My Body Has Been Possessed By Someone - Chapter 162
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 162
Silvien Valentino took a step back.
He was not in his right mind.
Kalen, murmuring with a hollow expression, seemed to have something broken deep within his mind.
The cold rationality he normally possessed appeared to have died along with Kanna Adis, nowhere to be found.
Silvien Valentino left the Chapel as it was. Only after boarding the Carriage did he notice his palms were drenched in sweat.
He had wondered where that thunderous sound was coming from, but it was the beating of his own heart. The pounding echoed relentlessly in his ears.
Silvien Valentino swallowed hard as he loosened the cravat that had been strangling his neck.
‘I need to meet Prince Argon.’
He would know something.
Why Kanna Adis died, whether it was truly suicide, why Kalen Adis had gone mad like this,
why….
‘Why?’
Why on earth?
Why did you die, Kanna Adis?
His throat tightened.
Silvien Valentino irritably tore off his cravat and hurled it away in frustration.
There was no reason. Not for a woman like you.
She was a woman who would burn everything around her just to survive.
A woman like a flame who would incinerate everything around her and use it as a sacrifice just to live alone—why would she do such a thing?
Those eyes, those eyes burning with intensity, those eyes that left scars like burns—they were still so vivid….
Was it all an act? Is that why she took her own life?
‘How foolish.’
The moment he thought that, he knew he had no right to say such a thing.
How could he dare call her foolish?
He couldn’t.
She was a woman who had lived a life worse than death.
In Adis, in Valentino, she had lived like vermin. I had only ever watched from the sidelines.
What right did I have to judge?
Silvien Valentino hated dwelling on the past and revisiting old memories. He had never regretted anything, never harbored attachment to paths not taken.
But still.
What if.
What if I had extended my hand to her back then.
What if I had protected her by making the incident with Prince Casil public instead of covering it up.
What if I had protected her when Josephine dragged her away and beat her.
Silvien Valentino closed his eyes. In an instant, memories from the past unfolded with deceptive clarity.
“Excuse me, Your Excellency. I have something to tell you.”
Last spring.
When I heard from the Butler that Kanna Adis had been beaten by Josephine with a riding crop and was left untreated, abandoned in her Room.
“And so?”
Silvien Valentino answered thus.
It was simply tiresome. So he told her to leave him be. He thought it wouldn’t matter even if he died like this.
But what if.
“Please take your medicine. I will bring it to you myself.”
Had he said such words.
Instead of turning away, had he sought out her room with medicine in hand.
“Your Excellency?”
Kanna Adis would surely have looked at him in surprise.
“What brings you here…?”
She would certainly not have believed it. For he had always ignored and turned away from her.
The imagined Silvien Valentino approached her with a bitter smile.
Sitting beside Kanna Adis as she lay with her swollen legs, he wiped her sweat-dampened forehead with his handkerchief.
“I apologize for pretending not to know all this time.”
And he spoke words he had never once uttered.
“I apologize for leaving you to suffer.”
Back then, there had been an opportunity to say such things.
“It is my fault. Had I paid you even a little more attention, you would not have clung so desperately to this point.”
There had been opportunities to acknowledge that truth sooner. Countless opportunities had overflowed.
“I apologize for leaving you to deteriorate like this.”
But the moment his eyes opened, everything scattered like bubbles.
All that remained was an empty chair.
It was perhaps a future that might have unfolded for them.
Yet it was a path Silvien Valentino had not chosen, opportunities that would never return.
Silvien Valentino gazed out the window. The moment he saw the cloudless, brilliant sky, a bitter emotion surged forth and gripped his chest.
Kanna Adis.
You abandoned that dazzling sky, this world, this life, and departed for an unknown realm—perhaps an eternal darkness—such was your choice.
Was this place truly so unbearable?
‘I did not know.’
I truly did not know.
I did not know it was to that extent.
Even though I was once your husband.
* * *
“Drinking, are we?”
That late night, Prince Argon came to visit.
Silvien Valentino, who had been sitting on the sofa drinking whiskey, turned his head weakly.
“Are you intoxicated?”
“No, sir.”
“It looks as though you’ve finished an entire bottle by yourself.”
“Yes, but I am fine.”
Prince Argon chuckled and sat across from him.
“Good heavens. I’ve never seen the Duke in such disarray. Has the death of his ex-wife left him so grief-stricken?”
“No.”
“Then button your shirt properly before making such claims.”
Silvien Valentino’s brow furrowed.
He found Prince Argon’s playful expression distasteful.
“My wife—”
No, that wasn’t right.
“My former wife has passed away. Is that truly cause for such amusement?”
Kanna Adis was dead, and he was laughing?
That woman had taken her own life, had chosen death over the unbearable weight of her existence, and he dared to laugh?
My composure shattered in an instant. The glass in my grip tightened until my knuckles whitened.
“How curious. Did the Duke harbor feelings for Kanna Adis?”
“She was my wife.”
“When she was your wife, you showed no concern whether she lived or died. Now that she’s gone, do you find yourself bereft?”
In that moment, all my defenses crumbled. He was right.
“Did Kanna Adis truly take her own life?”
“Yes. She stabbed herself through the heart before Kalen Adis, or so I’ve heard.”
“….”
“That’s why Kalen Adis’s hair turned snow-white in a single day.”
Suddenly, I recalled Kalen Adis as I had seen him in the Chapel.
That man with a youth’s face crowned by an old man’s silver hair. He had appeared half-mad.
“Kalen Adis will likely be tormented by nightmares for the rest of his life. He’ll never forget that scene, not even in death.”
“….”
“But Duke, you may be grieving prematurely.”
“…What do you mean by that?”
“Perhaps Kanna Adis is still alive.”
“She is dead. I am returning from confirming the corpse myself.”
“That corpse could be a fabrication.”
Silvien Valentino’s eyes opened slowly.
Had it been anyone else, I would have dismissed the words without a second thought. But this man possessed the Empire’s most extensive intelligence network.
“Explain yourself in detail.”
“Are you prepared to pay the price?”
“Of course.”
“Crescent is dead, which makes me a formidable candidate for the throne. Prince Casil exists, but no one will support him.”
Prince Argon exhaled slowly.
“I will be the next Emperor.”
It was a future he could not escape, regardless of his wishes.
“As you know, Duke, I have no interest in the throne. I will do whatever it takes to prevent myself from becoming Emperor—even commit treason if necessary.”
“I give you my word.”
“Good.”
Argon shrugged his shoulders. It was a betrayal of his bond with Kanna Adis, but he had no choice. She mattered less to him than this.
“In truth, Kanna Adis wished to leave Adis. She yearned for asylum in a foreign land.”
“…Asylum?”
“Yes. So I gifted her an identification document from the Yalden Kingdom. A forged one, naturally.”
Argon continued, noting how Silvien Valentino’s full attention was now riveted upon his words.
“An identification bearing the name Erdel Iris. And there exists a record of a woman carrying that document entering the Lamas Kingdom on the very day Kanna Adis died.”
Argon smiled coldly.
“So, track down that woman.”
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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