To My First Love, With Regret (Libenia) Chapter 46

Entrusting her son to lead his own mother to the altar—to a man who wasn’t his father. She understood it was madness, but she’d gone through with it anyway because this marriage wasn’t without feeling.

Hostility. The moment it rose to her throat, she felt like she’d spit a curse at that bandit instead of a vow. That she hoped his death would part them as soon as possible.

She’d hoped that walking with Tony’s hand in hers would make it less repulsive—but in the end, there were just two of them walking, both disgusted by Callas.

Still, Tony seemed to enjoy this adult game. He seriously adjusted his clothes. Then he deliberately ruffled his hair again, ran up, and offered Eve his hand.

“Let’s go.”

Eve, taking her son’s hand, was about to climb the steps to the church and enter through the open doors when someone called out to her.

“Lady Evelyn, long time no see. Do you remember me?”

She could never forget that voice—once whispering words of love in her ear. Her heart raced, as if warning her—but her gaze ignored the caution and turned to the man leaning against the wall by the gate in a casual pose.

Ethan Fairchild, slowly drawing on a cigarette held between his fingers, looked at Eve like a nightmare from which you couldn’t wake—even if you screamed.

The careless gesture of flicking ash, the rebellious smile that made her heart beat—all of it was the same as ten years ago, and yet everything was different.

The college student—pessimistic yet optimistic, seeming somewhat unsteady but passionate—had died. What returned was a terrifyingly dangerous man, as if he’d touched the very bottom of this world and crawled back out.

She’d heard rumors that Ethan Fairchild, following his father into the criminal underworld, had become the second-in-command of the gang. But why was he in an Air Force officer’s uniform? The title “prince of the criminal underworld” should outrank a major.

Ethan Fairchild wore the uniform of a defender paid by the state—but radiated not order, but chaos. This strange dissonance made him even more sinister.

Their gazes clashed through a veil of smoke. Murky blue light sharply ensnared Eve.

Everything had changed—but one thing, his gaze, hadn’t changed at all since that cold autumn night ten years ago when he’d looked at Eve, carrying this child in her womb.

His anger—undiminished by the long years—pierced Eve’s glass heart. The heart that had shattered into pieces the day her lover’s hatred turned on her too. On that glass wall, so painstakingly glued back together over years of chaos, cracks were ready to form again.

Why did you come back? You abandoned us and left—so why did you come back?

It was astonishing that he appeared exactly when Eve was marrying another man. This couldn’t be a coincidence. He definitely had a purpose. A terribly dirty one.

Eve swallowed, suppressing the indignation rising in her trembling throat. She asked the traitor—to whom she didn’t want to give the satisfaction of hearing her voice until the day she died—in an icy tone:

“Why are you here?”

“Your face looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Ethan slowly removed the cigarette from his mouth and curled his lips. It wasn’t a smile. It was the expression of a predator ready to tear out the throat of prey he’d been hunting long and hard.

Just that expression made her pure white wedding dress look like a shroud. The wedding march coming from beyond the doors sounded like a funeral dirge, mourning her death in advance.

“I understand how you feel. I should have died—that would have been more polite to you—but forgive me for the rudeness of staying alive.”

He treated the woman he’d once sworn to love until death like a mortal enemy he wanted to kill.

In a sense, he’d kept his vow. He’d loved her passionately until death parted them. He just didn’t know that the end of love would come not from their own deaths, but from someone else’s.

But what she couldn’t understand was why he treated her—the woman who had fought for that love—as an enemy too.

She wanted to say everything to him—but the gazes of guests turning from the chapel were sharp. What worried Eve more, though, was Tony watching the stranger with curiosity.

They must not meet.

Eve looked away from the ghost of the past and led the child forward. But she couldn’t take a single step—she had to meet the eyes of the man blocking her path again.

“Get out of my way.”

“Eve, who’s that mean soldier?”

“Ha…”

Ethan looked down at the child he’d been ignoring—as if he hadn’t existed.

“Mean little one—and who might you be?”

Eve’s breath caught. That ordinary question—”And who might you be?”—felt like a sharp blade searching her son’s face for traces of his father. The moment everything came to light, everything she’d worked so hard to maintain would collapse—and another predator would take her family.

No, he can’t find out.

Tony was Eve’s spitting image.

Except for his pale blond hair—in which he was a dead ringer for that man. And his blue eyes, which were beginning to show a gray tint.

Oh god, please…

The moment she prayed to the god she no longer believed in—right before a union that was a deception against him—Tony screamed at his own father.

“How dare you call the Duke of Kentrell ‘little one’! What insolence!”

“Ah, His Grace the Duke?”

Ethan, hearing the rebuke from this arrogant Sherwood-style brat, only smiled happily.

I know exactly who you are.

How could I not recognize my prey?

Once I kill you, the Kentrell house will be mine.

“My apologies for not recognizing you. The last duke I saw was big and fat—and the young duke is so small.”

The boy, sensitive about being thinner than his peers, flared up at the word “small.”

“And who are you to dare insult my house? Are you the king?”

“In a sense.”

Ethan—the usurper who’d come to kill the young duke—dropped to his knees like a loyal servant.

“My name is Ethan Fairchild. I’m from Cliffhaven—born and raised at that lighthouse over there.”

The boy’s blue eyes widened as he looked at him.

“His Grace knows me. Should I consider that an honor?”

He asked, fully knowing that in front of this child, he’d surely been vilified as “the murderer of your brother” and “the scoundrel who kidnapped your sister.”

“What did your sister say about me?”

“Hey. You need to get something from me, don’t you?”

“Hey”? Just like to a street beggar. Looking down with contempt at the man who’d once been her husband.

So now I’m such a pathetic bastard to you that you’re ashamed to even acknowledge knowing me? You threw me in prison to die—and I survived and came back. Must give you goosebumps, doesn’t it?

Ethan ground his teeth. He forcibly swallowed the shards of his shattered pride and, as if nothing had happened, put on a mask of complete composure.

He slowly rose and looked at her face again. The beautiful Maiden—whose face, veiled by the shadow of passing years, was still beautiful—stood frozen, as if it were agonizing to be near this pathetic beggar, and whispered:

“I’ll return it—so meet me here tomorrow at this same time. And don’t interfere anymore.”

Incidentally, I have no idea what she’s talking about—what she’s supposed to “return.” Damn it, she’s intrigued me.

This woman has always known how to intrigue a man so he’d follow her around. I already fell for that hook once, and my whole life went to hell—and here I am, about to fall for it again.

Ethan, pretending to have fallen for her ruse, stepped aside. The moment she looked away as if he no longer existed in this world, she walked past him. He watched her go and called out, loud enough for it to sound like a wedding blessing inside the church:

“Tomorrow at this same time? That’s the very time you’ll be a happy bride? And at such a time, the Lady wishes to meet me in secret… This worthless slave dare not refuse. My condolences in advance to your pathetic groom.”

The laughter of the man she’d once loved stabbed into her back like a dagger—but Eve didn’t turn around. She looked only ahead, eyes wide to hold back her indignation. The moment she’d set foot on this thorny path to escape the past, the past had appeared as a ghost and bound her ankles. With each step, the shards of her broken glass heart pierced her skin.

In her bloodshot eyes, there was no room for such a worthless enemy. Thanks to that, her anger at Dr. Callas subsided—but the wedding had turned into hell because of a different grievance.

When the time came to exchange vows of love, Eve finally uttered a curse—though she didn’t know whom it was meant for.

“Until death parts us.”