Please Grant Me a Glorious Regret [Novel] Chapter 13

"It's been taken care of, Captain. They said he was released a little while ago, so he should arrive here before the sun is fully up."

Dimion's adjutant and trusted confidant, Axel, reported concisely.

Sitting in the guest room with a cigar in his mouth, Dimion gave a light nod.

Releasing an unjustly imprisoned comrade was child's play for both Captain Rocata and Duke Rocata.

No matter how much money that nouveau-riche Baron Pitt or whatever that vermin's name was smeared around, he couldn't even raise his head before the power Dimion wielded.

If Dimion wanted to release someone, not even the Emperor could stop him.

That was the power of the name Rocata, and at the same time, the reward reaped for bearing the weight of that power.

"Haa…"

With a long exhale, cigar smoke drifted through the room.

His coldly sunken eyes turned to a small piece of paper resting on the table.

It was a telegram he had received in town before returning to the Count's estate.

Because it was marked urgent, he expected news from the military.

Yet, upon receiving it, he found it was a report regarding the family elders.

It detailed how the elders were frantically searching for a woman who resembled Phelia, desperate to attach someone to Dimion's side by any means necessary.

It was nothing new.

It wasn't the least bit surprising.

However, a few details caught his eye, standing out from the usual.

First, they were boasting that they would succeed this time, seemingly having found a rather plausible candidate.

Second, the place they found her was the Dalupe region, the very area where the Tian estate was located.

Third, for some inexplicable reason, one of the elders had been in contact with that nouveau-riche vermin, Pitt.

The telegram, crammed with as many words as possible, added a warning that the elders' demeanor was unusually serious and warranted caution.

Arte immediately came to mind the moment he read it.

But he couldn't be certain.

She was a woman with completely different hair and eye colors.

For some inexplicable reason, she overlapped with Phelia only in Dimion's eyes, so objectively speaking, they didn't look alike.

The old men, who bothered Dimion in all sorts of creative ways, were always obsessed with brown hair and light brown eyes, so it was highly probable that Arte wouldn't have met their standard.

However, the moment he arrived at the estate and followed Arte, his suspicion turned into conviction.

The fact that Baron Pitt stormed in, her brother was dragged off to the military police with his fingers blown off, and she subsequently declared she needed money to release him and take revenge on the Pitt family.

Even offering to follow Dimion as Phelia's replacement in exchange.

The more he heard, the more it felt like puzzle pieces neatly snapping into place.

The events of the past few days at the Count's estate flashed by like a panorama.

Her face as she begged for help after being attacked by the young Baron Pitt remained vivid.

Her audacious plea for him to help her by pretending she was Phelia still echoed in his ears.

He had lost his reason the moment Phelia's name was brought up and failed to see things clearly, but looking back now, it was entirely possible she had orchestrated the whole scene with the young Baron Pitt.

One might question if it was an excessive suspicion, as it would mean sacrificing her own brother's fingers just to get to Dimion, but Dimion knew all too well how monstrous human desire could become to achieve a goal.

The elders were unparalleled in dangling irresistible rewards, capable of blinding Arte with greed easily enough.

An elder approaching Baron Pitt made perfect sense too.

Those arrogant old fools wouldn't have contacted a countryside upstart without a specific purpose.

Moreover, the fact that Marquis Lapsus had been part of this entire process solidified his conviction.

Nathan was one of the few people who had properly seen Phelia's face.

Phelia usually went around with her face hidden under a large hat pulled down low, taking it off only when she met Dimion.

As Dimion's closest friend, Nathan had the privilege of seeing Phelia's face up close on a few occasions.

What if Nathan had detailed Phelia's impression and aura?

What if he had passionately argued that this was the only way to lure Dimion out?

It would completely explain why those stubborn elders abandoned their obsession with hair and eye color and chose Arte.

Dragging Dimion to the Tian estate was Nathan's doing, too.

Dimion never planned to come here in the first place.

Had things gone according to his plan, he should have died at the Duke's estate a few days ago.

He intended to die.

He had barely held on, forcing himself to endure by recalling Phelia's tearful face as she made him promise never to escape through death, but he had reached his limit.

Enduring for five years was enough, wasn't it?

He felt Phelia would acknowledge this much effort, so he wanted to abandon his life without lingering regrets.

But Nathan had suddenly latched onto Dimion.

Whether it was the instinct of a comrade-in-arms or the intuition of an old friend, he seemed to have caught the scent of death on him.

Nathan had stubbornly insisted that Dimion accompany him to the Tian estate.

He claimed a friend he'd been close with since their cadet days needed to sell his family's estate but was struggling because it hadn't sold for a long time.

He argued that if rumors spread about Duke Rocata's visit, various nobles would take interest in the property.

That way, their friend and comrade could avoid ending up on the streets.

He insisted Dimion had to tag along, if only to fulfill a humanitarian duty.

He nagged him hundreds of times a day to come along, leaving Dimion defenseless against the persistence.

It was uncharacteristically relentless of Nathan, which Dimion had already found suspicious.

But assuming Nathan was an accomplice who orchestrated this grand scheme, every piece of the puzzle made sense.

Nathan had been trying to persuade Dimion for a long time to finally let Phelia go.

He would constantly beg him to forget her, meet a new woman, and start fresh.

And now, having caught wind of his plan to put a bullet in his own head, Nathan would have done anything to keep Dimion anchored to this world.

Teaming up with the elders was perfectly aligned with that goal.

"Ha."

As he pieced it all together, he couldn't hold back a scoff.

The thought of being played as a pawn on a chessboard left a foul taste in his mouth.

Dimion recalled Arte pressing his hand to her face.

While her clear eyes conveyed considerable resolve, the fragile hand gripping his large one trembled like a leaf in the wind.

If he had faced her without hearing any of this news, he might have mistaken it for ordinary desperation.

He might have been fooled into believing it was sincere.

Arte reminded him of Phelia that much.

The moment he first arrived and faced Arte remained vivid.

He thought he was seeing a phantom.

With a much more mature version of Phelia standing right before his eyes, it had to be a hallucination.

He assumed his unfading longing had finally driven him mad.

Since his dead lover couldn't possibly return to life, he figured it was just an agonizingly cruel illusion.

But the illusion refused to fade.

She stared piercingly at Dimion, her round eyes wide open.

He couldn't help but call out as if possessed.

His heart pounded, wondering if this was a miracle born of his heartbreakingly desperate wish.

It was an absurd thought.

A delusion the usual Dimion would never entertain.

Yet, when it came to Phelia, he could easily conjure up even more preposterous notions.

Phelia was that kind of existence.

The one who cracked Dimion's perfectly fortified world.

The only being who could bring Dimion, a man who arguably reigned above all authority, to his knees.

His swelling hopes shattered and scattered with Nathan's low voice.

Only then did he see it.

The wavy silver hair instead of straight brown hair, the golden eyes instead of hazel, and the bare back of her hand instead of one marked with the Darton family crest.

"…"

A despair so deep it felt paralyzing washed over Dimion, but that was all.

Having vain hopes crumble to dust and realizing Phelia's absence all the more painfully was close to a daily routine for him.

The problem was what came after.

Since she wasn't Phelia, he thought she was a woman not even worth a single glance.

Yet Arte continued to shake Dimion in ways he couldn't have imagined.

She claimed to have seen him in her dreams for years where he called her Phelia, asserting she was indeed Phelia.

Even after learning the truth, she begged him to help her by pretending she was Phelia.

He didn't want to admit it, but he had to.