FWTR Chapter 10

Chapter 10

“…Marquis Aslan. I heard you collapsed.”

Michael let out a dry laugh as he looked at the old man lying in bed, eating a peach.

“Did you come, Your Highness?”

Marquis Aslan calmly put down the peach he had been crunching and greeted Michael.

“You deceived me.”

Michael, feeling a sense of emptiness now that his haste had been for nothing, pressed his temples with frustration. Damn old man.

“I was just on the verge of collapsing, but I had to exaggerate a bit, or else Your Highness wouldn’t have come.”

Aslan’s excuse only grated on Michael’s nerves. His constant cunning never ceased to annoy him.

“Make sure you focus on recovering so that you don’t collapse. I’ll be leaving now.”

“Your Highness! Are you leaving? Please wait!”

Aslan, wiping the smile from his face, hurriedly grabbed Michael as he turned to leave.

“On the verge of collapsing, yet your voice is still so loud.”

“…I’m sorry, Your Highness. I won’t do it again.”

Marquis Aslan, always quick to admit his mistakes when he realized he had crossed a line, was like this every time.

“Anyway, why did you call for me?”

Now that the apology was out of the way, Michael chose to be patient and wait for the real reason.

“I heard you removed the shadows again today.”

As Michael approached once more, Aslan began to lecture him, as if waiting for the moment.

‘I wish it had been the news that the Emperor had passed away.’

Realizing that there was no special issue at hand, Michael suppressed his anger.
If it hadn’t been for Aslan, he could have spent a little more time with Estelle.

The brief time he had kept her in his arms after she nearly collapsed, even just watching her back, had been enough to satisfy him.

When he saw her alive, it was like his own time had started flowing again.
He had wanted to feel that lingering sensation a bit longer.

“I’ve told you time and again, Your Highness, you need to be aware of your position. You’re the only one among the royal family who possesses the Golden Eyes.”

Michael didn’t need to hear the tedious explanation; he already knew all too well.
Because of those damn eyes, he had narrowly escaped death countless times, lost his mother, and even killed Estelle.

‘If I didn’t have the Golden Eyes…’

Sometimes, he wished he could rip his eyes out.
The Golden Eyes, a symbol of divine blessing, felt like a curse to him.

If he could, he would have certainly gouged them out.

‘No. If I didn’t have these eyes, I could never have brought Estelle back. Not once, but twice.’

There was one good thing about it, though. The ability to turn back time using the Golden Eyes.
The fact that he was already living his third life was something even his long-time confidant, Marquis Aslan, didn’t know.

The beginning of this tragedy started the day Princess Cecilia of the Lweon Kingdom came as an envoy to the Valderman Empire.
Falling in love with the Emperor after meeting him, Cecilia became pregnant.

And when Princess Cecilia gave birth to Michael, the Emperor whispered to her, expressing his desire to grant Michael, their child, great imperial power.

The Emperor, who had suffered from the influence of the royal relatives, whispered his woes into her ear, explaining that Michael would have to be considered a bastard. At the same time, he gently coaxed her, telling her that if they took the lead in negotiations with Lweon, they could suppress the power of the royal relatives.

Feeling pity for the Emperor, Princess Cecilia ultimately handed over her parents’ and siblings’ weaknesses to him, believing it would be beneficial for her, the Emperor, and her son, Michael.

Princess Cecilia was incredibly naive. She didn’t realize the Emperor would use that information to start a war.

Moreover, the Emperor broke the promise he had made to marry her and instead took another woman as his Empress.

After breaking off the engagement with the Emperor, she secretly gave birth to a child, Michael, who would become the second prince, despite being born before Leonov. He was considered a bastard due to his mother being a princess from a defeated kingdom.

Princess Cecilia, consumed by deep feelings of betrayal, wanted to kill the Emperor immediately but couldn’t bring herself to do it. He was the father of her son, Michael.

Moreover, because she still had lingering feelings of love for the Emperor, her assassination attempts repeatedly failed.

Princess Cecilia hated love. If she hadn’t loved the Emperor, Michael would never have been born, she wouldn’t have betrayed her parents and siblings, and she wouldn’t have left her country with the stigma of being from a defeated nation.

There was a record handed down through generations in the Lweon royal family.
It contained a spell to remove feelings of love and compassion.

So, Princess Cecilia, thinking that without emotions, there would be no weaknesses that could threaten someone, cast the spell on Michael, even if it meant sacrificing her life.

