B-ronken-R-ing 159...

***

"Sol de mi vida, my Inés,

Thanks to your care, I arrived safely in Calztela before noon. Even now, as evening falls, I remain in excellent spirits, perhaps because I had spent a restful night by your side before my journey. Finding a letter from you awaiting me upon my arrival was a delight I had not anticipated.

I must beg your forgiveness for not writing to you immediately. I instructed Balan to convey news of my safe arrival instead because I had to leave the residence promptly to attend to my duties at the headquarters in time for the admiral's inspection. If I had known you wished for a personal message from me, I would have written to you, even at the risk of defying the admiral's orders.

I assure you, I am in perfect health. I intend to remain so, for I cannot bear the thought of leaving you to remarry. I would never wish for you to stay loyal to me for the rest of your life should the worst happen. I simply mean that I do not wish to see another man by your side.

In the end, I will always wish for your happiness. So, I want you to live the way you want to. Even in death, I would support your decisions. In fact, the thought of you remaining a widow pains me more than the prospect of you finding another husband.

I wish for everything you ever wish for to come true, my sunshine. And I hope I am always at your side as you do whatever you want.

As long as you want me at your side, you will never need another husband. I plan to live a long and persistent life by your side as long as you do not cast me aside. Inés, I will make sure you will never need another man at your side, even for a moment.

In truth, I cannot tolerate the mere thought of another man by your side. It is such an unbearable thought that I already broke two pens while writing this... Laugh at my foolishness if you must, but know this: I refuse to succumb to any fate that would separate us.

I am, and will remain, in robust health. I have not been ill nor sustained any new injuries, and you have no cause for concern. I promise this will always be the case. Please endure my presence, my impropriety, my foolishness, forevermore.

Writing from our cherished house by the sea, Cárcel Escalante de Esposa

P.S. I have received orders from my superiors and will be away from Calztela for about ten days starting tomorrow at dawn. I am letting you know in case you wish to send me another love letter before then, my dear Inés.

Not that I expect you to, but I can dream."

Instead of jumping on a horse and galloping to Calztela, as her initial wild impulse dictated, Inés fell into a deep slumber after receiving the two letters from Calztela. That night, it was she who dreamed of him.

The postscript had spared her considerable trouble.

She had nearly set out for Calztela, only to discover that he was not home, or worse, to watch him leave again as soon as she arrived and ran into his arms.

The thought of having to say goodbye like that again filled her with dread.

You rogue. You scoundrel, she fumed inwardly. He had driveled on about how she should remarry once he was dead and some such nonsense. Then again, if he had demanded that she remain a widow for the rest of her life, she would have slapped him across his rotten head. But hearing him say that he would be all right with her marrying another man made her want to kick him in the shin. She wanted to ask him if he truly meant it.

"He'd say it would be fine," Inés mumbled to herself.

Cárcel Escalante was a complete fool, after all.

She couldn't tell what she wanted herself, but she would make her own choices about her future. Whether she remarried ten times or twenty, or chose to stay faithful to him for the rest of her life, the decision would be hers alone. Nevertheless, she was not going to let him get away with placing her in a situation to make such decisions. Either way, she wanted to punch him. How could he mention the prospect of his own death so casually? He was practically asking for a beating with such a remark.

Seething with anger, Inés had glared at the pillow he had used as though it were him and had fallen asleep. Upon waking up at dawn, she read his letter again and again. "You will never need another husband. I plan to live a long and persistent time."

That was all he had ever needed to say. She never expected him to suddenly confess the truth. Cárcel Escalante would never tell her himself that he had been shot. But she hadn't expected him to lie so nonchalantly about being in perfect health, assuring her there was nothing to worry about.

You absolute scoundrel... Inés thought of his angelic face, which didn't suit this title at all. Then, she sat at her desk in the dimly lit study, picking up a quill pen as if to write back. She tapped the quill, not yet dipped in ink, against the paper and began to scribble aggressively.

Assassination.

Ijar.

Cárcel Escalante.

The Crown Prince.

A sense of inferiority.

Envy.

Murderous intent.

Jealousy.

Twenty-four.

Twenty-five.

Twenty-six.

Her pen scratched along the paper without a trace. The words were all in a foreign language, as though out of habit.

"I will kill that bastard, Inés. I'll kill him... and ensure he never lays a hand on you again. Yes, I'll kill Escalante, too. And that Montor bastard..."

Escalante.

The mention of his name in her memory sent a chill down her spine. Long ago, she had barely paid attention to Oscar's remark.

