The deep, wordless regret was visible in his clenched fist.
“It’s over now, Lady Melberine. I sincerely hope we never need to meet again.”
With those cold, final words, Axel turned his back on me entirely. I watched him grow smaller in the distance, and then something snapped me back to clarity.
This felt like a goodbye. A real one.
I could not let this be how it ended.
I have to stop him.
I willed my frozen arms and legs to move — and then stopped again.
…But how?
How was I supposed to stop him? Could I truly break through his doubt and make him understand this was all a misunderstanding? What did I even have left?
My mind raced, and then — the vision orb the Crown Prince had given me came to me all at once.
If there was anything that could show him I had a reason to be here, it might be this.
With that thought, I moved immediately.
“Your Highness! Wait — just a moment, please!”
My voice came out rough, unsteady. Axel’s retreating figure was the only thing in my field of vision.
I ran toward him — and then my right foot caught on a stone in the path, and my body lurched forward, lifted into the air for one weightless second.
As my body pitched toward the ground, before I had even consciously decided to, I pulled the bag against my chest with both arms and held on.
If the vision orb breaks— the thought came before any thought of myself. It was my last remaining hope. Protecting my body was not the priority.
My body hit the ground hard, the skin on my palms and knees scraped raw against the earth. But thanks to the way I’d fallen, the bag was safe. The vision orb was unharmed.
I was registering this with relief when I looked up to find Axel had turned back — standing over me with his brow creased deeply, looking down.
“…What are you doing?”
There was no room in me for pain. I pushed myself up and walked toward him.
“…So — it’s all a misunderstanding. All of it, Your Highness. The reason I met with the Crown Prince today — this was why.” I pressed the orb toward him. “If you see this, maybe you’ll understand at least a little of what I was trying to say. So this is—”
The words came stumbling out in no particular order. I rifled through the bag with shaking hands, barely managing to grasp what I needed. As I pulled out the vision orb, several photo cards came spilling out with it and lay scattered across my palm.
Please. Just once. Just look.
I stretched my hand out to him with everything I had.
The moment the vision orb began to glow — Axel’s hand struck mine with sharp, sudden force.
The impact sent everything flying. The orb and all the photo cards scattered from my hand and fell to the ground. The vision orb hit the earth with a sound that was almost cheerful compared to the circumstances, and cracked.
But it didn’t stop there.
The orb rolled down the slope, gaining momentum — and then fell into the pond with a clear, soft sound.
The scattered photo cards followed, one after another. Some were swallowed by the dirt. Others sank into the water without resistance.
“No — no…”
That had been my last hope.
I stared after it in anguish, and then twisted to go retrieve the orb — only to find my wrist held fast.
I turned. Axel was there, jaw clenched, hand wrapped around my wrist. His grip tightened, incrementally, with something building behind his eyes.
“…Why do you keep doing this? Didn’t I say it’s over? Stop putting on this pathetic performance!”
It was as though my actions were nothing more than another irritant — and his voice made that very clear.
“Or if not that — go back to being the insufferable, untouchable girl you were before. Stop making things worse with this kind of act.”
Pathetic performance. Not once — not even for a single moment — had anything I’d done been anything other than genuine. But to him, everything I’d ever done was a polished lie.
Until the misunderstanding was resolved, that was all it would ever look like.
Which was exactly why I needed that vision orb.
“…Let go. Let go of me, please, Your Highness.”
The expression Axel turned on me had shifted into something terrible — as though he were looking at something revolting.
“Ha. To the very end… Now even this — looking at you like this makes my skin crawl, Lady Melberine.”
The words landed in my chest like something sharp.
The moment he released my wrist, I ran for the pond.
He watched me go, and said something barely above a breath.
“…Fine. Do as you please.”
He turned away from me, coldly, completely — and was gone.
I made my way to the water’s edge without looking back, too focused to spare a thought for his departure. The orb had not drifted far, and with a long stick from nearby, I managed to fish it out without getting wet.
The photo cards too — I retrieved every single one.
Then I sat down where I was, right there by the water, and my legs simply gave out beneath me.
I stared at the sky above the pond — vivid, burning red — and could not make myself believe what had just happened to me.
Everything had been going so well. I was sure of it.
And yet — this happened to me.
The look in Axel’s eyes — disdain, contempt, the cold absolute — would not leave me. Every word he had said pressed into me, one by one, with relentless precision.
This kind of pain was new to me.
When I first realized Axel had misunderstood, I had felt something like disappointment. Simple sadness that my favorite person was being sharp with me.
But this — this was different. It felt as though someone had taken my heart in their hands and squeezed.
Will I really… never see him again? Axel?
Sitting quietly, I became aware that tears were beginning to fall — steady, unstoppable — and I hadn’t even noticed.
And then, as though something had lifted, all the numbness drained away, and the full weight of what I’d been holding came pouring out.
My right ankle — the one that had caught the stone — throbbed. The scraped skin on my palms and knees was beginning to sting. And the wrist Axel had grabbed was flushed red, already swelling.
There was not a part of me that was whole.
And at the sight of that, the tears came harder — a flood, sudden and complete. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was crying for.
Only that the faucet had been turned, and there was nothing left to do but let it run.
I sat there for a long time by the water, crying until the tears were gone. Only when they finally stopped did I make myself stand.
Impossible as it felt — it was time to go home.
After the last meeting with Axel that day, I shut myself inside the house and did not go out. For about three days, I did nothing but cry in my room.
The grief was so overwhelming that I could not find any way to hold it. I didn’t know how to carry it.
Father, who had come rushing to my room in a panic at first, quietly began to pretend nothing was wrong when I made it clear I wanted it left alone. Even so, his eyes were full of worry for me — more than he tried to show.
He’s a good man…
I could not keep worrying him. And so, at last, after a full week, I made myself go outside.
Walking back into sunlight after so many days inside, I squinted against it like a vampire encountering daylight for the first time in centuries.
It’s bright…
I had always been outdoors so often that I had never realized sunlight could be quite this blinding.
When I sat in front of the mirror to make myself presentable, I startled at what I saw.
I had always been slender, but with the water gone from me, the lines of my face had grown sharper. The hollow eyes, the expression weighted with something unresolved — it all lent me a look that felt somehow precarious. Fragile.