It was a chain that included the thought that if she hadn’t fallen in love, she would not have betrayed her country or killed her parents and siblings.

As a result, Michael, who had lived without knowing emotions, married Estelle under the Emperor’s orders in his first life.

During their long marriage, Michael caused Estelle a great deal of pain.
He heard the words “I love you” hundreds of times but never returned them once.

“Michael, can you come home early today? I have something to tell you.”

“I’ll be late because I have work. Don’t wait for me. If it’s not important, I’ll hear it later.”

“…It’s fine if you’re busy. It wasn’t urgent. There’s plenty of time to talk, so just come back.”

It wasn’t a difficult matter, but she couldn’t speak the words and turned away.
Not understanding what love was, Michael never believed Estelle’s confession that she loved him.
Every time he saw her, his heart would feel hot and heavy.

Whenever that happened, his mind would become tangled, and he would act coldly and sharply.
He deliberately created work to keep himself away from home and left Estelle alone.

Her clingy behavior, asking him to look back just once or love her, was annoying to him.
He couldn’t return the love she gave him, so he purposely kept his distance.

He knew she had longed for affection because she hadn’t received it from her family, yet he couldn’t even offer her a kind word or hug her warmly.

When she asked him to come home early, she didn’t even know that the words she wanted to say were that she was pregnant.

Unable to reveal the pregnancy due to his attitude, Estelle suffered in silence and eventually miscarried.
As she started losing her mind, hearing the cries of the dead child, Estelle ultimately took her own life.
Foolishly, Michael only realized he loved her when she died.

When she no longer breathed by his side, and everything he should have protected disappeared, he finally remembered that he loved her.
He had forgotten.

Princess Cecilia, worried that Michael might fall in love with someone, had made arrangements in advance to ensure that if the spell were to break, he would lose all memory of the person he loved.

It was because he loved Estelle that whenever he saw her, his heart would feel hot, and his mind would become tangled. It was because they had secretly met as lovers that she loved him.

Regret was useless. Estelle had essentially been killed by him, and she was no longer breathing, her body cold.

He painfully realized that she couldn’t feel his warmth, nor could it ever return to her.
So, to bring her back to life, he used immense divine power at the cost of his own life and turned back time—back to before he even met Estelle.

He intentionally did not attend the debutante event where they had first met, thinking that if he never met her, Estelle wouldn’t die.

He even asked the Emperor to remove Estelle from his marriage list, the first time he had ever made such a request.

He believed that if only he could disappear from her life, Estelle’s second life would shine brightly, free from tragedy.

She loved Leonov, the crown prince, and was engaged to him. The thought of it burned him with jealousy, but he pretended not to notice.

He didn’t want to interfere with Estelle’s life again and risk causing her death.
He realized he had been gravely mistaken just a few days before Estelle was supposed to marry Leonov, when Estelle died again.

In his first life, she had slit her throat with a jewel he had given her…
In her second life, she had died from poison.
What had gone wrong? Estelle had tried on her wedding dress for the national wedding at the palace, smiling with such clear joy.

It was strange. This time, she hadn’t met him, and she hadn’t lost a child, yet she died.
The fact that the future had changed meant that someone else had interfered.

It wasn’t until Leonov, now the Emperor, had brought in the adopted daughter of the Winchester Duke’s family now that Michael realized what had happened.

Melody Winchester. That woman had poisoned Estelle.

He wanted to twist her neck and kill her right then. He had saved Estelle, had wanted to embrace her again, and had kept his feelings from rushing to her, yet how could he have let another man take her?

And to think she had been killed with snake venom, suffering in agony. How much pain had she endured? How tormented had she been? Michael had to avenge Estelle.

Having already squandered his first and only chance, he couldn’t turn back time again to save her.
All he could do for Estelle now was to take revenge on Leonov and Melody.

He would expose the truth to the people of the Winchester family, who had looked down on Estelle.
He started a rebellion to kill Leonov and imprisoned Melody in a dungeon.

Before Melody’s trial, he even led an attack on the Winchester family’s home to capture them.
He planned to bring them back alive and make them watch as he made Melody answer for Estelle’s murder.

But unfortunately, they had already fled.
Just as he was about to leave, a soft breeze blew.
The familiar scent that had always come from Estelle reached his nose—a warm lily scent that had always brought him comfort.

Turning his head, he saw her standing in the middle of the hall.
It was an illusion created by his longing.

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