My Ex-Husband Came Back Crazy - Chapter 82

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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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Episode 82
Chapter 9. Remnants (2)
This place was hell’s forward outpost.
Celia watched the bubbles burst in her Champagne glass, resenting the two men who refused to appear.
‘Those bastards… why won’t they come.’
The corset strangled her breath, her feet throbbed where they’d been forced into the shoes, and the bubbles in the Champagne had gone flat and stale.
The laughter of the surrounding nobility pierced her ears.
‘What a spectacle.’
On the surface they displayed grace and refinement, but their eyes never stopped assessing one another—who commanded the Emperor’s favor, who wore the more expensive jewels.
It was disgusting how transparent they all were.
And there was one more thing.
‘Ugh. That insufferable face.’
A confident stride that caught the eye even from a distance.
As though this entire ballroom were her personal stage for High Society’s debut, a woman walked past with her chin held high.
Chloe Larrendel. It was her.
Her entourage was composed of familiar faces—all retainers and relations of House of Brickwell.
“……This is maddening.”
Celia’s expression twisted without her noticing.
Recently, rumors had spread through High Society that Evandor and that woman were engaged. To see that detestable creature laughing and chattering so carelessly among her own family members…
The revulsion was so complete that she drank down a glass of lemon water as though it were medicine.
“Madam, shall I refill your glass?”
The attendant filled the glass with lemon water as though it were some rare vintage wine.
Celia crossed her legs beneath her dress and rested her chin on her hand with studied indifference.
Then Chloe looked up toward her. That insufferable woman with her invariable confidence began walking in her direction.
“……?”
An elaborate embroidered dress adorned with jewels. And even more dazzling than the dress was her self-assurance.
She came to a stop before Celia’s chair.
A smile played at her lips as she lowered her head in feigned warmth.
“It’s been so long. Madam… but since we’ll soon be family, might I have permission to call you by your name?”
So Evandor’s Engagement had knocked the sense out of this one too.
Though the person actually responsible for lacking sense was someone else entirely, Celia found herself increasingly doubting the sanity of everyone around her.
“Celia?”
The way she spoke her name so gently was like the smooth hum of a wound-up automaton.
Celia closed and opened her eyes, raising her fan to her lips. In response, Chloe’s lips curved upward at a calculated angle.
A perfectly engineered expression. That unnatural precision was one of many reasons Celia found her so revolting.
“I’ve granted you no such permission.”
“But you ought to grant it.”
“Self-delusion is a cheap mercy handed down only to inadequate young ladies. And if you—who may not even become the mistress of House of Brickwell despite your Engagement to Evandor—presume otherwise, then you’re simply pathetic.”
Chloe settled herself onto the small chair beside Celia’s seat.
No permission had been given, but it came as no surprise.
This woman’s caprices were nothing new.
“Why do you suppose such things? Engagements rarely dissolve, as you well know. Though there are occasionally exceptional cases, of course.”
Was she mocking her just now?
Celia—whose list of broken engagements exceeded ten—drew a slow, measured breath.
A moment of clarity returned to her mind. Watching the woman beam at her with that radiant smile, Celia offered a cold sneer in return.
“You may also find yourself an exception. That is, if my husband wills it otherwise.”
“……Lucius?”
The instant Lucius’s name escaped her lips, Chloe’s eyes transformed in an instant.
Beneath the mask of an impossibly perfect doll, an aberrant hunger for Lucius seeped through with sticky persistence.
“Ah, of course. I should have known.”
She murmured while fidgeting with her fingertips, as though entranced by rapture.
Ah, irritation surged up within her—undeniable and fierce.
Celia wanted to crush Chloe beneath her heel.
On that day when Chloe, blinded by her obsession with Lucius, had shoved Celia over a cliff.
If Celia harbored one regret, it was that she hadn’t finished the job properly that night.
If what she felt for Lucius burned red with rivalry, revulsion, and hatred, then what she felt for Chloe approached something closer to contempt—the kind one reserves for something barely human.
