My Ex-Husband Came Back Crazy - Chapter 33

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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 34
Chapter 3. Upheaval (13)
His stride through the alley grew rougher with each step.
Lucius cut through the narrowing passage like a man tearing through cloth, brushing past walls and shadows. The Public Order Bureau captain who followed him could only maintain an anxious silence.
They collided with the footsteps of men who had been scouting another section.
“Celia.”
The brief question froze the air in an instant.
When his usual gentleness vanished, his voice dropped to something low and measured, and that shortened breath drew tension tight around everyone nearby.
“My apologies. We have not yet confirmed her whereabouts.”
……
Lucius had summoned the Public Order Bureau near the end of the fireworks display.
As the crowds dispersed and they combed the streets again and again, there was no sign of Celia.
Even Rowald, who had kept insisting everything would be fine, went rigid when he saw the empty streets. And when his men reported that they had watched Celia disappear with the children, there was no longer any reason to wait.
It did not take long to reach a conclusion.
By the time he had regained his composure, Lucius had already found the drunken Public Order Bureau soldiers.
“Where did they say Dunrow Hollow was.”
“It is… just down the next alley, sir.”
Those still sodden with drink made excuses before drawing their swords—weapons meant to protect citizens—and using them as canes.
“L-lord… My apologies, but surely there is no need to worry so much—”
The captain wet his throat once before choosing his words carefully.
“It is common knowledge in these parts that the Dunrow Hollow gang has taken root beyond that alley.”
“The lady of the house would scarcely venture in that direction. Had she, surely someone would have stopped her!”
He stopped.
Lucius’s pupils moved like rapids beneath thin ice.
“The fireworks drew chaos to the area until just moments ago.”
His voice emerged as though a sharpened blade were hidden in his throat.
“This is not directly under Windmere’s control, and information travels slowly here. What do you think the chances are that Celia—a stranger to these parts—would have known of the gang’s recent hideout and moved deliberately toward it?”
The captain’s face went pale.
If the lady of Windmere came to harm within their jurisdiction, this matter would not end in mere responsibility.
As the fireworks drew the crowds, abandoning their posts under the pretense of inconvenience was undeniable dereliction of duty. Those tasked with maintaining order had shirked their responsibility—there was nowhere left to hide now.
“I swear I will do everything in my power!”
Lucius looked down at them as though they were useless things, then turned sharply on his heel.
‘Finding Celia comes first.’
He resumed his stalled stride.
His pace was steady, though an effort to mask composure hung beneath it—yet his clenched fists could not hide their tremor.
With each step he took, the landscape deepened and darkened around him.
And yet nowhere did he find Celia.
“Search the surroundings a little further—”
Then a sudden headache seized him, and he stopped abruptly.
For a fleeting instant, some incomprehensible memory swept through his mind like ash-gray smoke.
“Why did you come?”
In the foul, suffocating stench, in pitch-black darkness, a woman with snow-white hair had whispered through a fractured voice, her body limp.
“Why were you the one who saved me?”
On a cheek still wet with tears, from the very depths of despair, she had looked up at him—
“……Celia.”
The image of a woman who should not exist flickered past like an afterimage.
When was this memory from?
At this fragmentary recollection—the first to surface so dimly—he drew a sharp breath.
No, this could not possibly be a normal memory.
“That makes no sense.”
But what was this dread?
Ever since hearing the name Dunrow Hollow, holding onto reason had become unbearably difficult.
An inexplicable instinct gripped him violently, pouring ominous whispers endlessly into his ear.
He staggered for a moment, covering his face with his hand.
‘If I cannot find Celia…’
Soon his eyes, revealed between his fingers, caught the darkness with a cold gleam.
That was when—
Someone cried out, gasping for breath.
“My lord! There are children who say they have seen a woman believed to be the lady of the house!”
***
Savages.
Celia came to her senses on a floor of splintered boards and curled her body up like an insect to pull herself upright.
