I Became The Wife Of The Cursed Grand Duke Chapter 89

Evelyn blushed.

 

She blushed because she felt like they were a real couple, not just a contractual relationship.

 

She couldn’t tell if Kalian was teasing her, or if he was slyly reprimanding her.

 

Evelyn stared at him, trying to figure out his intentions, but all she could see was his handsome face.

 

Then she remembered Viktor’s words after a rather dangerous battle in the canyon.

 

“How are you feeling…?”

 

Evelyn studied his complexion and smiled a mixture of gratitude and apology.

 

He’d just come back from a hard day’s work, and now, as if that weren’t bad enough, she’d invaded his space and asked him a question that sounded like a question.

 

“I hear you had a hard time subduing the frost giant, and it took you days to reinforce the barrier.”

 

Luckily, her question seemed to amuse him. Kalian curled his lips into a graceful smile and stroked her earlobe.

 

“Took you long enough. So, to answer my question?”

 

“I’ve been doing well.’”

 

“Again.”

 

Something in her chest tingled at the affectionate tone. Evelyn looked up at him, the corner of her mouth quivering.

 

“I wanted to see…”

 

She stroked Kalian’s jawline, which seemed sharper than usual, and confessed slowly.

 

“I’ve missed you so much, I don’t know if I’ve ever missed someone so much.”

 

A shaky voice escaped her lips. Evelyn bit down hard on her bottom lip, which was nervously quivering.

 

Kalian ran his tongue over her lips, as if he were chastising her for the habitual behaviour.

 

“Don’t keep biting. It makes me want to torment you more.”

 

Evelyn quickly pulled her lower lip away from the nibbling.

 

Kalian chuckled at her rabbit-like quickness and patted each side of her thigh.

 

Then he gestured impatiently at the picture frame on the floor.

 

“You ever wonder why that portrait was hanging in a glass conservatory in the capital?”

 

“Why?”

 

Her heart, barely calmed, began to beat as if it had broken again.

 

A sense of foreboding crept over her, as if words that shouldn’t have been spoken were about to come out of his mouth.

 

“The answer is simple, the man in that portrait is…”

 

And her hunch was correct.

 

“That’s me.”

 

A thick silence settled over the darkened room.

 

Evelyn stared for a long moment, as if questioning her ears, then swallowed dryly.

 

“…I can’t believe that’s you.”

 

One corner of his mouth curled up at an angle as he stared into her fearful eyes.

 

“I know it sounds crazy, Cailus Van Orpheus, but I am the Ancestral Guardian whose love blinded him to the cataclysm.”

 

“That’s impossible, how could that happen…”

 

Evelyn’s eyes flickered with confusion. The more she thought about it, the stranger it sounded.

 

‘An old guardian who killed himself because he couldn’t deal with the guilt of his wife’s death?’

 

‘Could it mean that he had been reincarnated with memories of his previous life?’

 

‘If so, why can’t he remember our past lives together?’

 

Evelyn’s face contorted in frustration as her mind raced.

 

If this was true, it was a great misfortune for him.

 

But Kalian’s face showed no sign of weariness or agitation, only his straight eyebrows twitched for a moment before settling back into place as if he was considering her.

 

Evelyn denied reality.

 

‘Okay, maybe he’s joking.’

 

A remarkable calm for someone who had just confessed something so unbelievable.

 

‘Maybe he’s hanging a portrait of the old guardian so that he won’t repeat his mistakes, or maybe he’s using it as a lesson.’

 

Evelyn shook her head in disbelief as she stared at his too-serious face.

 

“If you’re joking, stop it, it’s not funny.’”

 

“I guess I’m the kind of person who strikes you as the kind of person who’d make a bad pun.”

 

He raised an eyebrow to reassure her that his statement was not false.

 

“As you can see from the portrait, you bear a striking resemblance to my former wife, Daphne.”

 

This was the first time Kalian had ever mentioned “the woman”.

 

That alone was daunting, but when he followed it up with an unbelievable confession, Evelyn felt her heart sink.

 

‘He had a wife, albeit in a past life, and she looked like me. How am I supposed to take this?’

 

As she wallowed in her confusion, a low, powerful voice penetrated her ears and snapped her out of it.

 

“The reason is simple: you are a descendant of Helene, the first saint.”

