Ch. 91
The Young Master I Carefully Raised Became ObsessiveThis chapter is broken. Please report this on discord.
Notes
TL: I hope you guys are having a good time today. How is today's chapter? It's interesting and truly played out well ~
This chapter is broken. Please report this on discord.
TL: I hope you guys are having a good time today. How is today's chapter? It's interesting and truly played out well ~
“What answer?”
“Whether you truly can’t trust me.”
Before I knew it, Ardion’s expression had grown serious.
I looked into his eyes for a moment before slowly speaking. “I came this far because I trusted Your Highness.”
The moment I called him ‘Your Highness’, my eyes widened in surprise, but Ardion simply looked down at me, his gaze endlessly deep.
Then he gently rubbed my wrist with his thumb and lifted my hand. As I blankly stared at him, he looked into my eyes and pressed a kiss to the back of my hand. “Then don’t be anxious anymore. No matter what, I’ll protect you.”
To be honest, there was no one else I could trust more than Ardion. When I really thought about it, he was all I had. He had helped me countless times, and now, we were even married. There was no turning back.
Still, for some reason, his words made me uneasy. I looked at him, but he remained silent. When I turned my head, he gently guided me.
“Laila, let’s go to the office.”
I nodded, and he wrapped his arm around my shoulder. I was still self-conscious about the people around us. With Ardion by my side, Serina probably wouldn’t act out, but I was still worried.
“People are watching.”
“So what? We’re married now. What does it matter?”
With no other choice, I walked with him to the office, his arm fully around my shoulder. Since the office was far from the banquet hall, we drew quite a lot of attention. It might’ve been more attention than we got at the wedding itself.
Leaving all those stares behind, we eventually entered a quiet hallway. Ardion guided me along and stopped in front of a large door.
“Is this it?”
He nodded and signaled to the guards. The doorman immediately opened the door, everyone’s eyes locking on me. When I looked back, they cleared their throats and quickly lowered their gazes.
Ardion’s office was very different from Rowell’s. It was filled with books stacked up to the ceiling, far more than I could ever read.
“What did you want to talk about, just the two of us?” His soft voice tickled my ear. At some point, his lips were hovering near mine.
I flinched and took a step back.
“Laila?” Ardion smiled and stepped closer.
I quickly scanned the room and spotted a table. I practically rushed over to it.
I set Derol down on the table. Standing on two legs, he sniffed around, tilting his head back and forth.
“It smells much cleaner than Rowell’s room.”
“Derol, you have an amazing nose. I don’t smell anything at all.”
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I could smell Ardion, a fresh yet deep scent.
I took my time sitting in front of the table. When I turned my head, I saw Ardion still standing there, watching me. I forced a smile and gestured for him to come over. “I have something to say. I think we should sit and talk.”
Only then did he slowly approach. He sat across from me and folded his arms. “What is it?”
His voice was lower than before. I wondered if he was sulking, so I studied his face, but he didn’t seem angry.
Still, the warm smile he usually wore had faded a little. As I silently stared at him, he tilted his head slightly. “Laila, what is it you want to say?”
Ardion was still watching me with those deep, unwavering eyes.
I held out my wrist to him. “I found where Rowell planted the magical drug.”
He glanced at my wrist. “Your wrist?”
I nodded.
He quickly examined it by pressing his thumb around different parts of my wrist. “I don’t feel any magical drug though.”
He continued to touch my wrist, murmuring to himself. Then he paused in thought and looked up. “How did you know it was there?”
“Derol helped. He smelled something strange on my wrist, so I checked, and sure enough, there was the magical drug.”
Ardion turned to look at Derol. His expression remained stiff, and his gaze towards Derol wasn’t exactly kind.
“What kind of smell?” Ardion asked in a low voice.
Derol let out a few squeaks in response. “It was just different from usual. Kind of sweet, maybe.”
Suddenly, a burst of mana light flared around Ardion.
Startled, I grabbed his arm. “Ardion, what’s wrong?”
He lifted his head. Our eyes met, and he shook his head. “My mana just flared up on its own.”
His tone was casual, but something felt off. His face was still tense, his gaze sharper than before.
Why is he like this?
Just because Derol picked up a scent…? Then I remembered—Ardion couldn’t smell.