Ugh.
She swallowed calmly and blinked her hazy eyes a few times. When pain hit belatedly, she grimaced—
—but by the moonlight seeping through the shattered roof, the knees she looked down upon were a sickly purple with bruises, and her cheeks throbbed where they had scraped against stone.
“Damn it.”
Her hands and feet were bound with coarse rope.
She immediately pressed her wrists against the fractured edge of a board on the floor.
Whether skin tore, whether blood seeped—she didn’t care. The sensation of something restraining her was far more repulsive.
How long had she rubbed her arms against it?
Just as her skin began to flush raw and bloody, Celia’s strength gave out and she swayed.
Ah……
Every muscle ached, and her breathing came shallow.
She tried to straighten her posture, but it collapsed again almost at once.
Suddenly a bitter thought seized her.
She had spoken so confidently to her captors, but would anyone actually come to save her?
Would she not be trapped in this narrow space, struggling and resisting as she had then, getting nowhere?
Years ago, when those men had kidnapped her, they learned her identity and demanded a ransom from Brickwell.
Edmund, the lord of Brickwell, refused to pay the slum trash. Instead, he sent elite knights to retrieve her.
A few common criminals could hardly stand against knights, so by all rights, she should have come home safely.
Yes, by all rights, she would not have spent seven days in that horrible place.
Luck had been cruelly against her. On the very day they meant to rescue her, Evandor went missing. Resources were finite, and Edmund had made his choice.
What was abandoned in the process was Celia.
In the hands of brutal kidnappers, as useless a child as Evandor was precious.
“Damn it……”
Even breathing now felt unnatural.
The tremor that began in her fingertips spread to her arms, her throat, her vision, feeding her panic.
“Ha……ngh.”
She curled her body into a ball.
The more her lips gasped for air, the more her chest replayed that old, frantic rhythm.
The cold of the floor seeped into her flesh. Moisture and old decay rising through the gaps in the boards—Celia’s fingernails scraped deep, raw marks down her forearms.
The sensation of that night, so long ago, when she had breathed like this and felt life slipping away—it seized her again.
‘It’s all right.’
Was it, though?
Two feelings collided roughly within her.
‘No one is coming to save you.’
What truly tormented her now?
The memory of nearly rotting alive in this filthy place, or the memory of being abandoned by her own family?
‘Rather than endure that again…’
Click.
A small sound split the darkness.
……
As light seeped in, Celia flinched.
What wretched thing was it this time? Fear rose reflexively to meet him.
“……Why are you in such a state?”
But at that familiar voice, soft and descending, her eyes slowly widened.
Tension melted away. Vigilance drained out and relief seeped slowly in.
He crossed the dimmly-lit space toward her without hesitation.
His stride through the night before dawn carried no uncertainty.
“I want to ask if you are hurt.”
……
“But I can scarcely ask if you are all right—there is nowhere on you that is intact.”
His large hand came near and touched her cheek. That familiar touch, which now soothed her wound—she was entranced.
“Celia.”
A small call dispersed the chaos and drew her up.
The moment he touched her, the fear that had pooled in her lungs scattered and dissolved. Her breath met his chest and finally found its rhythm again.
“I am too late.”
Somehow, everything resembled that day.
The day she was abandoned by her father, the night she fell into the hands of kidnappers.
Then, too, it was Lucius Windmere who had stood before her.
Why him, of all people?
And why him again, even now?
“Forgive me for being late.”
You had told her once not to ask ‘why.’
Yet each time she faced him, she could do nothing but repeat that question.
The you I knew is not the you standing before me—you remain strange, difficult, almost too much to bear.
“Let us go home.”
And yet, she was slowly coming to accept that strangeness.
Like ink bleeding across transparent water, her defenses had grown soundless and dim. She could no longer deny this self that was opening to him.
“……I want to go home.”
After much hesitation, she slowly raised her arms and wrapped them around his neck.
The embrace that held her firm was warm.

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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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