The reason I didn’t tell him the truth — that I’d heard it from the Crown Prince — was simple.
The fact that we had met this morning was something no one else knew, apart from the two of us.
If Axel currently believed I had deceived and manipulated him — that I was using him to get close to the Crown Prince — then adding I was just with the Crown Prince this morning would likely only fan the flames of his suspicion rather than extinguish them.
So this, in my own view, was the most rational choice available — the most efficient path to clearing the misunderstanding without making things worse.
What I had not foreseen was the kind of catastrophic outcome that my silence might instead bring about. Not even close.
Axel’s lip curled, and he spoke with cold derision.
“…You don’t know.”
“Then allow me to ask you one thing. Did you stop anywhere before coming to my office?”
At that question, I hesitated for a fraction of a second.
Why would he ask this? Does he know I met the Crown Prince?
But the doubt disappeared almost immediately. It couldn’t be. There was simply no way.
I shook my head internally.
At that hour, Axel would have been in his office. In all the time I had known him, he had never left it during those hours. Not once.
I lifted my head, smiled, and answered.
“No. Where would I have stopped? I came directly, Your Highness.”
The crooked arch of his mouth went rigid and stayed there.
Then Axel looked down at me and opened his mouth again. His voice was flat, heavy with something held back.
“You are aware, Lady Melberine, that I lived here for less than a month. Because of that, the number of people who know I stayed here is very small — even many of the palace servants have no idea what this place is. And yet Lady Melberine apparently knows. How exactly is that?”
I closed my mouth.
I hadn’t known that.
I understood I had made a mistake, but there was nothing to be done now. The words had already been spoken.
“Where did you hear that from?”
Axel pressed for an answer.
I had committed to not knowing from the start. There was nothing to do but hold the line.
I bowed my head slightly and answered.
“I’m sorry, Your Highness. It may be that it was too long ago — I genuinely cannot seem to remember. I’m sorry to be so unhelpful. Was it something particularly important?”
Axel let out a short, contemptuous laugh. His face twisted into an expression that was unreadable — not quite anger, but something more like a man who could not make himself accept what was in front of him.
“…Ha. Keeping up the act to the very end. Fine. Perhaps this is also something that happened so long ago that Lady Melberine cannot remember — this morning’s meeting with the Crown Prince in this very garden?”
For a moment I stopped breathing entirely.
My hands tightened involuntarily at my sides. I frowned.
What did he just say? He knew? He knew about the Crown Prince?
The inability to speak — the way I simply stood there, unable to form a word — seemed to satisfy something in Axel. He looked at me with thin, biting mockery.
“Why the reaction? Was this a fact I was not supposed to know? Why so surprised?”
How — how does he know? But more than that—
Everything went white in my mind. I had not prepared for this. Not even slightly.
The pitch-black eyes that looked at me held no warmth — not a trace of light. Facing that gaze, I felt the air go out of me.
I knew that nothing I could say right now would get through to him.
The worst possible outcome, beyond anything I had imagined, had arrived.
“Was the date with the Crown Prince at the dressmaker’s enjoyable?”
“No, Your Highness. A date? The Crown Prince and I met that day entirely by coincidence. The reason I was at the dressmaker’s was to look for a gift for you. That is the truth, Your Highness. Please — please believe me!”
“…So you went there to give me clothing as a gift, you said.”
“Then why did nothing arrive? If Lady Melberine had truly gone there to give me clothing, I would have received something. Would I not?”
Because I had wanted to look at the clothes together with him in person. Rather than sending a gift out of nowhere, I had planned to bring the custom-made pieces alongside the other things I had ordered — to put them on him myself, to see.
That was why I had been planning to make the dressmaker our next destination together, specifically…
I looked up at Axel with trembling eyes. His gaze, when it returned to mine, was cold. Beyond cold — hardened. The feeling in my chest was going numb.
Even if I said it plainly now, I didn’t think he would believe me. The panic was growing. I was losing ground with every second.
Where did things go wrong? It was already as bad as I thought it could be — and somehow it’s gotten worse. I had never felt panic like this.
Axel watched my lips stall and pause, and his expression twisted with something knowing and bitter.
“How interesting. To be smiling at me, telling me it was all real, that every feeling was genuine — all while laughing at me inside, finding me contemptible. You must have found me thoroughly ridiculous, watching me fall for your performance so completely. Did it feel as though the whole world was in the palm of your hand?”
“No, Your Highness. It was never a performance. I truly, genuinely—”
“What, exactly, is genuine about any of this?”
Axel’s voice — always so composed — carried a low, trembling undercurrent of fury. And yet for all that fury, why did he look so devastatingly sad?
How can I say it so he’ll understand? What words will actually reach him?
His expression grew uglier with each moment that passed.
“You call that paper-thin lie genuine? That is what you mean by sincere?”
“No. It’s a misunderstanding. Please, let me explain again.”
“The first time I asked whether you knew this place, you lied. The second time I asked, you lied again. How long exactly are you expecting me to keep playing the fool and fall for the same tricks?”
And then I understood — the questions he had been asking from the start had been Axel’s way of offering me a last chance. And I had not taken it.
The urgency in my chest became unbearable. My whole body was trembling with the tension.
My voice broke, and I couldn’t even smooth it over — I reached out and held onto him.
“Please, it truly is a misunderstanding. From the very beginning — I can explain everything. So just — please, one more time—”
“What is—”
The force of his voice was something I had never heard from him before, and I froze on the spot entirely.
It was as though I had been turned to stone. Something like a small animal, cornered by a predator.
“What is a misunderstanding? What are you explaining from the beginning? How can you stand there with that kind of shamelessness? Have you no sense of decency at all, Lady Melberine?”
“Then say it yourself, right now. Say the words, Lady Melberine. Say that you approached me deliberately — to make a fool of me, a person you despise.”
“Say it plainly.”
His voice, as it said those words — overwhelming, commanding — and yet his face looked like a person who had been wounded. Deeply.
Eyes that held something close to desperate longing found mine across the space between us. My chest gave a sharp, piercing pang. I could not find a single word.
My lips moved and stopped, moved and stopped. When I finally managed to speak, it came out barely above a breath — the voice of someone fading.
“No — no, it’s not — Your Highness. It isn’t like that…”
That was all I could repeat. Nothing else came.
The expression in his eyes shifted. Exhaustion settled over the features that had been taut with anguish. His gaze moved, and he looked away.
Axel pressed a hand roughly over his face. His chest rose and fell, working to steady itself.
“…I suppose I only have myself to blame. Knowing she could never truly care for me — knowing that — and still choosing to believe it. The contract should never have been accepted in the first place. I should have kept my distance from the start.”