Could it be… he’s reacting because Derol could smell something he couldn’t?
I looked at Ardion with a puzzled expression, but he soon relaxed his face and met my eyes again.
“Laila, I want to hear the rest of what you were saying earlier.”
“Right. We need to remove the magical drug without Rowell finding out.”
“That’s probably not possible. The drugs are linked to each other, so you can’t take one out without alerting him. It could be even more dangerous.”
I hesitated.
Ardion carefully studied my face. “Laila, if it’s too much, just say so. I…”
“I had a dream, and Rowell was in it.”
His face immediately hardened.
I continued cautiously, “But it didn’t feel like a dream. Serina said she was going to kidnap me in the dream, and a few minutes later, she really showed up.”
“…”
“And I heard something strange there. During Rowell’s coronation…”
Ardion’s brow twitched as if something was bothering him, and he said in a low voice, “Laila, you used to speak casually to me sometimes. Why are you back to formal speech now?”
His sudden comment caught me off guard.
“What? But I’ve always spoken this way…”
“We’re married now. Don’t talk to me so formally. You and I are equals.”
“…”
“If you really think of me as your husband, I don’t want to hear you speak like a stranger.”
His words cut straight into my heart. It felt like he was calling me out for being emotionally distant this whole time.
“Laila, do you not see me as your husband?”
“What? No, I do.”
“Then from now on, talk to me informally. If you’re using formal speech because you hate me that much, I’ll accept it… but I’ll be heartbroken the whole time…”
“Okay, I’ll stop,” I answered quickly.
Ardion chuckled softly. The look on his face made me feel like I’d just been baited into something.
Seeing my stiff expression, Ardion smiled and said, “Go on, Laila. I’ll always listen to what you have to say.”
I rolled my eyes and continued where I left off. “So, in the place I thought was a dream… you…”
I paused. The word ‘you’ didn’t come easily. I was too used to calling him ‘Your Highness’ for it to feel natural. Ardion watched me closely, his eyes growing sharper.
I coughed lightly and resumed, “… Is it true that you said you’d drain all your mana at the temple?”
I finally managed to say it informally while observing Ardion’s expression. There wasn’t even a flicker of change, not even in his eyebrows. His face was calm. That calmness made me even angrier.
“I told you not to try something like that.”
“Laila, that’s the only way to save you. And because of that, the charges against you were cleared.”
“But you could die from it.”
“Laila, I won’t die.”
“No, Rowell will kill you afterwards. He doesn’t even care about prophecy anymore.”
Ardion laughed. Seeing me staring at him in shock, he calmly took my hand. “Laila, now you really feel like my wife. Hearing you speak casually suits you.”
I tried to pull my hand away in embarrassment, but he just held it tighter. “And you said you trusted me. So why is it so easy for you to believe I’ll die?”
“…”
“As long as you’re by my side, I’m not going to die easily.”
“Then why did you talk like you were giving everything up back then?”
“What do you mean?”
“You sounded like you were ready to let everything go.”
“That’s…”
“You keep worrying that I don’t trust you, but you don’t trust me either.”
“Laila…”
“If you really trusted me, you would’ve removed the spell on my ankle. You would’ve discussed the mana offering with me beforehand.”
Ardion stared at me with a stiff expression. Seeing him not saying anything, all the words I had held back until now spilled out.
“Ardion, do you know how selfish you are? You act like you’re thinking of me, but you’re really only thinking of yourself.”
“Laila, do you mean that?”
“Yes, I mean it. If you offer all your mana to the temple, I’ll never see you again.”
I stood up abruptly. Ardion grabbed my hand, but I yanked it away.
“Please understand that your life matters too. Don’t just throw it away like that.”
Then Ardion knelt in front of me and took my hand again. “But this time, there’s no other way, Laila.”
“What?”
“I have to offer all my mana to the temple.”
I let out a laugh of disbelief. He gripped my hand tighter. He looked desperate.
“Have you never considered that you might die from it?”
“I won’t die, Laila,” Ardion said, still smiling.
Looking at him, I realized I couldn’t reach him anymore—no, that he wasn’t the Ardion I knew.
I finally said, “I told you I won’t see you again if you do that.”
His face stiffened for a moment, but then he shook his head. “This is the only way to make everything clean.”