Chapter 12
“Did you not hear me tell you to leave?”
His voice was sharp, as if it had been sharpened by glass.
Even while drenched in cold sweat, looking like he could collapse at any moment, he still managed to glare at me with those fierce eyes.
“Where is your doctor?” I asked.
“Did you not hear what I said?”
He had no intention of telling me. Which probably meant he still thought he could handle it.
There was no point in pushing further.
My job was simple: to do whatever he commanded. Like a puppet that moved only at his will.
If he told me to read, I would read. If he told me to stand still, I would stand still. If he told me to stop breathing, I was expected to obey.
There was no reason to create unnecessary trouble.
Just as I was about to turn and leave, Cassian’s body suddenly gave out.
He collapsed silently.
I approached slowly, but his body lay motionless on the bed. Not a single sign of movement.
Fear swept through me.
I held my trembling legs together, turned, and ran out of the room without a clear direction.
As I ran, memories of the recent past flooded my mind.
One day, my mother had collapsed just like that.
It had been an unsettling evening. She hadn’t come to greet me after work, like she usually did.
Something felt wrong. I rushed into the house and found her lying unconscious, not breathing.
Her face was just as pale as his.
The moment I saw her, I ran back outside.
I don’t even remember how I ran or where I turned. I just ran from one clinic to another, but every door was shut.
It was late at night. Of course they were closed.
After sprinting from place to place, I finally found one small clinic still lit in the early morning. I grabbed the doctor and ran all the way back with him.
He said if I had come even a little later, it might have been too late.
My mother could have stopped breathing for good.
I searched for a proper diagnosis after that, visiting different doctors, but none of them could give me a clear answer.
Since then, every time I return home and don’t see her waiting near the alley, I start running.
That fear clings to me like it’s soaked into my skin.
Cassian looked exactly the same just moments ago.
And yet, even in that state, he still had the pride to tell me to leave.
Did he really not care whether he died?
I suppose it didn’t matter to him. He had already been told he was terminal. Dying now or later probably felt the same.
His arrogant posture had always made me forget that.
I reached the drawing room at the end of my frantic run and spotted the butler’s back.
Still catching my breath, I called out to him. He turned with a surprised look, his eyes widening as if I were a sudden nuisance.
Without bothering with explanations, I told him about Cassian’s condition.
I expected panic, but instead he responded calmly and disappeared to summon the doctor. As if this wasn’t the first time.
So this had happened before.
As I watched the physician enter Cassian’s room, my legs finally gave out.
I tried to follow him in, but the butler stopped me at the door. After that, all I could do was pace outside and wait.
Not long after the doctor went in, I heard faint groans from the room.
He must have regained consciousness. I let out a long breath of relief.
Sitting there quietly, I listened as the groans came and went.
Even the way he suffered seemed refined, noble in its restraint. It was strange.
Did nobles have to keep up appearances, even at death’s door?
That must be why he lashed out earlier—why he told me to leave with such a sharp voice. He had been trying to hide that he was in pain.
The fear and emotion had risen all the way to my throat.
Finally, the door opened, and the elderly doctor stepped out.
The elderly doctor adjusted his monocle and glanced at me for a moment before walking past as if I wasn’t there.
The butler gave a subtle nod, signaling that I could go inside.
When I stepped into the room, Cassian was sitting upright, looking completely fine, just like usual.
If I hadn’t seen what happened earlier with my own eyes, I would never have believed he had just collapsed.
He looked so composed, so flawless.
So perfectly Blanchet.
Not wanting to challenge his pride, I didn’t ask if he was feeling better.
Instead, I pretended I hadn’t seen anything at all.
“Would you like me to read something to you?”
For a moment, Cassian’s expression twisted.
Was he angry because I didn’t leave him to suffer alone?
Or was it because I saw something he didn’t want anyone to see?
Maybe it bothered him more that I pretended nothing had happened.
Or maybe he just hated that I saw through him, despite how hard he tried to hide it.
But in the next instant, he returned to his usual calm, noble expression.
As if nothing had happened. As if he’d never shown a single sign of weakness.
Then he smiled—that cold, sharp smile he wore yesterday when he stood by the window, staring down at me.
“No need for a book. Read this instead.”
He leaned back lazily and handed me something.
Just like that, the brief concern I had felt for him vanished.
He made it seem ridiculous, like it had been meaningless from the start.
In the quiet room, the girl’s voice echoed softly as she read aloud.
Her face was pale like fresh snow.
The curve of her neck was long and delicate, and the light caught the nape as she spoke, casting gentle rays over her skin.
Sweat gathered and rolled down her neck.
It pleased me, knowing that sweat was for me.
She had smiled politely at the silver-haired boy outside, but she hadn’t gone this far for him.
That thought made it easier to forgive the fact that she disobeyed and called the doctor.
So I decided to keep her around a little longer.
She was entertaining.
Everyone else who had tried to serve me before was painfully dull.
They didn’t even bother hiding their real intentions.
Each of them hoped that, by being close to the heir of Blanchet, they could climb the social ladder.
But in my family, if something like that were ever to happen, it would be buried—along with the person responsible.
The Blanchets would erase them completely.
Seal their mouths forever in a coffin where they could never speak again.
