After I Died, My Husband Went Mad - Chapter 60
The blue birds, soaring as if yearning for the sky, vanished without a trace moments later. Those who had gazed upon the phenomenon returned to their arguments, leaving only Dehart standing, frozen in time.
“My Lord.”
Eli called out to him. Without a hint of hesitation, his brashness shone through at times like these.
“Are you alright?”
However, even the oblivious Eli couldn’t help but be surprised upon looking at Dehart.
Flashes emanated from Dehart’s golden irises as he nodded, his trembling hands clenched into fists. There was no trace of the confusion that had engulfed him moments before.
All that radiated from him was a chilling determination.
“Yes.”
Eli felt an indescribable pressure. It was like observing flames dancing within ice—like the fragile ice could break at any moment as he gazed at this relentless entity ready to set both him and the world on fire.
Eli shuddered in spite of himself.
I’ve never seen him like this before. I wonder if this is who he really is.
Until his cousin Ryan had recommended him for the job, Eli had never met Dehart up close. He had always thought of Dehart as someone fiery in nature, quick to judge, and obsessively focused on one thing to the exclusion of all else. In simple terms, he deemed Dehart too flawed to be a duke.
However, the Dehart before him now shattered his expectations. By Eli’s own reckoning, Dehart should have exploded like a firecracker at the sight of someone who resembled the dead Duchess and gone on a rampage not caring about the destruction it caused…
And yet, he was eerily composed at the moment.
To Eli, this wasn’t a good sign. If Dehart was now mistaking the short-haired woman for the Duchess, his reaction would be even more catastrophic once he snapped out of that delusion and realized that she wasn’t.
“…Are you really convinced that it’s her?” Eli asked cautiously.
Dehart’s eyes widened in disbelief as if Eli was questioning something so obvious. Eli continued calmly, however. He needed to quickly shatter this illusion before it solidified in Dehart’s mind. It was not just for his sake but also for the sake of Inverness.
“Please do not take offense, but listen. At the funeral at Hillend Hall…didn’t you see with your own two eyes?”
“…”
“The Duke himself saw the Duchess off, and all of Hillend Hall was there to send her off with him.”
That was an undeniable fact. Even those from the Capital had confirmed that it was Sebelia’s body.
“She still rests in the family cemetery at Hillend Hall. Right beside the place where, one day, the Duke will be laid to rest.”
Dehart’s mouth tightened at Eli’s point. The reality he’d been forcing himself to ignore, the hope he’d been holding onto, rushed at him like a tidal wave.
“Are you really sure?”
Why did he believe that she was the Duchess?
Eli’s cautious inquiry pierced his chest like an arrow. Dehart couldn’t answer his question. Because…
She’s Sebelia.
Because that was all he could say for himself given everything. Dehart let out a bitter chuckle. It felt like thousands of needles pricking his skin.
“…Is this what it feels like for a lunatic to realize they’re truly insane.”
Eli’s reasoning doused his emotions like a torrent of icy water. The conflict of what he felt now and what he saw in the past cooled his fevered thoughts.
His heart had just confirmed that the woman he had faced moments ago was real. But his head screamed that his experience and reason told him it was only a look-alike, that the real Sebelia was already dead.
What is the truth? No, what do I want to believe is the truth?
That frivolous and narrow belief that Sebelia hadn’t committed suicide. It was with that belief alone that he had come this far, but now she was suddenly here, alive, in front of him, at this very moment, in this very place, when he was trying to piece together the truth of her death?
“It was all an illusion.” Dehart’s voice was fractured—each broken syllable falling apart as he uttered the words. “I thought I saw it with my own eyes, but I only wanted to see it that way.”
Had his hope-soaked mind completely lost itself and mistaken a hallucination for reality?
Did I… actually want her to be alive?
It felt like a sharp blade was scraping through his insides, completely exposing and unraveling everything he had hidden and buried: The reason he had clung onto the belief that there was a secret to her death, even amidst accusations of lunacy. The reason he had persisted, gathering the remaining family members and leaving for the North.
It was because he didn’t want to believe that she was actually dead. Because he couldn’t accept that she was gone.
At least, if it wasn’t suicide, if she was unjustly killed by someone… perhaps then, I could accept it, even just a little.
“Ha…”
A bloody mess, a living hell. In the midst of it all, Dehart blinked slowly, his vision fading to white.
Eli looked at Dehart calmly, hoping he would abandon that foolish belief that the Duchess was alive. However, Dehart, gazing blankly at the sky, finally spoke.
“…Station knights at the city’s south and west gates.”
“Yes?”
“Seek cooperation from the Baron to reinforce nighttime patrols and surveillance. Once they’re out there, our first priority is to make sure there are no escape routes.”
“My Lord!” Eli’s eyes widened.
“Whether it’s a hallucination, just my delusion, or… whether there’s a hidden secret I’m unaware of, I’ll know when I meet her again.”
White lightning struck down upon the golden irises that shone as bright as the sun. Eli swallowed hard at the sight.
The madman could not answer for himself.
