominated his mind the entire time he was chasing her on horseback.
The "shackle" he eventually envisioned was an existence he had never once imagined in his life. Knowing how his own mother had treated him, he had never wanted children. To him, a child was merely a sacrificial lamb to a parent’s greed.
However, if it served as a means to hold Vanessa, he would welcome it a thousand times over.
I have to love it. Unlike my father, I won't fall for another woman.
With dark, damp eyes, he bit her lips. He gripped her slender chin and forced his breath into her; it was heavy, suffocating, and hot. His sensual lips brushed against her cheek and traveled down to rest against her neck.
Then, he stopped abruptly.
A repulsive sensation that made his skin crawl traveled from his head to his toes. Slowly lifting his head, he found Vanessa swallowing her sobs, her chin tilted away.
She was weeping silently, her lips muffled by the back of her hand to keep the sound from escaping. Her eyes held a depth of grief that he could not pretend to ignore.
Seeing her endure this moment without even resisting, yet showing such a visceral, revolting reaction, he suddenly felt a surge of white-hot rage.
[Declan] "Why don't you say you hate it?"
As she blinked her blurred eyes, a tear rolled down the bridge of her nose.
It wasn't that he wanted her to resist. However, her attitude of total resignation felt like it was pushing him into a despair that rendered him motionless.
[Declan] "I asked why you aren't rejecting me!"
He felt like a madman for even asking. To scream at her for not resisting while he was trying to take her by force—his contradictory self felt like a lunatic or a fool with a missing screw.
Yet, he couldn't bear it. A single shred of denial from her was the lifeline he craved. Ironically, her rejection and the way she pushed him away were the only clues that allowed him to believe she still had some lingering emotion for him.
Her face of resignation, far beyond mere struggle, was a cold response that sent him plunging off a cliff. He couldn't remain calm. A torch had been thrown into his chest, and flames were consuming him. He felt as if his blood, his flesh, and his entire being were drying up.
[Vanessa] "You ask why I am like this?"
The moment he met her empty pupils, which no longer showed even a hint of a negative emotion, his heart sank.
[Vanessa] "You made me this way."
[Declan] "......"
[Vanessa] "You bind me and squeeze the very breath out of me until I can't do anything. Every single time......"
Once, on a night that was now a faint, lingering scent in the past, she had asked him:
[Vanessa] "Why are you going this far?"
[Declan] "Because you make me act this way."
Back then, he had spat out the same words she was saying now. You make me act like this. You are the cause of everything.
Vanessa was now returning that answer to him. He was the one who was blinded by emotion and possessed by desire, acting like a beast without reason. He was the one who had made her this lethargic.
It was entirely his fault that she no longer had the will to resist.
The desolate green eyes looking up at him gradually filled with moisture until they shimmered. She tried to suppress the feelings she never wanted to show him again, but it was impossible. From the moment he spoke that word she had tried so hard to ignore, unbearable sadness and despair poured down into her heart like a torrential rain.
[Vanessa] "How...... how can you shamelessly bring up our baby with that mouth?"
[Declan] "......"
[Vanessa] "How could you!"
There was no strength in her hands as she struck his chest, but his heart lurched in time with the movement. She unleashed a torrent of resentment so fierce it was hard to believe she had been harboring such feelings.
[Vanessa] "You killed our baby!"
Having wrenched those words out, she curled her body into a ball as if someone had snatched a precious treasure from her arms and sobbed mournfully. It was as if the misery and despair she felt that day—the uncontrollable sobbing she did while staring at a clear sky—were pouring over her once again.
It was an existence that still slashed at her heart whenever it crossed her mind. Even though the child had not sinned, it had lost its life solely due to its parents' selfishness. That child was an inseparable guilt and a permanent bruise on her soul.
The words she sent through her cries pierced his chest like a dagger. His mind froze like a block of stone.
He didn't understand what she meant.
Our baby? There couldn't have been a baby.
According to his memory, there wasn't. He had no idea what she was talking about.
A baby......?
Yet, his heart pounded with a sense of dread.
[Declan] "What does that mean?"
He turned her body toward him as she struggled to speak through her sobs.
He asked with a sense of urgency. The thumping in his chest was becoming maddeningly intrusive. An ominous intuition hit him with such intensity that it made the back of his head go numb.
[Declan] "What do you mean, Vanessa! A baby? There was no such thing. I clearly used the medicine......"
But he suddenly faltered. He couldn't quite remember if he had always used the "medicine" before she died.
[Vanessa] "Do you know why I tried to run away from you back then?"
She turned to look at him, but she immediately pressed her hands against her eyes, as if she couldn't stand to face him any longer.
[Vanessa] "Because I thought you would kill our baby too."
Declan, who was about to pull her hands away to force her to look at him, froze. Like someone witnessing a hidden truth, his face turned deathly pale.
[Vanessa] "Just like you sent my father and my knight away......"
The fierce light in his pupils crumbled away like peeling skin.
[Vanessa] "But in the end, you caught me, and you killed our baby too."
[Declan] "......"
[Vanessa] "You probably don't even remember."
Even as she wheezed, her breath hitching from her cries, she did not stop blaming him.
[Vanessa] "You murderer."
Just as she wished, his internal world was thoroughly fracturing. Through the brutally crushed and splintered cracks, a memory of a certain day suddenly flooded his mind.
It was a dark night, a night when he could see nothing through his surging rage. A night when he had lost his reason, not because she had run away, but because of her confession that she no longer loved him.
Her delicate voice murmured that she was in unusual pain. The scent of blood was so faint he couldn't be sure. He had thought it was just a wound on her arm on that day......
Goosebumps erupted across his entire body.
[Vanessa] "And yet, how can you say you love me?"
[Declan] "......"
[Vanessa] "Have a child? How could you possibly......"
Her voice was thick with sorrow, as if she were forcibly prying open a throat glued shut to spit the words out. The intermittent chest pain had started again, roughly kneading her heart.
When did it begin? When did looking at him start to cause only this agonizing pain? When did pain become the only emotion left?
Through this change, she knew one thing for certain. Even if her claim of being attracted to Hayden was a lie, the statement that she had stopped loving Declan was the absolute truth.
[Vanessa] "I don't want to be near you."
Her head throbbed, her chest ached, and her ankle stung. There wasn't a single part of her from head to toe that didn't hurt.
[Vanessa] "When I am with you......"
The moisture pooled in her palms, which covered her eyes, as if a flood had overflowed. Yet, she didn't even think to wipe it away because despair was the only emotion dwelling within her.
Every single nerve that had been on edge collapsed, sinking completely to the very bottom. It felt as if her reason, her emotions, and everything that made her who she was were vanishing into thin air.
Clearly, time had been turned back by the grace of the Goddess.
[Vanessa] "I always want to die......"
Despite the miracle, she was reliving the exact emotions she felt back then.
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