 

“You mean I have… Lindbergh blood in my veins?”

 

He nodded.

 

“I have found traces of the Lindberghs in the Irina Gorge.”

 

That meant that the women in the temple’s processing chamber were all descended from the Lindbergh family.

 

“Uh, how is that…”

 

Evelyn’s heart was beating so fast she felt dizzy. Her mind went white and blank, and she couldn’t think.

 

Kalian gently pulled Evelyn into his arms as she stared at him in disbelief.

 

“That’s what drew me to you, and that’s what made me more wary, though that’s irrelevant now.”

 

A large hand gently patted her back as she drew in a ragged breath.

 

“This is my secret, something only you and I know. I know it’s confusing, but there’s no need to dwell on it, because no matter who I was in the past, you’re the one I have to protect now.”

 

Kalian gave a little more strength to the arm that held her. Despite her flailing about, Kalian suddenly felt like everything was settling down.

 

His heart, tattered from reincarnation after reincarnation, pulsed with clean blood. In this way, he always felt reborn in Evelyn’s presence.

 

“Evelyn.”

 

Her shoulders stiffened at the weak call. Kalian seized the moment, cupping Evelyn’s cheek and locking eyes with her.

 

“Oh.”

 

Her face was streaked with tears and cold sweat. Feeling sorry for her distorted expression, Kalian gently stroked her cheek.

 

“I must have said the wrong thing to make you cry. If I’d known it would be like this…”

 

“No, I’m not crying because I’m sad…”

 

Evelyn couldn’t finish her sentence. Her mind was a tangled mess of threads, and she couldn’t say anything.

 

‘Maybe… This is my chance to confess our past, to tell him that I’ve regressed.’

 

But she immediately shook her head. She didn’t want to confuse him further, not when it was already hard enough to confess her unbelievable past.

 

“Don’t worry, whatever happens, I will not repeat the tragedies of the past.”

 

Evelyn recalled the bitter look on Kalian’s face as she explained about the Ancestral Guardians.

 

“No one can understand the sadness that lies within them.”

 

Emotion stirred. Evelyn sighed deeply and leaned her forehead against Kalian’s shoulder.

 

“If you’ve told me your secret, it means you care about me, and that alone makes me feel special to you.”

 

Come to think of it, he’d given her plenty of hints along the way. He relied too heavily on the Oracle, convinced it was the only way to destroy Babel.

 

Even the reason he summoned Aether was to bring back the woman he loved.

 

It was she who refused to listen to him, refused to take him seriously.

 

She was afraid to know the truth.

 

Or more accurately, she instinctively felt that the consequences of the truth were too much to bear.

 

‘That’s why you have a whole wardrobe full of dresses… in the same size.’

 

It makes sense that he’d memorialise her in his own way, for a wife he didn’t know when she would return.

 

At the same time, a pain like a dull knife slicing through her heart rushed through her, and she quickly clutched at the collar under her breast.

 

Her heart ached.

 

It wasn’t a pity for herself for being the wife of a man who had given his heart to another woman.

 

It was for his life, for the loss of everything he loved.

 

Evelyn felt an indescribable kinship with him in that they had both experienced death, albeit in different ways.

 

‘How hard it must have been, what a lonely life this man must have led.’

 

But she couldn’t say that she was in the same situation.

 

All she could do was wrap her arms tightly around the nape of his neck and spit out the words that were stuck in her heart.

 

“Thank you for being honest with me, and…”

 

“…….”

 

“I love you.”

 

It was something she’d been suppressing, thinking she had nothing to lose by admitting her feelings for him.

 

But now she doesn’t want to. He had swallowed his loneliness for so many years, and she wanted to give him strength by opening up a little bit.

 

Besides, he was a perceptive man.

 

He was not a great man who would not notice if she kept her feelings for him to herself, and she wanted to make it easier on herself.

 

He knew that their relationship was still nothing more than physical lust, but if she didn’t use that as an excuse to cling to him and bother him, he’d let her say she liked him… and he’d be forgiving.

 

“No matter who you are, no matter what your name is… nothing will ever change my mind about you.”

 

No, he didn’t react, which she found both frustrating and fitting.

 

“Then I suppose the rest of our conversation will have to wait until you receive the reward you promised.”

 

Kalian pulled the cloak off his shoulders and flung it to the floor.