Why had that despicable man placed Cárcel on an equal level as Fernando that night?

Oscar's envy toward Cárcel had simmered for many years. It was a sentiment he had failed to hide even in those few years of seemingly idyllic time. But society never uttered a word about the crown princess and the prince's cousin, who seldom exchanged a glance, let alone words. There was simply no room for speculation.

There had barely been anything between Oscar and Cárcel, besides Oscar's deep-seated sense of inferiority, Cárcel's heroic standing he built up over time in the navy, and the crown prince's unspoken hostility toward his cousin that had existed since their youth.

Inés recalled the first time she had contemplated Cárcel Escalante's death. In the past, she had simply thought that Oscar sought to destroy Cárcel's reputation, making sure his cousin would neither soar to prominence nor achieve further renown.

According to her first life, such events had yet to transpire. But in that life, she hadn't been Cárcel Escalante's wife. Inés nervously tapped the tip of her quill against the paper again.

She found herself back at square one, as always, when her thoughts turned to him. There were too many unknowns, and there was little she knew about that Cárcel Escalante. She had to scoff at her younger self for naively assuming he was a transparent libertine she could see through without issue.

Such was the folly of possessing a consciousness as immature as her youthful body, despite retaining the memories of her past. When she had regressed to her sixteen-year-old self, only three months before her impending marriage to Oscar, she had been impulsive and reckless, just like a young girl might be when cornered.

At the tender age of sixteen, she had believed love would be the answer and abandoned luxury and power in its pursuit. As she counted the days left before marrying into the imperial family, she had anticipated how her life would turn out differently. Whatever drew her to love Emiliano, at first, she had simply deemed it fate without even knowing what kind of man he was. She had convinced herself that life with him would be a chance to rewrite her destiny.

She had felt like an artist painting over the glass of an empty canvas that was already framed. Her time with Emiliano remained a beautiful memory in her mind because he had matched her romanticized ideals. It was because the Emiliano added onto the glass belatedly had been beautiful-not because she had been.

It was her misfortune to delude herself into thinking the painting, which should have been messy all along, was beautiful. Emiliano had been the perfect candidate for the mindless fantasies of a sixteen-year-old girl, which led to his destruction, and because of her folly, everything had been ruined.

Inés tightened her grip on her pen for a moment before releasing it.

Choosing Cárcel Escalante had been the childish decision of a much younger Inés. She had been the most cold-headed, but also the youngest of her iterations. She did not regret this decision, of course. Without it, she would have been betrothed to Oscar once more, spending another lifetime trying to escape that yoke of fate.

She had little choice to begin with, seeing that Empress Cayetana would have never allowed Inés to join just any noble house. She might have deceived herself into thinking she had a choice, but in reality, she did not. And even if the empress had allowed her to do as she pleased, she still would have had to remain vigilant of the imperial family, feigning ignorance all the while.

"I wish I could remember more about you..." Inés mumbled to herself with a sigh.

She couldn't act rashly since the dangers that had loomed over Cárcel in their previous life were not at his doorstep just yet. Nevertheless, her mind was occupied with the fact that assassins had attempted to kill him, and the news of his deployment to war arriving much sooner than she had expected.

Oscar's unexpectedly pristine face and disgustingly tender smile distorted her thoughts momentarily before they could take shape. He was desperate to eliminate his cousin, so he would not oppose Cárcel's retirement, which would pave the way for him to trample his cousin more easily.

Despite her sympathy for Isabella, Inés knew Cárcel Escalante was in greater peril outside of the navy's battlefields, especially now that Oscar seemed to desire her again. Inés coolly considered this fact.

Cárcel needed to ascend to the position his grandfather once held, if only to survive.

Inés was now certain that Oscar's strange jealousy and seemingly innate sense of inferiority toward Cárcel had much more to do with her than she had first thought. But she did not think that her presence was the sole cause.

There had to be something more profound, something fundamental. She was like a curse that coincidentally overlapped with this inherent cause.

As the realization dawned on her, the pen slipped from her grasp. "I... am a curse to you."

She ran a hand down her face before burying her face in her palms. She couldn't think of what to do now. If she were cursed to break and be broken no matter what she did, why was she condemned to relive this life so many times? Why was she being forced yet again to destroy what she loved?

Her hands dropped from a face like a mask being removed. "Love..." she murmured blankly, tasting the unfamiliar, accursed word on her tongue.

Twenty-four, twenty-five, and finally, twenty-six. The demise of her first life. There were now less than three years left until that very precipice.