People like that meant nothing to us.
Even now, my mother was still in the capital, searching for the most fitting noblewoman to be my bride—someone worthy of the Blanchet name.
Those girls didn’t know.
They threw themselves at me anyway, hoping for a future that would never come.
In the Empire, being eighteen meant engagement proposals and marriage talks were normal.
Sometimes, heirs were even born by then.
Noble families pushed their children into those roles like it was routine.
Maybe I should have accepted one of them.
But if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to witness this curious little scene.
Today, what I gave the girl to read was the daily paper.
Her voice trembled slightly as she read.
It started right where I expected—the part that always made people uncomfortable.
I couldn’t help but smile.
The serialized story in the paper was about a noblewoman and a poor man falling in love.
But it didn’t end like a fairy tale.
The wealthy princess eventually forgot the man and went on to live happily ever after with a prince.
In other words, someone like a prince would never end up with a poor, ordinary man.
A story grounded in reality, not fantasy.
Unlike the usual fairytales, this one was praised for its honesty and became a bestseller among nobles for breaking the usual clichés.
As she read, I wondered what she was thinking.
Was she thinking of that boy from yesterday?
For a brief moment, an image of a young man with silver hair and bright blue eyes passed through my mind.
His features weren’t especially vivid in my memory, but his face was handsome—just the type young girls would like.
I heard he graduated early from veterinary school as the top of his class, thanks to a Blanchet scholarship.
Now he took care of our horses.
His name was Hael, I think.
He didn’t even have a last name, yet my family trusted him with our prized bloodline horses.
That meant he had talent—at least enough to earn my father’s approval.
My father valued bloodlines more than anything.
He wouldn’t have entrusted our purest stallions to just anyone.
Now that I think about it, I might have seen that silver hair passing by once or twice.
I never really paid attention, so I don’t remember his face clearly.
Most people who go to the capital tend to stay there.
But he voluntarily returned to this tiny, rural village.
I remember seeing his name on one of the applications.
His handwriting was neat and careful.
The reason he gave?
He wrote that he wanted to return to his hometown and serve me faithfully.
I nearly laughed reading it.
He barely knew me. We had hardly ever spoken.
And yet he claimed to have come back for me.
If he had just said he missed home, I might have at least pretended to believe it.
But one thing was clear.
He didn’t behave like everyone else desperately clinging to the capital for their chance at success.
That silver-haired boy came straight back here.
And now, instead of looking at the horses, his eyes were on the girl in front of me.
He stood there by the fountain, perfectly within my line of sight.
His eyes never wavered. He was watching her with unwavering focus.
The way his entire face lit up the moment he saw her smile.
And the way that pale-faced girl smiled back at him, just as brightly.
Every bit of it got under my skin.
Did she know why that silver-haired boy came back to this village?
She must. That’s probably why she spoke to him so warmly, smiling in a way I’ve never seen her smile at me.
The satisfaction I had felt earlier, seeing her break a sweat reading for me, vanished almost instantly.
Why should I care if she laughs with him or spends time with him? What does it matter to me?
But of course it matters.
She’s supposed to be mine—a doll meant to cry only for me.
If she starts caring for someone else, things will fall apart.
Maybe it’s a cruel thought. Maybe, if someone heard it, they’d say it taints the noble name of Blanchet.
Maybe it’s shameless, like that old saying—save someone, and they end up demanding everything from you.
But what can I say?
People like me—those born into high bloodlines—are raised to be shameless.
We’re taught to want without guilt. To take without needing to give.
If she didn’t want this, she should never have come into my world.
“You.”
Her voice, which had been reading the newspaper softly just moments ago, stopped mid-sentence.
She turned her clear face toward me slowly.
“Yes?”
“Did you not hear me say not to bring the doctor?”
She lowered the newspaper quietly.
A faint tremble flickered in her green eyes.
“You were in pain,” she said.
“That’s not something you need to worry about.”
Yurisiel’s eyes widened at my words.
What I said next made them grow even wider.
“This body is already dying anyway.”
Cassian de Blanchet—eighteen years old—speaking about death like it was nothing.
Some might say eighteen is old enough to know loss.
But in most stories, it’s the age when a person finally begins to bloom.
To speak of dying at that age—it was painfully cruel.
It’s an age where crying out to the heavens isn’t just allowed—it’s expected.
Cassian had always acted like the world revolved around him, cold and indifferent to others.
At least that’s how he had always seemed to Yurisiel.
But to hear him speak like this—not blaming the doctor, not even resisting—just calmly accepting that he might die…
That brought back memories she hadn’t wanted to relive.
There was a time when her mother had tried to give up too.
It happened the day she realized just how expensive her medicine would be.
Even though that medicine might have kept her alive, her mother was ready to let everything go.
And now here was a nobleman—someone with every means to live—choosing to give up instead.
There are people who long to live, who fight with everything they have just for one more day.
And yet here he was, refusing to even try.
Yurisiel wasn’t supposed to be angry. But she was.
“There’s no such thing as a life that’s already meant to end,” she said, her voice trembling with frustration.
Cassian let out a quiet laugh, almost amused.
That laughter reflected clearly in the mirror behind him, revealing every trace of his smile.
