My Ex-Husband Came Back Crazy - Chapter 89

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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 89
Chapter 9. Remnants
Celia’s eyes opened inside the wreckage of the carriage.
Absolute darkness and damp cold pressed down on her body first.
She blinked through her blurred vision several times before attempting to push herself up, struggling. At first she thought she’d gone blind, but fortunately that wasn’t it—the night was simply too deep, too thick with darkness in every direction.
“I never even wrote my will. I thought I was dead.”
The moment she drew breath, pain found her.
“Ugh!”
Celia sank back down to the floor with a gasp, abandoning the half-risen position.
Her left shoulder was wrong. Even the smallest movement sent a scraping pain through her as bones and muscle grated against each other. It would almost be a relief if it were just her arm…
“Damn it, what the hell is wrong with my legs…?”
Below her waist, sensation grew faint. Her calves tingled with a numb paralysis that ran clear to her feet.
“That cursed Cloe Larendel.”
She would never leave that woman alive.
‘I’ll kill her with my own hands.’
Clinging to her anger, clarity finally sharpened in her mind.
Celia swallowed her trembling breath and pushed herself up again. Pain erupted across her shoulder, her vision flashing white, but she forced herself to move through it.
She looked up at what must have been the carriage door—now the ceiling.
“Hah.”
She stretched her right arm and shoved, but the door didn’t budge an inch.
The carriage had come to rest in a ravine far deeper than the cliff face itself.
Layers of bedrock and forest blocked the view from above; they wouldn’t spot it easily. And climbing back up from below seemed just as impossible.
She should have been grateful just to be alive. She could have knelt with clasped hands like some devout believer and praised whatever god would listen, but instead her teeth ground together in fury.
“That woman. I won’t kill her quickly.”
Her father had been right about not leaving any retribution unfinished.
When Cloe had claimed she’d pushed her off a cliff before, the story had been generous. It was really just a gentle slope. Back then, Celia’s injuries amounted to nothing more than scraped cheeks and legs.
But this time was different.
Celia looked up at the towering stone wall rising beyond the darkness and laughed softly.
“So. If you’re going to call it a cliff… at least it ought to be this impressive.”
After a long search for any way out, Celia finally leaned her back against the ceiling and steadied her breathing.
Working herself up emotionally wouldn’t change anything—
“Roll her off a cliff the same way. Or maybe I should borrow some of Father’s knights instead. If that doesn’t work, I could join forces with Evandor and just kidnap her outright……”
If Cloe had gone through with killing her, she must have made peace with the possibility of dying herself.
Celia could only hope the woman was somewhere, keeping her throat nice and ready.
“But it’s going to take forever for a rescue party to get here.”
A ravine this deep meant search parties would need time just to check below the cliff face. Even if Lucius sent his people immediately…
“Best case? Four days? Worst case? A week?”
Ugh, even four days was too long. This would drive her mad.
She bit her lip hard and pulled her shawl tighter around herself. The night was brutally cold now that the sun had set completely. Her nose twitched at the chill, and she shivered despite herself.
“Fine. I can ration my strength and last about a week.”
She wasn’t about to die here just because that’s what Cloe wanted.
At least nobles’ carriages usually carried simple refreshments and beverages. They needed them during long journeys—tea to drink, water to quench their thirst.
“It might be somewhere around here.”
Celia began searching near the broken seat.
“Ah.”
A moment later, a bottle rolled out from between pieces of shattered box.
She shook it—liquid sloshed inside. It was cold now, but it was tea from this morning.
“Lucius, you bastard… you better find me quickly.”
She was down here in this miserable state because of his past lover, and if he made her wait too long…
All she had to do now was survive until he arrived.
***
“My lord, you cannot!”
“It’s too dangerous!!”
He shook off the men clinging to him. Hands grabbed at his arms and shoulders, wrapped around his waist, trying to force him to stand still—fingers tangling at him from all sides. Lucius threw his head back, blue veins standing out on his neck as he shouted.
“Where is Celia!!”
His voice cracked like an animal’s cry.
“Why is everyone just standing here!? Get down there and find her now!!”
A dirt-caked boot crushed the gravel at the cliff’s edge, sending small stones tumbling over the precipice. In the precarious chaos, his subordinates shouted desperately.
“We’re determining the fall point!”
“We’re still confirming—”
He turned his head slowly.
“Confirming?”
His voice had dropped to an unnaturally low tone, sharp as a well-honed blade.
“My wife has fallen down there, and you’re calmly confirming?”
“W-we’ll send the knights down immediately!”
“We’ll get reinforcements from nearby estates!”
The sheer cliff below was no place to venture without careful preparation. The right approach was to plan methodically before descending. Even knowing this, Lucius could not afford to waste a single moment.
She hated the cold and pain so much.
She always pretended her wounds didn’t bother her.
But he remembered how she’d clench her lips silently at even the smallest cut, only to stare at it later with reluctant eyes. He remembered the warmth of her body seeking his chest, breathing in the sweet night air. He remembered her fingers gripping his clothes, searching for warmth.
“She’s down there alone in this cold.”
His breathing came rough and ragged.
Raw desperation and despair tangled in that breath, tearing from the inside out the surface of composure and reason he’d built over a lifetime.
“She’s… alive. She has to be.”
The cliff top had become chaos.
Torches swayed in the harsh wind, voices twisted together between orders and pleas and panic, and a broken carriage wheel teetered precariously on the cliff’s edge, creaking ominously.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
His heart pounded against his ribs like a fear newly learned.
“Celia.”
When his eyes first opened, he’d simply coveted her because she seemed like a woman he loved.
But that wasn’t the whole of it anymore.
The facets she showed him were lovely enough, and she seemed to be the woman who’d held his life in her hands even in memories he’d lost long ago. None of those words mattered now.
“I can’t lose you like this.”
She was the one who made him wonder how she could possibly look at the sky so beautifully. She was the one who taught him how sweet it was when she finally allowed him near her, after holding everyone at arm’s length for so long. She was the one who had ultimately taught him how the world could collapse and rebuild itself in entirely new ways when her eyes held affection.
He could never return to reality now.
She possessed things he did not.
Lucius had always realized something whenever he felt his heart move toward Celia.
He’d never spoken it aloud, but he knew it instinctively.
At the root of this desire to be drawn to her, to follow her gaze, to covet her, to possess her completely…
“I’ll save you no matter what.”
…there was a deficiency that had been born before love.
An abnormal, surging possessiveness welled up inside him.
“You’re mine.”
If that moment when his eyes first opened could be called a rebirth, then she was like the only thing he’d held in his hands from that birth moment onward.
He would not let her be taken from him now.
Even if his opponent were a god, he would never let her go.
“My lord! The knights will be sent down shortly! Perhaps you could wait—”
“No. I’m going too.”
It was then that Lucius, shaking off those trying to restrain him, suddenly lifted his head.
A pristine snowflake landed on his cheek as if it had been waiting.
The remnants of a season the woman who loved summer’s brilliance despised most—snow—were drifting down from the sky, of all times.
“My lord, maintaining body heat down there will be difficult enough. The terrain is treacherous besides; we cannot guarantee safe passage down.”
The timing was cursed.
Autumn was already drawing toward its end, and this region’s terrain meant it sat near the northern reaches where snow fell even in fall.
“If you descend now… my lord, you too will be in danger.”
“……”
Lucius did not answer.
He only felt the snowflake melting as it touched his cheek, and he stared down into the darkness below the cliff.
Of all times.
It was the first snow of the season, and it had come far too early.

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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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