A pathetic, ephemeral fool. It was humiliating even to regard her in the same light as Lucius.
“Shall I tell you what else he said? Ah, has he already told you of our—”
“‘Our’ story?”
Celia had been absently tracing her fingernail, but now she lifted her eyelid with deliberate indifference.
Chloe swallowed her words promptly enough, but her flushed cheeks and the greasy gleam of her secretive gaze could not be hidden.
“There’s no need to pick your words now. I’ve heard it all.”
Celia paused, considering, then spoke. She’d come to a conclusion: Lucius was hiding something related to Chloe.
With the bait she’d dangled, Chloe had taken the hook eagerly.
“Ah, so you have heard. I thought as much.”
Perhaps it wasn’t Lucius who ought to be seeing a psychiatrist regularly—perhaps it was this one.
“He promised me everything.”
“…….”
“Your heart must ache terribly. But I understand, Celia. However, you already hated Lucius, didn’t you? You condemned him, disparaged him, raised your hand against him without hesitation.”
As Chloe’s breathing grew quicker with excitement, Celia became progressively calmer and more composed.
“So now your time has come.”
Chloe laughed like a child innocent of the world’s ways.
The woman who had once shoved her off a cliff was now wringing her hands like someone desperate to share a secret with her beloved.
“Your divorce is near.”
Chloe smiled with the clarity and purity of a doll, her flushed cheeks thrust forward shamelessly.
“I do hope that day comes soon.”
“…….”
“Because then I’ll remarry him, as he promised.”
Though she’d been forced into an Engagement with Evandor by family pressure, she added, she had no intention of marrying him—she was confident she would one day marry Lucius instead.
What kind of absurd situation was this?
Celia let out a laugh of incredulous shock.
***
Lucius stared into the void instead of answering.
Like a mathematician confronted with an irrational equation, his eyes narrowed to slits.
“The question itself is malformed.”
He turned slowly to face Evandor. His expression was far too serene to be bothered by Evandor’s rage.
“You should have asked whether I loved her, not whether I liked her.”
“……Do you even understand what you’re saying right now?”
“I knew the moment I saw her. That she was the one—had to be. My body remembered her even when my mind held no memory.”
Of course he knew his past had been garbage. But he’d never once doubted that what his former self had felt for her was ‘love’.
A love twisted and grotesque in its shape.
“I want to make Celia happy. I have no intention of erasing this feeling, nor any desire to change it.”
“You’re going to make her happy?”
Who was it that was violating her, using amnesia as an excuse?
Those few who knew Lucius’s memory was incomplete whispered to Celia that he harbored different intentions—that he’d feigned love and a normal marriage as cover while exploiting his weakened state to achieve some hidden goal.
“I know what you really are. You don’t remember, but I haven’t forgotten a single word you ever spoke!”
But in Evandor’s view, all of this was wrong.
Lucius was deceiving Celia.
“How you trampled her, tried to destroy her. How you insisted on tormenting her instead of taking out your ugliness on me. I remember everything you did.”
For the first time, Lucius’s eyes wavered.
Evandor was the only person who knew things Lucius didn’t want to know—things he nonetheless had to know.
“Shall I tell you what you said to me the day you married her?”
A long index finger pressed painfully against Lucius’s chest.
“‘Even Brickwell’s noble princess becomes nothing but a useful hostage the moment she enters my estate.'”
The sharp words cut deep into his heart.
“Those were your words.”
Lucius froze as though struck by lightning. He felt a strange sensation—hearing words he would never speak, words arrogant and contemptuous, replayed in his own voice.
“Celia will make an excellent hostage.”
A searing ache bloomed in his skull, and vertigo swept through him as though the ground beneath his feet were crumbling.
“I’ll make an effort to ensure she doesn’t break. Yes, an effort.”
This repugnant, crystalline memory.
Whose was it truly?
“And yet you speak of her happiness.”
You deceiver, Evandor whispered.

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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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